SAP Community - SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud

SAP Enterprise Support Academy Newsletter July 2026

2026-07-01T14:16:34.678000+02:00

Dear customers,
Find here a preview of the SAP Enterprise Support Academy monthly newsletter on latest news, training courses, upcoming sessions, and further educational offerings.
The SAP Enterprise Support Academy provides expert guidance and high impact knowledge transfer services that enable you to innovate and be successful with your SAP solutions.

Subscribe to regularly receive latest news and stay informed about the wide range of educational offerings provided by the SAP Enterprise Support Academy that help you to build the digital skills tailored to your needs.

SAP Customer Experience and the Autonomous Enterprise

SAP's Autonomous Enterprise is a vision for the whole business - finance, supply chain, procurement, HR, and Customer Experience running on AI agents that act, not just advise. See what's available today, and how to get there.

Learn more

Join the Territory Management Workshop

Discover how to build sales territories that perform. The new Expert-guided Implementation (EGI) session provides strategic guidance on territory design and management, technical readiness for SAP Sales Cloud, Version 2, and hands-on experience using your own test tenant and master data.

Stay Ahead with SAP Commerce Cloud Updates

Discover our new short e-learning guide to understand how SAP Commerce Cloud updates work, why continuous innovation matters, and what the transition from JDK 17 to JDK 21 means for your business. Find latest release information and how to contribute to the future product roadmap through the Continuous Influence Program.

Access the e-learning here

Join us to Master Parallel Lines in SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Discover how parallel lines accelerate delivery, reduce testing time, and safeguard operations. Join this course to learn to separate configuration from innovation, streamline data migration & training, and leverage the 3-System Landscape. Perfect for optimizing your S/4HANA Cloud journey.

Enroll the e-learning today

Master Procure-to-Pay with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

Ready to transform your procurement strategy? Master SAP S/4HANA Cloud's procure-to-pay processes, unlock powerful Fiori apps, and discover automation innovations with SAP Ariba integration. Streamline operations, reduce errors, and drive business growth with our new e-learning course.

Start today

May 2026 Replay: Discover What’s New in SAP Fieldglass

Watch the replay session straight from our experts and discover what’s new in SAP Fieldglass — don’t miss the latest updates and insights! Explore the Spend Management Value Map knowledge base (visit the “How do I stay up to date?” section) to dive deeper and stay informed.

Check out here

Watch the 2605 Release Webcasts on Demand for SAP Ariba and SAP Business Network

Explore on demand webcasts covering key features planned for the 2605 release across SAP Ariba and SAP Business Network. Learn what’s coming in Procure-to-Pay, Supplier Management & Risk, and Source-to-Contract at your convenience. Explore the Spend Management Value Map knowledge base (head to “What's New in the 2605 Update” section) to see how these updates connect to your current processes and planned changes.

Access here

May 2026 Replay: Transitioning to Next-Gen SAP Ariba

Watch the Meet-the-Expert replay session – Transitioning to Next-Gen SAP Ariba: Overview, Architecture to get a clear view of key concepts and architecture decisions. Explore the Spend Management Value Map knowledge base (head to “How do I stay up to date?” section) to see how this shift influences your SAP Ariba landscape.

Learn more

SAP for Me Just Got Smarter!

Discover what's new in the SAP for Me Services and Support dashboard: AI-powered search with Joule, smarter navigation, faster insights & a streamlined experience. Your support journey just got easier.

Learn what's changing inside and read the article

Refining Diagnostics Tab in SAP for Me Services & Support Dashboard

Discover how SAP EarlyWatch Alert helps you stay ahead of system issues. The improved Diagnostics tab in SAP for Me (Services and Support dashboard) now offers clearer visibility into your landscape health—enabling early risk detection across on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments.

Learn more

Ariba /Features in Focus webinars - Onboarding shippers to SAP Business Network for Logistics

Features in Focus webinars is proud to present a new webinar with the SAP Business Network for Logistics team with a focus on shipper onboarding for freight collaboration.
Learn step-by-step how to create a subaccount in SAP Business Technology Platform, establish trust configurations, and subscribe to the required services to enable the shipper tenant.

Registration page

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management: Q2-26 Updates & Highlights

2026-07-01T16:57:49.977000+02:00

As we move through 2026, I'm back with the next edition of my quarterly blog series covering the latest innovations and highlights in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management. This quarter brought a strong mix of updates — from richer analytics and a new carbon balance to broader environmental impact calculations, expanded emission factor content, and a first look at where we're taking AI and regulatory support. In this blog post, I'm covering:

Analytics Enhancements

Good analytics are what turn footprint calculations into decisions, so this quarter we focused on the Footprint Overview app, which now includes new functions for an improved user experience. The updated app aligns with sustainability reporting frameworks and introduces footprint comparison as a capability, so you can put results side by side instead of looking at them in isolation. In addition, the top five contributors are now directly available on the main view, helping you act on insights instead of only validating calculation results.

The app organizes results into four sections – Climate, Products, Energy, and Waste – accessible from a navigation panel. The Climate section shows total GHG emissions broken down by GHG scope and category, and surfaces the top five plants by emissions; the Energy, Products, and Waste sections highlight the most significant contributors among energy sources and consumers, purchased and sold products, and waste in operations. From any chart you can drill into the underlying records in apps such as GHG Emissions, Manage Footprint Results, or Waste Generated in Operations. The new Compare With option lets you benchmark a selected inventory against a reference footprint inventory, calculation variant, or period, showing primary and reference values side by side together with the absolute and percentage difference. With comparison and the top contributors surfaced up front, it becomes much faster to spot where your biggest hotspots are and how they shift between periods or scenarios. For more information, see Analyzing Footprint Overview on SAP Help.

Carbon Balance for Production Processes

One of the key innovations this quarter is the new carbon balance calculation for production processes. With this feature, SAP Sustainability Footprint Management enables you to track and calculate direct Scope 1 – Process Emissions from production by comparing the carbon entering a process with the carbon leaving it. The approach is modeled on the principle of mass balance, such as the methodology outlined in the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) Monitoring and Reporting Regulation, so the resulting emissions are grounded in an established regulatory accounting method.

This is especially relevant for production processes where carbon is physically transformed. To use the new approach, you provide carbon content data for the production-related business transactions that represent the two sides of the balance. Goods Issue for Production represents material issued from a plant with reference to a production document, while Goods Receipt from Production represents material received at a plant with reference to a production document.

When you calculate the production footprint, the system first determines the difference in carbon content by subtracting the sum of the output carbon content from the sum of the input carbon content – the amount of carbon directly emitted during the production step. This difference is then multiplied by the C-to-CO2 conversion factor to translate it into Climate Change CO2e, which is added to the total footprint of the production and distributed to the output items. The result can be either positive or negative depending on the relationship between input and output carbon: if more carbon is emitted than is captured in the outgoing products, the value is negative, whereas if more carbon is captured in the outputs, the value is positive. Where production is not yet closed, work-in-progress items carry their carbon content over into the next period.

After a successful calculation, you can view the production results in the Manage Footprint Results app. For footprint items of type Production, the carbon balance appears as an input item under the Allocation category – connected to the business transaction Allocation on Production – and its climate change impact is shown in the Sankey chart quick view. The underlying moisture and carbon content values for the in-going and out-going products are available on the Input and Output tabs for review. Under Allocation, you can also navigate to the calculation details and formula of the carbon balance.

To support this capability, the Import Business Transactions (Corporate and Products) API has also been enhanced with the new moistureContent and carbonContentPerUnit fields. For more information, see Calculating Carbon Balance and the scenario guide Calculating Scope 1 Emissions (Carbon Content) Using Business Transaction Data on SAP Help.

Expanded Gas Impact Categories for Environmental Footprint Analysis

In previous updates, I introduced how SAP Sustainability Footprint Management is evolving from a carbon-focused solution into a broader environmental footprint platform (see: Deep Dive: Multi-Impact Categories in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management). This quarter, we’re continuing that journey with seven new gas-related impact categories for environmental footprint calculations:

CO2 – Carbon Dioxide (Total Biogenic and Fossil)
CH4 – Methane (Total Biogenic and Fossil)
N2O – Nitrous Oxide
HFCs – Hydrofluorocarbons (Aggregated GHGs)
PFCs – Perfluorocarbons (Aggregated GHGs)
SF6 – Sulphur Hexafluoride
NF3 – Nitrogen Trifluoride

This gives you more transparency into the constituent gases behind the overall greenhouse gas (GHG) picture, with each gas calculated using its own characterization factors based on global warming potential, and separate biogenic and fossil treatment for CO2 and methane. For more information on the gases, see Impact Categories on SAP Help.

In the Manage Emission Factors app, you can maintain emission factors for the new gas categories either directly in the UI or by importing them via the app template, as with the other impact categories.

In the Manage Footprint Inventory Scopes app, you activate the relevant impact categories for your scope. With this release, you can activate up to 12 impact categories, including Climate Change, which remains enabled by default. Once scoped and calculated, the new categories are visible in the Manage Footprint Results app, where the system shows total footprints and statuses across the selected impact categories and the contribution of GHG categories into them.

Constituent Gases in the Item Footprint

Footprint Data Offloading

As customers run footprint calculations period after period, the volume of calculated inventory data grows over time. To help you manage that data lifecycle, this quarter we introduced the new Manage Footprint Data Offloads app, which lets you move calculated footprint inventories to long-term storage once they are no longer needed in the active system. This helps you optimize system performance, reduce license consumption, and support your organizational sustainability objectives, all while keeping the data available for the duration you need it.

To make this controllable, footprint data offloading is built around two configurable time periods that you now set per scope in the Manage Footprint Inventory Scopes app:

The residence period is the minimum time that calculated footprint inventory data stays in the system before it becomes eligible for offloading to long-term storage. It must be at least 24 months and is part of the overall retention period.
The retention period is the total time the data must be kept, including both the residence period in the system and the time in long-term storage. It must also be at least 24 months. After the retention period ends, you can permanently delete the data.

The Manage Footprint Data Offloads app lists all calculated footprint inventories with the status Calculated Successfully, Calculated with Errors, or Calculated. Once an inventory’s residence period has ended, you can offload it from this app, and you can also delete the data of calculated footprint inventories to manage your data lifecycle and system resources. Offloaded inventories can be downloaded as JSON files, so the data remains accessible for archiving, reporting, or audit purposes after it leaves the active system. Offloading actions are also captured in the audit logs.

Manage Footprint Data Offloads

If you’re already a customer, this transition is handled for you: any footprint inventories created before this feature are automatically migrated, with the residence period set to 24 months and the retention period set to 36 months by default. You can adjust these periods per scope going forward to match your own data governance and reporting requirements. Note that to use the app, you need the relevant footprint data and calculation roles. For more information, see Offloading Calculated Footprint Inventories in the Release Impact Information on SAP Help.

Emission Factors: Expanded Default Content & Sustamize Partnership

High-quality emission factors remain the foundation for accurate and audit-ready footprint results. This quarter, we broadened the emission factor content from two complementary angles: we refreshed the default content and we added new premium partner content that you can purchase through the SAP Store. As always, the data flows into the Manage Emission Factors app, so you can mix SAP-provided content, partner content, and your own imported data packages within one consistent governance and calculation model.

Default Content from ADEME and EPA

Also this quarter, we further extended the default emission factor content that SAP Sustainability Footprint Management delivers out of the box. We’ve added emission factors from the French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME), which is the official public reference database of emission factors for France, organized along the GHG Protocol’s Scope 1, 2, and 3 structure and used as the basis for regulatory greenhouse gas reporting in the French market. Adding ADEME as default content gives you well-recognized, France-relevant factors out of the box, which is particularly valuable if you operate in or source from France.

Furthermore, you can now use new versions of emission factors from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), spanning across the years 2015, 2018, 2020-2022, and 2025. The EPA packages are U.S.-focused and include content for GHG Scopes 1, 2, and 3.

Taken together, this is a substantial expansion of what you get out of the box: all default content draws on six different open-source databases and comprises around 45,300 individual datasets, across UK, US, France, Germany, as well as Europe and Global geographies. The datasets cover Energy, Fuels, Purchased Products, Passenger Travel, Transport of Goods, Process Emissions, and Refrigerants, giving you much wider coverage across categories and regions before you need to bring in your own or partner content. As before, this default content is kept separate from any factors you import yourself: if you don’t maintain your own datasets you can rely on the default content directly, and if you do, you continue to import, release, upgrade, archive, and delete your own data packages alongside it within the same governance model. For more information, see Using Default Emission Factor Data in SAP Help.

Partner Content from Sustamize

Beyond the content SAP delivers directly, we’re also constantly exploring partnership options and I’m happy to share that Sustamize emission factor datasets are now available through the SAP Store: Sustamize Scope 3 Data / Carbon Footprint Data. Sustamize provides high-quality, fully regionalized CO2e emission factors for product carbon footprints and Scope 3 calculations, with over 10 million emission factors across materials, components, and processes. The datasets are continuously updated, validated, and aligned with standards such as the GHG Protocol and ISO 14067, and they integrate directly into SAP Sustainability Footprint Management for scalable, audit-ready emissions calculations.

This partnership means you can:

Access a large, granular CO2e database across materials, processes, and regions.
Strengthen auditability and compliance with standardized data.
Increase accuracy with regional electricity consumption mix data.
Enable automated Scope 3 and product carbon footprint (PCF) calculations at scale.
Stay current with regularly updated datasets reflecting real-world conditions.

Because this content is consumed through the same Manage Emission Factors app as the rest of your data packages, you can adopt it without changing how you scope, calculate, or govern your footprints.

Other Release Highlights

In the Manage Purchased Product Footprints app, you can now enter a plant when creating or importing purchased product group footprints. The plant represents geographical information, such as country or region, so you can define emission factors for a product group at plant level and better capture geographical differences. This works together with the Purchased product footprint on the product group level determination method in the Manage Calculation Variants app, and if both a plant-specific and a non-plant-specific footprint exist for the same product group, the system uses the more specific footprint with plant assignment. See Creating Footprints for Purchased Products and Product Groups on SAP Help for more details.

The Waste Generated in Operations app now displays a subtotal row at the end of each group in the table, showing combined Waste Quantity and Total Footprint values so you can see each group’s total contribution without manually adding individual rows. For more information, see Analyzing Footprints for Waste Generated in Operations on SAP Help.

The Manage Locations app now includes a read-only field showing which address fields were used to calculate geocoordinates. The system first uses all available address fields and, if that returns no result, retries using only country/region and postal code, so minor address issues no longer necessarily prevent a location from receiving accurate geocoordinates. For more details, see Manage Locations on SAP Help.

On the API side, the existing Item Footprints API has been renamed to Item Footprints - V1 and is now deprecated (bug fixes only), while a new Item Footprints - V2 API is available on SAP Business Accelerator Hub with a similar payload structure but improved performance for bulk operations. The batch size capacity for the Item Footprints API has also been expanded from 1,000 to 10,000 records. See APIs for Analytics on SAP Help for all details. In addition, the Import Business Transactions (Corporate and Products) API now includes the new moistureContent and carbonContentPerUnit fields supporting the carbon balance calculation. For more information, see APIs for Data Import on SAP Help.

Outlook: Footprint Optimization Agent & CBAM Solution

Beyond the features that shipped this quarter, I also want to share a brief outlook on where we’re heading, across both AI and regulatory topics. For staying updated on all planned innovations, I recommend checking out SAP Road Map Explorer.

Footprint Optimization Agent

At SAP Sapphire this May, SAP announced a new family of sustainability AI agents, planned for general availability by the end of 2026, that embed carbon, compliance, and safety intelligence directly into everyday business workflows rather than treating sustainability as a separate, manual exercise. The line-up spans regulatory readiness, packaging compliance, hazard classification and labeling, workplace safety, and footprint optimization. Read here the full press release: The Path to the Autonomous Enterprise: SAP Announces New Sustainability AI Agents.

The Footprint Optimization Agent is part of SAP Sustainability Footprint Management and is designed to help you move from footprint insights to informed action with real impact. It lets you review your corporate and product carbon footprints faster and in more detail, analyzing emission sources across multiple dimensions – products, processes, plants, and value-chain stages – on a consistent calculation foundation, so you can identify footprint hotspots and the reduction levers that matter most.

From there, you can run what-if scenarios to examine how operational choices such as production methods, energy inputs, and sourcing patterns would affect your footprint, and compare emission-reduction scenarios side by side against your baseline. Because all simulations rely on the same underlying footprint data and shared assumptions, the results are directly comparable, helping you understand whether a change reduces impact and by how much. The agent can then generate executive-ready views of footprint calculations, drivers, scenarios, and comparisons, giving sustainability, operations, and finance teams a shared starting point to prioritize high-impact initiatives, map the financial impact, and track progress against reduction goals. The Footprint Optimization Agent is planned to be generally available in Q4 2026, so I’ll come back to it in more detail once it’s released. For more details, see the business case Reduce Carbon Footprint More Efficiently with AI.

The following video is part of this year's sustainability showcase at SAP Sapphire and gives you a preview of how AI agents automate reporting - creating data points and linking metrics to disclosures with traceable lineage. It shows how you can use these agents to identify carbon hotspots, simulate scenarios, and recommend actions balancing cost and risk (Footprint Optimization Agent starts at 3:22).

The Footprint Optimization Agent is however only one part of how we’re bringing AI into the product. We’re also continuing to invest in the AI capabilities already embedded in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management. For the AI-assisted emission factor mapping we plan to release significant improvements in July already to make mapping your products, materials, and business transactions to suitable emission factors faster, more accurate, and easier to govern. Stay tuned for the details.

CBAM Solution

With the CBAM definitive regime having started on January 1, 2026, we also announced new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) capabilities planned for SAP Sustainability Footprint Management together with SAP Green Ledger later this year. CBAM reporting requires total embedded emissions that are consistent, repeatable, and traceable, often across thousands of shipments and suppliers, which is exactly the kind of scaled calculation SAP Sustainability Footprint Management is built for.

The planned CBAM capabilities in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management will include centralizing ERP and master data enhanced for CBAM purposes alongside official CBAM content, automating the interpretation and use of supplier data, calculating embedded emissions, certificates, and estimated CBAM cost, a CBAM dashboard to view and analyze emissions and costs, and the generation of reports ready for download and submission to the EU. The exact cost calculation will be based on the weekly EU ETS price in SAP Green Ledger, which accounts for the financial liability triggered by CBAM-covered emissions and the certificates used to settle it, in line with IFRS and US GAAP. Together, SAP Sustainability Footprint Management and SAP Green Ledger connect emissions data with the financial dimensions companies already use, so carbon can be governed, allocated, forecasted, audited, and reconciled in line with financial data. The first release is planned for Q4 2026, and I’ll share more details in the next months. To learn more about CBAM and our solution, read the following blog: CBAM Definitive Regime: What to Know and Actions to Take.

Analyst Recognition: IDC MarketScape Leader

I’m also happy to share that for the second time SAP has been recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Carbon Accounting and Management Applications 2026 Vendor Assessment. The assessment evaluated 17 vendors on how well they support credible emissions measurement, strong data governance, corporate-, product-, and supplier-level visibility, and standards-based reporting. It singles out SAP’s ERP-embedded approach, which “unifies financial, operational, and sustainability data into a single, trusted foundation”, as a key strength. SAP Sustainability Footprint Management is a core part of this suite, enabling organizations to calculate carbon footprints across Scopes 1, 2, and 3. It’s great external validation of the direction many of the features in these updates are taking. For more information and downloading the report, see the SAP News Feature: SAP Named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Carbon Accounting and Management Applications 2026 Vendor Assessment.

Additional Information

For in-depth details on SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, including concepts, setup, and the application help, I recommend you browsing through the SAP Help Portal. For an overview of all new features and functions that have been released, check the What’s New section, which is updated with every new software release.

To see what’s ahead, the SAP Road Map Explorer gives you a forward-looking view of planned innovations for SAP Sustainability Footprint Management. And if you’d like to help shape the product, the SAP Influence portal is the place to submit improvement requests and vote on ideas from other customers and partners – many of the enhancements I cover in these posts started as customer requests there.

For exploring and experimenting in a live system, register for the free SAP Sustainability Footprint Management Trial. You’ll receive an e-mail with access information within seconds after your registration and can then test the solution at your own convenience within a 30-day trial period. It also includes a wide range of guided tours designed to help you navigate through the features and functions comprehensively.

To stay up to date on SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, follow me here in the SAP Community. In regular cadence, I’ll publish blog posts giving you updates on all the product’s new features and functions as well as deep dives into the product capabilities. I’m also looking forward to engaging with you directly, feel free to leave your feedback in the comment section.

How SAP Commerce Cloud,cloud ERP edition and S/4 HANA cloud connect

2026-07-01T17:46:54.468000+02:00

Ever wondered when you configure SAP Commerce Cloud Cloud ERP edition in SAP4Me to connect to SAP S/4 HANA Cloud ERP ,how it is actually done ?

I encountered this thought when I was watching a video while learning the course https://learning.sap.com/courses/positioning-sap-commerce-cloud-cloud-erp-edition/showcasing-the-end-to-end-capabilities-of-sap-commerce-cloud-cloud-erp-edition

S/4HANA Cloud Provisioning: When the IT Contact provisions the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition landscape from SAP for Me, an SAP Cloud Identity Services tenant is automatically provisioned as part of the bundle (or reused if one already exists). The S/4HANA Cloud system is connected to this Cloud Identity Services tenant automatically — you don't manually "create a system and tie it in." SAP Cloud Identity Services is described as the only access control tool that can grant access to the environment.

Step 2 — Commerce Cloud, Cloud ERP Edition Provisioning: When you later provision SAP Commerce Cloud, Cloud ERP Edition, a key prerequisite is that SAP Cloud Identity Services must already be set up for your SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition tenant. During the Commerce Cloud provisioning in SAP for Me, that same already-established Cloud Identity Services tenant is referenced — meaning the Cloud ERP identity context flows in through the pre-existing tenant, not as a new separate configuration.

In summary:

Step	What Happens
Step 1	S/4HANA Cloud provisioned → Cloud Identity Services tenant auto-provisioned (or reused) and linked to S/4HANA automatically
Step 2	SAP Commerce Cloud, Cloud ERP Edition provisioned → same Cloud Identity Services tenant (already tied to S/4HANA/Cloud ERP) is referenced as a prerequisite

How to Assign Authorizations for Analytics for Universal Journal

2026-07-02T16:34:29.477000+02:00

Managing access to financial data requires careful attention to user roles and permissions. In SAP's universal journal, different accountants need different views of the same data—and that's where authorizations come into play.

What Is the Universal Journal?

The universal journal serves as the foundation for integrated accounting. It combines financial and management accounting data into a single chart of accounts, eliminating the need for reconciliation between these areas. This unified approach brings together:

- General Ledger Accounting
- Asset Accounting
- Controlling
- Profitability Analysis (integrated with margin analysis)
- Material Ledger

All data is stored in table ACDOCA, creating one source of truth for your financial information.

Why Authorizations Matter

Even though everyone accesses the same underlying data, business requirements differ by role. A general ledger accountant might need visibility into all company code data for financial statements, while a cost accountant should only see specific cost centers relevant to their area.

Setting Up Access: Business Roles and Business Catalogs

You grant access by assigning business roles to users using the Maintain Business Roles app. These roles combine pre-defined business catalogs with restriction types that control read and write access at the field level.

Learn how to set up access: Maintain Business Roles

Key Business Roles and Catalogs

Here are some common examples:

- General Ledger Accountant: SAP_FIN_BC_GL* (Template: SAP_BR_GL_ACCOUNTANT)
- Asset Accountant: SAP_FIN_BC_AA* (Template: SAP_BR_AA_ACCOUNTANT)
- Cost Accountant - Overhead: SAP_FIN_BC_OH* (Template: SAP_BR_OVERHEAD_ACCOUNTANT)
- Cost Accountant - Sales: SAP_FIN_BC_SA* (Template: SAP_BR_SALES_ACCOUNTANT)
- Cost Accountant - Inventory: SAP_FIN_BC_IA* (Template: SAP_BR_INVENTORY_ACCOUNTANT)
- Cost Accountant - Production: SAP_FIN_BC_IA* (Template: SAP_BR_PRODN_ACCOUNTANT)

The beauty of this system is its flexibility. You can use the provided templates as starting points or create custom business roles tailored to your organization's specific needs.

Setting Up Access: Restriction Types

Figure: Restriction Types in the System

To further define access to customer data, authorization values are assigned to restriction fields, which are grouped into restriction types. General organizational restriction types are found in the General section of the Maintain Business Roles app and each contains a single restriction field. The combined settings across all restriction types determine the overall authorization granted to the business role and its assigned users.

Configure restriction types consistently across all relevant business catalogs to ensure users can work effectively within their applications.

Learn how to use restriction types: How to Define Authorizations Based on Restrictions

For a detailed list of the restriction types for analytics for the universal journal, see Authorizations for Analytics for Universal Journal .

Further Reading:

Universal Journal

Business Catalogs

Business Role Templates

Production Order Combination in Cloud ERP (2602 and onwards) - Boosting Production Efficiency

2026-07-02T17:11:36.839000+02:00

One of the most requested capability for manufacturing industries is available since 2602. Production Order Combination helps production planners to run production more efficient by combining "similar" production orders - either entire orders, or only similar operations.

Think you are running a paintshop in your factory. Combining all paint jobs for the same color into one joint run, saves lot in set-up-times or cleaning-operations.
Or consider a heat furnace where you want to heat-treat parts at certain temperatures. Here you could combine multiple production order into one joint operation, saving energy and time.
Third, typical scenario is cutting or slitting operations. Bundle these into one cutting operation, potentially with some additional geometrical optimization. Results in less waste, less warehouse operations, more throughput.

The Production Order Combination capability allows to combine entire (existing) production orders, or only selected common operations. The flow to create such a combined order follows four steps:

The four steps of production order combination

How does the result look like for the case of combining only a subset of operations?
In below example, the production orders A and B have the common operations 20 and 30. The other operations are different (and cannot be combined).
When we combine the two orders, we create a combined order from these common operations 20 and 30. The other operations are still executed in the original orders A and B.
Combining selected operations

The combination also influences the scheduling of the orders, as depicted in below picture.
This is an important consideration regarding the first step, the selection of orders to combine. Typical, you select within a relative narrow planning horizon. We discussed this in a recent user group meeting. How many orders to combine depends largely on the physical reality in the plant (how much can you process together, how much fits in your furnace) and the time horizon chosen.

Combining selected operations

Find more information (and especially importantly, the contraints and prerequisites) in the documentation. A more detailed description of the process steps are captured in the excellent blog by .

Outlook
With 2602, we delivered the core functionality of production order combination.

With 2608 (and beyond), we intend to ship APIs and on stack extensibility, and intend to make this capability broadly available in 39 more countries. Additionally, we are looking into further integration into production scheduling, QM and logistics.

We are actively searching for your input regarding AI use cases and SAP Digital Manufacturing integration.

Expect more news on the topic (and an update to this blog) as we move forward.
We intend to discuss the topic in more depth with partners, customers & our SAP experts at roundtables at the SAP Manufacturing, Materials & Mining Conference this October in Rome.

Brauche ich Application Management für SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition?

2026-07-03T08:59:03.675000+02:00

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition verändert das Betriebsmodell grundlegend. Viele technische Aufgaben, die früher intern oder durch Dienstleister erbracht wurden, liegen im Public-Cloud-Modell bei SAP. Infrastruktur, standardisierte Updates und zentrale Lifecycle-Aktivitäten werden deutlich vereinfacht.

Genau daraus entsteht nach dem Go-live häufig eine berechtigte Frage:

Wenn SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition bereits von SAP betrieben wird - warum sollte ich dann zusätzlich Application Management von SAP benötigen?

Die kurze Antwort lautet: nicht immer, aber häufig. Denn Public Cloud reduziert technische Komplexität, nimmt Unternehmen aber nicht die Verantwortung für ihre Geschäftsprozesse, Benutzer, Integrationen und kontinuierliche Weiterentwicklung.

Dieser Beitrag soll eine praktische Einordnung für Kunden, Partner und Projektteams, die sich mit dem Betrieb nach dem Go-live beschäftigen.

Public Cloud reduziert Aufwand - aber nicht Verantwortung

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition entwickelt sich kontinuierlich weiter. Kunden profitieren von regelmäßigen Innovationen, neuen Funktionen und Verbesserungen. Gleichzeitig müssen diese Änderungen bewertet, getestet, kommuniziert und in den Fachbereichen verankert werden.

Auch nach dem Go-live bleiben zentrale Aufgaben bestehen:

Geschäftsprozesse benötigen klare Ownership.
Benutzer benötigen Unterstützung im Tagesgeschäft.
Integrationen müssen überwacht und analysiert werden.
Berechtigungen, Rollen, Formulare, Workflows und Analytics müssen gepflegt werden.
Quartalsweise Releases müssen bewertet und getestet werden.
Dokumentationen und Enablement-Materialien müssen aktuell bleiben.

SAP Cloud ALM stellt hierfür ein starkes Toolset bereit - etwa für Implementierung, Testing, Deployment, Monitoring und Alerting. Entscheidend ist jedoch, wer die Informationen aus diesen Tools bewertet, priorisiert und in konkrete Maßnahmen übersetzt. Ein Toolset ersetzt kein Betriebsmodell.

Was AMS in diesem Kontext bedeutet

Application Management Services, kurz AMS, sind Post-Go-live-Services zur Stabilisierung, Unterstützung und kontinuierlichen Verbesserung einer SAP-Lösung unter vereinbarten Service Levels.

Im Kontext von SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition geht es weniger um klassische Basis-Administration. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf Business Application Operations: Prozesse stabil halten, Benutzer unterstützen, Incidents analysieren, Releases vorbereiten, Tests koordinieren und Verbesserungen strukturiert vorantreiben.

Anders gesagt: SAP betreibt die Cloud. Die Frage ist, wer den laufenden Betrieb der Software sicherstellt.

Wann AMS besonders sinnvoll sein kann

AMS wird besonders relevant, wenn SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition geschäftskritische Prozesse unterstützt und operative Lücken vermieden werden müssen.

Typische Auslöser sind:

Finanz-, Beschaffungs-, Vertriebs-, Logistik-, Fertigungs- oder Projektprozesse sind geschäftskritisch.
Es bestehen mehrere Integrationen zu SAP BTP, Non-SAP-Systemen, Banken, Steuerplattformen, E-Commerce- oder Warehouse-Lösungen.
Das interne Team ist klein oder bereits stark ausgelastet.
Es fehlt Kapazität für strukturierte Release-Bewertung und Regressionstests.
Es werden messbare Service Levels für Incident Handling benötigt.
Monitoring, Issue Triage und Fehlerbehebung sind geschäftskritisch.
Der Fokus soll nicht nur auf Fehlerbehebung, sondern auch auf kontinuierlicher Verbesserung liegen.

In solchen Situationen kann AMS helfen, Verantwortlichkeiten zu klären, Risiken zu reduzieren und den Wert der Cloud-Lösung langfristig zu sichern.

Fragen zur Einordnung des Betriebsmodells

Für die Zeit nach dem Go-live lohnt sich ein nüchterner Blick auf die eigenen Verantwortlichkeiten und Kapazitäten. Die folgenden Fragen können helfen, das Betriebsmodell realistisch einzuschätzen:

Können Business User nach dem Go-live schnell und zuverlässig unterstützt werden?
Gibt es genügend Kapazität, jedes Release zu bewerten und kritische Prozesse zu testen?
Ist klar geregelt, wer Integrationen, Berechtigungen, Formulare, Workflows und Analytics betreut?
Kann das Team unterscheiden, ob ein Thema aus Produktverhalten, Konfiguration, Prozessdesign, Datenqualität oder Nutzung entsteht?
Gibt es nachvollziehbare Service Levels und Governance für den Anwendungssupport?
Ist definiert, wie Monitoring, Alerting und Incident Triage im Alltag funktionieren?
Können Innovationen übernommen werden, ohne das Tagesgeschäft zu überlasten?

Wenn mehrere dieser Punkte offen sind, ist das kein Zeichen für ein schlechtes Setup. Es zeigt lediglich, dass das Betriebsmodell nach dem Go-live noch weiter konkretisiert werden sollte - unabhängig davon, ob diese Aufgaben intern, durch Partner oder im Rahmen zusätzlicher Application-Management-Fähigkeiten abgedeckt werden.

Fazit

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition nimmt Kunden viel technischen Betriebsaufwand ab. Die Verantwortung für Geschäftsprozesse, Benutzer, Integrationen und kontinuierliche Verbesserung bleibt jedoch bestehen.

AMS von SAP – also SAP Cloud Application Services - können helfen, diese Lücke zu schließen. Sie unterstützen dabei, aus einer bereitgestellten Cloud-Lösung einen stabil betriebenen, geschäftlich verankerten und kontinuierlich verbesserten Anwendungsbetrieb zu machen.

Die entscheidende Frage lautet daher nicht:

„Ist SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition nicht schon gemanagt?“

Sondern:

„Wer stellt sicher, dass unsere Geschäftsanwendung jeden Tag stabil läuft, Releases beherrscht werden und Innovation tatsächlich im Business ankommt?“

Wenn diese Verantwortung intern klar besetzt und ausreichend skalierbar ist, kann das genügen. Wenn nicht, sind SAP Cloud Application Services eine sinnvolle Ergänzung des Betriebsmodells.

Was bedeutet das für die Praxis?

Wenn Ihr SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition nutzt oder Euch auf den Go-live vorbereitet, lohnt sich ein ehrlicher Blick auf Euer zukünftiges Betriebsmodell.

Klärt frühzeitig, welche Aufgaben bei SAP liegen, was intern übernommen wird, welche Rolle Partner spielen und wo zusätzliche Application-Management-Fähigkeiten Stabilität, Geschwindigkeit und kontinuierliche Verbesserung unterstützen können.

Hinweise und weiterführende Links

Weitere Informationen und Materialien findet Ihr hier:

SAP Cloud Application Services auf sap.com: https://www.sap.com/germany/services-support/cloud-application-services.html
SAP Cloud Application Services im Partner Portal: https://partneredge.sap.com/en/partnership/services/cas.html
Webinar Aufzeichnung: Autonomous Enterprise beginnt im Betrieb - der konkrete Mehrwert von SAP Cloud Application Services

Why Doesn't My Purchase Requisition Commitment Go to Zero? Demystifying Budget Commitment Behavior

2026-07-03T10:13:23.087000+02:00

SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP SCM Enablement: Live Product Expert Sessions in 2026

2026-07-03T15:23:22.561000+02:00

As organizations accelerate their journey toward the Autonomous Enterprise, SAP is redefining how business processes are executed through AI, automation, and data-driven decision-making. With SAP’s recent Autonomous Enterprise vision now rolled out, enabling users to fully leverage SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Supply Chain Management (SCM) solutions has become more important than ever.

We at Cloud ERP & SCM Product Success Enablement and Adoption strive to enable our valued customers and partners to take advantage of our suite solutions. Therefore, we offer various enablement assets, from product experts to product experts, explaining the features and functions as well as the benefits of innovations across the suite.

In this blog, we showcase the diverse live session formats delivered for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, and SAP Supply Chain Management. From expert-led webinars to deep-dive learning experiences, these programs are designed to help customers and partners stay current with innovations, build practical expertise, and accelerate adoption of SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP SCM solutions. Explore how each format supports different learning needs and empowers participants to get the most value from their SAP investments.

In the following, I'd like to shed some light on our various live product expert sessions. As of today, the team offers five different types of live sessions:

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: Early Release Series | Equivalent: What’s New for SAP SCM
In-Depth with SAP Cloud ERP | Equivalent: Meet the Expert for SAP SCM
Product Expert Training for the Autonomous Enterprise

This table helps you to get an overview of the available sessions as well as the content that is covered during the different formats. If you're interested in more detail and would like to follow regular updates, check out the individual landing pages linked below.

Live Product Expert Session	Content Covered	Frequency	Target Audience	Access Requirements
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: Early Release Series	Talk about and demo key innovations for upcoming major SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition releases	Bi-yearly	Customers, partners, SAP Internals	Active SAP Learning Hub License needed*
In-Depth with SAP Cloud ERP	Deep-dive knowledge transfer sessions independently from releases for both public and private cloud	Monthly based on demand	Customers, partners, SAP Internals	Active SAP Learning Hub License needed*
What’s New for SAP SCM	Talk about and demo key innovations for major SAP SCM releases	Bi-yearly	Customers, partners, SAP Internals	ON24 webinars, open & free for anyone
Meet the Expert for SAP SCM	Deep-dive knowledge transfer sessions independently from releases for SAP SCM	Monthly based on demand	Customers, partners, SAP Internals	ON24 webinars, open & free for anyone
Product Expert Training H1	Snackable standalone expert videos covering broad and deep-dive product knowledge across the suite	Always-on in H1 starting mid-March – end of June	Open to anyone	Via learning.sap.com
Product Expert Training H2	~ 3 full weeks of training covering broad and deep-dive product knowledge across the suite	Hybrid event in H2 (starting 28th Sept. 2026)	Partners and SAP internals	Active SAP Learning Hub License needed**

*Get access to Support Edition for Customers & Partners // Internal Edition for SAP Employees.

**Access Partner Edge here or send a mail to partner@sap.com if you face any issues.

Live Product Expert Sessions Throughout 2026

Fig. 1: Global enablement plan for 2026; based on SAP’s release plan. As the release plan may be changed by SAP without notice, the global enablement plans can change as well.

With the above focus of the sessions in mind, let's take a look at the global live session plan for 2026. For the two major releases SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2608, we plan on showing and demoing highlights of the releases during the Early Release Series which is happening one week before shipment.

Similar to the offering for the Public Cloud, we host a webinar series to cover the latest features in the area of SAP SCM via the What’s New format.

In an almost monthly cadence, based on demand, we're hosting In-Depth with SAP Cloud ERP which is a format that is running independently from releases. In these sessions, we cover specific topics in-depth to get a more holistic insight into certain aspects of the product. As this series is not bound to releases, it depends on topic suggestions from our stakeholders. If you'd like to nominate topics, simply do so via this blog post.

Similar to this In-Depth series, we host an event called Meet the Expert which is targeted for deep dive insights into SAP SCM solutions.

In H1 2026, we offer the Product Expert Training in an always-on format with standalone expert videos and bite-sized learning content covering the Autonomous Suite. In the second half of the year (H2) 2026, the Product Expert Training for the Autonomous Suite will take place in a hybrid mode. The event will combine an onsite week in St. Leon-Rot with multiple weeks of virtual sessions, enabling partners to engage directly with SAP product experts and executives in person, while also allowing broader participation through live online access.

How to sign up for the SAP Enterprise Support Edition as a customer/partner

In order to watch the recordings, you will need to have an active SAP Learning Hub license with at least the SAP Enterprise Support Edition. Find out how to register for the SAP Enterprise Support edition in case you don't already have access to any of the editions yet:

Navigate to the sign up page
Click the Sign up button. Authenticate yourself with your s-user ID and password. Upon first access, the system will check your eligibility, create a new SAP Learning Hub user, and populate your learning catalog respectively. Within two hours, you will then receive a registration confirmation via e-mail.
After you have received the confirmation e-mail, the registration process is complete.

Partners can access the recordings through an SAP Partner Edge Edition.

How to sign up for the Internal Edition as an SAP employee

In order to watch the recordings, you will need to have an SAP Learning Hub license. In case you have no edition assigned to your profile, please register here for the Internal Edition which is free of charge.

Make sure to be logged onto the SAP Learning Hub before opening the URL. In case the link doesn't open, copy and paste it into your browser. If you face any other issues with your login, please contact the help center.

Follow the PSCC_Enablement tag to stay up to date with the latest blog posts.

Find All of Our Assets

Is there more enablement we’re offering? Of course! We offer a podcast, different video formats, demo playlists, customer councils and much more. Check out our interactive wheel:

Setting Up SAP Joule on S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: A Technical Guide

2026-07-07T10:45:24.268000+02:00

Introduction

SAP Joule is SAP’s generative AI copilot designed to enhance user productivity across SAP applications. In SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, Joule empowers users to discover applications, access contextual business insights, and navigate business processes conversationally directly within the SAP Fiori experience.

This document provides a comprehensive, end-to-end technical guide for setting up SAP Joule with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition. It is written from an administrator and platform engineering perspective, explaining not only how to configure each component, but also why it is required and how the overall integration functions.

Architecture Overview

At a high level, Joule runs on SAP BTP and is embedded into the SAP user experience using SAP Build Work Zone. Authentication and authorization are handled centrally through SAP Cloud Identity Services.

Prerequisites and Readiness Checklist

Before proceeding with the setup, ensure the following prerequisites are in place:

Authorizations

SAP BTP Global Account Administrator
SAP BTP Subaccount Administrator
SAP Cloud Identity Services (IAS & IPS) Administrator
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Administrator

Entitlements

SAP Joule (Digital Assistant Service – das-application)
SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition

Landscape Requirements

Supported for both 2-System Landscape (2SL) and 3-System Landscape (3SL)
SAP Cloud Connector is not required for Public Cloud systems

Technical Preconditions

SAP S/4HANA Cloud tenant registered in BTP System Landscape
SAP Cloud Identity Services tenant available and accessible
Browser allows iFrames and third-party cookies

Preparation

SAP BTP Subaccount Strategy

A dedicated SAP BTP subaccount is typically used to host Joule and SAP Build Work Zone. From a design perspective, regional alignment with SAP Cloud Identity Services is recommended to minimize authentication latency and reduce cross-region dependencies.

The subaccount acts as the orchestration layer where:

Joule services are provisioned
Work Zone acts as the user entry point
Trust and identity integration converge

Identity Trust and Domain Alignment
Single Sign-On between SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP BTP, and SAP Build Work Zone is achieved through trust establishment with SAP Cloud Identity Services.

A critical design consideration here is domain alignment:

The IAS domain selected must align with the domain model of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud tenant
Mismatched domains are a frequent root cause of repeated authentication prompts and intermittent Joule access issues

Trusted domain configuration on both BTP and IAS is essential for enabling secure cross-origin communication and embedded user experiences.

Identity Attribute Readiness
Joule and SAP Build Work Zone rely on a consistent identity model provided by IAS. Certain core user attributes must be available and consumable by downstream applications.

From an operational perspective:

Attribute completeness matters more than attribute volume
Missing verification-related attributes can result in silent authentication failures that are difficult to trace at runtime

Ensuring identity consistency early on significantly reduces troubleshooting effort later.

Joule Enablement Model
Guided Onboarding via Booster

SAP provides a Joule Booster that automates the majority of the technical enablement steps. This guided onboarding mechanism establishes the baseline configuration required for Joule to operate within the BTP subaccount.

Conceptually, the booster:

Validates entitlements and platform readiness
Establishes system formations
Creates the necessary connectivity artifacts
Activates SAP-delivered communication scenarios

Architecturally, this step should be treated as a managed onboarding process rather than a manual configuration exercise.

SAP Build Work Zone Integration

SAP Build Work Zone serves as the experience layer through which Joule is surfaced to end users. Key design elements include:

Subscription to the Work Zone service
Secure consumption of S/4HANA Cloud content
Centralized role-based navigation and access control.

Work Zone consumes S/4HANA Cloud content using SAP-delivered exposure mechanisms, ensuring that only authorized applications, catalogs, and groups are visible.

Content Exposure Model
Content exposure from SAP S/4HANA Cloud into SAP Build Work Zone is governed by standard communication scenarios delivered by SAP. These scenarios enable controlled sharing of Fiori content without custom integration.

From a best-practice perspective:

Content exposure should be validated, not modified
Role and catalog assignments remain the authoritative control mechanism

This approach preserves clean-core principles while enabling rich user experiences.

Identity Provisioning Architecture
Identity Provisioning Services (IPS) are used to synchronize users and role assignments into SAP Build Work Zone.

Rather than being treated as a one-time activity, identity provisioning should be viewed as:

A continuous synchronization mechanism
A dependency for consistent authorization behavior
A key operational component for Joule visibility

Operational validation of IPS jobs and logs is a critical checkpoint during the initial enablement.

Validation and Operational Readiness
Once the platform setup is complete, validation should focus on the end-to-end user experience rather than on individual configuration items.

Typical validation checkpoints include:

Successful single sign-on from SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Visibility of SAP Build Work Zone content
Availability of the Joule interaction entry point
Execution of basic conversational queries

A successful validation confirms that Joule is correctly embedded and operational.

Common Operational Observations
Based on real-world implementations, the following patterns are frequently observed:

Repeated login prompts usually indicate trust or domain misalignment
Missing Joule entry points are commonly linked to role assignment or identity synchronization gaps
Empty or incomplete content typically points to content exposure or IPS issues

Systematically addressing these areas resolves the majority of post-enablement issues.

Get Ahead of What's Next: Join the Early Release Series

2026-07-07T11:43:57.960000+02:00

Be First to Know What’s Next

Curious about the innovations shaping the future of supply chain? The Early Release Series gives you a front row seat. It's a biannual event where SAP product experts walk you through what's coming next in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, before everyone else.

What You'll Get Out of It

Across several days, you can join expert-led demos, gain insider insights, and take part in real-time Q&A. That means early access to new features and direct answers from the people building them. It's a practical way to see live demos, ask your questions, and plan ahead with confidence.

Sessions for the SCM Community

Here are four sessions we think you'll find valuable. Each one is a detailed, expert-led deep dive.

Artificial Intelligence — July 13, 2026, 12:30pm – 2:00pm CET

Take a broader look at where AI is heading. This session covers the Autonomous Enterprise, Joule for Business, workflow automation, and Autonomous SCM, including production, planning, and inventory agents that connect directly to your supply chain work.

Supply Chain Management — July 16, 2:00pm – 2:45pm CET

Discover the latest innovations in Supply Chain Management and see how they can support your day-to-day operations.

Manufacturing — July 14, 4:00pm – 4:45pm CET

Explore the newest manufacturing innovations, from engineering and planning to shop-floor execution. You'll see how AI-driven manufacturing agents help streamline decisions, automate routine tasks, and strengthen operational resilience. Expect practical demos, insider tips, and a clear view of what's next, so you can accelerate value from day one.

Quality Management — July 16, 4:30pm – 5:15pm CET

Get up to speed on the latest innovations in Quality Management and what they mean for your processes.

How to Sign Up

An active SAP Learning Hub license is required to register for the live sessions and to watch the recordings afterward.

If you're a customer:

You'll need access to at least the SAP Enterprise Support edition. Here's how to sign up:

Go to the sign-up page and select Sign up.
Authenticate with your S-user ID and password.
The system checks your eligibility, creates your SAP Learning Hub user, and populates your learning catalogue. This step can take up to 2 hours.
You'll get a confirmation e-mail once registration is complete.

If you're a partner:

With a valid SAP Universal ID and access to the Empowering SAP Partners site, you can join the live sessions and recordings directly.

Don't Miss Out

These sessions won't wait, and neither should you. Secure your spot to gain early insights, watch live demos, and stay ahead with the newest SAP updates.

Register today and be first to know what's next: learning.sap.com

SAP Green Ledger: Q2-26 Release Updates and Highlights

2026-07-07T12:14:08.203000+02:00

Welcome to the Q2 2026 edition of our SAP Green Ledger Quarterly Release Highlights! This blog summarizes the most important SAP Green Ledger innovations and enhancements delivered during Q2 2026. Highlights include new capabilities for carbon traceability, carbon collection processing, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), carbon allocations, analytics, and usability improvements across SAP Green Ledger.

Read on to learn more about the key innovations introduced throughout Q2 2026:

Carbon Traceability with Related SAP S/4HANA Documents
Mass Reversal of Carbon Collections
Simplified CBAM Processing
Flexible Carbon Allocations
Analytical Dashboard Update
Further Updates and Enhancements

Carbon Traceability with Related SAP S/4HANA Documents

The Manage Carbon Collections app now includes a new "Related Documents" section that allows you to maintain and view references to the SAP S/4HANA documents from which emissions originate. Supported reference types include:

Purchasing Documents
Accounting Documents
Other Documents

If you import material movements into SAP Green Ledger from a connected SAP S/4HANA system, related document references are transferred automatically. When importing carbon data via CSV files, you can also include related document information in the file. For manually created carbon collections, you can maintain related documents directly in the Manage Carbon Collections app. These references are then carried through from the carbon collection into the corresponding journal entries in the Manage Journal Entries app. This allows you to trace carbon postings throughout the accounting process, from the originating business documents to the resulting carbon journal entries, also improving auditability of carbon data.

Related Documents in a Carbon CollectionTo further simplify navigation and reporting, you can now also filter in the Manage Carbon Collections, Manage Journal Entries and Display Line Items apps by Related Document Type and Related Document ID. This helps you quickly locate carbon records for specific business transactions. For more details check SAP Help: Create a Carbon Collection and Use a CSV Template.

Mass Reversal of Carbon Collections

The Manage Carbon Collections app now supports reversing multiple posted carbon collections in a single step. Instead of reversing each carbon collection individually, you can now select and reverse multiple posted carbon collections at once. This significantly reduces manual effort, particularly after correcting mass uploads. Up to 5,000 carbon collections can be reversed in a single operation. For more information, see SAP Help: Post a Carbon Collection to the Journal.

Simplified CBAM Processing

Several enhancements improve the processing and monitoring of Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) carbon collections while also increasing transparency for CBAM accounts configuration.

Efficient Processing of CBAM Carbon Collections

The Manage Carbon Collections app now also supports reversing CBAM carbon collections. In addition, you can now post and reverse multiple CBAM carbon collections in a single step. As a result, you can process large volumes of carbon collections that require carbon certificates more efficiently.

When reversing CBAM carbon collections, the resulting journal entries are created with the journal entry source type Carbon Collection Reversal, providing a clear audit trail for correction postings. When posting or reversing multiple CBAM carbon collections, SAP Green Ledger automatically calculates a single fair value per company code. This reduces manual effort and ensures consistent valuation across company codes.

To support the monitoring of these postings, the Manage Carbon Liabilities app now supports filtering carbon liabilities by Posted and Reversed status. With that, you can quickly monitor the processing status of carbon liabilities and identify relevant entries. Check out SAP Help for more details: Post a Carbon Collection to the Journal, Fair Value Calculation, and View Carbon Liabilities.

Filter for Posted and Reversed Carbon Liabilities in the Manage Carbon Liabilities App

Improved Visibility into EU CBAM Accounts by Company Code

The Configure Carbon Certificate Data app now displays the EU CBAM accounts maintained in the Determine Mandatory Accounts app for each company code. This allows you to view the configured account assignments directly while working with carbon certificate data, without switching between applications. See also SAP Help: Configure Carbon Certificate Data and Determine Mandatory Accounts.

EU CBAM Accounts per Company Code in Configure Carbon Certificate Data App

Flexible Carbon Allocations

Several enhancements make carbon allocations more flexible and align them more closely with financial accounting. Our new capabilities can help you reuse existing allocation logic and support project-based allocation scenarios.

Copy Financial Flow for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition

The ability to create allocation models by copying financial flows in the Manage Allocations app is now also available for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. Previously available only for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, this enhancement enables you to create carbon allocation models based on the allocation patterns already used in your connected SAP S/4HANA system.

Allocation Model Copied from Financial Flow

Using the latest Cost Center Accounting data from the connected SAP S/4HANA system, SAP Green Ledger automatically copies the receiving objects and allocation percentages and transfers them into the allocation model. This eliminates the need to manually maintain allocation rules and helps keep carbon allocations aligned with financial allocations. For more details, check SAP Help: Create Allocation Models by Copying from Financial Flow.

Project-Level Carbon Allocations with WBS Elements

The Manage Allocations app now supports Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) elements as both sender and receiver dimensions when creating periodic allocation models. For both the sender and receiver, you can now choose a WBS element or a cost center as the allocation dimension, enabling allocation scenarios such as WBS-to-WBS, WBS-to-Cost Center, Cost Center-to-WBS, and Cost Center-to-Cost Center. To ensure consistency with the existing allocation behavior for cost centers, the corresponding Profit Center and Segment are now automatically derived as well when a WBS element is used as the receiver dimension.

WBS Elements Used as Sender and Receiver Dimensions in a Periodic Allocation Model

To further improve transparency, Partner WBS Elements are now included in journal entry line items and displayed in both the Manage Journal Entries and Display Line Items apps. You can also filter, group, and sort by Partner WBS Element in the Display Line Items app, giving you better visibility into carbon allocation flows across project structures. For more details, see Create Period Allocation Models.

Analytical Dashboard Update

The SAP Green Ledger Analytical Dashboard has also been updated for Q2 2026 with the latest analytical capabilities for combined financial and carbon reporting. For a detailed overview of these enhancements, see the dedicated SAP Community blog post and the SAP Help Portal topic Analyze Carbon Data Alongside Financial Data.

Further Updates and Enhancements

Several smaller enhancements further improve the usability of SAP Green Ledger.

Improved Journal Entry Usability

The Manage Journal Entries app now allows you to maximize the Line Items table. You can review journal entries with many line items more comfortably and reduce the need for scrolling. Additionally, each line item is now assigned a stable unique identifier that remains unchanged when the table is sorted or filtered. The stable identifier makes it easier to reference individual line items and improves navigation during journal analysis.

Updated Posting Terminology

The posting action in the Manage Carbon Collections app has been renamed from Post Carbon Collection to simply Post. The related posting statuses are:

Posting
Posted
Posting Failed

New Origin Business System Filter

A new Origin Business System filter is now available in the Manage Journal Entries, Display Line Items, and Display Account Balances apps. Selecting an origin business system automatically limits the available master data to values from that system. Likewise, when a master data object that is linked to a specific business system, such as a company code, is selected, the corresponding business system is identified automatically and applied to the remaining filters.

Additional Information

If you want to dive deeper into SAP Green Ledger, the SAP Help Portal is a good place to start. It provides detailed information on concepts, configuration, and application usage. You can also check the What’s New section, which is updated with every release and gives a complete overview of the latest additions. To see what's coming next, the SAP Road Map Explorer offers insight into planned features and upcoming innovations. It is updated regularly and outlines how the solution will continue to evolve.

Using Investment Projects for Larger Maintenance Activities - Including Project Stock

2026-07-07T14:45:29.520000+02:00

Background - Why Standard Maintenance Orders Are Sometimes Not Enough
The Standard Investment Project Process (Recap)
Investment Projects for Larger Maintenance Activities
Adding Project-Specific Stock to the Scenario
Variant: Investment Project Without an Investment Profile
Key Takeaways
Further Reading
System Example Showing the Process Flow

1. Background - Why Standard Maintenance Orders Are Sometimes Not Enough

When a company plans a significant maintenance activity, an overhaul of a complex machine, a major refurbishment of production equipment, or a large infrastructure repair, the cost and material management requirements quickly exceed what a simple overhead project can provide comfortably.

Key challenges in these scenarios include:

Tracking all incurred costs (internal labor, external services, materials) in one structured object across a potentially multi-month timeline.
Ring-fencing materials ordered specifically for this activity so they cannot accidentally be consumed by other production or maintenance tasks.
At the end of the activity deciding which portion of the costs should be capitalised to the fixed asset and which should be expensed. (As a big overhaul will increase the value of the asset, capitalising at least part of the maintenance costs makes totally sense.)

Investment projects in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud address all three challenges in a single, coherent setup.

2. The Standard Investment Project Process (Recap)

Before focusing on the maintenance use case, it is worth recapping the standard flow because the maintenance scenario builds directly on it.

In a standard investment project, costs for the creation of a new own-used asset are collected on a project and settled to an Asset under Construction (AuC). This settlement to the AuC can be done event-based or period-based. This moves costs off P&L into the balance sheet. Once the asset is ready for use, the AuC is settled to the final fixed asset. Any costs that cannot be capitalised are redirected to a cost center or an overhead project.

Create Investment Project & WBS Structure
Define the project with an investment profile. The investment profile drives the automatic creation of an Asset under Construction (AuC).
Collect Costs on the Project
Post actual costs: purchase orders, goods receipts, time confirmations, service entry sheets. All costs land on WBS elements.
Settlement to the AuC
At period end (or event-based, triggered by every posting to the project), costs are settled from the investment project to the AuC. This removes costs from P&L and places them on the balance sheet.
Final Settlement to the Fixed Asset
When the asset is complete, the AuC is settled to the final fixed asset. Non-capitalisable costs are distributed to a cost center or overhead project according to the settlement rule.
Asset Activation & Deprecation
The asset is activated in Asset Accounting and begins regular depreciation according to the assigned depreciation key.

SAP Community Blog Reference
For a detailed walkthrough of the standard settlement process, see the SAP Community blog post:
Settlement of Investment Projects in SAP Cloud ERP at community.sap.com.

3. Investment Projects for Larger Maintenance Activities

Investment projects are not limited to the creation of entirely new assets. They are equally well-suited for larger maintenance activities. For example, a complete overhaul of a turbine, a production line rebuild, or a major refurbishment of a building; where a (substantial) portion of the incurred costs is expected to be capitalised to the existing fixed asset.

Typical Scenario

A company plans an extensive overhaul of a complex machine. The activity is expected to take several weeks, involve multiple vendors and internal teams, and require a large volume of specific spare parts. The total cost is expected to be significant, and management expects that a meaningful portion will extend the useful life or increase the value of the machine - qualifying for capitalisation.

Why an Investment Project Fits

Structured cost collection: WBS elements allow costs to be organised by work package/ project phase (e.g., disassembly, repair, reassembly, testing).
Flexible settlement: At the end of the overhaul, the settlement rule determines which percentage is posted to the fixed asset (capitalisation) and which goes to a cost center or another cost object (period expense). Both receivers are optional.
Audit trail: with event-based settlement all postings are traceable back to their origin - purchase orders, time entries, material consumptions - via the project.

INFO: When to Capitalise Maintenance Costs
Under IFRS and US GAAP, costs that extend the useful life of an asset, increase its capacity, or improve its quality beyond the original standard are capitalisable. Routine repairs that merely maintain the current condition are expensed. The settlement rule in SAP lets you split both in a single settlement run.

Setup Considerations

When the goal is to settle a portion of costs to an existing fixed asset (not create a new one), you have two options:

With investment profile — an AuC is created automatically. Costs flow from the project to the AuC during the activity, and finally from the AuC to the existing fixed asset. This approach is preferred when the activity runs across multiple periods and interim balance sheet capitalisation is required.
Without investment profile — no AuC is created. Costs accumulate on the project and are settled directly to the existing fixed asset at the end. This simpler variant is covered in Section 5.

4. Adding Project-Specific Stock to the Scenario

For large maintenance activities, materials are often ordered weeks in advance and stored in the warehouse. Without further measures, these materials sit in unrestricted stock and can be issued to any other order or project creating the risk that critical spare parts are consumed elsewhere, delaying the overhaul.

Project stock solves this by ring-fencing materials for a specific WBS element. Any goods receipt for a purchase order referencing that WBS element lands in project stock, not in unrestricted stock. Goods issues from that stock are only possible against the same project.

Availability in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud
In SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, project stock is available for investment projects and projects with revenue. This is a deliberate design: overhead cost projects do not support project stock in the public cloud edition.

End-to-End Material Flow with Project Stock

Create Purchase Order with Account Assignment to WBS Element
The buyer creates a purchase order for the required spare parts. The account assignment references the relevant WBS element of the investment project. The account assignment category is set to Q – Project – Make-to-Order.
Goods Receipt into Project Stock
When the materials arrive, the goods receipt posts them into project stock (a separate stock segment linked exclusively to the WBS element, special stock indicator Q). The materials are visible in inventory management but are reserved for this project only.
Goods Issue from Project Stock to the Project
When the materials are needed during the overhaul, they are issued from project stock to the WBS element. The cost hits the investment project directly at actual cost.
Settlement of Material Costs Together with Other Project Costs
Material costs posted to the WBS element are settled along with all other project costs (labor, services) to the AuC, or directly to the fixed asset, or to other receivers like e.g. cost centers, or to a combination of all of these objects. This can be done using the same settlement rule.

5. Variant: Investment Project Without an Investment Profile

Not every maintenance capitalisation scenario requires the interim step of an Asset under Construction. If the maintenance activity is relatively self-contained and management is comfortable settling directly to the existing fixed asset at completion, an investment project without an investment profile is a simpler and equally valid option.

How It Works

Without an investment profile assigned to the WBS element, no AuC is created automatically. Costs are collected on the project throughout the activity. At the end, the settlement rule points directly to the existing fixed asset (for the capitalisable portion) and to a cost center (for the expensed portion). The settlement is executed once at project close.

INFO: No AuC — But Still an Investment Project
The project must still be created as an investment project (not an overhead cost project) to be eligible for project stock. The absence of an investment profile means no AuC is created, but the project type remains "investment," which is the prerequisite for using project-specific stock in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud.

When to Use This Variant

The maintenance activity is completed within a single fiscal period or a short time frame where interim balance sheet capitalisation is not required.
You do not need to report work in progress on the balance sheet during the activity.
You want to minimise the number of settlement postings and avoid managing an AuC asset master.

Scenario Comparison at a Glance

Aspect	With Investment Profile (AuC)	Without Investment
Asset under Construction created?	Yes — automatically from investment profile	No — no AuC master record
Interim balance sheet capitalisation?	Yes — costs move to balance sheet at each settlement or even event-based	No — costs remain on the cost object until project close
Settlement target	AuC → final fixed asset at project completion	Directly to the existing fixed asset or other receivers at project close
Project stock eligible?	Yes	Yes — investment project type is still required
Partial capitalisation possible?	Yes — via settlement rule percentages	Yes — via settlement rule percentages
Best suited for	Multi-period projects, large capex activities, new asset creation	Shorter maintenance activities, direct asset improvement, simpler setup

6. Key Takeaways

Investment projects in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud are not restricted to new asset creation, they are an effective tool for managing costs of larger maintenance and refurbishment activities.
Project stock is available for investment projects (and revenue projects) in the public cloud edition. This makes the investment project the right vehicle when material ring-fencing is required for a major maintenance task.
The settlement rule gives you the flexibility to capitalise a portion of maintenance costs to the existing fixed asset while expensing the remainder to a cost center. It is also possible to expense 100% of the maintenance costs. This can be done in a single settlement run.
If interim AuC-based balance sheet capitalisation is not required, an investment project without an investment profile simplifies the setup while retaining all cost-collection and project-stock capabilities.

7. Further Reading

8. System Example Showing the Process Flow

1. Create Capital Investment Project
when creating the project, you need to use the Project Profile: Investment Project,
otherwise the functionality described in this blog will not be available

The assignment of an investment profile is optional.

With an investment profile assigned the system will automatically, with release of the project, create an asset under construction (AuC), you will then periodically or event-based settle the costs from the project to the AuC (move costs out of P&L and capitalise them in the balance sheet).
If no investment profile is assigned the system will not create an asset under construction. All the costs posted to the investment project can later be settled to a fixed asset, a cost center, another project,…

2. Capture Planned Costs and/ or Project Budget
If needed, you can upload planned costs or budgets to the investment project.
You can use the app Import Financial Plan Data (F1711) to upload planned costs or project budget.
Planned costs and budgets are differentiated via the plan category. Make sure you choose the category BUDGET01 for the budget upload.

3. Create Demands
If needed, demands can be planned for the investment project. Details are described in scope item 4RF- Project Control – Resourcing and Procurement

4. Purchase Materials into Project Stock

create a demand (as described in 3.), or
directly create a purchase order (app Manage Purchase Orders) with
- account assignment category Q – Project – Make-to-Order
- enter the WBS that should own the stock (item details), you do not need to enter a GL account
The special stock indicator Q - Project Stock is derived automatically from the WBS account assignment.

If the purchase order needs an approval, check the tab “Approval Details” to find the assigned approver.
Approvals can be found via Self Services > My Inbox > Approve Purchase Order

5. Goods Receipt for Project Stock

Use the app Post Goods Receipt for Purchasing Document (F0843) to post a goods receipt into project stock.
Check your project reporting (Project Financial Booklet Booklet – Enterprise Projects) to see the balance sheet posting (material inventory) is assigned/ attributed to the investment project
The project report shows the inventory account (BS) is account assigned to the project and therefore visible in project reporting. This is only done for project stock.
Check your material inventory to see the posted material quantity update in project stock (special stock indicator Q).
This means, these materials are not freely available but can only be consumed by the assigned WBS element.
app Stock – Multiple Materials (F1595)

6. Consume Material from Project Stock
Use the app Post Goods Movement (MIGO) to consume the material from project inventory to the investment project.
- Movement Type 221
- Special Stock Indicator Q
enter your WBS element as this project stock can only be consumed for the assigned WBS
the project report shows the consumption:

7. Post Costs to the Investment Project
e.g. activity allocation posting (app Manage Activity Allocation)

8. Maintain Settlement Rules
the settlement rule can be maintained in the project master (app Project Control – Enterprise Projects)

In this example 50% of the costs are capitalised and therefore settled to a fixed asset, the other 50% are settled to a maintenance cost center.
It would also be possible to settle 100% to cost center or other cost objects. There is no need to settle to a fixed asset.

9. Project Settlement
app Run Settlement – Actual

Extending SAP Joule with SharePoint Grounding and MCP

2026-07-08T04:38:41.868000+02:00

What You Will Learn

In this blog post you will learn how to:

Ground SAP Joule in SharePoint documents using SAP AI Core Document Grounding so that Joule can answer questions directly from your document library
Build a chunking and embedding pipeline in SAP AI Launchpad that keeps the vector index fresh as documents change
Create custom Joule skills and agents in SAP Build that chain document search, structured extraction, and S/4HANA API calls into a fully automated workflow — no copy-paste, no form-filling
Connect a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server as a Joule toolkit so that warehouse operations can evolve independently of the agent definition

By the end of this two-part series, a warehouse operator can type "Process delivery note 54321" in Joule and have an inbound delivery created in S/4HANA automatically.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have:

An SAP BTP subaccount with entitlements for SAP AI Core (Extended plan) and SAP Build Process Automation
An SAP AI Launchpad instance connected to your AI Core service
An SAP S/4HANA Cloud tenant with the Inbound Delivery A2X API enabled, or access to SAP API Business Hub sandbox
A Microsoft 365 tenant with a SharePoint site containing your delivery note documents (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, or PPTX)
Global Administrator or Privileged Role Administrator access in Microsoft Entra ID — or a contact who has it — to grant admin consent for API permissions
Basic familiarity with SAP Build (Joule Studio) and BTP destinations

Introduction

SAP Joule is SAP's generative AI copilot embedded across the SAP ecosystem. It understands SAP transactional data well out of the box — but enterprise knowledge often lives outside SAP. Delivery notes, vendor contracts, material specs, and SOPs typically sit in SharePoint, Teams, or network drives. Joule cannot act on what it cannot read.

This walkthrough shows how we connected those two worlds. The result is a Joule Capability Package called Custom Agent Ideation that imports three reusable building-block packages and adds two orchestration agents and four Joule skills on top:

searchDeliveryNotes — instant vector search over SharePoint PDFs directly from Joule
deliveryNotetoInboundDelivery — end-to-end automation: search → extract → map → create inbound delivery in S/4HANA
createInboundDelivery — direct inbound delivery creation when you already have the data
warehouseTaskCreator — MCP-powered agent that creates warehouse tasks from an inbound delivery number

Architecture Overview

Joule Extensibility — Reference Architecture

The SAP reference architecture for Integrating and Extending Joule defines the canonical pattern that underpins everything in this walkthrough. At its core, Joule sits in the middle — connected to SAP BTP for extensibility, SAP Cloud Identity Services for authentication, and the broader SAP application estate (S/4HANA Cloud, SuccessFactors, Ariba, Concur) through a unified integration layer.

extend joule with joule studio

Source: SAP Architecture Center — Integrating and Extending Joule (Ref-Arch 464deb)

Joule's extensibility operates across four capability patterns:

Pattern Description

Transactional	Natural language triggers direct backend processes — purchase orders, approvals, document creation
Navigational	Guides users to the right application or screen without manual navigation
Informational	Delivers knowledge from SAP Help, customer documents, or indexed content via RAG
Analytical	Surfaces business insights and performance metrics on demand

This walkthrough implements the Informational pattern (SharePoint document grounding) and the Transactional pattern (automated inbound delivery creation and warehouse task management) — showing how both can work together in a single Joule Capability Package built with Joule Studio in SAP Build.

This Demo — Solution Architecture

The diagram below shows how the components in this walkthrough connect at runtime. The Joule Capability Package (Custom Agent Ideation) sits on top of three reusable building-block packages and exposes four skills that Joule routes to based on the user's intent.

Imported Package Version Purpose

SharePoint Document Grounding Search	1.1.0	AI Core vector search over SharePoint
Delivery Note Assistant	1.1.0	SBPA action to retrieve and extract delivery note details
Inbound Delivery (A2X)	1.1.3	SBPA action to create inbound deliveries in S/4HANA

These three packages are SAP-maintained building blocks. You write only the orchestration logic that is unique to your scenario.

Custom Agent Ideation project overview showing imported package dependencies

Part 1: SharePoint Integration

Step 1 — Set Up SharePoint Grounding

This step produces the four credentials that AI Core needs to pull documents from SharePoint. You will set up a SharePoint site, register an Azure app, grant the right permissions, and validate access before wiring anything into AI Core.

1a — Prepare the SharePoint Site

Sign in to sharepoint.com and create a new Communication site (recommended for document repositories).
Upload your delivery note files. Supported formats include PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, and images.
Note the site URL: https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/<site-name> — you will need it in Step 2.

1b — Register an Azure App in Microsoft Entra ID

Go to Azure Portal → Entra ID → App registrations → New registration.
Name the app (e.g., SAP-DocumentGrounding) and complete the registration.
From the Overview page, copy the Application (client) ID and Directory (tenant) ID.
Go to Certificates & Secrets → Client Secrets → New client secret.
- Copy the Value immediately — it is shown only once. The Secret ID (GUID) is not the secret value.
Go to API Permissions → Add a permission → Microsoft Graph → Application permissions.
- Add Sites.Selected (Application type — "Access selected site collections").
- Do not use Sites.Read.All — Sites.Selected is the least-privilege option and the correct permission for Document Grounding.
- Click Grant admin consent. The Sites.Selected permission must show a ✅ status before you continue.

Caution: Admin consent requires a Global Administrator or Privileged Role Administrator. If you do not have that role, you cannot approve this yourself.
SAP employees: raise a request with your SharePoint / Azure Entra ID admin team to grant consent on the app registration.
External partners / customers: work with your organisation's SharePoint administrator to click Grant admin consent on your behalf.
Without this step, all API calls will return 403 Forbidden even if the permissions appear in the list.

Azure App Registration overview page showing Application and Directory (tenant) IDsAzure API permissions showing Sites.Selected granted with admin consent

1c — Grant the App Access to the SharePoint Site

Admin consent in Entra ID grants API-level access, but you also need to grant site-level read permission using PnP PowerShell:

Install-Module PnP.PowerShell

Connect-PnPOnline -Url "https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/<site-name>" -Interactive

Grant-PnPAzureADAppSitePermission `
  -AppId "<CLIENT_ID>" `
  -DisplayName "SAP Document Grounding" `
  -Site "https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/<site-name>" `
  -Permissions Read

1d — Validate Access (Optional but Recommended)

Get an access token and confirm the Graph API can reach your site before wiring it into AI Core:

# Get access token
curl -X POST "https://login.microsoftonline.com/<TENANT_ID>/oauth2/v2.0/token" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
  -d "grant_type=client_credentials&client_id=<CLIENT_ID>&client_secret=<CLIENT_SECRET>&scope=https://graph.microsoft.com/.default"

# Validate site access
curl -X GET "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/sites/<SHAREPOINT_DOMAIN>:/sites/<SITE_NAME>" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>"

A 200 response with site metadata confirms everything is wired correctly.

At the end of this step you should have four values ready:

Value Where to find it

Tenant ID	Entra ID → App registration → Overview
Client ID	Entra ID → App registration → Overview
Client Secret	Entra ID → Certificates & Secrets → Value column
SharePoint Site URL	SharePoint Admin Center or browser address bar

These four values feed directly into the AI Core secret in the next step.

Part 2: AI Core Service Integration

Step 2 — Create the SharePoint Grounding Generic Secret in AI Launchpad

AI Core needs your SharePoint credentials to pull documents during indexing. Store them as a Generic Secret in SAP AI Launchpad so they are never hardcoded in pipeline configuration.

Open SAP AI Launchpad → AI Core Administration → Generic Secrets.
Click Create and name the secret, e.g., sharepoint-grounding-secret.
Paste in the credentials JSON:

{
  "tenantId": "<AZURE_TENANT_ID>",
  "clientId": "<CLIENT_ID>",
  "clientSecret": "<CLIENT_SECRET>",
  "sharepointSiteUrl": "https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/<site>"
}

AI Launchpad Generic Secret form showing Application (Client) ID fieldAI Launchpad Generic Secret form showing Client Secret field

Save. This secret will be referenced by the chunking pipeline in Step 3.

Step 3 — Create the Document Chunking Pipeline

The chunking pipeline reads documents from SharePoint, splits them into semantically meaningful chunks, embeds them, and writes them to a vector collection in AI Core.

In AI Launchpad, navigate to Pipelines → Create Pipeline.
Select the Document Grounding template.
Set the source to SharePoint and reference the secret from Step 2.
Set chunk size and overlap. Recommended starting values: 512 tokens, 50-token overlap.
Name the target collection — e.g., delivery-notes.
Run the pipeline and wait for completion. Note the final document and chunk counts.

Tip: If you update documents in SharePoint regularly, schedule the pipeline to run on a recurring cadence so the vector index stays current.

Step 4 — Verify the AI Core Search Endpoint

Once the collection is populated, verify the search endpoint is working. This is what the searchDeliveryNotes skill will call at runtime.

In AI Launchpad, go to Grounding → Collections and select delivery-notes.
Note the Collection ID — you will use this as the id in the grounding filter in Part 2, Step 5.
Set the retrieval config: Top K = 5, Similarity threshold = 0.7.
Run a test query — e.g., "delivery note vendor material PO number" — and confirm chunks return correctly.

The SharePoint Document Grounding Search package imported in the project wraps this endpoint as a callable Joule function.

Part 3: SAP Build

Step 5 — Build the Actions

Actions in SAP Build Process Automation (SBPA) wrap external API calls as reusable steps. The project imports two action packages.

5a — SharePoint Delivery Note Search (from `Delivery Note Assistant` package)

This action calls the AI Core Orchestration endpoint and returns the delivery note content as structured JSON. Under the hood it combines document grounding with an LLM extraction step in a single request.

Action identifier: post_getDeliveryNoteDetails
Destination: mocked_JOULEDELIVERYNOTEDEST (points to your AI Core endpoint)
Input: query (string) — the search phrase passed by the agent
Output: deliverycontentdetails — the extracted delivery note fields as a JSON string

The SBPA function is called asynchronously via the Joule skill integration gateway and uses long-polling (14 s timeout) to wait for the AI Core response.

The full request body sent to AI Core:

{
  "orchestration_config": {
    "module_configurations": {
      "llm_module_config": {
        "model_name": "gpt-4o",
        "model_params": { "max_tokens": 1000, "temperature": 0 }
      },
      "grounding_module_config": {
        "type": "document_grounding_service",
        "config": {
          "input_params": ["query"],
          "output_param": "groundingOutput",
          "filters": [
            { "id": "<YOUR_COLLECTION_ID>", "data_repository_type": "vector" }
          ]
        }
      },
      "templating_module_config": {
        "template": [
          {
            "role": "system",
            "content": "You are a delivery note extraction assistant. Extract all fields from the document context and return ONLY a valid JSON object with no markdown, no extra text, no code fences."
          },
          {
            "role": "user",
            "content": "Document context:\n{{?groundingOutput}}\n\nExtract all delivery note details and return as JSON."
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  },
  "input_params": { "query": "<natural language search query>" }
}

Key points to note:

filters.id — replace <YOUR_COLLECTION_ID> with the Collection ID from Step 4.
data_repository_type: "vector" — must be snake_case. Using dataRepositoryType (camelCase) returns a 400 error.
{{?groundingOutput}} — the AI Core Orchestration service injects retrieved document chunks here before calling the LLM.
The system prompt forces a clean JSON response with no markdown fences, because the downstream agent parses the content string directly.

5b — Create Inbound Delivery (from `Inbound Delivery (A2X)` package)

This action calls the S/4HANA A2X Inbound Delivery API to create the delivery record.

Action identifier: post_A_InbDeliveryHeader
Destination: mocked_inbound_delivery (points to your S/4HANA or API Hub endpoint)

Field Source in agent S/4HANA field

`supplierdeliverydocument`	DeliveryNoteNo	DeliveryDocumentBySupplier
`deliverydate`	DeliveryDate (ISO format)	DeliveryDate
`actualdeliveryquantity`	DeliveryQty	ActualDeliveryQuantity
`purchaseorder`	PONumber	ReferenceSDDocument
`purchaseorderitem`	LineNo	ReferenceSDDocumentItem
`batchnumber`	BatchNo	Batch

Step 6 — Create the AI Agent Project in SAP Build

The project in SAP Build groups everything together. Create a new AI Agent Project and import the three dependency packages.

In SAP Build, go to Lobby → Create → Build an Automated Process → AI Agent.
Name it Custom Agent Ideation, set description to Customized Joule Agent for Public Cloud ERP.
Import the three dependency packages:
- SharePoint Document Grounding Search
- Delivery Note Assistant
- Inbound Delivery (A2X)
Configure the system aliases under Settings:
- SbpaService → destination: SAP_SBPA_API
- APIAGENTCALLBACK → destination: AC_callback_api

These aliases let the function configuration in SAP Build refer to the SBPA integration gateway without hardcoding URLs.

Step 7 — Build the Delivery Note to Inbound Delivery Agent

This is the orchestration brain of the solution. The agent runs the full Search → Extract → Map → Create → Confirm flow automatically, without any user intervention.

Agent configuration:

agent: Delivery Note to Inbound Delivery Agent
base_model: gpt-5-minimal
iterations: 25
default_output_format: markdown

The automated process the agent follows:

On any delivery note query, immediately call Search Delivery Notes with the query: "delivery note number, vendor, material, quantity, PO number, line item"
Parse the JSON response and extract: DeliveryNoteNo, DeliveryDate, PONumber, LineNo, MaterialNo, DeliveryQty, BatchNo, Warehouse
Map the extracted values to the inbound delivery API fields (see table in Step 5b)
Call Create Inbound Delivery with the mapped parameters
Reply to the user with a confirmation including the delivery note number, PO, quantity, and date

The agent instruction explicitly states: "The agent must never ask the user for any of these values or present options; the process must be strictly automated and sequential."

Content safety filtering is applied to all inputs (Azure Content Safety, threshold 4 for hate/self-harm/sexual/violence).

Expertise:

You are an expert in automating logistics workflows, specializing in the seamless extraction, mapping, and orchestration of delivery note data to inbound delivery processes without user intervention.

Instructions:

**Purpose & Objectives**
The Delivery Note to Inbound Delivery Agent assists users in fully automating the creation of inbound deliveries from delivery notes. Its objectives are:
- Automatically search for and extract delivery note information upon receiving relevant queries.
- Parse, map, and transfer all required delivery fields for inbound delivery creation, without requesting further input from the user.
- Ensure successful creation is promptly confirmed to the user.

**Process**
1. When the user requests a delivery note-related task (such as providing a delivery note number, vendor, material, PO, or line item):
   - Immediately call the 'Search Delivery Notes' tool with the query: "delivery note number, vendor, material, quantity, PO number, line item".
2. Upon receiving the JSON output from the tool:
   - Parse the JSON string and extract these fields:
     - DeliveryNoteNo
     - DeliveryDate
     - PONumber
     - LineNo
     - MaterialNo
     - DeliveryQty
     - BatchNo
     - Warehouse
   - Convert *DeliveryDate* with same format of '2026-04-27T00:00:00'
   - Map the extracted values as follows for the next step:
     - SupplierDeliveryDocument = DeliveryNoteNo
     - DeliveryDate = DeliveryDate
     - ActualDeliveryQuantity = DeliveryQty
     - PurchaseOrder = PONumber
     - PurchaseOrderItem = LineNo
     - BatchNumber = BatchNo
3. Using the mapped values, automatically invoke the 'Create Inbound Delivery' tool with the mapped input parameters.
4. Upon successful execution, confirm to the user what was created (including delivery note and PO details).
- The agent must never ask the user for any of these values or present options; the process must be strictly automated and sequential as above.

**Tooling**
- 'Search Delivery Notes': Retrieves delivery note and related document data based on query parameters.
- 'Create Inbound Delivery': Consumes extracted and mapped values to generate inbound deliveries.
- JSON Parsing: The agent must be capable of handling and extracting the required fields from complex JSON responses and mapping them precisely as outlined.
- The orchestration logic must guarantee a hands-free, predictable workflow for the user.

Additional Context:

**Communication**
- Maintain a professional, concise, and transactional tone; avoid any unnecessary small talk or ambiguity.
- Always state exactly what was done and which identifiers were involved.
- Never prompt the user for information or present choices about delivery note or inbound delivery details.

**Guidelines**
- If any required value is missing in the JSON output, clearly state which information was unavailable, but do not request user input to supply it.
- Follow the sequence of tools and logic strictly: Search → Extract → Map → Create → Confirm.
- Avoid speculation or assumptions—work strictly with the output you have.

**Examples**
**User:** "Please process this delivery note."
**Agent:** *[Searches delivery notes, extracts all required fields, creates inbound delivery, then replies:]*
"Inbound delivery created for Delivery Note #54321 (PO #98765, Qty: 100, Date: 2024-06-10)."

**User:** "Can you make an inbound delivery from this note?"
**Agent:** *[Performs end-to-end flow automatically; responds with confirmation of creation and details.]*

**Edge Case:**
**User:** "Process this delivery note."
**Agent:** *[If deliveryNoteNo is missing after parsing JSON:]*
"Unable to create inbound delivery: delivery note number was not found in the search results."

Step 8 — Create the Joule Skills (Scenarios)

Skills are what Joule sees — each scenario maps a user intent to a function, which in turn calls an agent or directly invokes an action. The project exposes four skills:

Skill (Scenario) Joule trigger description Target function

`searchDeliveryNotes`	User asks about delivery notes, vendors, materials, or shipments	`searchDeliveryNotes` (direct action)
`deliveryNotetoInboundDelivery`	User wants to convert a delivery note to an inbound delivery	`deliveryNotetoInboundDelivery` (agent-orchestrated)
`createInboundDelivery`	User wants to create an inbound delivery directly	`createInboundDelivery` (direct action)
`warehouseTaskCreator`	User wants to create a warehouse task	`warehouseTaskCreator` (agent-orchestrated via MCP)

Each agent-orchestrated skill works the same way at the function level: take the raw user message, pass it to the agent, and return the agent's response as markdown.

# deliveryNotetoInboundDelivery function (simplified)
- type: agent-request
  name: deliveryNotetoInboundDelivery
  body: <? agentRequestBody ?>
  result_variable: agentResponse

Step 9 — Build the Warehouse Task Creator Agent (MCP)

The Warehouse Task Creator is a second agent that handles a different part of the workflow: once an inbound delivery exists, create the corresponding warehouse task via the MCP server.

Agent configuration:

agent: Warehouse Task Creator
base_model: gpt-5-minimal

Process:

Receive a user request containing an inbound delivery number
Validate that the number is present and correctly formatted (numeric)
Call the MCP warehouse task creation tool
Return the task ID, or a clear error message if something goes wrong

MCP toolkit binding:

toolkits:
  - name: WarehouseTaskCreator
    type: mcp
    config:
      description: Create warehouse task based on inbound delivery document number.
      destination: warehouse-task-mcp
      namespace: warehouseTaskCreator.WarehouseTaskCreator0
      path: /mcp
      timeout: 60

The type: mcp is what distinguishes this agent from the previous one. Instead of calling an SBPA action group, it calls a Model Context Protocol endpoint at /mcp on the warehouse-task-mcp destination. Joule discovers available tools dynamically via the protocol — new warehouse operations can be added to the MCP server without touching the agent definition.

Expertise:

You are an expert in creating warehouse tasks in the MCP system, specializing in processing inbound delivery numbers and efficiently triggering warehouse operations based on user requests.

Instructions:

**Purpose & Objectives**
The Warehouse Task Creator assists users in automatically creating new warehouse tasks in the MCP system using the inbound delivery number provided in their prompt.
Success criteria include:
- Promptly creating a warehouse task whenever a valid inbound delivery number is given.
- Ensuring the user receives clear confirmation about task creation, including task details or error messages.

**Process**
1. Receive the user's request containing an inbound delivery number.
2. Validate that the inbound delivery number is present and correctly formatted.
3. When the number is valid, call the MCP warehouse task creation tool and submit the inbound delivery number as input.
4. Relay the response from the MCP tool back to the user, summarizing task details or clearly stating any encountered issues.
5. If input is missing or invalid, ask the user for clarification or a valid inbound delivery number.

**Tooling**
- MCP Warehouse Task Creation Tool: Use this tool to create a warehouse task by inputting the provided inbound delivery number. Always match the user's request to the required format before calling the tool.

Additional Context:

**Communication**
- Keep responses concise, straightforward, and informative.
- Avoid ambiguity—if the inbound delivery number is missing or incorrect, state the issue directly.

**Guidelines**
- Never guess or invent inbound delivery numbers; always ask the user to provide one if missing or unclear.
- Confirm task creation clearly and include key details or relevant error messages.

**Examples**
**User:** "Create a warehouse task for inbound delivery 5273849"
**Agent:** "A new warehouse task has been created for inbound delivery 5273849. Task ID: WT-00012345."
**User:** "Create a task for inbound delivery 123xyz"
**Agent:** "The inbound delivery number '123xyz' is invalid. Please provide a valid numeric inbound delivery number."

Step 10 — Configure the MCP Destination

The MCP server exposes warehouse operations as MCP-compliant tool definitions. The BTP destination is what connects the SAP Build agent to your deployed server.

Deploy the MCP server to BTP (Cloud Foundry or Kyma). The tool namespace is warehouseTaskCreator.WarehouseTaskCreator0.
In BTP Cockpit, create a destination named warehouse-task-mcp pointing to your deployed MCP service URL.
Configure authentication (Bearer token recommended).
In SAP Build, the warehouseTaskCreator agent picks up this destination automatically via the type: mcp toolkit binding.
Test end-to-end by triggering the warehouseTaskCreator skill in Joule with a real inbound delivery number.

End-to-End Walkthrough

With everything deployed, here is what a warehouse operator experiences in Joule:

Scenario A — Search for a delivery note:

"Show me delivery note from Vendor ABC for PO 4500012345"

Joule routes to searchDeliveryNotes → SBPA calls AI Core Document Grounding Search → returns chunks from the SharePoint PDF → Joule displays the delivery note details.

Scenario B — Fully automated inbound delivery creation:

"Process delivery note 54321"

Joule routes to deliveryNotetoInboundDelivery → agent searches SharePoint → extracts and maps all fields automatically → calls S/4HANA A2X API → confirms:

"Inbound delivery created for Delivery Note #54321 (PO #98765, Qty: 100, Date: 2026-04-27)."

Scenario C — Warehouse task creation:

"Create a warehouse task for inbound delivery 5273849"

Joule routes to warehouseTaskCreator → agent validates the number → calls MCP server → confirms:

"A new warehouse task has been created for inbound delivery 5273849. Task ID: WT-00012345."

Summary

Step Component What Was Built

1	Azure / SharePoint	App Registration with `Sites.Selected` for least-privilege grounding access
2	AI Launchpad	Generic Secret storing SharePoint credentials
3	AI Core Pipeline	Document chunking and embedding pipeline → `delivery-notes` vector collection
4	AI Core Search	Vector search endpoint verified and ready
5	SAP Build Actions	`post_getDeliveryNoteDetails` (SharePoint) + `post_A_InbDeliveryHeader` (S/4HANA A2X)
6	SAP Build Project	`Custom Agent Ideation` with three imported packages
7	Joule Agent	`deliveryNotetoInboundDelivery` — automated Search → Extract → Map → Create
8	Joule Skills	Four scenarios: search, end-to-end automation, direct create, warehouse task
9	Warehouse Agent	`warehouseTaskCreator` — MCP-powered agent for warehouse operations
10	MCP	`warehouse-task-mcp` destination + deployed MCP server

Key Design Decisions

Why two separate agents instead of one?

The delivery note flow is deterministic and fully automated — it always follows Search → Create with no branching. The warehouse task flow is simpler and uses a completely different backend (MCP vs. SBPA). Keeping them separate means each agent has a tight, auditable task definition and an independent iteration budget.

Why MCP for warehouse tasks?

MCP lets the warehouse operations backend evolve independently. New tools — cycle counting, pick confirmation, stock queries — can be added to the MCP server without touching the Joule agent definition. Joule discovers new tools dynamically via the protocol.

Why import packages instead of building from scratch?

The three imported packages (SharePoint Document Grounding Search, Delivery Note Assistant, Inbound Delivery (A2X)) are SAP-maintained building blocks. Using them gives you tested action definitions and upgrade paths for free. You write only the orchestration logic that is unique to your scenario.

Next Steps

Extend the document scope — add more SharePoint libraries (purchase orders, goods receipts) by adding source configurations to the chunking pipeline.
Chain the scenarios end-to-end — route deliveryNotetoInboundDelivery output directly into warehouseTaskCreator so that a single Joule prompt covers the entire inbound process.
Add locale formatting — the project already includes a localize function that formats dates and numbers according to the user's regional settings before displaying results.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test Automation Tool in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition CE2608

2026-07-08T16:32:58.164000+02:00

Introduction

Every SAP S/4HANA Cloud release brings exciting innovations and continuous business improvements. While these enhancements deliver greater value to customers, they also introduce the need to validate the business processes continue to function seamlessly after every SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud release cycles (6-month release upgrade or monthly update).

Testing therefore becomes an essential part of every upgrade/update cycle. However, executing the complete regression suite for every upgrade/update is both time-consuming and resource-intensive. The key challenge is no longer whether to test but what to test and with what data and infer the tests with the right status.

As we continue to innovate and enhance the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Test Automation Tool (TAT), the CE2608 release brings in further improvements aimed at simplifying test scoping, test data management, test status comparison of different Post Upgrade Tests (PUT) executions

In this blog, I’ll walk you through the following latest features delivered with CE2608.

AI-Powered Test Scoping in Intelligent Test Scoper (i-TS)
Multiple Data Variant capabilities for Test Data
Post Upgrade Tests (PUT) Comparator enhancements

1) AI-Powered Test Scoping in Intelligent Test Scoper (i-TS)

To address the challenge of deriving the right scope automatically, Intelligent Test Scoper (i-TS) was introduced to automatically derive an optimized PUT scope based on SAP Standard code changes delivered in every major upgrade or monthly update.

While code-change analysis marked a major step towards intelligent regression testing, in this release we have introduced an additional optimization measure with AI-based scoping complementing the code-change-based approach.

Several additional factors like below are now considered whether a business process should be executed after an upgrade where AI has the potential to identify patterns that traditional rule-based approaches cannot

Customer Relevancy: Application usage information indicating how frequently customers execute individual business processes.
Process Complexity: The number of ABAP development objects touched by each automated test process across different object types
Code Change Object Ratio: The relationship between changed development objects and the total objects touched by an automation process

Historical Behaviour: Regression behaviour observed across previous releases

What's New in CE 2608

Based on the above factors, the AI model was trained and validated with simulated upgrade scenarios of previous releases to identify the right scope. Beginning with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud CE2608 release, Intelligent Test Scoper proposes an optimized regression scope using AI taking the below factors into consideration.

SAP Standard code changes
Customer Usage
Process complexity
Change-to-touch ratio
Historical learning from previous cloud releases

The result is a smarter regression scope that enables customers to:

Execute fewer but relevant regression tests without compromising on quality
Reduce upgrade validation effort
Shorten regression execution time
Lower testing costs

Unless the customer wants to change the scope in the Manage Upgrade Test app, there is no additional action required by the customer. By default, AI-based i-TS scope will be executed as part of Post Upgrade Tests.

2) Simplifying Test Data Management with Creation of Multiple Data Variants and Assigning them to TDC Variants

Managing test data efficiently is critical for executing reliable business process tests. As organizations expand their test coverage across different business scenarios, creating and maintaining multiple test data variants can become repetitive and time-consuming.

To address this challenge, we have introduced a powerful enhancement to Test Data Container (TDC) that significantly simplifies test data management. With the introduction of a new entity called Dataset which brings the ability to create multiple data variants and assign them to TDC variants in a simple workflow, testers can prepare their test plans faster, reduce manual effort, and improve consistency across test executions.

The Challenge

Traditionally, when a test plan required multiple business scenarios, users had to:

Create individual data variants one at a time.
Assign TDC variants separately for each variant.
Repeat the same steps across multiple test scenarios.

While manageable for smaller test plans, this process became increasingly tedious and error-prone for enterprise-scale testing where dozens of variants may be required.

Introducing Dataset – A Smarter Way to Organize Test Data

The new Dataset entity brings a structured approach to organizing test data and easy consumption during data variant creation. A Dataset groups together multiple Test Data Container (TDC) variants into a single reusable entity.

Creating a Dataset

Creating a dataset is straightforward:

Navigate to More Actions in the TDC application.
Select Manage Dataset.
Choose Create.
Provide the dataset name, tag, and description.
Select two or more Test Data Containers to include.
Review the selections and confirm.

Once created, the dataset becomes available for future test plan executions.

Create Multiple Data Variants in One Go

Create multiple data variants and assign their corresponding test data with just a few clicks.

Within the Test Your Processes application:

Open the required test plan.
Navigate to the Variants tab.
Select Create Data Variant and Assign TDC Variant

The application intelligently adapts based on the number of TDCs associated with the test plan.

Scenario 1: Single Test Data Container

When only one TDC is available:

Select one or more data variants.
Optionally modify the variant name and description.
Map each data variant to the appropriate TDC variant.
Select Create and Assign.

All selected variants are created and assigned in one operation.

Scenario 2: Multiple Test Data Containers

When multiple TDCs are part of the test plan:

Select from the available datasets
Review the corresponding descriptions.
Complete the mapping between data variants and datasets.
Select Create and Assign
The system automatically assigns the appropriate TDC variants contained within the selected dataset, eliminating repetitive manual assignments.

Key Benefits

This enhancement has significant advantages for customer testing teams:

Reduced Manual Effort – Create and assign multiple data variants in a single workflow.
Improved Productivity – Spend less time managing test data variants and more time validating business processes.
Better Organization—Related TDC variants are logically grouped for easier management.

3) Post Upgrade Tests (PUT) Comparator enhancements

The Post-Upgrade Test (PUT) Comparator enables users to compare any two completed executions of the same execution variant, either within the same release or across different releases. By comparing execution analytics and matching scope details side by side, users can quickly identify execution differences, analyze failures, and validate upgrade readiness.
With CE2608, several enhancements have been introduced to make comparison analysis more efficient and intuitive.

Data Visibility & Pagination
Comparison results have been enhanced to provide better visibility into execution details while supporting pagination for large comparison datasets.
As organizations execute larger post-upgrade test suites, comparison results can contain hundreds of matching scope items. Pagination allows users to efficiently navigate through these datasets while maintaining a responsive and organized comparison experience.

Key Highlights
a. Improved visibility of execution comparison results.
b. Pagination support for large comparison datasets.
c. Faster navigation through matching scope items.

Filtering & Usability
The PUT Comparator now includes enhanced filtering capabilities that help users quickly focus on the comparison results that matter most.
Instead of manually reviewing every matching scope item, users can filter comparison results based on execution status and other relevant criteria to rapidly identify failed, successful, or impacted processes. Combined with usability improvements across the interface, these enhancements make post-upgrade analysis faster and more efficient.

Key Highlights
a. Advanced filtering options for comparison results.
b. Quickly identify failed or impacted scope items.
c. Improved navigation and overall usability.
d. Faster analysis of execution differences across releases.

Additional Info

Links to other important blogs:

How to get started with the Test Automation Tool for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition
Beginner’s Guide to SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Test Automation for Functional Consultants and Testers
The video playlist for Test Automation Tool can be accessed here
Integrating SAP Cloud ALM and the Test Automation Tool [TAT] for SAP S/4 HANA Cloud

Please bookmark the test automation community page to keep up with the latest updates happening in the test automation space.

For more details on the functionality, please refer to the links below:

Questions, feedback, or tips? Comment below or connect with us on SAP Community! Follow the PSCC_Enablement tag to stay up to date with our latest blog posts.

NR4 Canada Report in SAP DRC – Available for On-Premise and Private Edition, soon in Public Edition

2026-07-09T20:15:14.535000+02:00

Introduction

Canadian tax compliance just got a significant upgrade in SAP. We are excited to announce that the NR4 withholding tax report for Canada is now available in SAP S/4HANA 2023 and SAP S/4HANA 2025, released via SAP Note 3748353. In addition, it is planned to be delivered in SAP S/4HANA 2025 FPS02 (October 2026) and in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2608.2 (October 2026).

The report is delivered as part of SAP Document and Reporting Compliance (DRC) — the same solution that already hosts the T4A-NR report — giving Canadian customers a consistent, unified experience for non-resident withholding tax reporting.

This new report directly addresses a long-standing need expressed by our Canadian customers and complements the existing T4A-NR report that was already available in SAP.

What Is the NR4 Report?

The NR4 – Statement of Amounts Paid or Credited to Non-Residents of Canada is a form mandated by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). It must be filed by Canadian payers who have paid or credited amounts — such as dividends, royalties, rental income, management fees, or other passive income — to non-residents of Canada during a calendar year.

For every non-resident recipient, a corresponding NR4 slip must be issued, and an NR4 summary must be submitted to the CRA. This is a critical reporting obligation under the Income Tax Act of Canada and is distinct from the T4A-NR, which covers payments to non-residents for services rendered in Canada (such as acting or performance fees).

What's New: NR4 Report in SAP S/4HANA & SAP S/4HANA Cloud

With the delivery of this new functionality, SAP S/4HANA & SAP S/4HANA Cloud now supports the automated generation of NR4 slips and summary directly from the withholding tax postings recorded in the system.

Key capabilities of the new NR4 report include:

Extraction of withholding tax data posted against non-resident vendors and business partners
Income type classification according to CRA-defined NR4 income codes (e.g., dividends, royalties, rents, management fees)
Currency conversion handling for amounts paid in foreign currencies, in line with CRA requirements
Country of residence derivation from business partner master data
Tax treaty code mapping based on the non-resident's country of tax residency
Gross income and withholding tax amounts per recipient, per income type
Output in the format required for CRA electronic filing

How It Complements the T4A-NR

We have heard your feedback. Many of our Canadian customers highlighted that while the T4A-NR report covered payments to non-residents for services, there was no equivalent SAP-delivered solution for the NR4, which covers passive income payments to non-residents. The NR4 report fills this gap.

Feature	T4A-NR	NR4
Payment type	Services rendered in Canada	Passive income (dividends, royalties, rents, etc.)
Recipient	Non-residents providing services	Non-residents receiving passive income
CRA form	T4A-NR slip	NR4 slip
Available in SAP DRC	Yes	Now available

Configuration: What You Need to Set Up

At the Business Partner Level

A key prerequisite is the correct setup of the Business Partner master data. For the NR4 report to correctly identify and extract non-resident payees, the following must be maintained at the business partner level:

Country of residence / tax country: The country where the non-resident is tax-resident must be maintained. This drives both the reporting and the applicable treaty withholding tax rate.
Withholding tax data: The relevant withholding tax type and code for Canada NR4 must be assigned to the business partner, including the non-resident's tax identification number (e.g., the Social Insurance Number, Business Number, or foreign TIN as applicable).
NR4 income type code: The CRA income type code (e.g., code 09 for rental income, code 11 for royalties, code 13 for management fees, code 25 for dividends) must be configured and associated with the applicable withholding tax type/code combination.

For full configuration details at the business partner level, refer to the SAP Help Portal: Business Partner Configuration for NR4 – SAP Help Portal

In SAP Document and Reporting Compliance

The NR4 report is executed from within SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, the same way you already run the T4A-NR report. It allows you to:

Select the reporting year and company code(s)
Filter by withholding tax type relevant to NR4
Generate the output for review, correction, and submission to the CRA

For the full functional documentation of the report, refer to the SAP Help Portal: NR4 Withholding Tax Report for Canada – SAP Help Portal

Availability Summary

Edition	Release	Availability
SAP S/4HANA On-Premise & SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition	2023	Available – SAP Note 3748353
SAP S/4HANA On-Premise & SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition	2025	Available – SAP Note 3748353
SAP S/4HANA On-Premise & SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition	2025 FPS02	Planned – October 2026
SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition	2608.2	Planned – October 2026

Getting Started

If you are on SAP S/4HANA 2023 or 2025 on-premise, implement SAP Note 3748353 to activate the NR4 report. Ensure your Basis team has applied the note and that your Finance/Tax team reviews the business partner configuration prerequisites before the next reporting cycle.

If you are on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, the functionality will be available with the 2608.2 release in October 2026 — no manual note implementation required.

We Want Your Feedback

The NR4 report was developed in direct response to customer demand, and your input continues to shape what we build next. If you have questions, configuration challenges, or suggestions for future enhancements, we invite you to share your feedback through our dedicated Work Zone community:

Canada ERP Localization – Work Zone

We look forward to hearing from you.

Assembly Subcontracting with Sales Order Stock (E) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: 7DW

2026-07-10T08:03:18.990000+02:00

Business Case

ABC Scooter Company is executing a Customer Order of 100 Scooters with Matte Black Panel. The Body Panel is manufactured specifically for the specific customer order (Sales Order Stock E), while Primer and Paint are standard consumables issued from Regular Plant Stock. The subcontractor paints the body panel and returns the finished Painted Black Body Panel back into Sales Order Stock (E).

By using Sales Order Stock (E) in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, the company ensures that all materials and subcontracting activities are strictly tied to the individual customer order, enabling precise cost tracking, eliminating cross-consumption.

Other applicable industries:

Industrial Machinery (custom components outsourced for specialist machining),
Medical Devices (patient-specific items outsourced for sterile packaging),
Electronics (customer-specific assemblies outsourced for specialist coating),
Apparel & Fashion (sales-order fabric sent to CMT vendor for cut-make-trim).

What changed in 2608:

The Subcontracting PO can now contain BOM with Components both from Regular inventory stock and Special stock (Sales Order Stock: E) in the same order.
No stock type conversion required: E transfers directly to F at the vendor.
Full MTO support: materials and costs tied strictly to the individual customer sales order no cross-consumption.
No financial document at Goods Issue: the FI/accounting posting occurs only at Goods Receipt.

For scope item 7DW, the stock type transitions are:

Sales Order Stock component (e.g. RM027): E (at producer) → F Stock (at vendor) → Consumed on GR
Regular Plant Stock component: O (at producer) → O at vendor → Consumed on GR
Finished product (e.g. SG035): Received back into Sales Order Stock (E) on GR

Important: No financial or accounting document is generated when components are issued to the subcontractor (Goods Issue). This is a stock-to-stock transfer only no consumption has occurred yet. The financial posting is triggered only at Goods Receipt.

Example Master Data: SG035(main material), Components: RM027(Sales Order Stock)
In the material Master of RM027: Go to MRP4 and set the individual/Collective requirement as 1(Individual)
Note: The Individual/Collective Requirement = 1 (Individual) setting on MRP4 is mandatory. Without it, MRP will not plan the component against the specific sales order it will be treated as pooled stock and the Sales Order Stock (E) link will be lost.

For SG035: In the MRP2 Tab: maintain the following.

Go to the tab MRP4 and set the individual/Collective requirement as 1(Individual)

Process Steps:

Step 1: Create Sales Order

Create a Sales Order in the App: Manage Sales Order(F1873).

Ensure the Storage Location, shipping point is determined rightly
Save the Sales Order document and note down the number.

Step 2: Ensure Components are Available

Before running MRP, ensure the required components are available in the correct stock type:
Note: Either procure the components via a standard purchase order or production order referencing the sales order (so they land in Sales Order Stock E), or ensure sufficient stock already exists in the respective stock type before planning. Do not start MRP planning until the component stock is confirmed available.

Step 3: Run MRP

Schedule MRP Run in the background in the App: Schedule MRP Run(F1339) or
Go to the App: Manage Material Coverage(F0251) and run the MRP directly
Select the Material and click on details and Run MRP directly here. Post MRP Run, for the respective Sales Order, a Purchase Requisition should be created. Note down the Purchase Requisition number.

Step 4: Create Subcontracting Purchase Order

Go to the App: Process Purchase Requisitions(F1048).
Enter the Purchase Requisition or filter based on your criteria, select the Purchase Requisitions and Assign the Supplier, should be determined based on the Purchase InfoRecords.

Then click Create Purchase Order, the Purchase Order Simulation should be displayed.
In the Items Table, the Account Assignment = M (Sales Order) and Item Category = L (Subcontracting) must be pre-determined. Note: Account Assignment M = Make-to-Order / Sales Order. This ties the subcontracting PO to the specific customer sales order, ensuring all costs are tracked at order level. Do not change this value.

Select the Item, in the Material Data tab, click on components.

The Special Stock should be set for RM027 as E

Go to Account Assignment tab: Sales Order information should be determined.

In the Confirmation Tab, select Inbound Delivery under the Confirmation Control.
Save the Purchase Order and note down the number.

Step 5: Post Goods Issue to Subcontractor

Go to the App Subcontracting Cockpit (F2948) and enter the Purchase Order and click Go, the components details should be displayed.

Select the components and click Expand all

Then select all the components and click Create Delivery.

Ensure all the details are determined, For example for RM027, the Special indicator is E, Sales Order and Its Item number should be displayed

Then click Create Delivery. An outbound delivery document should be created, note down the number.
Login as Inventory Manager and check the Stock in the App: Display Stock Overview(MMBE) before posting goods issue.

Enter the material name SG035, Plant: 1010, Storage location as 101B and click execute

Enter Material as RM027, Plant 1010 and Storage loc as 101C and execute

Click Detailed display, the stock associated to respective Sales Order should be displayed.

Login as Shipping Specialist, go theApp: Change Outbound Delivery(VL02N).
Enter the outbound delivery document, which was created in the previous step, go to picking tab and complete the picking process and save the document.
Click post goods issue
Go to The Document flow of the Outbound Delivery and click on the material document which was created, check the below:
For RM027: The Special stock indicator should be E at the Producer and F once moved under Subcontractor’s Stock

Important: No financial/accounting document is generated at Goods Issue, this is a stock-to-stock transfer only. No consumption has occurred yet. The FI/accounting document is generated only at Goods Receipt (Step 8).
Financial Document is not generated from outbound delivery, because it's only transfer the material from E stock to Subcontracting stock, no consumption has occurred yet.

Step 6 :Verify Stock at Subcontractor

Login as Inventory Manager.
You can as well check the stocks of each material in the App: Display stock overview(MMBE). And see the stock details, how many are with subcontracting vendor and how many with Producer. For example:

Step 7: Receive Inbound Delivery from Subcontractor

Login as Receiving Specialist and Go to App: Change Inbound Delivery(VL32N) and enter the Inbound Delivery number and press ENTER
Select the Item and go to the tab: Stock Placement, Enter the Putaway Qty and click Save.

Step 8: Post Goods Receipt

Note: The Goods Receipt is the trigger for the financial posting. The finished product SG035 is received into Sales Order Stock (E) and the subcontracting fee + material costs are posted against the customer sales order.

Go to the App: Post Goods Receipt for Inbound Delivery(F2502) and enter the Inbound delivery number which was created in the previous steps.
Check the Special Stock type as E and Sales Order and its item number information are predetermined.

Select the Item and check the details. Check the component details are reflected rightly with respective special stock type for the component Material RM027

Post the Goods Receipt and note down the material document.

Step 9: Verify Material Document and Journal Entry

Doc Info tab → FI Documents → Journal Entry

Check the Material Document, following details should be available and Accounting documents should be generated.

Click Doc Info tab and click FI Documents

Check the Journal Entry:

Step 10: Create Supplier Invoice

Note: this is optional because we are focusing on the logistic process

Step 11: Final Stock Verification

Check the Stock in theApp: Display Stock Overview(MMBE)

Summary:

Scope item 7DW closes a critical gap in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition by enabling full MTO subcontracting with Sales Order Stock (E). Make-to-Order manufacturers can now outsource operations while maintaining complete sales order integrity, preventing cross-consumption, and ensuring accurate order-level cost tracking.

Related Resources:

Assembly Subcontracting with Project Stock (Q) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: Scope Item 6GD

Restrictions

Assembly Subcontracting with Project Stock (Q) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: Scope Item 6GD

2026-07-10T11:20:50.436000+02:00

Business Case:

Scooter Manufacturer: Body Panel Painting

ABC Scooter Company is executing a Government Fleet Project. The Body Panel is manufactured specifically for the project (Project Stock Q), while Primer and Paint are standard consumables issued from Regular Plant Stock. The subcontractor paints the body panel and returns the finished Painted Body Panel back into Project Stock (Q).

By using Project Stock (Q) in S/4HANA Public Cloud, all materials and subcontracting costs are tied to the specific WBS element, ensuring strict project-level control, accurate budget tracking, and full traceability, critical for delivering complex projects on time and within budget.

What changed in 2608:

The Subcontracting PO can now contain BOM with Components both from Regular inventory stock and Special stock (Project Stock: Q) in the same order.
No stock type conversion required: Q transfers directly to R at the vendor.
Full ETO support: all costs tracked to the WBS element throughout GI, GR, and FI.
No financial document at Goods Issue: the FI/accounting posting occurs only at Goods Receipt.

For scope item 6GD, the stock type transitions are:

Project Stock component (e.g. RM0614): Q (at producer) → R – Subcontractor Project Stock (at vendor) → Consumed on GR
Regular Plant Stock component (e.g. RM0613): Blank ( ) (at producer) → O at vendor → Consumed on GR
Finished product (e.g. SG0612): Received back into Project Stock (Q) on GR
No financial or accounting document is generated when components are issued to the subcontractor (Goods Issue). This is a stock-to-stock transfer only — no consumption has occurred yet. The financial posting (cost to WBS element) is triggered only at Goods Receipt.

How to Set-up:

Example Master Data: SG0612(main material), Components: RM0613 (regular or Plant Stock) and RM0614(Project Stock)

In the material Master of RM0614: Go to MRP4 and set the individual/Collective requirement as 1(Individual)
RM0613: Go to MRP4 and set the Individual/Collective Requirement as 2 (Collective) this allows the component to be planned pooled from plant stock.
Note: The Individual/Collective Requirement setting on MRP4 is the most commonly missed configuration. RM0614 must be set to 1 (Individual) so MRP plans it per WBS element, not pooled. Without this, the project stock link will not be established correctly.

If the stock is insufficient, then Produce or Procure the components RM0613 and RM0614 according to your scenario.

Step-by-Step Process Guide

Step 1: Create Project Demand

Create a demand in the App: Manage Project Demand(F4562) by entering details as shown in the screenshot.

Step 2: Run MRP

Either schedule MRP Run in the background or Run it as shown below:
Go to the App: Monitor Material Coverage - Net and Individual Segments (Version 2)(F2101A)
Enter the Shortage definition as MRP Standard, Material as SG0612 (For which the demand is created in the above step) and then click Go. The details are listed.

Select the demand and click Start MRP Run.

After the MRP run, click Manage Materials.

A Purchase Requisition should be created.

Step 3: Create Subcontracting Purchase Order

Go to the App: Process Purchase Requisitions(F1048A).
Enter the Purchase Requisition or filter based on your criteria, select the Purchase Requisitions and assign the supplier, supplier should be determined based on the Purchase InfoRecords.
Then Click Create Purchase Order, The Purchase Order Simulation should be displayed.
Account Assignment = Q (Project/WBS) and Item Category = L (Subcontracting) must be pre-determined in the PO item table. Do not change these values.
In the Item Table, ensure that the account Assignment(Q) and Item Category = L (Subcontracting) pre-determined. Select the Item, in the Material Data tab, click on components.

The Special Stock field must be set to Q for RM0614 whereas for RM0613 it should be blank

Go to Account Assignment tab: WBS information should be determined.

In the Confirmation Tab, select Inbound Delivery under the Confirmation Control.
Save the Purchase Order and note down the number.

Step 4: Post Goods Issue to Subcontractor

Go to the App:Subcontracting Cockpit (F2948) and enter the Purchase Order and click Go, the components details should be displayed.

Select the components and click Expand all

Then select all the components and click Create Delivery.

Ensure all the details are determined, For example for RM0614, the Special indicator is Q, WBS information is as same as for which the demand was generated.

Then click Create Delivery. An outbound delivery document should be created, note down the number.
Login as Inventory Manager and check the Stock in the App: Analyze Stock in Date Range(F6185) before posting goods issue.

Login as Shipping Specialist and go to theApp: Change Outbound Delivery(VL02N).
Enter the outbound delivery document, which was created in the previous step, go to picking tab and complete the picking process and save the document.
Click Post Goods Issue
Go to The Document flow of the Outbound Delivery and click on the material document which was created, check the below: for RM0613, once the stock moves to Subcontractor stock, it should be denoted with Special Stock type O (Subcontractor Stock).

Whereas for RM0614: The Special stock indicator should be Q at the Producer and R once moved under subcontractor’s stock

Important: No financial/accounting document is generated at Goods Issue this is a stock-to-stock transfer only. No consumption has occurred yet. The FI/accounting document is generated only at Goods Receipt (Step 7)

Step 5: Verify Stock at Subcontractor

Login as Inventory Manager and go to the App: Analyze Stock in Date Range(F6185) and check the stock details:
You can as well check the stocks of each material in the App: Display stock overview(MMBE). And see the stock details, how many are with subcontracting vendor and how many with Producer. For example:

Step 6 : Receive Inbound Delivery from Subcontractor

Login as Receiving Specialist and go to App: Change Inbound Delivery(VL32N) and enter the Inbound Delivery number and press ENTER
Select the Item and go to the tab: Stock Placement, Enter the Putaway Qty and click Save.

Step 7: Post Goods Receipt

Note: The Goods Receipt is the trigger for the financial posting. The finished product SG0612 is received into Project Stock (Q) and the subcontracting fee + material costs are posted to the WBS element.
Go to the App:Post Goods Receipt for Inbound Delivery(F2502) and enter the Inbound delivery number which was created in the previous steps.
Check the Special Stock type as Q and WBS information are predetermined.

Select the Item and check the details.
Check the component details are reflected rightly with respective special stock type for the component Material RM0613 and RM0614.

Post the Goods Receipt and note down the material document.

Step 8: Verify Material Document and Journal Entry

Doc Info tab → FI Documents → Journal Entry

Check the Material Document, following details should be available and Accounting documents should be generated.

Click Doc Info tab and click FI Documents

Check the Journal Entry:

Step 9: Create Supplier Invoice

Note: this is optional because we are focusing on the logistic process

Step 10 : Final Stock Verification

Check the Stock in the App: Analyze Stock in Date Range(F6185)

Summary:

Scope item 6GD closes a critical gap in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition by enabling full ETO subcontracting with Project Stock (Q). Manufacturers can now outsource operations while maintaining strict WBS-level cost control, complete material traceability, and automated financial posting all within a single integrated process.

Related Resources:

Assembly Subcontracting with Sales Order Stock (E) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: 7DW

Restrictions

AI Powered i-TS (Intelligent Test Scoper) for Post Upgrade Test of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Releases

2026-07-10T11:33:54.313000+02:00

Introduction

Every SAP S/4HANA Cloud release brings exciting innovations and continuous business improvements. While these enhancements deliver greater value to customers, they also introduce the need to validate if already available business processes continue to function seamlessly post upgrade to every SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Continuous Feature delivery (CFD)

Testing therefore becomes an essential part of every upgrade cycle. However, executing the complete Test Suite for regression test of every SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release and CFD is time and resource intensive. The key challenge is no longer whether to test, but what to test?.

This challenge inspired the development of the Intelligent Test Scoper (i-TS) (See Figure-1) an application designed to recommend the optimal Post Upgrade Test (PUT) scope for SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers.

Figure-1

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud CE 2608 release, we introduce AI-powered i-TS that delivers more efficient yet effective scope for Post Upgrade Tests, thereby further reducing the TCO for out esteemed Customers.

The Journey of Intelligent Test Scoper

Post Upgrade Tests (PUT) are a key offering for SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers to validate software upgrades before consumption in productive environments.

The objective is simple:

Maintain software quality
Reduce effort and upgrade validation time
Sustain confidence in Release quality

Traditionally, PUT testing relied on executing even the entire suite of standard scripts delivered (via SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test Automation Tool) . While this approach maximized confidence, it also resulted in significant execution effort and longer upgrade cycles, not to mention higher TCO.

To address this challenge, Intelligent Test Scoper (i-TS) was introduced to automatically derive an optimized PUT scope based on SAP Standard code changes delivered in every Cloud Release or Continuous Feature Delivery (CFD).

How i-TS Determines the Optimized Scope

The working principle of i-TS can be understood using the following Venn diagram.

Consider the rectangle representing all development objects within an application area.

The blue circle represents the objects touched by SAP Standard PUT automates.
The yellow circle represents the objects changed in a Cloud Release or CFD.

The overlapping region identifies the automation processes affected by code changes. These processes form the optimized regression scope proposed by Intelligent Test Scoper.

This approach has successfully enabled customers to execute only those automated tests that are technically impacted by a release, reducing unnecessary regression execution.

Why Go Beyond Code Change Analysis?

While code-change analysis marked a major step in the direction of intelligent regression testing, our engineering team continued asking an important question:

Can Artificial Intelligence further reduce the scope proposal while maintaining the same quality standards?

The answer lay in recognizing that code changes alone do not always represent the complete business impact. Several additional factors influence whether a business process should be executed after an upgrade:

How frequently customers use the application
The overall technical complexity of a test process
The relationship between changed and executed development objects
Historical regression behaviour observed across previous releases

By learning from these signals collectively, AI has the potential to identify patterns that traditional rule-based approaches cannot.

Building the AI Foundation

As with every successful AI initiative, the journey starts with data. Our objective was not to replace the existing code-change logic, but to enhance it with additional intelligence derived from historical observations.

The AI model was trained using multiple dimensions of information, including:

Code Change Information: The optimized scope proposed by the existing i-TS solution based on SAP Standard code changes.
Customer Relevancy: Application usage information indicating how frequently customers (cumulatively) execute individual business processes.
Process Complexity: The number of ABAP development objects touched by each automated test process across different object types.
Change-to-Touch Ratio: The relationship between changed development objects and the total objects touched by an automation process.

Together, these parameters provide a richer representation of the business impact associated with every automated test process.

Training the AI Model

Building confidence in AI recommendations required extensive validation; Instead of relying only on historical accuracy, we simulated real upgrade scenarios by training the model on previous releases and predicting scope for future releases.

Training Release	Prediction Release
CE 2502	CE 2408
CE 2502 + CE 2408	CE 2508
CE 2502 + CE 2408 + CE 2508	CE 2602

This approach closely mirrors the way customers consume SAP S/4HANA Cloud upgrades in production. For every prediction cycle, the AI-generated scope was carefully validated against actual PUT outcomes to ensure there was no quality leakage while measuring optimization gains.

This iterative learning process enabled continuous refinement of the prediction model before introducing it into productive scope recommendations.

The Results

The outcome exceeded our expectations. Earlier releases of Intelligent Test Scoper relied exclusively on SAP Standard code-change analysis and consistently delivered approximately 10% optimization in comparison to the full suite of standard automates.

With of AI-powered scope optimization, i-TS is now able to achieve nearly double the optimization efficiency while continuing to maintain the same quality standards.

Rather than replacing engineering expertise, AI complements the existing code-change analysis by learning from historical release behaviour and customer usage patterns to make more informed scope recommendations.

What's New in CE 2608

Beginning with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud CE 2608 release, Intelligent Test Scoper proposes optimized regression scope using Artificial Intelligence.

The AI-powered scope recommendation combines:

SAP Standard code changes
Process complexity
Change-to-touch ratio
Historical learning from previous cloud releases

The result is a smarter regression scope that enables customers to:

Execute fewer regression tests without compromising quality
Reduce upgrade validation effort
Shorten regression execution time
Lower testing costs
Increase confidence during every SAP S/4HANA Cloud upgrade

Looking Ahead

AI is transforming the way software quality engineering is approached, and Intelligent Test Scoper is an important milestone in that journey.

The introduction of AI-powered scope optimization in CE 2608 demonstrates how historical engineering knowledge, customer usage insights, and machine learning can work together to deliver more intelligent testing recommendations.

As we continue evolving i-TS, our focus remains unchanged: helping SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers perform faster, smarter, and more reliable upgrade testing while maximizing efficiency and maintaining the highest standards of software quality.

We are excited about this journey and look forward to continuously enhance the capabilities to Intelligent Test Scoper in future releases. Refer following Help Portal Documentation to learn more about i-TS (Intelligent test Scoper)

Talk to Your Localized Reports: How Joule Runs A/P, A/R, and Stock Reports in Native Language

2026-07-10T12:38:09.694000+02:00

Running a country-specific aging report used to mean remembering the transaction code, the exact parameter names, and the local compliance rules that shape every field. Now you can just ask.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition introduces AI-assisted localized business data management — a new capability that lets Joule, SAP's generative AI digital assistant, run classic localized reports through natural-language prompts while respecting every country- and region-specific requirement.

Scope Note

This blog post covers SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and the new AI Case Manage Business Data Using Localized Classic Applications. Activation requires the feature toggle GLO_DAS_LOCLZN_CLSICAPPL_INTEG and the corresponding business catalog per report. Three localized reports are currently in scope: the A/P Aging Report, the A/R Aging Report, and the Stock Overview Report. The reports were originally built for specific countries, but any customer can adopt them wherever they see a fit — simply copy the delivered business catalog into your own business role and assign it to the target users. Other editions (on-premise, Cloud Private Edition) and other localized reports are not covered here.

Main Insight

Localized reports are where compliance meets complexity. Every country encodes its own rules for aging buckets, currency handling, cleared-item treatment, and inventory posting — and each rule shows up as another parameter on a classic report screen.

The result: teams spend more time configuring the report than reading it. New users take weeks to get productive. And every parameter mis-entry is a potential compliance gap.

AI-Assisted Localized Business Data Management flips that. Joule sits on top of the same classic reports your finance and supply-chain teams already use — but it understands the country-specific context. You describe what you need in plain English. Joule fills the parameters, respects the localization rules, and runs the report.

You keep the compliance-certified backend. You lose the friction.

Three Reports, One Conversational Interface

Three classic localized reports ship with the initial release. Each requires its own business catalog assigned to the user.

1. Accounts Payable (A/P) Aging Report

Report ID: RFIDCN_AP_AGING
Business Catalog: SAP_GLO_BC_CLSICAPP_IDCNAP_PC
What Joule handles: filter by company code, supplier, and key date · select item types · configure due-date buckets and currency · analyze amounts in transaction or reporting currency
Example prompt: "Run the A/P Aging Report for specific suppliers or supplier ranges within a company."

2. Accounts Receivable (A/R) Aging Report

Report ID: RFIDCN_AR_AGING
Business Catalog: SAP_GLO_BC_CLSICAPP_IDCNAR_PC
What Joule handles: filter by company code, customer, and key date · include or exclude cleared and special G/L items · define due-date buckets and reporting currency
Example prompt: "Run the A/R Aging Report for customers S13100251 to S13100253 in company 1310."

3. Stock Overview Report

Report ID: J_3RMOBVEDH
Business Catalog: SAP_GLO_BC_CLSICAPP_MOBVED_PC
What Joule handles: filter by plant and product number · select a posting date or date range · filter by storage location and batch · review inventory status in context
Example prompt: "Run the Stock Overview Report for product tg-d010_ua in plant 6510 with posting date today."

Same reports. Same compliance guarantees. New way to reach them.

Not restricted to the original country. These reports ship as SAP-delivered business catalogs, but you don't have to run them only in the country they were originally designed for. Copy the delivered catalog into a custom business role and assign the role to any user or business unit that needs the same reporting logic. For step-by-step guidance, see Copying and Editing Business Roles — SAP Help Portal.

Activation in 6 Steps

The capability is off by default. Enable it with the feature toggle GLO_DAS_LOCLZN_CLSICAPPL_INTEG:

Open your SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition configuration environment with an administrator user that has the required authorization.
Search for and open the configuration activity Activate Features.
In the feature list, search for the feature toggle GLO_DAS_LOCLZN_CLSICAPPL_INTEG.
Review the feature details to confirm you are activating the AI-assisted localized business data management capability.
Choose the activation option and confirm when prompted.
Wait until the system confirms successful activation, then assign the required business catalog(s) to your users.

Once activated, users can invoke Joule from any Joule-enabled entry point in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and prompt the localized reports directly.

Practical Takeaway

Start with one report and one country. Pick the localized report your team runs most often — A/P Aging for a China entity is a good candidate — and follow this path:

Verify your system runs SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition with Joule enabled
Activate feature toggle GLO_DAS_LOCLZN_CLSICAPPL_INTEG in a test tenant
Assign the matching business catalog (e.g. SAP_GLO_BC_CLSICAPP_IDCNAP_PC) to a pilot user
Ask Joule to run the report using one of the example prompts above
Compare Joule's parameter selections to what your team would have entered manually
Roll out to the full team once you confirm the compliance rules and outputs match

You'll know it's working when your finance team stops asking "which parameter goes where?" and starts asking "can I get the same report for last month?" — because now they can.

Summary

Localized reports carry the weight of country-specific compliance, and that complexity usually lives in the report screen. AI-Assisted Localized Business Data Management moves the complexity into Joule — users describe what they need in natural language, and the classic report runs with the correct localized parameters. Three reports ship first (A/P Aging, A/R Aging, Stock Overview), with more expected as the capability expands. Because the reports are delivered as SAP business catalogs, you can copy them into your own business roles and reuse them wherever the reporting logic fits your process — not only in the country they were originally built for.

Key Takeaways

Compliance stays in the backend. Joule doesn't reinterpret local rules — it drives the existing compliance-certified classic reports, so audit and regulatory guarantees remain intact.
Activation is a single feature toggle. GLO_DAS_LOCLZN_CLSICAPPL_INTEG in the Activate Features configuration activity turns the capability on. No custom development required.
Business catalog assignment is per report. Each of the three initial reports has its own catalog (SAP_GLO_BC_CLSICAPP_IDCNAP_PC, _IDCNAR_PC, _MOBVED_PC) — assign only what each user needs.
Productivity gain is immediate. New users skip the parameter-memorization phase. Experienced users skip the parameter-entry step. Both groups reach the same compliant result faster.
Scope is intentionally narrow at launch. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition only, three reports only. Plan pilots around what's shipped today, and monitor SAP Help Portal for the expanding scope.
Reuse beyond the original country. Copy the delivered business catalogs into custom business roles and assign them wherever the reporting logic fits — the reports aren't locked to the country they were originally designed for.

More Information

Implementing SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition in Georgia Using Localization as a Self-Service (CLT)

2026-07-10T20:31:32.753000+02:00

Understanding Customer Local Versions

SAP delivers standard local versions for many countries. These include country-specific configuration, legal requirements, tax settings, reporting capabilities, and SAP Best Practices maintained by SAP.

However, not every country has a standard SAP localization.

For these countries, SAP provides Localization as a Self-Service (), allowing customers to create a Customer Local Version using the Configuration Localization Tool (CLT).

It is important to understand that this approach differs fundamentally from implementing an SAP-delivered country version.

SAP-Delivered Local Version vs. Customer Local Version

SAP-Delivered Local Version Customer Local Version (CLT)

Maintained by SAP	Maintained by customer or implementation partner
Country-specific Best Practices	Derived initially from Germany Best Practices
SAP legal updates delivered	Customer responsible for future legal changes
Standard localization content	Customer configures localization requirements
SAP-supported legal content	Customer validates local compliance

This distinction defines the implementation approach from the very beginning.

What Does Configuration Localization Tool (CLT) Actually Do?

CLT creates the technical foundation for a Customer Local Version by deriving the initial configuration from the SAP-delivered local version for Germany, which is currently the only supported source country.

CLT helps create country-specific configuration objects that can then be adapted using released configuration activities and extensibility.

It does not automatically deliver:

Georgian VAT configuration
Georgian statutory reports
Georgian legal forms
Georgian payment formats
Georgian tax rules
Country-specific legal updates

These elements remain the responsibility of the customer and implementation partner.

Why Germany Is the Source Country

A common question during project planning is:

Which source country should we choose?

According to SAP Note 3107866, the answer is straightforward:

Germany is currently the only supported source country for CLT.

This means that every Customer Local Version initially derives its configuration from Germany.

The implementation team must then analyze the legal and business requirements of the target country and adapt the configuration where supported by SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

Understanding this principle early helps avoid unrealistic expectations regarding the amount of localization delivered automatically.

Project Preparation Is the Most Critical Success Factor

SAP places significant emphasis on preparation before activating CLT.

Once a Customer Local Version has been activated, it cannot be rolled back, deleted, purged, or concealed. This makes early planning essential.

Before creating a Customer Local Version, implementation teams should conduct a comprehensive localization readiness assessment covering areas such as:

Corporate legal requirements
Financial accounting
VAT and indirect tax processes
Banking and payment methods
Statutory reporting
Document layouts and forms
Integration requirements
Master data requirements
Asset Accounting
Country-specific business processes

The earlier localization gaps are identified, the lower the overall project risk.

Recommended Implementation Approach

A practical implementation approach for a country such as Georgia can be structured into five phases:

1. Localization Readiness Assessment

Analyse legal and regulatory requirements.
Identify gaps between Germany Best Practices and Georgian requirements.
Define localization ownership and governance.

2. Customer Local Version Creation

Create the Customer Local Version using CLT.
Validate organizational structure.
Review generated configuration.

3. Configuration

Adapt available SSCUI settings.
Configure finance and tax settings where supported.
Maintain master data and organizational structures.
Configure forms and document layouts.
Develop approved extensions where necessary while maintaining a Clean Core.

4. Testing

Validate localization scenarios.
Execute end-to-end finance processes.
Verify tax calculations.
Test integrations.
Confirm statutory reporting requirements.

5. Go-Live and Continuous Improvement

Execute cutover.
Monitor localization processes during Hypercare.
Establish a process for maintaining future legal changes.

Working with Parallel Line in CBC

One recommendation in SAP Note 3107866 deserves particular attention.

SAP recommends completing the entire localization configuration in the Parallel Line, including Product Configuration—not only organizational structure and scope items.

Only after all activities have been completed should the configuration be merged into the Main Line.

This approach reduces the risk of major issues that could otherwise require a reset of the Parallel Line.

Another important consideration is that configuration changes related to the ongoing CLT implementation should not be performed directly in the Main Line while localization work is still in progress.

Key Limitations Every Project Team Should Know

Understanding the limitations of CLT is just as important as understanding its capabilities.

Some of the most significant restrictions currently include:

CLT is available only for customers using the 3-System Landscape (3SL).
Germany is currently the only supported source country.
Demo Data cannot be used together with CLT.
The Starter System cannot currently be provisioned with CLT.
Future legal changes for Customer Local Versions are not delivered by SAP and must be maintained by the customer or implementation partner.
Once activated, a Customer Local Version cannot be removed or rolled back.
Some localization scenarios remain unsupported and should be verified against the latest SAP documentation before project planning.

These limitations should be incorporated into the project's risk assessment and governance model from the outset.

Maintaining a Clean Core

Localization projects often create pressure for custom developments.

However, SAP's recommended approach is to keep the ERP core as standard as possible.

Implementation teams should first evaluate:

Released configuration activities (SSCUIs)
In-App Extensibility
Key User Extensibility
SAP Business Technology Platform (where appropriate)

Only after exhausting these options should additional development be considered, always within SAP's released extensibility framework.

A Clean Core strategy reduces upgrade risk and simplifies long-term maintenance.

Lessons Learned

Having participated in multiple SAP S/4HANA Cloud transformation programs, several practical lessons consistently emerge:

Localization is not a technical activity—it is a business transformation activity.

Many localization challenges originate from legal, financial, or operational requirements rather than system functionality.

Early involvement of local finance experts is essential.

Tax specialists, finance users, and local compliance experts should participate from the beginning of the project.

Do not assume that a Customer Local Version is equivalent to a standard SAP country version.

CLT provides the framework, but successful localization depends on careful planning, configuration, testing, and governance.

Treat localization as a continuous process.

Unlike SAP-delivered local versions, Customer Local Versions require organizations to monitor legal changes and maintain compliance over time.

Conclusion

Localization as a Self-Service significantly expands the reach of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition by enabling implementations in countries where SAP does not provide a standard local version.

For organizations operating in Georgia, CLT provides the foundation for creating a Customer Local Version, but it should not be viewed as a complete localization solution. Instead, it provides a structured framework that implementation teams can build upon using released configuration, extensibility, and robust project governance.

Successful implementations depend on thorough preparation, early localization analysis, disciplined use of SAP Central Business Configuration, and a commitment to maintaining a Clean Core. By understanding both the capabilities and limitations of CLT, project teams can deliver compliant, scalable, and upgrade-ready SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition solutions for countries beyond SAP's standard localization portfolio.

https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_S4HANA_CLOUD/60a09f68f2444ceca31dcac2e7017945/f5ce21aa2d894f9d92fc17557080b86c.html?locale=en-US

SAP Community - SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud

SAP Enterprise Support Academy Newsletter July 2026

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management: Q2-26 Updates & Highlights

Analytics Enhancements

Carbon Balance for Production Processes

Expanded Gas Impact Categories for Environmental Footprint Analysis

Footprint Data Offloading

Emission Factors: Expanded Default Content & Sustamize Partnership

Default Content from ADEME and EPA

Partner Content from Sustamize

Other Release Highlights

Outlook: Footprint Optimization Agent & CBAM Solution

Footprint Optimization Agent

CBAM Solution

Analyst Recognition: IDC MarketScape Leader

Additional Information

How SAP Commerce Cloud,cloud ERP edition and S/4 HANA cloud connect

How to Assign Authorizations for Analytics for Universal Journal

What Is the Universal Journal?

Why Authorizations Matter

Setting Up Access: Business Roles and Business Catalogs

Key Business Roles and Catalogs

Setting Up Access: Restriction Types

Production Order Combination in Cloud ERP (2602 and onwards) - Boosting Production Efficiency

Brauche ich Application Management für SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition?

Why Doesn't My Purchase Requisition Commitment Go to Zero? Demystifying Budget Commitment Behavior

SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP SCM Enablement: Live Product Expert Sessions in 2026

*Get access to Support Edition for Customers & Partners // Internal Edition for SAP Employees.

**Access Partner Edge here or send a mail to partner@sap.com if you face any issues.

Live Product Expert Sessions Throughout 2026

How to sign up for the SAP Enterprise Support Edition as a customer/partner

How to sign up for the Internal Edition as an SAP employee

Find All of Our Assets

Setting Up SAP Joule on S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: A Technical Guide

Introduction

Architecture Overview

Prerequisites and Readiness Checklist

Authorizations

Entitlements

Landscape Requirements

Technical Preconditions

Preparation

SAP BTP Subaccount Strategy

Joule Enablement ModelGuided Onboarding via Booster

SAP Build Work Zone Integration

Get Ahead of What's Next: Join the Early Release Series

Be First to Know What’s Next

What You'll Get Out of It

Sessions for the SCM Community

How to Sign Up

Don't Miss Out

SAP Green Ledger: Q2-26 Release Updates and Highlights

Carbon Traceability with Related SAP S/4HANA Documents

Mass Reversal of Carbon Collections

Simplified CBAM Processing

Efficient Processing of CBAM Carbon Collections

Improved Visibility into EU CBAM Accounts by Company Code

Flexible Carbon Allocations

Copy Financial Flow for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition

Project-Level Carbon Allocations with WBS Elements

Analytical Dashboard Update

Further Updates and Enhancements

Improved Journal Entry Usability

Updated Posting Terminology

New Origin Business System Filter

Additional Information

Using Investment Projects for Larger Maintenance Activities - Including Project Stock

Contents

1. Background - Why Standard Maintenance Orders Are Sometimes Not Enough

2. The Standard Investment Project Process (Recap)

3. Investment Projects for Larger Maintenance Activities

Typical Scenario

Why an Investment Project Fits

Setup Considerations

4. Adding Project-Specific Stock to the Scenario

End-to-End Material Flow with Project Stock

5. Variant: Investment Project Without an Investment Profile

How It Works

When to Use This Variant

Scenario Comparison at a Glance

Joule Enablement Model
Guided Onboarding via Booster

5a — SharePoint Delivery Note Search (from `Delivery Note Assistant` package)

5b — Create Inbound Delivery (from `Inbound Delivery (A2X)` package)