Replicating Business Partners

The business partner replication via transaction DRFOUT follows the same pattern as the replication of products. Therefore, it’s only discussed here with screenshots. If you want to see a video demonstration, please refer to the product replication lesson.

The following screenshots display the transaction DRFOUT with the parameters relevant for replicating business partners (on the left) and the available filters (on the right).

The following elements are highlighted:

1. Replication Model: Choose your replication model. In the demo SSCv2 was used.
2. Outbound Implementation: 986_3 - Outbound Impl. for BP/REL via Services
3. Replication Mode: Manual Replication in combination with Manual Filter Criteria
4. Manual Replication Filter Criteria: Depending on the business partners you would like to send. Refer to the next section for further details.
5. The Execute button to start the replication. Alternatively, hit F8.

Since the outbound implementation involves business partners and their relationships, contact persons associated with those partners are automatically replicated.

First of all, please note that the filters set in transaction DRFF for automatic replication are not taken into account in transaction DRFOUT. Therefore, you may need to redefine those filters for manual replication!

The purposes of the different replication filter types (general and node/segment) were discussed earlier. Therefore, we’ll repeat them only briefly here:

1. General filters can be used to filter whole instances of objects.
2. Segment/Node filters can be used to filter parts of the object.

While the General Filters decide whether to include or exclude business partners entirely, the Segment Filters are used to filter individual segments or object nodes.

Example from the previous screenshot

The screenshot above displays mainly node/segment filters and only includes two general filters:

• The field Business Partner, which refers to the business partner ID.
• The field Relationship Cat., which refers to the type of the business partner relationship.

As you learned in the product replication lesson, you can activate and deactivate filters from the tree on the left. Double-click entries to toggle them. The green entries are active and available for use on the right.

The screenshot above uses two filters:

• The general Business Partner filter with a specific business partner ID, since we want to replicate that particular business partner as a smoke test.
• The segment filter BP Role with the customer role FLCU01, since this business partner has multiple business partner roles (in the demo environment: FI Customer and Customer), and SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2 can only work with the Customer role.

With these filters, this one business partner is sent with the only role we need in the cloud CRM.

The following screenshots show the business partner in SAP S/4HANA using transaction BP.

You can see the following details:

1. General data of the business partner, such as its Address
2. Sales and Distribution (SD) data, such as the sales area-dependent and Partner Functions
3. Relationship data, such as contact persons

The following screenshot shows the business partner in SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2 after a successful replication. You can find it using the Accounts app.

As you can see, details like the address, the contact person, the account team with the responsible sales employee, and the partner functions are correctly reflected.

While the contact person was replicated using the configured integration scenarios, the employee was manually created in SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2 with the corresponding external ID mapping.

The message tracking was discussed briefly in the product replication lesson and will be explained in more detail in the monitoring and troubleshooting unit. Therefore, this topic is only briefly covered here.

You can track messages using the following tools:

• SAP S/4HANA:
  • Transactions DRFLOG to view the replication log, which is also shown after triggering replications from transaction DRFOUT
  • Transaction SRT_MONI to view web service messages
• Cloud Integration:
  • Monitor→Integration and APIs→Monitor Message Processing→All Artifacts.
• SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2:
  • Settings→Integration→Message Monitoring

Since the business partner replication runs with confirmation messages enabled, both systems are aware of each other's assigned business partner IDs.

• SAP Sales and Service Cloud: In addition to the External ID Mapping setting, you can view an account’s external ID in the Accounts app under Additional Identifiers.
• SAP S/4HANA: You can view external IDs in the Unified Key Mapping using transaction MDG_ANALYSE_IDM

The following screenshot displays the two previously mentioned locations, with the cloud CRM at the top and SAP S/4HANA at the bottom.