Configuring SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud Version 2 for Business Partner Replication

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to configure the communcation configuration and additional dependencies in SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud Version 2 required for business partner replication from SAP S/4HANA

Business Partner Replication including Relationships

In earlier units and lessons, several technical and functional settings have been discussed generally. This unit lists some of the specific settings and dependencies needed to replicate business partners and their relationships from SAP S/4HANA to SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2, and explains a few selected ones in more detail.

The business partner is one of the most complex objects in the system and, therefore, has many dependencies, especially code lists.

The following screenshot displays some of the key functional settings for Business Partners and Customers, which are a specific kind of business partners, and the dependent objects in the Company section, such as the Organizational Structure and Employees.

The following list provides more details on the relevant settings from a functional and technical perspective:

Relevant Settings for the Replication of Business Partners

Communication Configuration:
- Integrate Master Data with SAP S/4HANA
Object Dependencies / External ID Mappings:
- Organizational Model (Sales Organizations, Groups, Offices)
- Employees
- (Customers)
- (Contacts - part of the replication)
General Settings / Code Lists:
- Company/Sales Area-related:
  - Distribution Channel
  - Division
- Business Partner-related:
  - Titles
  - Academic Titles
  - Name Prefixes
  - Marital Status
  - Industries
  - Legal Forms
  - Relationships
  - Identification Types
  - (Account Hierarchy Types)
- Customer-related:
  - Roles
  - Payment Terms
  - Incoterms
  - ABC Classifications
  - Customer Groups
  - Delivery Block Reasons
  - Billing Block Reasons
  - Order Block Reasons
  - Price Lists
  - Price Groups
  - Delivery Priorities
  - Nielsen IDs
Value Mappings
- Business Partner Role
- Partner Number Type
- Business Partner Directed Relationship Partner Function Role

While this list isn't meant to be comprehensive, some dependencies listed here might not apply to your landscape and may simply need to be cleaned up or left unconfigured. For example, the code list Marital Status might not be relevant or maintained for your business partners. In such cases, you don’t need to maintain the list. Instead, consider clearing the code list or at least hiding the fields in the user interface so users can’t maintain values in SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2.

Since most code lists follow the same pattern, which has already been discussed in a previous unit, and covering all the code lists in detail would go beyond the scope of this beginner course, this lesson focuses on explaining the most important settings relevant to the replication of business partners from SAP S/4HANA to SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2.

You can find more information about which code lists belong to which business object and where to find details in the on-premise systems in the Knowledge Base Article (KBA / SAP Note) 2598332 - Code list mapping for integration with SAP Cloud for Customer. Although the KBA targets the previous version of SAP Sales and Service Cloud, the Excel file (Code_List_Usage.xlsx) can still be useful for locating customizing paths or tables in the on-premise systems (worksheet Code List Details). SAP S/4HANA shares most SAP ERP tables. For business partner-related code lists, you may check the SAP CRM table entry.

Communication Configuration

The Communication Configuration Integrate Master Data with SAP S/4HANA was copied with the default settings as part of the general technical preparation in a previous unit.

Remember: You can find the Communication Configuration by going to Settings→Integration→Communication Configuration. On the screen that shows all the Communication Configuration templates and the ones actually configured, it’s helpful to use the Communication System filter to quickly hide all templates and only display the ones you've already configured.

Since in this course, we set up business partner replication from SAP S/4HANA, including relationships and the confirmation message, several adjustments to the communication configuration are required or at least ensured they are in place.

The following settings are relevant:

The following two inbound services must be active, which means they must be listed under Inbound Configuration:
- Replicate Business Partner from SAP S/4HANA
- Replicate Business Partner Relationship from SAP S/4HANA
The following outbound service must be active, which means it must be listed under Asynchronous Outbound Configuration:
- Confirm Business Partner Replication to SAP S/4HANA with the default Target Message Entity API Path/http/c4c/s4/businessPartnerS4ConfirmationOut
The Value Mapping Group must be assigned. In the demo environment, S/4HANA is assigned.
The Communication Configuration itself must be set to active.

The following screenshot displays the communication configuration with the necessary settings applied.

Screenshot of Communication Configuration with the relevant settings highlighted.

Object Dependencies

Object dependencies lead to a specific sequence that is necessary to successfully replicate objects. The following graphic gives an overview of the most relevant dependencies.

Organizational Model

Business Partners (and products, as an example for another master data object) are assigned to Sales Organizations to conduct business with them. Because sales organizations are relevant for several business objects, they were discussed earlier as an example of External ID Mappings.

Employees

Although employees are business partners, there is a separate integration flow for replicating them from SAP S/4HANA. Therefore, they must be set up in the system before customer replication, including external ID mappings.

Different Kinds of Associations Between Business Partners

Business Partner is the general term for a variety of business objects, including Customers, Contacts, and Employees, that can be replicated as independent objects. The business partner role defines what kind of business partner they are, such as FLCU01 / CRM000 for customer, BUP001 for Contact Person, or BUP003 for Employee.

You can link business partners to each other to define connections between them, for instance, a contact person who works for a customer or an employee of your company who's responsible for a customer as an account executive. There are two different ways to link business partners:

The association between customers and contact persons is established through relationships, which are separate entities and use separate messages. That’s why customers and contacts can be sent independently, and the relationship is established in a second step.
The association between customers and employees is often used to define employees as account owners, responsible sales employees, etc. This kind of association is usually established through sales area-dependent partner functions, which are stored within the customer object at the sales area level.
The association among customers can be established using both of the previously mentioned approaches: relationships or partner functions, depending on the use case. Partner functions are often used to define sales area-dependent "ship-to" or "bill-to" relations. Relationshipsprovide a more flexible and detailed way to define directed or undirected relations between business partners.

Cross-references among customers can cause processing errors for affected customer messages, but they can often be resolved by restarting the messages. In some cases, when circular relationships exist between customers — meaning customer A refers to customer B and customer B refers to customer A — a deadlock situation can occur. This can be resolved by sending the customers once without partner functions, which also prevents cross-reference issues. This situation usually only happens during the initial load.

General Settings, Code Lists, and Value Mappings

Because of the numerous code lists and varying system configurations, this course cannot cover all code lists and potential value mappings. Instead, it focuses on the most relevant settings, code lists, and value mappings for a basic integration of business partners with relationships.

Hint

Generally, it’s a good practice to review the system’s settings for a specific object to identify the most obvious code list dependencies and other related settings, as shown in the screenshot earlier in this lesson.

Video: Maintaining Business Partner Settings and Value Mappings

The following video shows how the previously mentioned settings are maintained in SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2. The subsequent sections provide more details. The creation of the Business Partner Role was demonstrated earlier in this course.

Sales Area Dependent Partner Functions

To enable partner function information, such as Ship-To Party, Bill-To Party, or the Responsible Sales Employee, to be replicated from SAP S/4HANA, the relevant party relationship types must be activated for sales-area dependent maintenance in SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2, and additional value mappings for them are necessary.

You can find further details on the replication of business partners, including partner functions, in this What’s New article.

Caution

Please note that the lists in the following sections include values from the demo environment for sample purposes. While some of these values may be universally valid, they should always be verified against your actual environment before implementation.

In the demo environment, the following relationship types are enabled for sales area-dependent maintenance. You can access this setting from the User Menu→Settings→Business Partners→Relationships.

Code	Description
AT46	Sales Employee
CRME02	End Customer
CRMH02	Ship-To Party Relationship
CRMH03	Payer
CRMH04	Bill-To Party Relationship

This is a prerequisite for some of the following value mappings. If you do not enable sales area-dependency for these relationships, you won't be able to maintain all the required value mappings.

Value Mappings

As mentioned earlier, value mappings can be maintained in Settings→Integration→Value Mapping. The following value mappings were created in the demonstration:

Business Partner Role
Partner Number Type
Business Partner Directed Relationship Partner Function Role

All value mappings created for this course are assigned to the Mapping Group S/4HANA, which was also created during the demonstration, and all value mappings use the Pass-Through option as the Rule for Missing Mappings.

The following tables list the mapped values for a better overview and comprehensibility:

Business Partner Role:

Customer roles were discussed earlier in the course as an example of maintaining Value Mappings. Remember that the system comes with two default roles: one for prospects and one for customers. You can find them in Settings→Customers→Roles.

Since the customer role used in SAP S/4HANA in our demo environment is FLCU01, and the pre-delivered values in SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2 cannot be deleted, the following Value Mapping is necessary.

Internal Value	Description	External Value
CRM000	Customer	FLCU01

Value Mapping for Business Partner Roles

Partner Number Type:

This mapping specifies which number type the cloud CRM has to look up for specific partner functions. It indicates, for example, that a partner function with the code VE references an employee rather than a customer. Since multiple external values are mapped to the same internal value, the external value AG has the Default Outbound flag.

Please note that this only maps the number type, not the actual partner function.

Internal Value	Description	External Value	Default Outbound
Customer	Customer Number	AG	X
Customer	Customer Number	RG
Customer	Customer Number	RE
Customer	Customer Number	WE
Contact Person	Contact Person Number	AP
Employee	Employee Number	VE

For an explanation of what these codes mean, refer to the next table. Although the context differs, you can see the meaning of those codes.

Finished Value Mapping for Partner Number Type

Business Partner Directed Relationship Partner Function Role:

This mapping translates partner function codes into the relationship types used by the cloud CRM.

Internal Value	Description	External Value
AT46-1	Has sales employee	VE
CRME02-1	Has end customer	AG
CRMH02-1	Has Ship-To party	WE
CRMH03-1	Has the payer	RG
CRMH04-1	Has the Bill-To party	RE

Finished Value Mapping for BP Directed Relationship Partner Function Role

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