SAP Community - Situation Handling

Pricing Procedures in Accounts Payable

2024-05-20T13:16:23.324000+02:00

Introduction

The Blog “Pricing Procedures in Accounts Payable” is the learning outcomes from SAP INSIDE TRACK KOLKATA 2024. I have attended and participated as a volunteer in SAP INSIDE TRACK KOLKATA 2024, (27TH APRIL) and this SIT helped me to understand the different dimensions of Pricing procedures used in accounts payable. The speaker sessions of this event have discussed how the concept of Pricing Procedure has been developed in SAP and what are the core components used in defining pricing procedures in accounts payable. I have learned how pricing procedures will work in real-time business scenarios and the cruciality of configuring Pricing procedures in SAP.

Concept:

In Finance term, Pricing is the methodology to determine incurred cost components to process the finished goods and services from raw materials. In SAP, Pricing enables determination of actual value of goods and services to be produced or sold by considering all cost components.

In Accounts Payable, different cost components Base price of raw materials, freight, surcharges discounts and taxes are associated with finished goods and services production. Under Pricing Procedure, Consultant can define each and every cost component associated with Production of goods and services using SAP’s standard conditions or creating custom condition as per business requirements.

Pricing Procedures is the dynamic features of SAP MM Components that allows to consider all cost components with unique condition type and determine the net price of the goods and services.

Scope:

As discussed in earlier, Pricing is crucial methodology to determine cost associated with manufacturing or production or purchase and sales of goods and services. Hence, Pricing procedures has been used in different modules in SAP like Material Management, Sales and Distribution, Real Estate and Flexibility Management, Treasury and Risk Management and Controlling. In accounts payable (purchasing), Pricing Procedures is responsible for cost associated from procuring the raw materials to process the finished product.

Overview:

Components of Pricing Procedures

There are different key components associated with Pricing Procedures from Accounts Payable Prospectives.

Condition Type

As discussed in earlier Pricing Procedures considers different cost elements involved in procurement and production of goods and services. In SAP, every cost element has defined as unique condition type like discounts, freight, and surcharges. A unique condition type featuring below components.

Condition class: Condition class has been used as grouping functionality that allow system to control each condition type separately. For an example, Discount or Surcharge condition class allows system to group condition type having characteristics of discounting factors.

Calculation type: This is one of the crucial components of Condition type that define basis of calculation like quantity, percentage, or formula.

Condition category: Condition category allows to classify different condition type based on the nature of cost components like Base Price, Input Tax or Output Tax.

Rounding rule: The scope of rounding rule applies while small price difference has taken place in the transaction. By defining this parameter, Condition type has rounded off the value of small price difference in a form of rounding up, rounding down or commercial.

Accrual Key: It is a feature of condition type that allows to navigate a statistical condition type to determine separate accounts.

Group Condition: This feature allows to use a single condition type by multiple times in a single document.

Maintaining Condition table

This feature allows to create a Condition type by combining different fields or variables like tax code, country code, Company code, plant and other variable and same are used in Pricing procedures whenever the condition type being used in the transaction. For an example, a condition type for Tax classification might be used different key combination like Tax Code, Country Code, Plant, Business Place or Vendor.

Access sequences

Access sequences is one of the crucial controlling parameters used in pricing procedures. The key concepts of access sequences is determining the most appropriate and relevant condition record from the combination of Condition table. A single access sequence does contain multiple condition table based on business requirements. For an example, if a single access sequence has 3 different condition table, system will search all 3-condition table based on the sequence defined in access sequence.

Condition Record

In condition record, different pricing elements like Prices, discounts and surcharges has been stored with regards to Condition type for a specific timeline.

The variable maintained in the condition record has been derived via access sequence and condition type.

For an example, Condition record for Taxes has been maintained and if the same condition type getting called during the transaction, then said condition record will be applied during automatic price determination.

Calculation schema, Schema group and schema determination

Calculation schema is a logical structure that integrated with number of pricing condition used in purchasing document. This is also define a sequence or order by which different pricing condition called in a purchasing document. This configuration activity allows system to calculate subtotal, discount or taxes with the help of other parameters like calculation type, base price.

In pricing procedure, there are two Schema group, Schema group Vendor and Schema Group Purchase organization is being used and assigned with Vendor Schema Group is assigned to the purchasing data fields of vendor master record and on the other notes, Schema Group Purchase organization is assigned to Purchase organization in configuration.

By grouping different vendor and purchasing organization into a Schema group, system allow same schema calculation for every vendor or purchasing organization belongs to the same Schema group.

Schema determination is a customizing activity where Calculation schema (Procedure) is assigned to Schema Vendor group and Schema Purchasing Organization. Whenever any vendor or Purchase organization is being used in any transaction (suppose said vendor or Purchasing Organization assigned to Schema group), schema group combination is being fetched and based on the combination automatic pricing executed on purchasing documents.

Summary:

Key takeaways

Pricing is key factor that determine net value of goods and services at the time of procurement and as well as sales.
Pricing Procedures is the key features of SAP used to determine net value of goods and services by considering different cost element during procurement, production, consumption and sales
Different cost components like base price, discounts, surcharges and taxes has termed as Condition type in pricing procedure.
Condition table is the key combination of different fields to trigger pricing procedure for a specific condition type.
Access sequence defines most appropriate and relevant condition record from the combination of Condition table.
Condition record has been derived via access sequence and condition type.
There are two schema group, Schema group vendor and Schema group Purchasing Organization and based on schema determination schema group is getting triggered at the time of automatic pricing determination.

@DataTherapist MM (Materials Management) SAP S/4HANA Finance FIN General Ledger FIN Controlling SAP Tax Classification and Reporting FIN Posting and Taxes SAP Tax Compliance MM Purchasing MAN Material Requirements Planning

@SohamBhKoL

Responsibility Management: What Is It and Why Do You Need It? (1/5)

2024-06-10T16:03:13.536000+02:00

What is Responsibility Management?

Today’s Intelligent Enterprise requires a way to automatically determine who is responsible for a business process step such as an approval or a change of a contract. Fast-changing environments also require a flexible way of modelling responsibilities.

Responsibility Management is a framework that automatically identifies the right persons.

Employees can be responsible for one or more business processes steps, performing one or more key roles in their daily jobs. With Responsibility Management you can map multiple job functions and roles to the same person in a particular business process. You can also group responsibilities uniformly for many people, for example, all purchasers across locations and cost centers, or a dedicated team for strategic purchasers and one for operational purchasers. Responsibilities can also point to a specific person. By defining rules, you can, for instance, find the person who last changed a service order.

What are the benefits of Responsibility Management?

With Responsibility Management, you can

automatically identify users responsible for a task or activity
model teams and responsibilities across organizational hierarchies
define responsibilities and member functions in a fine-granular way
authorize users for specific contexts
create rules to dynamically detect the right person
benefit from a flexible configuration to keep up with continuous transitions

What kind of responsibilities are supported?

You can, for example, model responsibilities for

people from different organizational units working within a project (matrix organization)
employees dealing with specific groups of customers
the people who last changed a contract
substitutes in an approval process

Where is Responsibility Management used?

You can use Responsibility Management together with

Business Workflow (SAP S/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA Cloud)
SAP Build Business Process Automation (SAP BTP)
Situation Handling (SAP S/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA Cloud)

These frameworks also support the triggering of notifications with detailed information and follow-up tasks.

How does Responsibility Management work?

Responsibility Management supports two concepts: Teams & Functions and Responsibility Rules. Both are embedded in a business context. With Situation Handling you can use simultaneously while Business Workflow uses one or the other.

Teams & Functions

With the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app you can create teams for specific business contexts. For instance, you model a procurement team that has members with different functions and roles, such as operational purchaser, strategic purchaser, and catalog manager. You can use these member functions as filters, so that, for example, only strategic purchasers are selected to be notified about an activity that requires their attention.

For larger business units you can also define multiple teams that are responsible for different subareas. These could be different company codes, different suppliers, different plants, and so on. These responsibilities can also be used as filters. If a purchase order assigned to the company code A123 has been changed, only the members of the team with the corresponding responsibility for this company code are selected.

You can also use combined filters to narrow down the set of relevant persons. Assigning the company code to A123 and the member function to operational purchaser identifies only persons with the corresponding role in the respective team.

With Teams & Functions you benefit from identification processes being delivered out-of-the-box. You need to model only your team setup. We recommend using this approach for teams with up to 1,000 members.

Responsibility Rules

Alternatively, you can determine persons dynamically, for example, the creator of a purchase requisition or the approver of a purchase order. With the Manage Responsibility Rules app you can create your own responsibility rules. In S/4HANA Cloud you use BAdIs and in SAP BTP, you map the responsibility rule to a business rule or an external API call that contains the logic.

Rules offer a high flexibility and thus come with a higher implementation effort. We recommend creating rules for specific purposes and for teams larger than 1,000 members.

Responsibility Context

The responsibility context contains the team and rule definitions and connects them to the business process. For instance, the procurement context contains teams that relate to strategic and operational purchasing and rules that relate to the approvals for purchase requisitions and purchase orders. You map these contexts in the Manage Responsibility Contexts app.

Interested in learning more?

Now you have an overview of how Responsibility Management works! Stay tuned for the upcoming blog posts.

If you want to find out more, check out our next blog posts:

Responsibility Management: What Is It and Why Do You Need It? (1/5)
Responsibility Management: Create Your Teams (2/5)
Responsibility Management: Modify a Team Configuration (3/5)
Responsibility Management: Set Up a Team Configuration (4/5)
Responsibility Management: Create Your Rules (5/5)

For more information, see SAP Help Portal for Responsibility Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP Business Technology Platform.

Responsibility Management: Create Your Teams (2/5)

2024-06-18T12:14:13.023000+02:00

Identifying persons with teams & functions

You can identify persons based on team responsibilities and their respective roles. Teams come with a predefined configuration and can be created easily. You need to specify only the business areas a team is responsible for and add the team members with the dedicated roles. You can easily adapt the teams to changing requirements. Creating teams comes with a low effort while the process for identifying people comes out-of-the-box. We specifically recommend using Responsibility Management for teams with up to 1,000 persons.

Sample use case

Let’s consider a specific use case to illustrate the identification of people across teams and functions. Let’s look at purchasing. You are a reseller of notebooks, mobile phones, and printers. You have different plants, and each team is responsible for specific tasks, material groups, and suppliers as shown in the graphics below.

Purchasing teams across locations and responsibilities

In your daily business, several issues and tasks occur that are not related to the organizational setup, but you still need to identify the right persons responsible. For example:

You want to identify the persons responsible for a supplier.
You want to detect the right purchasers for taking corrective measures when deliveries are late or incomplete.
You want to inform operational purchasers when a new or updated contract is available.

Create the teams

You create the teams in the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app when you are logged in as a business process specialist or as a business process configuration expert. The app includes several predefined team configurations delivered by SAP. There’s also one for procurement. Let’s see how the team configuration for procurement looks.

The team configuration of procurement

The top level of a team configuration is the team category that relates to the business processes of a certain area such as procurement. The team category contains all responsibilities and team functions relevant to the procurement processes.

Team responsibilities define the matters the team members are responsible for. The Procurement team category includes the company code, material group, and supplier. You can use the responsibilities to filter for specific business objects, such as purchase orders that relate to material group 3000.

Team functions are associated with employee roles. The Procurement team category contains Catalog Management, Operational Purchasing, Strategic Purchasing, and Workflow Administration. You can also use the functions as filters to detect the right persons.

Team types are sub-categories of team categories and relate to the specific business processes. In Procurement these are Strategic Purchasing (STPUR) and Operational Purchasing (OPPUR). Team types inherit all responsibility definitions and team functions defined for the team category.

Since team types relate to specific business processes you can adapt the responsibility definitions and team functions. In our example both procurement team types use all the responsibility definitions because they are relevant to all processes. However, the role assignment for the team types differs. While the strategic purchasing team type excludes the operational purchasing role, the operational purchasing team excludes the strategic purchaser role.

Team configuration for Procurement

Create your teams

Let’s see how to configure our exemplary procurement teams in Bangalore and Chennai with the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app. We’ll create the first team of strategic purchasers. Selecting Create opens an object page.

Here you choose a meaningful name, for instance, Strategic_Purchasing_1, which also serves as a unique Global ID across systems. For example, if you have the same team in production and quality systems, you need this global ID as a unique reference in all systems. Add a description that illustrates the responsibility of the team and set the status to Enabled so that the team can be detected by Responsibility Management.

Now you select the type that loads the appropriate team responsibilities. In our example, it’s Strategic Purchasing (STPUR), which automatically displays the category Procurement (PROC).

Defining a strategic purchasing team

Then you specify the team’s responsibilities. In our case, this team is responsible for the suppliers Apple and Samsung. The responsibility is used as a filter to identify the right persons for issues related to these suppliers. And we’ve added the BLR company code for Bangalore.

Note: If you don’t maintain the responsibility filters, all values are considered.

Adding responsibilities to a team

As creator of a team you automatically appear as team owner. You are responsible for the team and can be informed with Situation Handling if the status of a team member changes and the team member is no longer available.

The next step is to assign the team members. Being a team owner doesn’t make you a team member. You need to add all employees, who need to be detected as team members, to the respective section. You can select the employees with a value help dialog that lists all persons maintained as business partners. Then you assign one or more functions to the team members.

Our sample team consists of Sarah and Saul, who both have the Strategic Purchasing function assigned to them. You also want to add a workflow administrator to this team and assign Walter.

Save the team and ensure that it’s enabled.

Assigning team members with their roles

In our purchasing example we would need to create five more teams:

Team Strategic Purchasing 2 is in Bangalore and is responsible for different suppliers.
- Responsibility definition
  - Company code: BLR
  - Suppliers: Canon, Epson, HP, and Lenovo
- Team members
  - Strategic purchasers: Sarah and Saul
  - Workflow administrator: Walter
Team Catalog Management is in Chennai and is responsible for all suppliers and materials.
- Responsibility definition
  - Company code: CNI
- Team members
  - Catalog managers: Carl and Carla
  - Workflow administrator: Walter
Team Operational Purchasing 1 is in Bangalore and is responsible for notebooks. The responsibilities of the operational purchasing team focus on products. Therefore, we set the responsibility filter accordingly to material group.
- Responsibility definition
  - Company code: BLR
  - Material group: 1000
- Team members
  - Operational purchasers: Nora and Norman
  - Workflow administrator: Wang
Team Operational Purchasing 2 is in Chennai and is responsible for printers.
- Responsibility definition
  - Company Code: CNI
  - Material group: 2000
- Team members
  - Operational purchasers: Ping and Prathap
  - Workflow administrator: Wang
Team Operational Purchasing 3 is in Chennai and is responsible for mobile phones.
- Responsibility definition
  - Company code: CNI
  - Material group: 3000
- Team members:
  - Operational purchasers: Mora and Morris
  - Workflow administrator: Wang

Hierarchical Teams

If your teams are organized hierarchically you can model your team configuration accordingly using super teams and sub teams. Just make sure that all teams use the same responsibility filters. In our example, all super- and sub teams must have values for company code, material group, and supplier. None of the team must have additional responsibility filters.

The responsibility detection starts with the sub team(s) on the bottom. Only if there is no match, the next level team(s) are considered. For example, we have 1 super team and 2 sub teams with the following responsibilities:

Super team: all suppliers (Apple, Canon, Epson, HP, Lenovo, Samsung)
- Sub team 1: Apple and Lenovo
- Sub team 2: Apple and Samsung

If you search responsible persons for Apple sub team 1 and sub team 2 are detected.

If you search responsible persons for Lenovo sub team 1 is detected.

If you search responsible persons for Canon the super team is detected.

Identify the right person

Now that we’ve set up the teams, let’s look at a few examples of how the right persons for specific business issues are identified.

Example 1: Identify all persons impacted by updates regarding the supplier Apple.

If there are updates regarding a supplier, you need to inform everybody who deals with them. You identify the right group of persons by using the responsibility filter for suppliers.

Responsibility Management identifies all team members that include the Apple value in the supplier definition. Remember, this also includes teams that have no explicit filter setting as this detects all values.

The filter Supplier = Apple identifies 8 persons:

Sri, Srini, and Walter from the Strategic Purchasing 1 team

Carl, Carla, and Walter from the Catalog Management team (supplier = empty)

Nora, Norman, and Wang from the Operational Purchasing 1 team

Mora, Morris, and Wang from the Operational Purchasing 3 team

Walter and Wang are members of separate two teams but are included only once in the result set.

Identify team members responsible for the supplier Apple

Example 2: Identify the contact persons responsible for Apple.

Now you want to narrow down the set of people to just those who are in contact with Apple and who negotiate contracts. This relates to the function Strategic Purchasing. This means you need two filters.

The responsibility filter Supplier = Apple and the team member filter Functions = Strategic Purchasing identify 2 people:

Sri and Srini from the Strategic Purchasing 1 team

Identify strategic purchasers responsible for the supplier Apple

Example 3: Identify persons dealing with notebooks.

Next you want to identify the people who deal with notebooks on the operational level. First you need to filter for material group 1000. Since the filter material group is only maintained for operational purchasing teams but not for other teams (no filter = all), you need an additional filter that detects only operational purchasers.

The filter Material Group = 1000 and the filter Functions = Operational Purchasing identifies 2 people:

Nora and Norman from the Operational Purchasing 1 team

Identify operational purchasers responsible for the material 1000

Example 4: Identify all operational purchasers located in Chennai.

Finally, you want to identify all persons who work as operational purchasers in Chennai. The location is represented by the company code, and you need to filter for the corresponding roles.

The filter Company Code = CNI and the filter Functions = Operational Purchasing identifies 4 persons:

Ping and Prathap from the Operational Purchasing 2 team
Mora and Morris from the Operational Purchasing 3 team

The Operational Purchasing 1 team is ignored because its company code is BLR.

Now you know how teams and functions work in Responsibility Management.

Identify operational purchasers in Chennai

Interested in learning more?

Stay tuned for the upcoming blog posts.

If you want to find out more, check out our next blog posts:

Responsibility Management: What Is It and Why Do You Need It? (1/5)
Responsibility Management: Create Your Teams (2/5)
Responsibility Management: Modify a Team Configuration (3/5)
Responsibility Management: Set Up a Team Configuration (4/5)
Responsibility Management: Create Your Rules (5/5)

For more information, see SAP Help Portal for Responsibility Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP Business Technology Platform.

Responsibility Management: Modify a Team Configuration (3/5)

2024-06-19T17:01:21.544000+02:00

How are teams configured?

Before you start modifying a team configuration, you need to understand how teams are set up in Responsibility Management.

Business processes such as procurement, sales, or finance are represented by team categories. Team categories contain all responsibilities and team functions relevant to the business process. Team types are derived from the team categories and inherit the responsibilities and functions. Team types are associated with specific business processes. If you want to modify a team configuration you do so on team type level.

The advantage of using teams and functions for Responsibility Management is that it’s easy to configure and the process of detecting the right persons comes out-of-the-box. We recommend that you model teams for business areas of up to 1,000 employees.

Modify a team configuration

You can easily modify team configurations predelivered by SAP if they don’t meet your requirements.

You log in as a business process configuration expert and start configuring with the Manage Your Solution app. Select the SAP Central Business Configuration link that takes you to the Project Experience app. On the Activities tab select Product-specific Configuration and then select the Configuration Activities tab. Search for Responsibility and you’ll see the various configuration options for Responsibility Management.

Assign the configuration to a transport request and release it after finalizing your changes

Customize team types, responsibilities, and functions

Depending on your system configuration, you can also use Configure Your Solution, filter for the Application Platform and Infrastructure application area and the Responsibility Management subapplication area. You’ll find the corresponding features there.

You have multiple options for adapting an existing team configuration:

Create new team types
Modify responsibilities
Modify functions

Let’s look at some examples of how this works. As a reference we’ll use the procurement example discussed in the previous blog post, Responsibility Management: Create Your Teams.

Example 1: New team type with reduced responsibilities and functions

If you want to modify the responsibilities and functions available with a predelivered team category, you can simply create a new team type. The team type inherits the responsibility definitions and functions from the team category by default. In the next step you can adapt these responsibilities and functions to your requirements.

Sample use case

You want to create a specific team type only for operational purchasers that supports an easy setup of teams and avoids misconfiguration. To do that, create a new team type and remove all responsibilities and functions that you don’t need for your business processes. The relevant responsibility definitions for our procurement example are Company Code, Material Group, and Supplier. The only relevant role is Operational Purchasing.

Define the team type

Select Define Team Types in the Configuration Activities; a new page opens. Enter a team type name, select the procurement team category, add a team type description, and choose Save. The new team type inherits the responsibility definitions and the functions from the team category.

Create a new team type

Exclude responsibility definitions

Select the new OPPUR_FOCUS team type and choose Exclude Standard Responsibility Definitions. Choose New Entries. Use the value help to select all responsibility definitions you want to exclude from your team type. In our example, these are Material, Plant, Purchasing Category, Purchasing Group, and Purchasing Organization. Save your changes.

Remove responsibility definitions for the new team type

Exclude functions

Select the new OPPUR_FOCUS team type and choose Exclude Functions. Choose New Entries. Use the value to select all the functions you want to exclude from your team type. In our example, these are Strategic Purchasing and Workflow Administration. Save your changes.

Exclude functions for the new team type

After transporting your changes to the target system, you can start using the custom team type in the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app.

Custom team type OPPUR_FOCUS

In the Responsibility Definitions section, you see only the three filter options that were not excluded.

Custom responsibility definitions with reduced filters

When you choose Functions in the Team Member section, only the option Operational Purchasing is left after excluding the other functions.

Custom member functions reduced to Operational Purchasing

Example 2: Enhanced responsibilities and functions for a team category

You can also enhance the responsibilities and functions for a team category predelivered by SAP. For instance, you want to add the responsibility definition Purchase Contract Type. And you also want to add the Manager function so you can detect managers when critical issues occur.

Enhance responsibilities

To enhance responsibilities for a team category you first need to create the new responsibility and then assign it to the team category.

Define a new responsibility

Select Define Custom Responsibility Definitions in Configuration Activities; a new page opens. Enter a meaningful name for Resp. Def. Name that serves as the ID. Choose the appropriate CDS view and the matching CDS field by using the value help. Enter a name for Resp. Def. Ext. Name that is displayed on the UI. Save your changes.

Custom responsibility definition

By the way, when you’re logged in as an administrator, you can also use custom fields from CDS views that you can create with the Custom Fields. Or you can use the Custom CDS Views app to create your own CDS views.

Assign a responsibility definition to the team category

In the next step you need to assign the custom responsibility to the procurement team category. Select Assign Custom Responsibility Definitions to Team Category in Configuration Activities; a new page opens. Use the value help to select the PROC team category and the custom responsibility definition Z_PURCHASECONTRACTTYPE. Save your changes.

Map custom responsibility to team category

Enhance functions

If you want to enhance functions, you need to define the new functions and map them to one of the team category’s function profiles.

Define a new function

First select Define Functions in Configuration Activities. A new page opens, and you see a list of all the available functions, including the entries for procurement.

When you select New Entries, a new list opens. You can enter new member functions in it. In our example we’ll add MANAG: Manager. After choosing Save, the new entry is displayed in the list of all functions.

Custom function

Map the function to a function profile

In the next step you need to assign the function to the function profile for procurement that is linked to the procurement team category. Select Define Function Profiles in Configuration Activities. Select the purchasing profile (PROC) from the list of function profiles.

Function Profile PROC Purchasing

Then choose Function Profile to Function Mapping; a new window opens. In the value help, search for MANAG and select Save. You can see the new entry in the list of all purchasing functions.

Map custom function to procurement profile

After transporting your changes to the target system, you can see the enhanced team configuration in the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app when you create a new team. Select the predelivered team type Strategic Purchasing.

Enhanced standard team type STPUR

In the section Responsibility Definition, you can see the custom value Purchase Document Type.

Custom responsibility definition Z_PurchaseContractType

You can also select the custom function Manager for team members.

Custom function Manager

Interested in learning more?

If you want to find out more, check out our other blog posts:

Responsibility Management: What Is It and Why Do You Need It? (1/5)
Responsibility Management: Create Your Teams (2/5)
Responsibility Management: Modify Team a Configuration (3/5)
Responsibility Management: Set Up a Team Configuration (4/5)
Responsibility Management: Create Your Rules (5/5)

For more information, see SAP Help Portal for Responsibility Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP Business Technology Platform.

Responsibility Management: Set Up a Team Configuration (4/5)

2024-06-26T17:56:02.961000+02:00

How are teams configured?

In the last blog post Responsibility Management: Modify a Team Configuration you already learned that team types inherit the responsibility definitions and functions from a team category.

If you want to set up a team configuration from scratch you also need to know how to create a team category and assign it to a responsibility context. The responsibility context relates to a specific business process, such as a purchase order approval in a Business Workflow or to a scenario for Situation Handling. You can assign a team category to multiple responsibility contexts.

Customizing a team configuration

You can create your own team configuration following the steps in this sequence:

Create a team category
Create a responsibility context
Set up your team

Sample use case

Let’s take a sample use case to illustrate a custom team configuration. We have a purchasing organization that has three focus areas:

Strategic matters that are handled by managers and strategic purchasers
The buying process that requires strategic buyers and catalog manager.
The operations that include operational buyers and the catalog managers

So you want to set up the following team configuration that correspond to your purchasing processes.

Purchasing team configuration

Create a team category

To set up a team configuration, start by creating a team category. Log in to SAP Fiori launchpad as an extensibility specialist. Open the Manage Team Categories app and choose Create. A new window opens and you enter a unique ID for the team category, a description, and save your changes.

Create a team category

Create a team context

Custom team contexts can be used only for Situation Handling. If you want to create your own team configuration for Business Workflow, you can reuse an existing team context.

When you’re logged in as an extensibility specialist, open the Manage Responsibility Contexts app. Select the Custom tab and choose Create. Enter a unique ID for the context and a description. The context type SITO (Situation Object) is automatically assigned. Then use the value help to add the team category.

In our example we’ve created two team contexts and assigned both to the team category YY1_MY_PROC:

Purchase contract context (YY1_MY_PURCHASECONTRACTS)
Purchase requisition context (YY1_MY_PURCHASEREQUISITIONS)

Custom context for purchase contract

Set up your team

To set up your team, you log in as a business process configuration expert and start with the Manage Your Solution app. Select the link SAP Central Business Configuration that navigates to the Project Experience app. On the Activities tab select Product-specific Configuration and select the Configuration Activities tab. Search for Responsibility and you’ll see the configuration options for Responsibility Management.

Assign the configuration to a transport request and release it after having everything finalized.

Customize team types, responsibilities, and functions

Depending on your system configuration, you can use Configure Your Solution, filter for the application area Application Platform and Infrastructure and the subapplication area Responsibility Management, and you’ll find the corresponding features.

The previous blog post Responsibility Management: Modify a Team Configuration explains the details about adapting an existing team configuration. So, let’s just discuss the values that need to be configured - but point out the additional steps that link the artifacts.

Custom responsibilities

Define custom responsibilities

Select Define Custom Responsibility Definitions in the Configuration Activities. We’ve maintained five responsibilities by entering the Resp. Def. Name, choosing the appropriate CDS view and matching CDS field using the value help, and entering a Resp. Def. Ext. Name.

Company code
Product group
Purchasing Group
Purchasing Organization
Supplier

Assign a responsibility to the team category

In the next step you need to assign a custom responsibility to the procurement team category. Select Assign Custom Responsibility Definitions to Team Category in the Configuration Activities; a new page opens. In our sample case, each of the above responsibilities need to be assigned to the team category YY1_MY_PROC.

Custom functions

Define functions

Select Define Functions in the Configuration Activities. Add functions by selecting New Entries.

MANAG: Manager
MANAG_CAT: Catalog Manager
OP_BUY: Operational Buyer
ZSTR_BUY: Strategic Buyer

Define function profiles

Function profiles let you group similar functions for a business process. A function profile links the functions to the team category. You can have one function profile for all functions. If you want to group similar functions for business processes, you can also create multiple function profiles.

First, select Define Function Profiles in Configuration Activities. You can add one or more function profile by selecting New Entries. For our sample case you need to have only one function profile, MY_PURCH.

Map the functions to a profile

Last, map the functions to the corresponding function profile. We’ve mapped all functions to the function profile MY_PURCH.

Now all the structural elements are complete and we can start modelling the team types.

Assign a function profile to a team category

Then Assign Functions to Team Category in Configuration Activities. On the new page, select New Entries and assign the function profile MY_PURCH to the team category YY1_MY_PROC.

Create a team type

We need to create three team types, map them to the team category, and remove responsibilities and functions to achieve the configuration of the sample use case.

Define the team types

Select Define Team Types in Configuration Activities and add the new teams by selecting New Entries.

Team type: MANAG, Management, team category: YY1_MY_PROC
Team type: BUY, Buying, team category: YY1_MY_PROC
Team type: OPER, Operations, team category: YY1_MY_PROC

Exclude responsibilities

In the next step you need to exclude non-relevant responsibility definitions from the team types. Select a team type and choose Exclude Custom Responsibility Definitions. Exclude the following responsibilities from your teams.

MANAG: none – all responsibility definitions are relevant
BUY: material group
OPER: purchasing department, purchasing unit

Exclude functions

Then you need to exclude the non-relevant functions from each team type. Select the team type and choose Exclude Functions. Exclude the following functions from your teams.

MANAG: catalog manager, operational buyer
BUY: manager, operational buyer
OPER: manager, strategic buyer

Now you’re all set. Transport the content to the target system and start creating teams.

Create your teams

Log in to the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app as a business process specialist or as a business process configuration expert. Choose Create and select a team type to see its team configuration.

Team Type Management

The custom team type Management is assigned to the custom category Procurement Teams and shows the custom responsibility definitions Company Code, Product Group, Purchasing Group, Purchasing Organization, and Supplier.

Custom team configuration Management with custom responsibility definitions

When you select the functions for the team members, choose Manager or Strategic Buyer.

Custom team configuration Management with custom functions

Team Type Buying

The custom team type Buying is assigned to the custom category Procurement Teams and shows the custom responsibility definitions Company Code, Purchasing Group, Purchasing Organization, and Supplier.

Custom team configuration Management with custom responsibility definitions

When you select functions for team members, you can choose Catalog Manager or Strategic Buyer.

Custom team configuration Management with custom functions

Team Type Operations

The custom team type Operations is assigned to the custom category Procurement Teams and shows the custom responsibility definitions Company Code, Product Group, and Supplier.

Custom team configuration Management with custom responsibility definitions

When you select functions for team members, you can choose only Catalog Manager and Operational Buyer.

Custom team configuration Management with custom functions

Interested in learning more?

If you want to find out more, check out our further blog posts:

Responsibility Management: What Is It and Why Do You Need It? (1/5)
Responsibility Management: Create Your Teams (2/5)
Responsibility Management: Modify a Team Configuration (3/5)
Responsibility Management: Set Up a Team Configuration (4/5)
Responsibility Management: Create Your Rules (5/5)

For more information, see SAP Help Portal for Responsibility Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP Business Technology Platform.

Responsibility Management: Create Your Rules (5/5)

2024-06-27T20:05:33.221000+02:00

Identifying persons using rules

You can identify persons using responsibility rules. Rules are based on business logic and assigned to a specific business context. This responsibility context refers to a specific business process, such as sales order creation or project budget request, in a Business Workflow. The responsibility context can also refer to a situation scenario in Situation Handling.

Rules are highly flexible and come with some implementation effort. That’s why we recommend creating responsibility rules for teams with more than 1,000 employees. For smaller units you may want to consider managing responsibilities by teams.

Sample use case

Let’s illustrate the identification of persons by rules with a simple use case that relates to the reseller introduced in the blog post Responsibility Management: Create Your Teams. We’ll create a rule that identifies the creator of a purchase contract.

Create your own rules

To create your own responsibility rules, follow the steps in this sequence:

Create the business logic

Create a custom rule

Assign the rule to a responsibility context

Create the business logic

A custom rule is based on a BAdI implementation. Log in as an extensibility specialist and open the Custom Logic app. Select Create and filter for RSM_BADI_RESPONSIBILITY_RULE. Then choose Responsibility Rule and go to step 2.

Responsibility Rule in Custom Logic app

Responsibility Rule in Custom Logic app

Add a new filter and select STATIC_RULE_FILTER. Enter a name in the Value field that identifies your BAdI. The name needs to

be identical with the responsibility rule ID because it’s the link between the business logic and the responsibility rule.
start with an ATO prefix such as YY1 or YY2.
be in UPPERCASE letters.

Save the filter and go to step 3.

Static rule filter for the responsibility filter

When you enter the implementation description the implementation ID is created automatically. Select Review and make sure that everything is okay.

Implementation ID of your custom logic

Then create and publish your custom logic. After the status has changed to published, open the code editor.

Published custom logic

Enter your business logic in the code editor and publish it. You will need to refer to all parameters used in the BAdI later on when you create the responsibility rule.

In our example the BAdI identifies the creator of a purchase contract. We need to use the purchase contract YY1_PURCHASECONTRACT as a parameter.

Code editor of custom logic

Since the BAdI isn’t context-dependent you can use it in multiple rules.

Create a custom responsibility rule

You’re logged in as an extensibility specialist and open the Manage Responsibility Rules app. Select the Custom tab and create a new responsibility rule. The rule’s ID needs to be the same as the BAdI’s ID. In our example it’s YY1_PC_CREATOR. The BAdI’s value filter is set automatically.

In the Parameters section you need to add all the parameters that you use in your BAdI. In our example we need YY1_PURCHASECONTRACT and are adding the corresponding CDS view I_PURCHASEORDERAPI01 and CDS view field CREATEDBYUSER from the purchase order.

Creating a responsibility rule

Assign your rule to a business context

You’re logged in as an extensibility specialist and open the Manage Responsibility Contexts app. Depending on your use case you have two options:

Extending a standard context delivered by SAP
Creating a custom context

Extending a standard context

Select the standard context and select the Extend button in the header. Then create an agent rule. Go to the subpage by selecting the chevron so you can see all the required fields.

Enter an ID and a description.

Select the responsibility rule, in our example YY1_PC_CREATOR.

Select the CDS view as the data source, in our example I_PURCHASECONTRACTAPI01.

The parameters are added automatically. You need to add either a fixed value or a data source. In our example we’ve add the CDS view field CREATEDBYUSER.

Assign a rule to a standard responsibility context

Creating your own context

Custom team contexts can be used only for Situation Handling. If you want to create your own rules for Business Workflow you can extend a standard responsibility context.

The responsibility context and the situation scenario are dependent on each other, so you need to follow this sequence.

1. Create a context without a rule

Create a custom context by selecting the Custom tab in the list view and choosing Create. Enter the responsibility context ID, add a description, and save the context.

Create a responsibility context without a rule

2. Create a situation scenario

Create your situation scenario and assign your custom context to it.

Assign the responsibility context to your situation scenario

3. Add your rule to your context

Open your custom context and create a rule. The procedure is the same as described above for extending a standard responsibility context.

Add a rule to the custom context

Now you’re all set.

This was the last blog post in this series. I hope the sample configurations provided helpful insight about how you can use Responsibility Management.

Responsibility Management: What Is It and Why Do You Need It? (1/5)
Responsibility Management: Create Your Teams (2/5)
Responsibility Management: Modify a Team Configuration (3/5)
Responsibility Management: Set up a Team configuration (4/5)
Responsibility Management: Create Your Rules (5/5)

For more information, see SAP Help Portal for Responsibility Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP Business Technology Platform.

Using Responsibility Teams in Situation Handling (1/2)

2024-07-10T12:48:37.810000+02:00

Situation Handling

Situation Handling is a framework in SAP S/4HANA Cloud that automatically informs the right users about issues requiring their attention. Situation Handling identifies the users by using integrated Responsibility Management. The blog post series Responsibility Management: What Is It and Why Do You Need It? (1/5) describes in detail how Responsibility Management works. This blog post series illustrates how Situation Handling and Responsibility Management work and in hand. The first blog post shows you how to inform the right persons about situations using responsibility teams. The examples are based on the extended framework for Situation Handling.

Sample use case

Let’s take a sample use case to illustrate how the right persons are informed about situations. We want to create situations for purchase contracts that are about to expire. The purchasing use case is also discussed in the blog post Responsibility Management: Create Your Teams. This blog post illustrates nicely how the identification of persons works for a fictional reseller’s purchasing unit. Let’s use the same example again. The reseller deals with notebooks, mobile phones, and printers. The purchasing teams in Bangalore and Chennai are responsible for specific tasks, material groups, and suppliers as shown below.

Sample procurement teams

Link between Situation Handling and Responsibility Management

The link between Situation Handling and Responsibility Management is the responsibility context. You choose the context when configuring a situation scenario. The context includes one or more team categories that you can choose from when creating a situation template.

Situation scenario

As an extensibility specialist you create your situation scenario with the Manage Situation Scenarios app. The scenario defines a business scope for an object that can be affected by situations. It comes with multiple elements such as situation triggers and actions to solve situations. The situation scenario is assigned to a responsibility context that includes corresponding team configurations for the business scope. In our example it’s PROC_PURCHASECONTRACT. The responsibility context type SITO (Situation Object) is assigned automatically.

Assign a responsibility context to a situation scenario

Situation template

As a business process configuration expert you configure your Situation Handling use cases with the Manage Situation Types – Extended app. This includes conditions for when situations are triggered, informative texts for the business users, and the situation recipients.

Define recipients of situations in a situation template

In the situation template you select a team category that is part of the responsibility context. The team category represents a business process, for instance, Procurement. It can have one or more team types that relate to specific aspects of the business process such as strategic purchasing and operational purchasing. The team category is assigned in the situation template that serves as a blueprint.

The team category also includes all responsibility definitions and member functions and are inherited to its team types. You can use the responsibilities and functions as filters when you create the situation type.

Situation Handling takes only enabled teams into account. You can see the team names when you select Enabled Teams in the Recipients section. View All Teams takes you to the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app. Here you see all teams that belong to a team category, and you can change their status, for instance, from disabled to enabled.

View all teams that belong to the category in the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app

Overview of Responsibility Management

Here’s a simplified overview of a team category within a responsibility context.

Simplified view of Responsibility Management

Situation conditions and recipient filters

Condition filters are used to detect situations. Let’s take the situation template Expiration of Purchase Contracts (PROC_ABOUT_TO_EXPIRE_CTR). You create a situation type from it and need to specify when to trigger a situation for an expiring contract. You define a corresponding condition for the anchor object, that is for the purchase contract.

Condition filter: Validity Period End = NEXT 30 DAYS.

Define condition filters

If this is the only condition filter, then all purchase contracts that expire within the next 30 days are taken into account.

Recipient filters are used to identify the persons who need to be informed about situations. You can choose filters by responsibility definition and by member function in a situation type. If you don’t set a filter for the recipients, then all enabled teams belonging to the team category will be informed about all expiring purchase contracts.

Define recipient filters for teams

Now let’s see how to use filters to inform the right persons.

Configure situation detection with condition filters

You can use the condition filters to fine tune the detection of situations. The available filters are the fields from the anchor CDS view and the trigger CDS view (which are not flagged as hidden fields in the situation scenario). You can choose as many filters as you like. By the way, when you start testing, I recommend using filters to get a decent number of situations.

Business-specific situation types

In our reseller example, the bestselling products are from the suppliers Apple and Lenovo. If a contract from these suppliers is about to expire, you’ll want to get a heads-up far enough in advance to avoid any risks, such as running out of stock. You create a situation type with these conditions:

Situation Type 1

Suppliers: Apple, Lenovo
Validity period end: next 30 days

Condition filters for situation type 1

For the other suppliers, it’s enough to detect expiring contracts two weeks before the expiration date. You create another situation type with these conditions:

Situation Type 2

Supplier: Canon, Epson, HP, Samsung
Validity period end: next 14 days

Condition filters for situation type 2

If you don’t add recipient filters, all enabled teams are informed 30 days before a contract with Apple or Lenovo expires. And all enabled teams are informed 14 days before a contract with one of the other suppliers expires.

Inform the right person about a situation

Responsibility Management offers two kinds of filters: the responsibility of a team and the function of a team member. To illustrate the effects, we take expiring contracts with the suppliers Apple, Canon, and Lenovo into account.

Responsibility filters

The responsibility filters are defined with the team category, in our example procurement. To achieve effective filtering, you need to consider the responsibilities you defined for the procurement teams. As described in the blog post Responsibility Management: Create Your Teams, the defined procurement teams use three responsibility definitions: Company Code, Material Group, and Supplier. If you use other filters, they don’t have an effect because empty responsibility definitions in teams are considered to be responsible for everything.

You also need to consider the fields from the anchor CDS view which are the attributes of the situation instance. If a responsibility filter doesn’t relate to an attribute of a situation instance, the filter won’t work either. For example, the situation template Expiration of Purchase Contracts (PROC_ABOUT_TO_EXPIRE_CTR) does not contain the filter Material Group in the anchor object conditions. Using the filter Material Group in the responsibility definitions would have no effect because it’s not an attribute of the situation instance.

You can combine multiple responsibility definitions which refine the filtering. To keep it simple, we only use the filter Supplier.

Responsibility definitions as filters

If we use only the responsibility filter Supplier and have no further condition filter other than Next 30 Days defined, the following teams are identified as responsible for the supplier of the specific expiring contract.

These teams are informed about an expiring contract with the supplier Apple:

Strategic Purchasing 1, responsible for Apple and Samsung
Operational Purchasing 1, responsible for Apple, Lenovo, and Samsung
Operational Purchasing 3, responsible for Apple and Samsung
Catalog Management, responsible for all suppliers

These teams are informed about an expiring contract with the supplier Canon:

Strategic Purchasing 2, responsible for Canon, Epson, HP, and Lenovo
Operational Purchasing 2, responsible for Canon, Epson, and HP
Catalog Management, responsible for all suppliers

These teams are informed about an expiring contract with the supplier Lenovo:

Strategic Purchasing 2, responsible for Canon, Epson, HP, and Lenovo
Operational Purchasing 1, responsible for Apple, Lenovo, and Samsung
Catalog Management, responsible for all suppliers

Identify team members by responsibilities

Member function filters

Another option is to filter the recipients by their functions. The functions are also defined with the team category. The team category Procurement contains four member functions: Catalog Management, Operational Purchasing, Strategic Purchasing, and Workflow Administration.

You can combine multiple member functions, which refines filtering. To keep it simple, we only use one filter: Strategic Purchasing.

Member functions as filters

If we use only the function filter Strategic Purchasing, have no further condition filter other than Next 30 Days defined, and no responsibility filters, all persons with that function are informed about the situation.

These strategic purchasers are informed about all expiring contracts regardless of the supplier.

Sri and Srini, strategic purchasers from Strategic Purchasing 1
Sarah and Saul, strategic purchasers from Strategic Purchasing 2

Identify team members by functions

Combine responsibility and function filters

Of course, you can also combine the responsibility and function filters. Let’s set Supplier as the responsibility filter and Strategic Purchasing as the function filter. Again, no further condition filter other than Next 30 Days is defined.

Responsibilities and member functions as filters

With these settings you get the following result:

These strategic purchasers are informed about an expiring contract with the supplier Apple:

Sri and Srini, strategic purchasers from Strategic Purchasing 1, responsible for Apple and Samsung

These strategic purchasers are informed about an expiring contract with the supplier Canon:

Sarah and Saul, strategic purchasers from Strategic Purchasing 2, responsible for Canon, Epson, HP, and Lenovo

These strategic purchasers are informed about an expiring contract with the supplier Lenovo:

Sarah and Saul, strategic purchasers from Strategic Purchasing 2, responsible for Canon, Epson, HP, and Lenovo

Identify team members by responsibilities and functions

Combine condition filters and recipient filters

Now, let’s take another step forward and use additional condition filters. Above, we introduced two situation types using the condition filters Validity Period End and Supplier.

Condition filters of situation type 1

Suppliers: Apple, Lenovo
Validity period end: next 30 days

Condition filters of situation type 2

Supplier: Canon, Epson, HP, Samsung
Validity period end: next 14 days

If we add the recipient filters Responsibility = Supplier and Member Function = Strategic Purchasing, we achieve a fine-granular detection of who will be informed about a situation.

These strategic purchasers are informed 30 days before a contract with the supplier Apple expires:

Sri and Srini, strategic purchasers from Strategic Purchasing 1, responsible for Apple and Samsung

These strategic purchasers are informed 14 days before a contract with the supplier Canon expires:

Sarah and Saul, strategic purchasers from Strategic Purchasing 2, responsible for Canon, Epson, HP, and Lenovo

These strategic purchasers are informed 30 days before a contract with the supplier Lenovo expires:

Sarah and Saul, strategic purchasers from Strategic Purchasing 2, responsible for Canon, Epson, HP, and Lenovo

Inform the right team members at the right point in time about situations

Now you know everything you need to know to set up your teams for Situation Handling. The next blog post shows you how to use responsibility rules in Situation Handling.

For more information, you can also refer to

SAP Help Portal

Responsibility Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA
Situation Handling in SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA

SAP Community for Intelligent Situation Handling

Using Responsibility Rules in Situation Handling (2/2)

2024-07-11T10:39:16.110000+02:00

Situation Handling

Situation Handling is a framework in SAP S/4HANA Cloud that automatically informs the right users about issues requiring their attention. Situation Handling identifies the users by using integrated Responsibility Management. The blog post series Responsibility Management: What Is It and Why Do You Need It? (1/5) describes in detail how Responsibility Management works. This blog post series illustrates how Situation Handling and Responsibility Management work hand in hand. The second blog post shows how to inform the right persons about situations using responsibility rules. The examples are based on the extended framework for Situation Handling.

Sample use case

In the previous blog post I discussed the use case of expiring purchase contracts based on the fictional procurement unit of a reseller. Let’s use the same scenario. But this time we want to inform the creator a purchase contract creator when it’s about to expire.

Link between Situation Handling and Responsibility Management

The link between Situation Handling and Responsibility Management is the responsibility context. You choose the context when configuring a situation scenario. The responsibility context includes one or more responsibility rules that you can choose from when creating a situation template.

Situation scenario

As an extensibility specialist you create your situation scenario with the Manage Situation Scenarios app. The scenario defines a business scope for an object that is affected by a situation and comes with multiple elements, such as situation triggers and actions for users. The situation scenario is assigned to a responsibility context that includes corresponding rules for the business scope. The responsibility context type SITO (Situation Object) is assigned automatically.

For our sample case we’ve extended the situation scenario PROC_PURCHASECONTRACT with custom rules.

Assign a responsibility context to a situation scenario

Situation template

In the Recipients section of the situation template, you can select a rule from the list that contains all rules defined for the responsibility context. In our example, it’s Creator of purchase contract.

In the template you can add multiple rules and a team category to support optimal flexibility for deferred situation types.

Select a rule to determine the recipients of a situation

Overview of Responsibility Management

Here’s a simplified overview of rules within a responsibility context.

Simplified view of Responsibility Management

Situation conditions and rules

Condition filters are used to detect situations. Once again, let’s take the situation template Expiration of Purchase Contracts (PROC_ABOUT_TO_EXPIRE_CTR). You specify when to trigger a situation for an expiring contract by defining a condition for the anchor object that is the purchase contract.

Condition filter Validity Period End = NEXT 30 DAYS.

If this is the only condition filter, then all purchase contracts that will expire within the next 30 days are taken into account.

Define condition filters

The recipient configuration is used to identify the persons who need to be informed about situations. In the situation type you can keep the recipient configuration that comes with the underlying template. That’s the case in our example. If the template configuration offers multiple rules and a team category you can also remove the ones that you don’t need.

Now let’s look at a sample configuration.

Configure situation detection with condition filters

You can use the condition filters to fine tune the detection of situations. The available filters are the fields from the trigger CDS view and the anchor CDS view (which are not flagged as hidden fields in the situation scenario). You can choose as many filters as you like. By the way, when you start testing, I recommend using filters to get a decent number of situations.

We defined the same two situation conditions that we defined in the previous blog post. This means, there is no difference in detecting situations.

Situation Type 1 recognizes situations for expiring contracts with the suppliers Apple and Lenovo. The situation is triggered 30 days before a contract’s expiration date. This requires two conditions:

Suppliers: Apple, Lenovo
Validity period end: next 30 days

Condition filters for situation type 1

Situation Type 2 recognizes situations for expiring contracts with the suppliers Canon, Epson, HP, and Samsung. The situation is triggered 14 days before a contract’s expiration date. This requires two conditions:

Supplier: Canon, Epson, HP, Samsung
Validity period end: next 14 days

Condition filters for situation type 2

Inform the right person about a situation

Responsibility rules are based on a BAdI implementation that can be as simple or as complex as required. You can use predefined rules that come with the situation scenario and you can define custom rules. In our example, we’re using a custom rule that identifies the creator of a purchase contract that is described in the blog post Responsibility Management: Create Your Rules.

Rule: Identify the creator of a purchase contract.

Sample contracts

Let’s illustrate the effects of our configuration with some sample contracts.

Apple contract no. 5987
- Creator: Sri (strategic purchaser, team Strategic Purchasing 1)
Lenovo contract no. 3958
- Creator: Saul (strategic purchaser, team Strategic Purchasing 2)
Canon contract no. 4092
- Creator: Sarah (strategic purchaser, team Strategic Purchasing 2)

The following persons are informed about the situation:

The creator of the Apple contract no. 5987 is informed 30 days before it expires:

The creator of the Lenovo contract no. 3958 is informed 30 days before it expires:

Saul

The creator of the Canon contract no. 4092 is informed 14 days before it expires:

Sarah

Inform the right persons about situations using rules

Now you know everything about how Responsibility Management and Situation Handling go hand in hand.

Using Responsibility Teams in Situation Handling (1/2)
Using Responsibility Rules in Situation Handling (2/2)

For more information, you can also refer to

SAP Help Portal

Responsibility Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA
Situation Handling in SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA

SAP Community for Intelligent Situation Handling

Help! Why Don’t I Get a Notification for My Custom Situation?

2024-09-25T13:28:36.497000+02:00

You’ve configured your own situation use case using the Extended Framework for Situation Handling. Now you’re waiting for a notification but nothing happens. What could have gone wrong?

Let me ask you a few questions to check whether your configuration is correct.

Has a situation occurred?
How have the conditions been set up?
Are all situation triggers covered?
Is recipient determination working?
Have email notifications been set up correctly?

These questions can support you as an SAP S/4HANA Cloud or SAP S/4HANA customer.

Has a situation occurred?

This may seem trivial but depending on the conditions that have been defined for the situation type, a situation instance may not have been created. An easy way to find out is for the user is to check the My Situations – Extended app to see if there’s an instance that they should have been notified about. If the instance is not displayed in the app, continue checking the conditions. If there’s an instance but no notification was sent, check the notifications / life cycle settings.

List of situaitons in My Situations – Extended app

Or, as a key user, you can display the current situation instances for a situation type by choosing Manage Instances in the header of the Manage Situation Types – Extended app.

Manage Instances in Manage Situation Types - Extended app

In the list of situation instances you can see if a notification was sent and when. Depending on the configuration, a notification can be sent only when a situation occurs for the first time or each time the situation is updated. If you don’t see an entry here, no notification was sent.

List of situation instances in Manage Situation Types - Extended app

There’s also the Monitor Situations – Extended app for key users that shows all created situation instances and all activities for an instance. You need to have situation monitoring enabled for the situation type in the Situation Instances section.

Enable the monitoring in Manage Situations - Extended app

List of situation instances in the Monitor Situations - Extended app

If no situation instance is displayed in the Manage Situation Types – Extended app and in the Monitor Situations – Extended app, this means that the users did not receive a notification because there no situation instance was created.

If you expected a situation based on the conditions that you have defined, you may find clues in the following section on conditions.

If a situation instance is displayed but no notification was sent, check the notifications / life cycle setting.

How have the conditions been set up?

In the Conditions section of the Manage Situation Types – Extended app, let’s look at the settings for Notifications / Life Cycle, the Order of the conditions, and the Filters.

Notifications / life cycle settings

Each condition can have a different Notifications/Life Cycle setting. Make sure you’ve assigned the appropriate ones.

Notification setting

You can select from three standard options:

The notification is sent to all recipients when a situation is created. When the situation is updated, only the assigned processors are notified.
No one receives a notification after a situation is closed.
All recipients receive a notification after a closed situation has been reopened (this option is available only for object-based situations with the instance closing behavior Close & Keep)

If you’ve defined your own Notification/Life Cycle behavior, I recommend double-checking the life cycle transitions. Make sure you have considered all relevant transitions from creation to closure. And check the notification settings for each transition.

Consider the processing order of conditions

If you’ve set up multiple conditions, the order of those conditions is important. The order defines the sequence in which the conditions are executed. It’s important to understand that the processing of the conditions stops when the first condition in the processing order is met. Conditions lower in the sequence are ignored. For this reason, you need to ensure that the more specific conditions, for which you want to have notifications, are being processed before the more generic conditions. Pay special attention to conditions that do not send notifications and those that close instances. If they are too high up in the sequence other conditions may always be ignored.

Processing order of conditions

Condition filters

Effective filters need to be of the same data format as the values in the CDS fields, such as strings or integers. You can find the reference to your object’s CDS views in the Manage Situation Objects app.

Sometimes the conditions and their filter values have been set up in such a way that no instances are created. Check whether one of the following reasons has prevented the creation of a situation instance:

The condition attribute filters are too constrained for your use case.
The attribute filter values overlap.
The attribute filter values are contradictory.

The condition and filter settings depend on your use case and the situation template on which your situation type is based. If you use multiple conditions, you can easily compare filters using the Compare Filters function.

Compare condition filters

Compare condition filters used

You can find some examples of using multiple conditions with filters in the blog posts Custom Situation Cases: Configure an Escalation Case and Custom Situation Cases: Configure a Complex Case.

Are all situation triggers covered?

Complex use cases often require multiple situation triggers. Check whether you have configured all possible triggers. And ensure that all triggers are enabled. There are two kinds of triggers: batch-based and event-based triggers.

Batch-based triggers periodically check the data you have defined in the condition filters.

The triggering object can be the anchor object or the trigger object.
The behavior of the trigger object is always Add/Update because the object still exists.

Use the Trigger Batch function to test immediately whether the situation trigger works as expected. Also check batch scheduling to make sure it’s configured correctly.

Batch-based situation triggers

Event-based triggers are based on an object’s status update. You can use multiple event-based triggers where you need to consider three aspects:

The triggering object: Multiple objects may impact a situation.
The trigger events such as create, update, and remove: Multiple events may impact a situation for a specific object.
The behavior of the trigger object can be Add/Update, Remove (Trigger data available), or Remove (Trigger data not available)

Event-based situation triggers

And these three aspects need to go hand in hand.

Situation objects that are created always have the trigger object behavior Add/Update because the object is added and exists.

The events that change an object can be manifold, for example, updated, confirmed, rejected, in progress, for approval, completed, released, posted, published, started, activated, blocked, unlocked, and many more. If the object still exists after the change, the trigger object behavior is Add/Update. If the object is flagged as removed or deleted, the trigger object behavior is Remove (Trigger data available).

Objects that are deleted always have the trigger object behavior Remove (trigger data not available). This means the object is physically gone along with all its data. No more references are possible.

You can find an example for multiple triggers in the blog post Custom Situation Cases: Configure a Complex Case.

Should a situation trigger be missing in the situation type, you have the following options in the test system:

Add a situation trigger from the value help in the situation type.
If no appropriate situation trigger is available for the situation type, you can add a situation trigger with the suitable event to your situation scenario (Manage Situation Scenarios app). To do this you need to have the extensibility specialist role. Then proceed with (1). Optionally, you can add the situation trigger to the related template so that it’s automatically available for all situation types created from the situation template.
If no matching situation trigger is available in the situation scenario, you can enhance or add a situation object with the missing situation trigger (Manage Situation Objects app). Again, you need the extensibility specialist role. Then proceed with (2) and (1).

Afterwards, transport your situation type, situation scenario, and situation object to the productive system.

Is recipient determination working?

Situation Handling uses Responsibility Management to determine the users that are responsible for a situation. In the My Situations – Extended app, users see the created situations, and, depending on the notification settings, receive notifications.

When you create a situation type in the Recipients section, there are two basic options for defining these users:

Responsibility by Teams, which determines the users with the help of a team category.
Responsibility Rules, which determines the users with a BAdI business logic.

Situation recipients

Responsibility by Teams

To determine the right users by teams, a team category needs to be in place. The team category links Situation Handling and Responsibility Management. For a team category, at least one team needs to be enabled so that the right users can be detected. You enable teams in the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app. Also check whether all enabled teams have team members assigned to them and include the users who have to be informed about the situation.

Situation recipients by teams

You can add team members by selecting users from the value help. If you can’t find the user in the value help, check whether this user is registered as a business partner. If the business partner registration is missing, contact your system administrator to have your users registered.

If you use filters for responsibility definition or member functions in your situation type, make sure they are appropriate and don’t exclude your users. For detailed information about these filters, see the blog post Using Responsibility Teams in Situation Handling.

Responsibility Rules

Responsibility rules use the logic of a BAdI to determine the right users. If the identification of users isn’t working as expected, the logic of the BAdI can be the reason why your users were not found and therefore did not get any notifications.

Situation recipients by rules

If your situation type uses a standard responsibility rule, please open a ticket on component CA-GTF-RM to have the rule checked.

For your custom implementation, you can check the BAdI implementation logic yourself. (You’ll need the SAP_BR_EXTENSIBILITY_SPEC role to do that). Then proceed as follows:

In the Manage Responsibility Context app, on the Extended tab, search for the parent responsibility context to find your extended responsibility context.
Open the extended responsibility context to display the details. Here, you can see the responsibility rule ID associated with the responsibility rule that is displayed in the situation type.
In the Custom Logic app, you need to filter the list for the responsibility rule business context. Then, search for the static filter value that is identical to the responsibility rule ID. In the details, you can then check the BAdI implementation logic.

For detailed information about custom responsibility rules, you can refer to the blog post Responsibility Management: Create Your Rules. The blog post Using Responsibility Rules in Situation Handling illustrates how responsibility rules and Situation Handling work hand in hand.

Have email notifications been set up correctly?

In addition to the SAP Fiori launchpad notifications, users can opt to receive email notifications for each situation type in their SAP Fiori launchpad settings. For details, see Enable Email Notifications for End Users.

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2408 email notifications are enabled automatically. In older releases users need to enable email notifications in their SAP Fiori launchpad settings. To be able to activate this option, users need to have received an SAP Fiori launchpad notification before they can see and select the situation type in the launchpad settings.

Notification settings

Users may also want to check the launchpad settings to see whether the email address for their user account is correct:

Email settings

If all the settings are correct and you're still not getting any emails, you may want to check whether the email domain is on the list of allowed domains. The list of sender domains is maintained in Output Management. You can find more information in the chapter Defining an Email Sender Domain in the Setup Guide for SAP Best Practices for Output Management.

For specific questions or issues with the notification framework, please open a ticket on component OPU-GW-NOT.

Additional prerequisites for SAP S/4HANA

As an SAP S/4HANA customer, you may need to check some additional settings for the Notification Channel Framework which are automatically in place for SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers. You can also refer to the blog post Enable Email Notification in Notification Channel Framework. If you want to enable email notifications per default, you can implement the SAP Note 3417113.

To be on the safe side, you may also want to check whether you have made the required technical configuration settings.

Did this help you?

If not → just open a ticket on our component CA-SIT-ENG and we’ll take care of your problem. In the ticket, please let us know the situation scenario and the situation template your situation type is based on. Please attach screenshots of your situation type’s Conditions and Recipients sections. Or tell us which of the steps above you’ve already tried.

For more information, see

SAP Help Portal for

SAP Community

Intelligent Situation Handling

Situation Handling in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public/Private Edition

2025-02-24T17:51:16.922000+01:00

Are you an SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition or Private Edition customer?

Are you interested in understating how to manage critical issues efficiently in today's fast-paced environment?
Do you want to understand how to identify urgent business issues, such as nearing deadlines and pending confirmations?
Would you like to learn about the key features of Situation Handling and understand how to implement relevant use cases for your business?

If the answer is yes to any of the above, then please make sure to register for the upcoming empowerment session with our experts.

Before you can access the link below, a one-time registration in the SAP Learning Hub, edition for SAP Enterprise Support, is required. A detailed step-by-step guide to registration can be found here.

Situation Handling in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public/Private Edition

(Please note that the recording will also be made available via the above link, after the session has been made available).

During this live empowerment session, you will:

Get an overview of Situation Handling in SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Learn about Situation Handling capabilities and how to get started
Gain insight into the Situation Handling roadmap

From reactive to proactive: Use extended situation handling for enterprise projects

2025-03-26T03:00:40.249000+01:00

Business cases without proactive notification

During each enterprise projects execution phases, manual oversight still been carried out for many activities, such as demand fulfillment, budget overruns, milestones missing, housekeeping after project completion. This led to high operational cost and prone-to error.

Take below 3 cases as example:

• Project procurement controllers manually track impending demand deadlines, a time-consuming process causing missed deadlines and inefficient resource allocation. Teams often waste hours chasing overdue requirements, leading to delays and rework. The lack of proactive alerts forces reactive responses, increasing risks of budget overruns and supply chain disruptions. Controllers require automated notifications when demands near expiration to prioritize actions and prevent operational bottlenecks.
• Project Managers manually track project milestones progress, which is error-prone, causing unnoticed delays that escalate into budget overruns and reactive firefighting. They expect automated real-time alerts to catch missed deadlines early, enforce financial discipline, and protect project margins from cascading risks.
• Project financial controllers face challenges when deviations between sales order revenue and planned project revenue go unnoticed, risking budget misalignment and financial discrepancies. They expect real-time alerts for any changes in sales order revenue, ensuring these values stay in sync and enabling immediate corrective actions to protect project profitability.

Standard situation framework provides predefined situation templates which can only covers a few business cases.

From SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2202, with extended framework for Situation Handling, you can create your own situation use cases with self-modeled situation object/scenario/template. This allows seamless alignment with your enterprise project management activities, helps with proactive risk mitigation through demands delay, milestone missing, budget overruns, revenue deviation and so on, which in the end reduce operational costs and risk.

In this blog, we will walk through a case which leverages this capability for enterprise project demand management: alert Project Demand Fulfillment Delay - If Demand Date is in the past, but Demand Status is not Closed, project manager can be notified. And user can navigate directly to the project demand App for immediate check.

Now Let us create this use case from scratch. As below, multiple roles are involved for this use case.

New apps for the extended framework for Situation Handling

App	Roles	Description
Manage Situation Objects	SAP_BR_EXTENSIBILITY_SPEC	With this app, you can model business objects that enable Situation Handling. A situation object connects existing application artefacts such as CDS views, events, and actions that form the foundation to set up situation use cases.
Manage Situation Scenarios	SAP_BR_EXTENSIBILITY_SPEC	With this app, you can model your own situation scenarios for extended object-based situations. That is, situations that occur for a specific business object. A situation scenario is the technical description of a business scenario and provides the foundation for defining multiple use cases in the form of situation templates, which serve as blueprints for situation types.
Manage Situation Types - Extended	SAP_BR_BPC_EXPERT	A situation template serves as a blueprint for a situation type that is used productively and creates situation instances. With the template you define the basic configuration . It is created with reference to existing situation scenario.
My Situations - Extended	SAP_BR_EMPLOYEE	This App shows all situations within your responsibility. It offers context info and actions to solve issues, helping optimize business processes by quickly addressing problems.

Project Demand Notification Sample

Let us look what the notification will be like before getting into the detail steps.
Notification Panel:

By choosing one notification takes you to the My Situations – Extended app. The situation page displays the detailed information as configured in the situation scenario, including the navigation option to a related app as configured in the situation type.

App: Manage Project Demand

Create a Situation Object

App: Manage Situation Objects

With this app, you can model business objects that enable Situation Handling. A situation object connects existing application artefacts such as CDS views, events, and actions that form the foundation to set up situation use cases.
You can use this app to model business objects that enable Situation Handling, including:
• Events that trigger a situation
• Actions that are displayed in the My Situations - Extended app
General Information
Input necessary information and choose appropriate SAP Object Type.

Structures

A structure represents a data source of the business object that can be affected by a situation or that triggers a situation. For object-based situations this is a CDS view. Each CDS view needs semantic keys which uniquely identify an object and are stored in an underlying table. For instance, this could be an ID such as the contract ID, or a combination of fields such as demand ID, demand status, and demand name. In this case, we use standard CDS view I_PROJECTDEMAND.

Navigation Targets
In some cases, there are no specific actions available that could resolve a situation, or a situation may be too complex to be managed with one click. To support the end user, you can define navigation targets to related apps that help solving a situation.
To find the semantic objects, semantic object actions, and parameters of a business app in the SAP Fiori Apps Reference Library.
With below config, we define the navigation to Manage Project Demand app which is shown chapter Project Demand Notification Sample.

End-User Actions
Finally, you specify the buttons that appear on the situation page in the My Situations – Extended app. Select the callback or navigation target and enter a button name and a button description.

Create a Situation Scenario
App: Manage Situation Scenarios

With this app, you can model your own situation scenarios for extended object-based situations. That is, situations that occur for a specific business object. A situation scenario is the technical description of a business scenario and provides the foundation for defining multiple use cases in the form of situation templates, which serve as blueprints for situation types.

The business object affected by a situation is defined as the anchor object. In the app, you define the anchor object and add all situation objects that serve as trigger object, to trigger situations for the anchor object. For the trigger objects, you define the trigger events and the actions that help the users resolve the situations. And you define which information is displayed in the My Situations - Extended app to the users responsible for solving situations based on this scenario.

The following graphic shows the elements that define a situation scenario:

General Information

Here you select:
• Situation object as anchor object.
• The anchor object structure ID as defined in the Manage Situation Objects app.
The anchor object key field that serves as unique identifier
In addition, you select a responsibility context ID as basis for the situation recipient definition. Contexts are created in Responsibility Management. For more information, see Manage Responsibility Contexts.

Instance Key

Define the anchor object key fields that uniquely identify a situation instance for the anchor object.

List Page Layout

This topic describes how you define the layout (columns, sections, subsections, and fields) for the My Situations - Extended app.
With the Manage Situation Scenarios app, you define for a scenario what you want to display in the list views and on the situation page of the My Situations - Extended app.

For the scenario-specific list page you can define a column for each the anchor object and for the trigger objects:

Column label for the anchor object:
The column label of the anchor object can be specific because there is only one per scenario.
Column label for trigger objects:

If you are using several trigger objects in a scenario, choose a generic label, such as Additional Information.
The following graphic illustrates where the two column labels are displayed:

Anchor and Trigger Columns on the Scenario-Specific List Page

Here we define one column for Anchor Object:

General Actions

General actions apply to the anchor object and are available for all anchor-trigger combinations. The input parameters are based on the anchor CDS view. They are selected on scenario level.

Situation Triggers

The situation triggers start the situation engine to check the conditions as defined in the Manage Situation Types - Extended app.

Trigger Objects
A trigger can either be the anchor object itself or another situation object. The trigger object key field needs to be unique and stored in an underlying table.

Anchor Object as Trigger
An anchor object trigger can either be an event, such as the creation, update, or removal of a contract, or batch runs that periodically check the status of the object, such as the expiration date of a contract.
Other Objects as Trigger
Other objects could trigger events. The update of a supplier rating for instance, that results in a significantly worse rating, triggers a situation for the contract with the proposal to select an alternative supplier. Other object triggers are always event-based.

Create a Situation Template

App: Manage Situation Types - Extended

A situation template serves as a blueprint for a situation type that is used productively and creates situation instances. With the template you define the basic configuration. It is created with reference to existing situation scenario.

Situation Instances
The standard settings for the instance behavior are unchanged. Each trigger creates a single situation instance and, after closing a situation, it remains in the system. The situations are displayed in the Instance List of the corresponding situation type in the Manage Situation Types - Extended app.

General Actions
General actions apply to the anchor object and can be both callback or navigation actions. They are displayed for all instances of a situation type on the situation page. For a situation template or situation type, actions that have been defined as general actions are automatically displayed in the corresponding trigger-related action sections (see below). You can add or delete general actions only in the General Actions table.

There is no one-click action for solving such an issue. That’s why a navigation option to a related app is used. The action is configured as a general action because it relates to the anchor object. It is automatically available for any anchor-trigger combination and displayed in the trigger details section as a navigation action.
For more information, please refer Actions | SAP Help Portal.

Situation Triggers
In this section of the app, displayed for extended object-based situation templates or types, you define how a situation is triggered. An extended object-based situation template or type can have one or multiple situation triggers. The following trigger types are possible:
Event-Based Triggers:
Uses system events to create instances. This trigger type is ideal when you want to inform your users as soon as possible after an issue has occurred. At the same time, you need to make sure that the frequency of events isn't too high to avoid information overload.
Batch-Based Triggers
Uses batch jobs for periodical status checks, especially for frequently changing statuses.
For more information, please refer to Situation Triggers (Object-Based) | SAP Help Portal

Trigger Details
You use the trigger details to define the conditions that determine if and when users will be notified about situations.
Conditions
In this app section, you define for a situation trigger the conditions for creating situation instances. Each condition needs to have its own texts (situation display) for informing the users about the situation and its own notification behavior, including life cycle transitions.
for example, we can set Demand End Date as ‘=PREVIOUSMONTH’ and Demand Status as ‘!=04100’ which means demand status is not Closed.

Situation Display
In this app section, you can specify the texts with which users are informed about situations. This includes the situation texts displayed in the My Situations - Extended app and notification texts shown on SAP Fiori launchpad. The texts can embed variables that contain information from the anchor object, the trigger object, or from the event.
For the situation display, you can define different texts for the situation description and for the notification, if required by your use case. In addition, you define a text for email notifications. The situation display is assigned to a condition and displayed to the users if the condition is met.
You can also define different situation display texts for each condition, or assign a situation display to multiple conditions.
For more information, please refer to Situation Display | SAP Help Portal

Notifications/Life Cycle
The notification behavior is closely related to the life cycle of a situation instance. The transition from one situation status to another can be a trigger for notifications. For example, the creation of a situation sets the status to Open, and closing it changes the status to Resolved. You can configure a different notification behavior for each condition that is related to a life cycle transition.
You can see the default behavior patterns available for object-based or message-based situations and adjust them for your use case
For more information, please refer to Notifications/Life Cycle | SAP Help Portal

Navigation Actions
The general Display Airline action is automatically displayed in the Trigger Details section.
Batch Job Scheduling
In this app section, you define the scheduling of the batch jobs for batch-based situation triggers. You can choose from a variety of scheduling patterns:

Recipients
With the Recipients functionality, you can identify the appropriate recipients for situations. In Situation Handling, recipients are users responsible for situations of a particular situation type. They are informed about these situations through notifications (if enabled under Conditions) and can view the situation instances as entries in the My Situations or My Situations - Extended app. Please refer here for more information: Recipients | SAP Help Portal.

Create a Situation Type

App: Manage Situation Types - Extended

Situation type defines the detail category of a situation, it is based on situation template as a blueprint. After we us create the situation type with reference to situation template, we can enable it. The configuration of the template can be used right away for a productive situation type. After situation type is triggered by predefined criteria conditions, you can choose Manage Instances to view situation instances for project demand.

Informing End Users

App: My Situations - Extended

After situation type is triggered, the users responsible will get a notification which described in chapter ‘Project Demand Notification Sample’. App My Situations – Extended shows all situations within your responsibility. It offers context info and actions to solve issues, helping optimize business processes by quickly addressing problems.

Further Information

Let me point you out to further information:

SAP Help Portal: Situation Handling – Extended Framework for SAP S/4HANA Cloud
SAP Community: Intelligent Situation Handling
Custom Situation Cases: Configure Your Own Use Cases (1/6)
Help! Why Don’t I Get a Notification for My Custom Situation?
Upcoming GenAI features for the extended situation framework:
1. Generative AI recommendations for Situation Handling
2. Newest AI-assisted user experience features in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

If you want to request a situation to be delivered by SAP in standard, please raise a request via Customer Influence: SAP S/4HANA Cloud for EPPM

SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA – Which notification to use when – Workflow, Situation Handling, KPIs, etc

2025-05-22T04:08:51.621000+02:00

TL;DR – Know when to use which SAP Fiori notifications. That is, workflow versus situation handling versus Smart Business KPI subscriptions versus process-specific notifications, and which technique to use if you need to create clean core custom notifications.

A very common business requirement is to notify someone that something has happened and, if possible, get them started on responding to it.

In classic SAP ECC you would use typically workflow notifications and/or email notifications. Unfortunately, over time this often led to a flood of emails, emails being ignored, and increasingly poor response times.
In SAP S/4HANA there are a range of more useful, more nuanced, notification techniques available in SAP Fiori that encourage prompt action. You can optionally send them as push notifications to your tablet or phone. These notifications don’t flood your email inbox, however if you want email notifications, you can optionally echo selected notifications to email.

These notifications are deliberately difficult to miss! You will find your notifications in a variety of places, including the notification center of the SAP Fiori launchpad as shown in the example below:

Why this blog series? During workshops with one my recent customers currently in transition to SAP S/4HANA, we came across a point of confusion. They are very interested in using Situation Handling but were getting confused about when to use Situation Handling versus Workflow versus some other notification technique. In this blog you will find the different notification techniques explained and when to use them.

There is a quick summary of the SAP Fiori notification techniques discussed in this blog post in the image below. These techniques are also listed in the table later in this blog post in section SAP Notification Techniques in SAP S/4HANA and when to use them.

In this first blog post, you will learn:

Part 1 - SAP Fiori notification techniques available in SAP S/4HANA and when to use them; when to use email notifications to complement or supplement SAP Fiori notifications.

Later in this blog series you will learn:

Part 2 - The impact on business users: SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA – Which notification to use when – Impact on business users

In part 2 you will learn where notifications are visible in the SAP Fiori launchpad of SAP S/4HANA and elsewhere such as: SAP Fiori app F0862 My Inbox, SAP Fiori app F6511 My Outbox, SAP Fiori app F4154 My Situations, SAP Fiori app F4537 My Situations - Extended, SAP Build Work Zone, SAP Task Center, SAP Mobile Start, and elsewhere.

You will also look under the covers at what your team needs to do to enable notifications.

Part 3 - For Key Users, Functional Consultants and UX Architects: Where & how to configure each notification technique in SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA – Which notification to use when – Where and how to configure
Part 4 - For Administrators and Developers, understand prerequisites such as the technical notification channel and notification provider that drives predefined and custom notification techniques, what's involved in setting up predefined notifications versus custom notifications, and some FAQ and Troubleshooting tips in SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA – Which notification to use when – Notifications for Admins and Developers

Further references:

For the difference between classic workflows, flexible workflows, and related cloud workflow techniques in SAP BTP refer to SAP Help - ABAP Platform - Workflow
For the difference between workflow and situations, and the difference between standard vs extended situations, refer to SAP Help – SAP S/4HANA – Process Management and Integration – Situation Handling - FAQ.
For understanding Smart Business KPIs refer to SAP Help - SAP S/4HANA - Analytics - Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Although much has changed, there is still some useful background information in our earlier blog post SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA - Notification Center - Part 1 - Activation

SAP Notification Techniques in SAP S/4HANA and when to use them

In the table below, you will find the 4 main SAP Fiori notification techniques to choose from based on your use case.

Use Case	Example	Notification Technique	Configured By
Notify an approver they have an approvals task	Notify approver of a new Purchase Order requiring their approval	Workflow notifications - flexible workflow (preferred) or classic workflow (supported)	Key User or UX Architect
Notify a business expert of a business situation to be resolved	Notify someone that: a contract is about to expire; a batch job has failed with a business-critical error, etc.	Situation Handling notifications - standard or extended	Key User or UX Architect
Notify that a KPI will soon be/has been exceeded target threshold	Notify the responsible manager that actual budget has reached 90% of planned budget	Smart Business KPI notifications	Key User or Analytics Specialist
Notify someone that a process has completed successfully	Notify Purchaser of the number of PRs automatically converted to POs today	Process-specific notifications	Administrator

When choosing between these notification types the main factors to consider are:

Traceability – Where you have very strict highly-controlled processes – such as approvals (also known as delegations of authority) - workflow notifications provide end-to-end traceability of every step of the process. You can find the status of the approval at any time and have an audit trail history (via the workflow log) of what has occurred including who was involved in each task.
Productivity – When working with business experts, you want them to know a business situation has happened and to be supported in how to resolve the business situation. However, you don’t want the business expert to feel micro-managed as that could make them less productive and even impact their mental health! Situation handling is the right choice here to aid swift resolution while showing that you trust the business expert to take the appropriate action. You can find the status of the situation’s business object at any time, which situation type was triggered, and which team was involved. The user acting on the business object is deliberately not tracked by the situation, however if they have made a change to a business object that will be tracked, as usual, in the change log history of the relevant business object.
Expected Response –
- Workflow notifications require a strict response – for example, the approver must approve or reject a purchase order.
- Situation notifications require a flexible response, the business expert must decide what is the appropriate action to take to resolve the situation.
- Most other notifications – both Smart Business KPIs and process-specific notifications – are primarily about keeping people informed with no specific response needed.
Notification source – To make sure the recipient is notified as quickly as possible, it makes sense to trigger the notification from the workflow, situation, KPI or process that first identifies the need for the notification.
- Often there are predefined notification providers that provide easy options to configure & trigger these notifications.
- Where you don’t have a predefined notification provider, creating a custom notification provider is a relatively easy task for a developer, and worth considering.

Understanding the Effort required to Configure Notifications

Skills needed for configuring all predefined notification use cases are LOW.

Creating your own custom notifications is a LOW to MEDIUM effort for a Developer with a small amount of configuration required by an Administrator.

When to use email notifications instead of SAP Fiori notifications

There are 2 additional notification use cases that commonly occur. While they may seem like separate notification types, they are essentially just variations of the notification types listed above. In these cases, an email notification is more likely to be required. These also are LOW effort to configure.

Use Case

Example

How to Handle

Configured By

Notify a casual employee that something has occurred

Notify a user who doesn’t login very often

User needs to login at least to the SAP Fiori launchpad. They can go to their personal Settings & opt to echo notifications to email. That is, in the User Actions > Settings > Notifications area. They can only configure notification types they have received at least once.

Business User

Notify an external person that something has occurred

Notify a supplier that a quote has been accepted

In this situation, the external person does not have access to the SAP Fiori launchpad. Where needed, notifications to external suppliers are typically included in process-specific notifications.

Key User or Functional Consultant

Sending aggregated email notifications of SAP Fiori notifications

For notifications where a response is expected, you may want to notify the user by multiple channels.

For workflow notifications the Workflow Extended Notifications (program SWN_SELSEN) is still available and can be scheduled as a batch program. You configure workflow extended notifications transactions SWN_CONFIG and SWNADMIN. You can include a link to SAP Fiori app F0862 My Inbox in the email.

Hint: To minimize searching through emails for past notifications, you should consider adding app F6511 My Outbox to all users who have My Inbox. My Outbox enables users to view the workflow log and task log of workflows they have been involved in, allowing them to see what happened before/after their involvement.

For situations, in app F2947 Manage Situation Types or F5437 Manage Situation Types – Extended, you can configure the option to send an email for aggregated notifications.

Refer to

SAP Help – ABAP Platform – SAP Business Workflow Reference Documentation - Extended Notifications for SAP Business Workflow
SAP Note 2892592 - WF Notifications: Generate link to My Inbox
SAP Note 3589593 - Setting Up Workflow Extended Notification Mail for Specific Multiple Recipients
SAP Help – SAP S/4HANA – Process Management and Integration - Situation Handling - Notifications

Notification techniques to avoid

Avoid using classic SAP Business Workflow “Display Notification” Tasks - i.e. Task Type = Notification. These classic notifications are only visible in the classic SAP Office Inbox and have very limited features.

Becoming a SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA guru

You’ll find much more on our SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA topic page

Brought to you by the SAP S/4HANA RIG and Customer Care team.

Designing Value Help Services for the Situation Handling - Extended Framework

2025-08-26T15:47:35.486000+02:00

Understanding Value Help Services: What They Are and Why They Matter?

Value help services are a cornerstone feature in enhancing user experience by offering context-specific assistance. These services provide users with relevant suggestions and options based on the current situation, making tasks more intuitive and efficient. But what exactly are value help services, and how do they help users? Let's dive into their key functions and benefits.

Key Functions and Benefits of Value Help Services

Easing Data Entry
One of the primary goals of value help services is to simplify data entry. For instance, when inputting data like product lists or options that require predefined choices, these services provide a seamless way to select the appropriate data. This reduces the risk of errors and speeds up the data input process.
Use in Situation Handling
Value help services are particularly useful when it comes to defining condition filters for situation templates and types in the Manage Situation Types - Extended app, as well as in the My Situations – Extended app as part of the filter bar. By offering context-specific suggestions, they help users navigate and interact with the system more efficiently, turning complex tasks into manageable ones.

Let's take a closer look at how these services work with an example. Figure 1 below shows how you can choose a plane type when defining a condition filter in the Manage Situation Types – Extended app. Value help services ensure that when you don't have to manually input each plane type; instead, you can select from a list of predefined options. You also see additional information, such as the total seats of the plane, that help you choose the appropriate plane type.

Throughout this blog, we'll continue to use the plane type value help as an example to illustrate how value help services enhance user experience and streamline processes.

Figure 1: Value Help for Plane Type in Condition Filter dialog in the Manage Situation Types - Extended app

Designing a Value Help Service

In this section, we explore the design of an value help service, breaking down its key components and steps. This will serve as a foundation for integrating these services into the extended framework for Situation Handling. We’ll use artifacts from the Flight situation object (ID: SITDEMO_FLIGHT), which is included as a demo object in the extended framework. The main components and their relations are shown in Figure 2 below:

Figure 2: Overview on Artifacts for the Value Help Definition

Key Components of an Value Help

CDS Views
- Value Help Source CDS View: Define the source entity that serves as the primary data source for the value help service. This view and its view entities are referenced from the situation object.
- Value Help Provider CDS View(s): Design one or more CDS views specifically for the value help, which may include additional filters or joins to meet the value help requirements.
  Both the base CDS view as well as the Value Help Provider Views contain annotations that are essential for enhancing the functionality and user experience of value helps.
OData Service
Value helps must be exposed as OData services to be accessible to SAP Fiori applications including their respective Service Definition and Business Service.
Situation Object
Linking the source CDS view in a situation object in the Manage Situation Objects app.

Steps to Design an Value Help Service

1. Define the Value Help Source CDS View

Start by creating the source CDS view, which will serve as the primary data source for your value help. This view should include all relevant fields that users might need for filtering or searching. Below is an example based on the Sitn2DemoFlightVH view provided by SAP:

@ObjectModel.viewType: #CONSUMPTION
@ObjectModel.dataCategory: #VALUE_HELP
define view entity C_Sitn2DemoFlightVH as select from R_Sitn2DemoFlight {
  @Consumption.valueHelpDefinition:[{entity: {name: 'C_Sitn2DemoPlaneVH', element: 'SitnDemoPlaneType'}}]  
      key cast( '' as sit2_demo_plane_type ) as SitnDemoPlaneType
}

This view only serves to reference the value helps for the entity sets it contains – it is not necessary to actually retrieve all field values here, i.e., as shown in the above entity set, it is possible to simply hard-code the field value as ''. The important annotations in this view are the @Consumption.valueHelpDefinition annotations which define the Value Help Provider View (entity.name) and the element (entity.element) in the target entity that is linked to the respective fields (SitnDemoPlaneVH and SitnDemoPlaneType in the example above). For more details, check out the Consumption Annotations page in SAP Help Portal.

2. Create the Value Help Provider View

Next, create a CDS view specifically for the value help.[1] This view may include filters, joins, or additional fields necessary for the value help functionality.

@ObjectModel.viewType: #CONSUMPTION
@ObjectModel.dataCategory: #VALUE_HELP
@ObjectModel.representativeKey: 'SitnDemoPlaneType'
define view entity C_Sitn2DemoPlaneVH as select from R_Sitn2DemoPlane
{
@Search.defaultSearchElement: true
@Search.ranking: #HIGH
key SitnDemoPlaneType,

@Search.defaultSearchElement: true 
@Search.ranking: #LOW
SitnDemoSeatsMaxQty,
... 
}

Besides the SitnDemoPlaneType, that was referenced by the entity.element in the Source CDS View above and must be part of the Value Help Provider View, the view incorporates extra fields like the number of seats available. To enhance user experience, the view can also include optional search annotations.

3. Expose as OData Service

Finally, expose the value help CDS view as an OData service to make it accessible to SAP Fiori applications and other systems consuming OData services. Currently, only OData V2 services are supported that needs to be implemented by using Business Service. Ensure the Service Definition includes the Source CDS View. For the latest S/4 HANA releases, the explicit exposure of all referenced Value Help Provider Views via the @Consumption.valueHelpDefinition annotation is optional as these are autoexposed. Only the Value Help Source CDS View needs to be exposed ike in the example below:

@EndUserText.label: 'Value help for Situation Demo'
define service C_SITN2DEMOFLIGHTVHSRV {
expose C_Sitn2DemoFlightVH as FlightVH;
// Exposure is optional when properly annotated
// expose C_Sitn2DemoPlaneVH as PlaneVH; 
}

This service definition is afterwards used for the service binding. Please use “OData V2 – UI” as binding type. The result should look like the service binding below:[2]

Figure 3: Service Binding for Value Help Service

Extending a Situation Object with a Value Help

We'll now guide you through the steps to add a value help service in the Manage Situation Objects app. To do so, open your situation object in the Manage Situation Objects app. We are again using the Flight situation object (ID: SITDEMO_FLIGHT) that comes with the extended framework, but with a different service that got exposed using Business Services.

Add a Value Help Service in the Manage Situation Objects App

Create a New Value Help Service
To add a new value help service, you'll start by clicking the "Create" button in your situation object in the Manage Situation Objects app.
Configure the Value Help Service
in the Value Help Services section, fill the following fields with the specified values:
1. Service Protocol Version: Set this to V2.
2. Service Path: Choose Standard - there are currently no other options available.
3. Service Binding: Enter the name of the service binding of the value help service you’ve created. In the example shown in Figure 3, this is C_SITN2DEMOFLIGHTVHV2.
4. Service Version: Use the latest service version from your service binding.In the example shown in Figure 3, this version is 1.
Add Properties.
Add the entity set of the Source CDS View here, not any of the Value Help Provider Views that are also included in the service. Add the name of the property that you want to use.
Please note that:
1. you need to select the Value Help Source CDS View here (FlightVH for our example), not the individual Value Help Provider Views (PlaneVH for our example).
2. you have to use the name of the entity set as defined in the Service Definition, not the name of the CDS view, i.e. for our example use FlightVH and not C_Sitn2DemoFlightVH.
3. All Entity Sets and Properties are case sensitive! Please use the casing that is exposed in the Service Definition: FlightVH is correct for the example. Other names such as FLIGHTVH are wrong.

The results should look like the figure below:

Figure 4: Manage Situation Objects: add a Value Help Service

Mapping Value Help Entities in the Situation Object Structures

To complete your value help setup, you provide a mapping between the fields of the CDS views you use in the structure of your situation object and the properties in the value help service entities. We'll walk you through the necessary steps to do this below:

Open the Structure in the Manage Situation Objects app
Navigate to the structure within your situation object that you wish to extend with value help functionality.
Access the Value Help Mapping Section
Next, go to the "Value Help Mapping" section. This is where you will map the fields to the value help entities.
Create a New Mapping
1. Click on the "Create" button to add a new value help mapping.
2. Select a Field: Choose the field from the structure that you want to enhance with a value help. For our example, we're using SITNDEMOPLANETYPE.
3. Assign the Value Help
  After selecting the field, use the value help to select the value help ID you modeled in the previous steps. Ensure you match the entity set and property correctly. For our example, the mapping should be:
  Value Help ID: VALUE_HELP_DEMO
  Entity Set: FlightVH
  Property: SitnDemoPlaneType
4. Again all Entity Sets and Properties are case sensitive! Please use the casing that is exposed in the Service Definition: FlightVH is correct for the example. Other names such as FLIGHTVH are wrong.

The results should look like the figure below:

Figure 5: Manage Situation Objects: mapping of Value Help Service and Structure fields

By following these steps, you'll successfully add the value help service to your situation object, enhancing your ability to manage situations effectively.

Using the Situation Object Enhanced with Value Help Services

Once you've created your situation objects and enhanced them with value help services, they're ready for use in situation scenarios, situation templates, and situation types. Most of your defined content is automatically propagated, making changes—even in value help services—immediately active.

However, situation type updates are handled different due to performance caching. If you add value help services after creating a situation type, you'll need to refresh it by creating a new version of the situation type. You can do this by making a small change for example in the type description and saving afterwards. This will trigger the value help changes to become active. For any situation type you create after enhancing your situation objects, the changes will immediately be applied.

Tips and tricks for testing and in case of problems

Testing your value help service

To test if your value help service works correctly you can first test OData Service itself and afterward test the value service in the context of the Situation Handling Framework.

To test the OData Service service, open the Service Binding for your value help service and right click on the Entity Set (FlightVH) and select the "Open Fiori Elements App Preview" option as show in the figure below.

Figure 6: Testing the value help service: generate the Fiori Elements App Preview from the entity set.

In app that is opened in your browser, click on the "Adapt Filters" button and select the filter you want to test. Afterward check if the value help for the filter in the generated app is what is expected.

Figure 7: Testing the value help service in the Fiori Elements App Preview app

Afterwards you can test the service in the Situation Handling context. Therefore create a new situation template that makes use of the situation object[3] that you’ve defined and check the condition filters. Make sure to select the correct trigger or anchor object for the condition filter to see all fields and their value helps.
An example for the Demo Scenario is shown in Figure 1 Value Help for Plane Type in Condition Filter dialog in the Manage Situation Types - Extended app.

Check the $metadata of your value help service

When the value helps are not working, please check the $metadata of your service. All fields with value help services should have the <Annotation Term="Common.ValueList"> property.

An example is the $metadata of the Demo Application

URL: …/sap/opu/odata/sap/C_SITN2DEMOFLIGHTVH_CDS/$metadata 

<Annotation Term="Common.ValueList">
...
<Record>
<PropertyValue Property="CollectionPath" String="C_Sitn2DemoRegionVH" />
...
</Annotations>

Similar annotation should be available in the OData Service defined in the Service Binding. Simply extend the service URL with /$metadata and check the properties you annotated. There should be a Common.ValueList annotation for each field annotated with @Consumption.valueHelpDefinition in your Source CDS View.

Case sensitivity for Entity Sets and Properties

Entity Sets and Properties are case sensitive and need to be used consistently.

Creating or Updating Situation Types after Situation Object Changes

As mentioned earlier (section “Using the Value Help enhanced objects”) remember that situation objects are cached for performance reasons in situation types when the situation type is created. This means that changes in the situation object are not reflected for the existing situation types, even if you might see them already in the situation template, unless they are updated.
So, whenever an update of situation objects was required, please remember to change or create new situation types to reflect the changes.

Update structure mapping after changing Value Help Services

Whenever you update a value help service in a situation object, , make sure to also update the value help mapping in the respective structure of the situation object.
Figure 6 shows an example where the entity set is wrong (ZAS_VH_BASE_VIEW) and should be changed to the correct name of the entity set as it’s exposed in the service (-> FlightVH). Once this was changed in the Value Help section, it also needs to be changed in the Value Help Mapping in the Structure section(s). The figure show the wrong configuration that is using the view (ZAS_VH_BASE_VIEW) instead of the correct view entity as exposed in the service definition (FlightVH for our example). Please ensure that the Entity Set is changed in both locations in the Value Help Section as well as in the Value Help Mapping and that both Entity Set and Properties are the same. The correct configuration should showFlightVH in both Entity Sets.

Figure 8: Manage Situation Object: Reflect changes in Value Help also to the Structure Mapping.

Popup “No authorization to access value help for <<FIELDNAME>> . Please define conditions”

While using the condition filter dialog, you might encounter the following error:
Figure 9: Popup “No authorization to access value help for <<FIELDNAME>> . Please define conditions”

This error can arise from two primary issues:

Value Help Service Authorization: There may be an authorization problem with the value help service, which needs to be addressed in the backend – check the DCLs assigned to the views and the authorizations given to the user.
Service Issues: The service itself might be experiencing problems.

Troubleshooting Steps:
To diagnose if the issue is with the service, use the browser’s network tab in the debugging tools to check for a /$metadata request related to your value help service.
Here’s what you might find:

Service Not Published: If the service URL is unavailable, it’s likely that the service hasn’t been published. Ensure that the service is properly published.
Wrong OData Version: If you see an error message similar to

<code>/IWFND/MED/170</code>
<message xml:lang="en">No service found for namespace '', name '...', version '0001'</message>
<innererror>

it’s probable that the incorrect OData version was used. Ensure you are using “OData V2 – UI” as specified in the “Expose as OData Service” step in the section “Steps to Design an Value Help Service.”

By following these steps, you should be able to identify and resolve the underlying issue causing the error.

Conclusion

Modeling value help services for the extended framework for Situation Handling is a powerful way to enhance user experience by providing context-specific assistance. By following the principles and best practices demonstrated in the Flight Demo, experienced developers can create robust and effective value help services tailored to their projects.
Stay tuned for more advanced techniques and in-depth discussions as we continue to explore the capabilities of the extended framework for Situation Handling.
Happy coding!

Footnotes:

[1] Multiple Value Help Provider Views need to be created when the source CDS view references several Value Help Provider Views in the annotations.
[2] Note -This service does not exist in the Flight situation object that uses a different mechanism. However, the target design is to use service bindings.
[3] When creating the situation template, you first need to create a situation scenario where the situation object that is enhanced with value help services is used as trigger or anchor object. The value help becomes visible in the value help for the field it got assigned to in the condition’s filters of the trigger or anchor object.

Deprecation of Intelligent Situation Automation Service

2025-09-24T13:13:52.706000+02:00

Abstract

Intelligent Situation Automation is an extension of Situation Handling. It processes situations and resolves them automatically using established business rules, thereby reducing the time users spend on routine, manual, and repetitive tasks. Please refer to SAP Discovery Center for more information.

As part of this blog, we are announcing the deprecation of Intelligent Situation Automation service.

What is the current end-of-service date of Intelligent Situation Automation?

The Intelligent Situation Automation will be under maintenance only mode and the end-of-service date is 6 months from the announcement or when the last contract commitment is fulfilled.

What do you need to do?

Unsubscribe the Intelligent Situation Automation SaaS solution. Please refer to below steps:

Prerequisite: You are an administrator of the subaccount.

Open your global account in the SAP BTP cockpit and open your subaccount.
In the navigation area of each subaccount, choose Services > Instances and Subscriptions.
Select the three dots at the end of the Intelligent Situation Automation subscription row, and from the menu, select Delete. All data related to the application will be deleted in the respective subaccount.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us via component CA-SIT-ATM.

S/4HANA Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM) and Situation Handling Scenarios: Part-1

2025-10-27T13:56:35.980000+01:00

In this blog, Part-1, I will be primarily focusing on SAP Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM) through a Supply Chain use case - predicting the forecast delivery date by using regression based predictive model (SAP Standard ISLM Framework). This Model provides predictions based on historical data. I will also touch base on the SAP Situation Handling Scenario for the Stock Transfer Order Process. However, I will walk you through the set-up in more detail in Part-2 of this blog series.

My Business Use Case:

My organization has to transfer an Asset: 20000000 (Equipment: 10000001-Air Compressor 1250 CFM 8KG/CM2) from our Norco Plant in Louisiana to our Robinson Plant in Illinois. To support this process and predict the forecast delivery date based on historical stock transfers, we have activated the ISLM Scenario: MATERIAL_OVERDUE_SIT (Stock In Transit Material Overdue) and a Situation Handling Scenario: MAN_MATLOVERDUESITSITN (Stock Transport Order Overdue) to monitor exceptions as well.

Let us dive in...

What Is ISLM: Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management is a standardized framework to build and manage AI use cases within SAP S/4HANA for both embedded and side-by-side scenarios. It can be leveraged to perform lifecycle operations, including Scheduled Training and Retraining, and deployment of the model directly within SAP S/4HANA.

ISLM framework consists of two Fiori Applications, Intelligent Scenarios (App ID F4469) and Intelligent Scenario Management (App ID F4470). These two applications provide a unified interface for creating, deploying, monitoring, and activation of the model directly within SAP S/4HANA.

Based on the ISLM association with business application, the ISLM scenarios can be categorized as Embedded and Side-by-Side.

Embedded: A business application, for example SAP S/4HANA runs in the same stack as its machine learning provider with the analytics libraries SAP HANA Automated Predictive Library (APL) or SAP HANA Predictive Analysis Library (PAL).

Side-by-Side: A business application, for example SAP S/4HANA runs in a separate stack than its machine learning infrastructure provider.

To begin with, let us take a look at the architecture of SAP Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management.

Architecture of Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management

Business User: The user who Interacts with the business application and uses the predictions from machine learning for the business purpose.
Business Administrator: A domain expert who can perform model trainings based on business context, evaluate model quality , and activate a model for production usage.
Technical Administrator: A system administrator who can perform the configurations of connectivity between different entities and maintains the technical configurations of the system.
ABAP Developer: A developer who can create ABAP artifacts required for Intelligent Scenario registration.
Intelligent Scenario Owner: An owner who creates, reviews, and publishes the Intelligent Scenario.

For instance, based on our business use case, I will walk you through the standard ISLM scenario that leverages one of the models from SAP HANA Automated Predictive Library (APL) by stepping into the roles of "Business User", "Business Administrator", and "Intelligent Scenario Owner".

The Intelligent Scenarios App is used to create, display, and configure various scenarios tailored to specific business needs. Using this App, we can view a list and activate SAP provided standard scenarios or create Embedded or Side-by-Side scenarios.

Now, let us use the SAP provided ISLM scenario "MATERIAL_OVERDUE_SIT" and take a look at the input and out put fields used by the model, and Fiori App IDs that support the business process.

The Input fields are the data points to train an ML model and to make new prediction. They represent the historical business data and other relevant information that the ML model can learn from to identify the patterns.

Output fields contain the results generated by the ML model after it is trained. These output fields provide the predictions and related metrics back to the business application.

It`s time to publish the scenario...

After successfully publishing the ISLM scenario, let us move on to the "Intelligent Scenario Management" application to train the model and schedule it.

The Intelligent Scenario Management App is used to manage, monitor, and optimize AI driven scenarios throughout their entire lifecycle. We can view the list of App IDs relevant for the ISLM scenario MATERIAL_OVERDUE_SIT.

For instance, let us retrain the model with new historical data using new filtering conditions. The system generates a new Model Version ID for every "Retrain".

Following the successful training, the system provides a statistical information on variables and performance of the model. The model version report screen provides a summary about a particular model version. The quality information details varies according to the intelligent scenario type and underlying machine learning used.

For Instance, the following filter values are used for training the model.

The tab "Debrief" in a "Model Version Report" provides a breakdown of the trained machine learning model`s characteristics and its key influencing factors. The "Debrief" helps us understand and evaluate the model by explaining the main drivers behind its prediction.

Key Influencers and their percentage of contribution in the overall prediction.

We can schedule a training for our Intelligent Scenarios. When the schedule is created for a training, the system creates a planned task, which can be viewed in "Scheduled Planned Task" tab.

Mini Note: If we try to create a new schedule without deactivating the previous one, the system prompts an error message.

We can monitor the scheduled runs that are created via ISLM in the "Monitor Planned Task Jobs" tile.

We can copy and cancel the planned task and view the logs associated with each run of the schedule.

Now, let us move on to "Situation Handling Scenarios"...

As part of our business use case, I have activated the situation handling scenario with the following conditions: "MAN_MATLOVERDUESITSITN" to notify respective business team if the the order gets delayed.

Situation Handling Scenario: ZMAN_MATLOVERDUESITSITN conditions to trigger an exception message.

Situation Handling Conditions to trigger an exception notification...

Following the successful activation and training of ISLM and Situation Handling Scenarios, let us examine the transactional data.

Norco Plant asset/equipment master:

We have Asset Master and Equipment Master synchronization functionality in place.

Following the successful movement of equipment 10000001 from its functional location to Engineering Spares Warehouse, the system updates the stock in the designated storage location, which should be transferred to the Robinson Plant. The stock movement has been completed using a Maintenance Order.

Now, let us create a Stock Transfer Order using App ID F1957 - Transfer Stock Cross - Plant

With this App, we can make transfer postings from one plant(Issuing Plant) to another plant(Receiving Plant). This app supports warehouse clerk in finding the allowed transfer postings and in personalizing the control settings of storage locations and visible columns.

For instance, I have chosen the material code "271", which is designated for Equipment 10000001.

Mini Note: If the predictive analytics model is active, the system uses the predicted delivery date as forecast delivery date. We can also select the entry "Use Predictive Model for Forecast Delivery Date" in the application settings.

I have chosen the storage location 171B , which contains the stock of Equipment 10000001. I have entered the input values in the pop-up screen. The activated ISLM scenario model determines the "Forecast Delivery Date" for the stock transfer order based on the historical data.

Now, let us create "Stock Transport Order" using the option "Create Stock Transport Order".

Following the successful creation of stock transport order, using App ID F2139: Overdue Materials - Stock In Transit, we can view the "Predicted Deviation" values for the stock transport orders.

Using this App F2139 (Overdue Materials-Stock In Transit) with an Active Predictive Model:

If the predictive analytical model is active, the system uses the predicted delivery date as forecast delivery date.
If the predictive analytics model is active, we can select the "Predicted Deviation" field in the view settings for the results list.

Mini Note: The predicted deviation field displays the difference between the planned and the predicted delivery date. With this information about the predicted deviation, we get an impression that if a goods receipt can be successfully completed in time.

How to Interpret the predicted Deviation field value:

In our case, the predicted deviation for the STO 4500000334 is negative, i.e., -1 : This means that the forecast delivery date calculated by the predictive model is one day later than the planned delivery date from the purchase order.
If the predicted deviation is 0 (Zero) : This means that the forecast delivery date and the planned delivery date from the purchase order are the same.
If the predicted deviation is positive, for example 2 : This means that the forecast delivery date calculated by the predictive model is two days ahead of the planned delivery date from the purchase order.

Using this App F2139 (Overdue Materials-Stock In Transit) without an Active Predictive Model:

If the predictive analytics model is not active, we cannot select the "Predicted Deviation" field in the view settings for the results list.
If the predictive analytics model is not active, the micro chart uses the planned delivery date from the purchase order instead.
If the predictive analytics model is not active, the forecast delivery date and the planned delivery date of the purchase order are the same.

The shipping duration micro chart illustrates the goods movement process for an Stock Transfer Order item and shows the forecast delivery date in relation to the actual delivery date.

Since we have activated the "Situation Handling Scenario" with the conditions, the system triggers the exception notification when the stock in transit days are >1.

In our use case, the STO 4500000334 was delayed and met the conditions that are part of situation handling scenario; hence, the system triggered the exception notification.

The situations are displayed at "Bell Icon", which is a gate way to the SAP Fiori notification center.

or we can use "App ID: F4154 (My Situations app) " to monitor exception notifications.

Following the successful completion of the STO 4500000334, the situation can be closed using thee option "Close Situations" in My Situations App.

😊 This brings me to the end of a detailed walkthrough of the SAP Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management process , along with a high-level overview on how the situation handling scenario supports business teams in monitoring exceptions. I hope this blog proves useful to the Inventory Management team to have a nuanced understanding of material movements with enhanced predictive insights and exception notifications during Stock Transfer Order Process.

A detailed walkthrough of the SAP Situation Handling scenario process flow is covered in Part-2 of this blog series...use the link below to view it.

S/4HANA Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM) and Situation Handling Scenarios: Part-2

Yours Sincerely,

Pardhasaradhi Reddy. C

S/4HANA Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM) and Situation Handling Scenarios: Part-2

2025-10-29T07:32:29.662000+01:00

In this Part-2 blog, I will focus on the SAP Situation Handling Scenario: MAN_MATLOVERDUESITSITN (Stock Transport Order Overdue), as a continuation of Part-1 blog: S/4HANA Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM) and Situation Handling Scenarios.

What is Situation Handling Scenario:

In a nut shell, SAP Situation Handling Scenario helps organizations increase the quality and efficiency of the business processes by automatically detecting, tracking, and informing the right users about the exceptional circumstances that require their immediate attention. With its tracking and monitoring features, Situation Handling allows organization to get insights into the life cycle of situations and to identify the recurring situations that can be prevented or automatically resolved.

Let us dive in...

To begin with, let us understand the Key Concepts of Situation Handling Scenario.

Situation Template: It serves as a blueprint for creating a situation type.
Situation Type: It describes the business situation. For example, how a situation instance can be triggered and who is informed about it.
Situation Instance: An exceptional issue which is displayed the responsible person.
Situation object: Technical model of a business object used in Situation Handling. It provides the basic technical configuration such as data structures, events, and actions.
Situation Scenario: Business Scenario that contains defining entity sets to create multiple situation templates.

Disclaimer: This blog focuses on the Situation Handling Standard Framework.

Let us now understand the process flow of the Situation Handling Scenario.

A Process Flow Of S/4HANA Situation Handling Scenario...

If you want to gain deeper understanding of SAP Signavio Process Manager & Process Collaboration Hub, dive into my blog post on SAP Signavio : The nuts and bolts of a well-thought-out SAP Signavio : Process Manager & Process Collaboration Hub

I will be walking you through the highlighted Apps below during the Stock Transport Order Overdue Situation Handling Scenario process.

Let us first configure "Responsibility Management".

In "Responsibility Management", the team category represents a business process. In our case, the team category is "Inventory Management Overdue Monitoring (INVOVDUEMO)". SAP provides a list of standard team categories.

Team attributes are represented as "Responsibility Definition".

Responsible Teams to receive exception notifications.

Let us move on to "Manage Situation Types".

In the standard framework, situation templates for object-based situations are predefined by SAP. We have to copy the situation type that can be adapted and enabled for productive usage. Enabled situation types create situation instances, send exception notifications, and display the situation message.

Let us copy the situation template: "MAN_MALOVERDUESITSITN" and create a Situation Type: "ZMAN_MALOVERDUESITSITN - Stock Transport Order Overdue".

When situation occurs, the system displays the message as:

In this section let us define the conditions based on which the system creates the situation instances and for which of these instances notifications are sent. Conditions are copied from the situation template when we create a situation type. However, the conditions can be configured by adding filter values. We can use input help to define multiple values for each date field.

We can select the time zone for scheduling to trigger situation instances based on the defined conditions. If this section is not displayed, then the situation type is even based.

To enable "Notifications", assign the "Teams" to the situation type.

With the "Trigger Now" option in the header section, we can directly initiate the batch process. As soon as the batch job is finished, we can see the new instances in the situation instances list.

We will now proceed to create STO for the material 271-Air Compressor 1250 CFM 8KG/CM2 SL200 movement from Norco plant to Robinson plant by recording the truck`s Inward and outward movements for this shipment.

Stock Transport Order:

As per the conditions configured in the Situation Handling Scenario : ZMAN_MALOVERDUESITSITN - Stock Transport Order Overdue, the system should alert the responsible team if the days in transit for the STO: 4500000334 is > 1 day.

When the days in transit for the STO: 4500000334 was "Null", the system did not trigger the notification.

Now, let us create "Outbound Delivery" for the STO 4500000334 and perform "Goods Issue" transaction referencing the Outbound Delivery.

Stock Transport Order Quantities and Timeline:

We have also recorded the truck`s Inward and Outward movements for this shipment at Norco Plant.

When the days in transit for the STO: 4500000334 was "1", system did not trigger the notification.

As the "Days in Transit" reaches to "2", the system alerts the responsible team that has been assigned to the situation handling scenario. In our use case, the STO 4500000334 was delayed and met the conditions that are part of situation handling scenario; hence, the system triggered the exception notification.

The situations are displayed at "Bell Icon", which is a gate way to the SAP Fiori notification center.

or we can use "App ID: F4154 (My Situations app) " to monitor exception notifications.

Now, the responsible team member shall coordinate with the team and resolve the issues related to the delay. For Instance, let us assume that, the truck has reached the location on early hours 27/10/2025, but the Inward entry was not recorded due to space constraint at the plant. Now, the team has cleared the space and recorded the "Gate Entry".

Inward Movement Entry at Robinson Plant:

Now, let us close the STO 4500000334 by recording "Goods Receipt Transaction". Responsible team can use the exception notification generated by the situation handling scenario and access the link to post the goods receipt by referencing the STO 4500000334

Now, let`s use My Situations App to view the exception notification for the STO 4500000334 and post the Goods receipt.

When we navigate through the exception message in the "My Situations" App, the system automatically copies the STO details into the selection screen field values.

Process flow of the STO up to the Goods Issue point.

We can use the populated link to post the "Goods Receipt" for the STO at the Robinson Plant.

We can attach the approval document for the movement of the Asset 20000000(EQ:10000001) while recording the Goods Receipt against STO: 4500000334.

Following the successful completion of the Goods Receipt, the STO 4500000334 is displayed under the "Delivery Completed" tab.

Let us now view the process flow of the Asset 20000000 movement from Norco Plant to Robinson Plant.

Following the successful completion of the Asset 20000000 movement, we can now close the "Situation" by using the option "Close Situation".

Let us now monitor the situations.

With this Analytical List Page App, we can monitor the handling of standard object-based situations with respect to their status and related business objects.

😊This brings me to the end of a detailed process walkthrough on SAP Situation Handling Scenario for the "Stock Transport Order Overdue". I hope this blog proves useful to the Inventory Management Team in gaining nuanced understanding of how to set up the situation handling scenario that triggers material movement exceptions during the Stock Transport Order process.

If you want to gain a deeper understanding of SAP Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management and how it can be set up to predict the "Forecast Delivery Date" in the Stock Transport Order process, check out my latest blog by accessing the link below.

S/4HANA Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM) and Situation Handling Scenarios: Part-1

Yours Sincerely,

Pardhasaradhi Reddy.C

Handling Maintenance Notifications with SAP Situation Handling

2025-12-12T14:33:49.108000+01:00

Efficient maintenance management is critical for smooth operations in any enterprise. SAP’s Situation Handling framework provides a proactive way to keep stakeholders informed and enable quick actions when key events occur. In this blog, we’ll explore how to leverage the Manage Situation Types – Extended app to handle maintenance notifications effectively.

What is Situation Handling in SAP?

Situation Handling in SAP helps users stay informed about important business events by triggering notifications and enabling them to take quick actions. For Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), SAP provides standard situation templates that can be customized to meet your business needs.

For more details and advanced configuration, refer to the official SAP Cookbook.

Template Name: EAM_MAINT_NOTIF_SUBPHASE_CHANGED

Description: Notification Subphase is changed

This template supports both event-based and batch-based triggers for maintenance notifications when they are:

Created
In Process
Completed

Key Features of the Template

Perform quick callback actions like Accept or Reject a maintenance notification.
Navigate to the Manage Maintenance Notification (F5777) app for detailed actions.
Configure recipients who should receive notifications via email or SAP Fiori Launchpad (FLP).

Steps to Configure Situation Handling for Maintenance Notifications

1. Create a Situation Type from the Standard Template

Select the template Notification Subphase is changed and click Create Situation Type.

2. Define Situation Triggers

Under the Situation Triggers tab, configure when notifications should be triggered. The template supports:

Event-Based Triggers for real-time updates (e.g., when a notification is created or completed).
Batch-Based Triggers for scheduled checks.

3. Configure Recipients

Under the Recipients section, assign users or teams who should receive notifications. You can filter recipients by Responsibility Definition (e.g., Lead, Internal) defined in the Teams and Responsibilities app.

4. Customize Notification Messages

End users can configure the message text shown in notifications for better clarity and context.

5. Define Conditions for Situation Trigger

Under the Conditions tab, you can set filters to control when the situation should be triggered. This allows fine-grained control over notifications.

You can filter based on:

Creation Date
Equipment
Functional Location
Last Changed By
Notification Text
Person Responsible
Priority (e.g., only trigger for Very High priority)
Phase or Subphase

6. Access My Situations – Extended App

Use this app to view all notifications raised, quick details of the maintenance notification, and perform quick actions like Accept Maintenance Notification or Navigate to the Manage Maintenance Notification app.

Benefits of Using Situation Handling for Maintenance Notifications

Proactive Alerts: Stay informed about critical changes in maintenance notifications.
Quick Actions: Accept or reject notifications directly from the alert.
Role-Based Notifications: Ensure the right people are notified at the right time.
Flexibility: Define conditions and customize messages to suit business needs.

Conclusion

By leveraging SAP’s Situation Handling and the Manage Situation Types – Extended app, organizations can streamline maintenance processes, reduce delays, and improve operational efficiency. Start by creating a situation type from the standard template and configure triggers, recipients, and messages to fit your requirements.

References

For more details and advanced configuration, refer to the official SAP Cookbook: https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_S4HANA_CLOUD/a630d57fc5004c6383e7a81efee7a8bb/516c8ecb7462453ca430a42481cc33ec.html?version=2508.500

My First Situation with the Extended Framework

2026-01-19T16:31:21.936000+01:00

Situation Handling notifies users about issues requiring their attention. With the extended framework for Situation Handling, you can define situations for your business needs.

This blog post illustrates how you can create a situation quickly and with minimal configuration. It outlines the core concept of the extended framework for Situation Handling and guides you in defining your own situation use case.

The configuration relates to the extended framework for Situation Handling which has been available since SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2202 and SAP S/4HANA 2021 FPS2.

Introductory Words

The extended framework for Situation Handling is very powerful. In turn, it’s not always easy to get started. To provide you with a straightforward path, this blog post focuses on the minimal viable configuration to create a situation instance.

The Apps

The configuration of Situation Handling is set up across three apps to maximize reuse. While it may seem complex at first, the advantages become clear as you create multiple use cases. The configuration effort decreases substantially with each new use case. The apps also align with different business roles supporting technical and business-oriented responsibilities.

Manage Situation Objects – reuse the artifacts from the applications, such as CDS views, events, and navigation targets, for defining a situation object.
Manage Situation Scenarios – map the affected object (anchor object) with trigger objects and trigger behaviors create, update, and remove.
Manage Situation Types – add logic to the anchor and trigger objects to define the use case

To inform the right users we additionally use the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app.

The Use Case

The extended framework for Situation Handling also comes with a demo app that serves as exploratory sandbox. We use the Situation Handling Demo app and its artifacts for the minimal configuration.

The demo app represents a fictional flight booking system. Your first situation will inform about flights that are scheduled within the next three days.

Minimal Configuration

Let’s define the minimal set-up to create a situation.

Manage Situation Objects

The situation object represents a business object. It reuses existing application artifacts that are relevant to your business scope. The core of a situation object is the structure, a CDS view. The CDS view needs to be allowlisted and needs a unique key.

Log-in as Extensibility Specialist to your system and open the app Manage Situation Objects.

Create a new object and enter the object ID, the name, description, and select the SAP object type.

General information of situation object

Then you add the CDS view that contains the data you want to monitor. The CDS view is part of the object’s structure. Create a new structure and enter a description. Select the structure type, the structure name (the reference to the CDS view), and the SAP object node type. For personal data simply select no fields.

CDS structure of situation object

Additionally, you add the semantic key that represents the situation object on the UI. For the flight object we choose the carrier ID, the connection ID and the flight date from the object’s CDS view. It will show, for example, as LH/403/20251224.

Then choose Apply and Create. Your first situation object is set.

Manage Situation Scenarios

The situation scenario relates to the object that is affected by a situation (anchor object). Additionally, it contains the objects that can trigger a situation.

Background: The trigger object can be the same as the anchor object - for example, if you want to monitor the data of the anchor object’s CDS view. The trigger object can also be another situation object. In our flight example, the trigger object could be the booking object, and the anchor object is the flight.

The trigger object also comes with a trigger behavior. The trigger object can be created or updated; it can also be removed.

In our example, we use the Flight object, both as anchor and as trigger object with the behavior add / update.

Open the app Manage Situation Scenarios.

Create a new scenario with ID, name, and description. Provide the scenario type and the object structure type. You also select the responsibility context ID which links Responsibility Management to Situation Handling to be able to identify the right users who need to be informed about the situation.

General information of situation scenario

Then you add the reference to the object that is affected by the situation, the anchor object. Select the object ID. Chose the object structure ID (an object can have multiple structures) and a key field that uniquely identifies your anchor object. The key field is part of the structure’s CDS view.

Reference to anchor object

Next you define the situation trigger with name and description. As we want to check the CDS fields regularly we create a batch-based trigger.

Batch-based situation trigger

Finally, you need to add the reference to the trigger object like you did for the anchor object. Select the object ID, the object structure ID, and the object key field. Additionally select the relevant object behavior. In our example, it’s add/update because we want to monitor flight data that is new or changed.

Reference to trigger object

Choose Apply and Create. Your scenario is done.

Log-off as Extensibility Specialist and log-in as Business Process Configuration Expert.

Manage Situation Types – Extended

In the Manage Situation Types – Extended app you define the logic when a situation is detected and who should be informed about it.

Background: The app supports the idea of reuse as well. You can create a situation template that serves as blueprint. And you can derive multiple situation types from it. The blueprint, for example, defines the monitoring of flights. Flight monitoring may require different conditions for different regions. For this purpose, you can derive multiple situation types from the template that contain all settings from the blueprint. You only need to adjust the conditions for the specific regions.

In our use case we want to identify flights that are scheduled within the next three days. Therefore, we want to check the flight data daily and use the batch-based situation trigger from the scenario. In the condition section we define the relevant period of next 3 days.

Open the app Manage Situation Types – Extended.

Create a new template from the scenario My First Scenario. Enter general data that describes the template: the scenario ID, the template ID, the name, and description.

General information of situation template

Then you add the batch-based trigger from the scenario and refine it with conditions. For our use case we simply add a date filter for the next three days.

Condition for situation detection

Now we add the texts that describe the situation for the end user. The situation title and description are used in various places, for example, in My Situations – Extended app, in cards on Fiori launchpad home, and in notifications. We define the title and only use variables to the flight for describing the situation. If we choose to send one notification per situation instance, the same texts are used. The public text My first situation. is added for email notifications (not visible in screenshot).

Situation description for end users

Select Apply.

In the next step we define when the periodical check is scheduled. We define a time zone, a repeat type and interval, and add a start time when the batch is supposed to be scheduled. In the example below, the batch is scheduled every day at 1 am.

Batch-job scheduling

Then we need to define who will be informed about situations. We want to alert users that belong to one or more teams that are responsible for a certain business scope which is expressed by the team category. We use the demo category SITDEMO. Without setting any further filters, all members of the teams belonging to the category would be informed about flights being scheduled within the next three days.

Inform team members about situations

Select Create and your template is complete.

Manage Teams and Responsibilities

Responsibility Management defines who is informed about the situation. Let’s create a simple team and add yourself as a team member.

Open the app Manage Teams and Responsibilities.

Create a new team and enter general data that describes the team: the name (that is also used as global ID), the description, and the type. The type is a sub-group of the team category. Also ensure that you set the status to enabled.

Define a responsible team

Then you add the team members that will be informed about the situations. For the minimal configuration you just add yourself as member.

Members of responsible team

Create the team and log-off as Business Process Configuration Expert.

Log-in as Business Configuration Specialist.

Situation Handling Demo

You can use the data of the Situation Handling Demo app to create a situation. Just open the app and check if the table is already populated with flight data. If not, choose Generate New Data.

Situation Handling Demo app

Manage Situation Types – Extended

Now you create a situation type from the template that will trigger the situation. Usually, types would be further refined or would be a bundle of variants to reflect specific usage. For example, the logic of a template refers to multiple types which address specific sales regions and therefore need specific adjustments in the condition section. In our sample case we simply use the logic of the template as is.

Open the Manage Situation Types – Extended app.

Create a new situation type from the template My First Template. Set the status to enabled and save it.

General information of situation type

On top of the page choose Trigger Batch.

Trigger the batch-job schedule for a situation type

Batch-job feedback

In the dialog select Manage Instances. You might need to wait a moment until the batch-job is finalized and refresh the page. Then you see the list of detected situations, that is all flights that are scheduled within the next three days. As a reference you see the semantic keys that you defined within the situation object structure.

List of situation instances in the Manage Situation Types – Extended app

Log-off as Business Process Specialist.

My Situations – Extended

In the My Situation – Extended app the users see all situations in their area of responsibility.

Log-in with the user you added as team member in the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app.

Open the My Situation – Extended app.

In the left navigation pane select the scenario My First Situation Scenario. The list shows all situations that were detected by the type My First Situation Type. The title My First Situation is the same for all instances. In the description you see the reference to the detected flight, for example, SQ 0160 13.12.2025.

Additionally, you see the new situations indicated next to the notification bell.

List of situations in the My Situations – Extended app

When you select a situation, for example in the list page of the My Situation – Extended app or from the notifications, you go to the situation details page. As the situation description is all we defined, there is no further information to see.

Situation details page in the My Situations – Extended app

You have created your first situations with the minimal configuration. And you have learned which minimal ingredients you need and how they work together.

Next Steps

For further guidance, I recommend reading the following blog posts:

Define the optimal information for the end user: Configure the layout of My Situations – Extended.
Deep dive into the concept of reusability: The Power of Reuse - Custom Situation Configuration.
Explore enhanced configuration options: Custom Situation Cases: Configure Your Own Use Cases.

You find many more blog posts in the Best Practices section of Intelligent Situation Handling in the SAP Community. And you can visit SAP Help for further guidance on Situation Handling.

Artificial Intelligence in SAP Cloud ERP 2602

2026-01-20T09:00:00.034000+01:00

Welcome to your one-stop shop to learn and share knowledge about SAP's ready-to-run public cloud ERP software solution.

SAP Cloud ERP is part of SAP Business Suite that brings AI, data, and applications together into a fully integrated system. This community is open for anyone in the cloud ERP ecosystem–customers, partners, and SAP experts.

In this blog, I’m thrilled to guide you through the latest AI innovations in our SAP Cloud ERP release 2602. This release marks a significant leap forward in our journey to embed reliable, relevant, and responsible AI directly into the core of your ERP. Our goal is simple: to make your work smarter, your decisions faster, and your daily tasks more intuitive.

With our AI co-pilot Joule and a host of new embedded AI capabilities, we're transforming the user experience and delivering tangible business value across every line of business. Let's dive into the highlights!

A Smarter Foundation: Cross-Topic AI Innovations

We're embedding AI into the very fabric of the user experience, making the system more proactive, helpful, and personalized for every user.

1. Situation handling

1.1. AI-assisted situation handling

Solve business challenges faster and smarter with AI-powered recommendations:

Instant, Personalized Guidance: Get tailored advice right when you need it, helping you resolve business issues quickly and confidently.
Flexible and Customizable: Adapt the solution to your unique business logic—make changes easily and keep your processes up to date.
Effortless Access to Knowledge: Find the information you need, even beyond SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, with simplified, contextual support.

Key Features:

Generate actionable recommendations based on your specific business context.
Create and manage prompts to ensure solutions are relevant and effective.
Enrich recommendations with data from multiple sources for deeper insights.

With AI-Assisted Situation Handling, you empower your team to work smarter, make better decisions, and stay agile in a fast-changing business environment.

For more information, see: Situation Handling

Disclaimer: The feature described above is planned for a future release and is not yet generally available. A dedicated blog post will be published once it becomes available

2. User experience

2.1. AI-assisted error explanation for SAP Fiori elements-based Applications

With AI-assisted error explanations for SAP Fiori elements-based applications, you’ll save valuable time, boost reliability, and make maintenance easier than ever. Faster resolution of errors with the support of generative AI:

Speed Up Maintenance: Let generative AI quickly explain errors and recommend solutions, so you spend less time fixing issues and more time driving your business forward.
Reduce Future Errors: Understand the root causes behind problems, helping you prevent similar issues from happening again.

For more information, see: Discovery Center

**2.2. AI-assisted smart personalization of My Home for applications**

Tailor My Home experience using natural language and transform your workspace with just a few words:

Natural Language Personalization: Simply tell SAP what you need—AI understands your requests and instantly suggests the most relevant apps for your daily tasks.
Quick and Easy Setup: Add new applications to your “My Home” in seconds. Preview AI-generated suggestions before confirming, so you always get what fits best.
Save Time, Boost Productivity: No more searching through menus. AI streamlines your workflow, making it ideal for both new and occasional users.
Trustworthy Recommendations: Rely on intelligent, data-driven suggestions that ensure accuracy and build confidence in your setup.
Seamless Experience: Enjoy a smooth, click-minimizing process with a preview-based confirmation—making personalization simple and enjoyable.

Unlock the full potential of SAP Cloud ERP by letting AI tailor your “My Home” to your needs—so you can focus on what matters most

For more information, see: Discovery Center

2.3. AI-assisted easy fill of SAP Fiori elements-based applications

Let AI handle the details—just describe what you need, and watch your forms fill themselves:

Save Time Instantly: Maintain all the fields on your object pages in seconds, thanks to seamless AI-powered automation.
No More Guesswork: Simply use natural language, and the system intelligently matches your words to the right fields—no more hunting through forms.

With AI-assisted easy fill, you’ll breeze through data entry, reduce manual effort, and focus on what matters most in your business.

For more information, see: Discovery Center

2.4. AI-assisted task automation (beta)

AI-assisted task automation is the next embedded AI feature in the SAP Fiori user experience of SAP Cloud ERP. It builds on the previously delivered features such as easy filter, easy fill and smart solutions for situations in My Home.

It allows key users and end users to automate their daily activities in SAP’s Fiori apps by using generative AI to create so called “smart helpers”. Those ”smart helpers” execute the repetitive activities on behalf of the end user either from the SAP Fiori launchpad or from individual SAP Fiori apps while always keeping the user in the loop for decisions on data changes.

Benefits:

Easy to use SAP Fiori application to create “smart helpers”
Full control of what the “smart helper” proposes to do
Intuitive way of running the “smart helper” while being always in control in case of changes
Supports all SAP Fiori elements-based applications

Key features:

Creation of “smart helpers” based on all available SAP Fiori elements-based applications in SAP Cloud ERP
Generation and validation of execution plan for “smart helpers”
Run time for “smart helpers” is integrated into My Home the product homepage of SAP Cloud ERP

Please register to be part of the SAP Beta Testing of the Newest AI Innovations in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

2.5. AI-assisted smart solution for situations (beta)

AI-assisted smart solution for situations in My Home simplifies workflows by dynamically adapting the user interface to guide business users through resolution steps using the power of generative AI

Directly on the SAP Cloud ERP homepage, users can resolve operational situations in just a few clicks. AI-driven recommendations accelerate decision-making and streamline user actions for improved efficiency

Benefits:

Drives time efficiency by eliminating navigation through intelligent UI design
Enhances decision-making with timely, context-aware AI recommendations
Delivers trustworthy AI-generated results, built on enterprise-grade intelligence
Offers an intuitive, click-efficient experience, empowering users to act confidently with minimal effort.

Key features:

Key information and actions are surfaced through dynamic cards reducing the need for in-depth navigation
Enables one-click resolution of situations directly from the homepage thereby enhancing operational efficiency within SAP Cloud ERP
Situation types supported:
End date for project reached but stage not completed
Alert for bank messages
Expiring Sales Quotations

Please register to be part of the SAP Beta Testing of the Newest AI Innovations in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

AI Innovations Across Lines of Business:

3. Finance

3.1. Accounting Accruals agent (beta)

Close Your Books Faster with the AI-Powered Accounting Accruals Agent

The agent helps accountants to automate journal entry preparation for accruals by analyzing historical data and leveraging accounting policy documents. It calculates accurate amounts and provides a pre-populated list of journal entries for review and confirmation. Your accounts will increase their productivity, ensure timely month-end close, and get more time for high-value activities.

Automate Journal Entries: Let AI handle the heavy lifting by preparing accrual journal entries for you—twice as fast as before.
Boost Accuracy: The agent analyzes your historical data and accounting policies to calculate precise accrual amounts, reducing errors and manual work.
Ready-to-Review Entries: Receive a pre-populated list of journal entries, so your team can quickly review and confirm, saving valuable time.
Focus on What Matters: Free up your accountants to concentrate on high-value activities, ensuring a timely and efficient month-end close.

Business Impact:

Cut time spent on accrual calculations and deferrals by up to 80%
Reduce review and posting time by 50%
Achieve a faster, smoother period-end close

For more information, see: Discovery Center

3.2. International trade classification agent (beta)

Classify your products for international shipping in seconds—no expertise required

This agent helps product classification specialists to classify goods for shipping. The agent reasons over product characteristics and trade regulations and acts to classify goods for international shipping. The agent recommends customs tariff numbers and commodity codes, providing rationale for easy review and approval.

This agent will help ensure compliance with global trade regulations and reduce the risk of manual errors with robust governance and a clear, audit-ready decision

Automatic Classification: Let AI analyze your product details and trade regulations to instantly recommend the right customs tariff numbers and commodity codes.
Ensure Compliance: Rely on recommendations that are reasoned from both product characteristics and up-to-date trade rules, helping you meet global regulations with confidence.
Reduce Risk: Eliminate manual errors with a robust, auditable decision process—every classification comes with clear rationale for easy review and approval.

Business Impact:

50% reduction in effort to classify international trade products

For more information, see: Discovery Center

3.3. Sales accounting: period comparisons and business insights for Product Profitability Review Booklet

The Product Profitability Review Booklet enables you, as a Sales Accountant, to analyze the profitability for products sold using built-in business pages for the Margin Overview and the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) Breakdown.

Benefits:

Gain deeper insights into margins and cost of goods sold (COGS) with period comparisons
Enable informed decision-making with AI-enabled financial business insights
Support flexible market segment analysis with an extensible CDS view
Improve visibility with additional currency types and dimensions

Key features:

Enhancements to the Product Profitability Review Booklet app that:

Provide new period comparisons for product profitability
Use AI to generate financial business insights into period comparisons for product profitability
Add a commenting feature
Display results in functional currency
Enable CDS view to support extensibility for market segment
Incorporate additional dimensions and navigation targets

For more information, see: Enhancements in the Product Profitability Review Booklet.

3.4. SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity: Using Joule to access solution-related content

Have a question about SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity? Whether you’re curious about features, setup steps, or integration scenarios, Joule is here to help! With Joule, you can simply ask your question in natural language—no technical jargon needed. Joule instantly searches the SAP Help Portal, analyzes the latest resources, and delivers clear, context-aware answers tailored to your needs.

Benefits:

Ask Naturally, Get Answers Instantly: Express your business needs in your own words and receive quick, relevant guidance.
Faster Self-Service: Get crisp, summarized content so you can resolve issues or learn new features without digging through documentation.
Save Time: Joule streamlines your search, helping you find the right information faster so you can focus on your work.

Key features:

Smart Search & Summaries: Joule scans SAP Help Portal documentation and summarizes the most important details about SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity processes and features.
Easy Deep Dives: Need more detail? Joule provides direct links to the original documentation for further exploration.

For more information, see: Joule with SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity | SAP Help Portal

3.5. SAP Green Ledger: Joule for reporting: AI-assisted carbon emission analysis (09/2025)

Instantly Visualize and Understand Your Carbon Data with Joule in SAP Green Ledger

Joule in Green Ledger can generate charts from carbon data through conversational prompts, providing automatic visualizations for reporting purposes. This tool is useful for efficiently analyzing and presenting carbon data in a clear and intuitive format.

Benefits:

Actionable Insights for Sustainability: Instantly see trends and breakdowns in your greenhouse gas emissions, empowering you to make smarter decisions for carbon reduction and long-term success.
Save Time, Focus on Strategy: Automated reporting means less manual work and more time for impactful analysis and decision-making.
Effortless for Everyone: The intuitive interface makes advanced carbon reporting accessible to all users, regardless of technical background.

Key features:

Tailored Visualizations: Generate column, donut, and line charts from carbon data, customized to your business needs and reporting requirements.
Support for Multiple Dimensions: Analyze data by GHG category, GHG scope, fiscal year, and more, with carbon emissions as the primary measure.
Smart Context Handling: Joule understands follow-up questions, so you can keep exploring your data without starting over

For more information, see SAP Green Ledger, carbon emission analysis in SAP Discovery Center.

3.6. SAP Document and Reporting Compliance: AI-assisted trend analysis and summary for reports (beta)

The Trend Analysis feature in Joule provides natural language interaction to help you analyze VAT returns. You can ask Joule to generate comparative trend reports and detect outliers. Joule delivers insights that make VAT reporting faster, more accurate, and easier to understand.

Joule can also summarize the generated reports, helping you review key trends and results quickly. This makes it easier to identify anomalies and support faster approvals.

Benefits:

Accelerates VAT review and approval cycles: Natural-language trend analysis and auto-summarized insights reduce the time required to interpret VAT data across periods, enabling faster reviews, quicker approvals, and shorter reporting cycles.
Improves accuracy and reduces compliance risk: Automated detection of trends, fluctuations, and outliers helps identify anomalies early, minimizing manual errors and lowering the risk of incorrect filings or regulatory non-compliance.
Enables informed, data-driven decision-making: Clear, comparable trend reports and concise summaries transform complex VAT data into actionable insights, helping finance and compliance teams make confident decisions with less effort.

Key features:

Use Joule to generate a trend analysis for a VAT return across multiple reporting periods. The analysis highlights key trends, fluctuations, and irregularities, and flags values that deviate from expected norms to help you identify potential errors or compliance risks.
Joule generates a concise summary of key VAT insights to support faster reviews, approvals, and decision-making.

3.7. SAP Enterprise Threat Detection, Cloud Edition: intelligent alert handling and investigation recommendations

Investigations are the central entities to examine security incidents in SAP Enterprise Threat Detection, cloud edition. Intelligent recommendations automatically add case-specific response and mitigation recommendations to investigations based on predefined value lists and machine learning functionality.

Benefits:

Decrease manual effort and increase efficiency for SAP monitoring agents

Key features:

Automated Recommendations: The system uses predefined value lists and machine learning to generate tailored recommendations for each investigation.
Guided Investigation Preparation: SAP monitoring agents are supported with automatic recommendations when compiling investigation results and suggestions for customers.
Standardized Response Generation: Recommendations are based on standard operating procedures for the detected alert patterns, ensuring consistency and reliability in incident response

For more information, see: Generating Investigation Recommendations

Sales

4.1. Automatic creation of sales orders from unstructured data (premium)

Internal sales representatives can create sales orders from purchase order files in PDF or image formats (unstructured data). After a file is uploaded, the system automatically extracts file information into a sales order request and proposes values for sales order request fields (for example, by determining the sold-to party based on extracted data). The sales order request can later be converted into a sales order.

Benefits:

Increase sales force efficiency through the automatic creation of sales orders from unstructured data
Reduce manual effort

Key features:

Automatic Data Extraction: Instantly extract and populate sales order details from unstructured files like PDFs and images
Intelligent Field Suggestions: The system proposes values for sales order fields, such as the sold-to party, based on the extracted data.
Multilanguage Support: SAP Document AI enables extraction and training in multiple languages, making the solution accessible for global teams.

For more information, see: Create sales orders from unstructured data

Procurement

5.1. Conversational search for local and central purchase requisition status (Release 2510)

Designed for casual users, who easily and quickly want to inform themselves about the status of their purchase requisition, the intelligent Joule assistant can be queried to fetch the follow-on document status of a requestor’s self-service purchase requisition

Benefits:

Provide quicker and easier access to the purchase requisition and follow-on document status

Key features:

Query Joule for the approval and follow-on document status of a given local or central purchase requisition without the need to navigate into the details of another SAP Fiori app
Enter any of the related document numbers—for example, local or central requisition number, purchase requisition number in the connected system, or cart number in SAP Ariba—when asking for the document status

Asset Management

6.1. Maintenance notification creation and screening with Joule (release 2602)

SAP Cloud ERP 2602 makes asset management easier for everyone.

Now, you can quickly create maintenance notifications just by telling Joule—using simple, everyday language—what the issue is, which equipment it affects, and how urgent it is. All your notifications are managed in the new SAP Fiori app, where you can easily follow up and turn them into maintenance orders with just a few clicks. This update makes reporting problems faster, reduces downtime, and takes the hassle out of routine maintenance tasks.

Benefits:

Simplified Maintenance Processes: Create maintenance notifications quickly and easily using natural language, reducing the complexity of traditional workflows
Faster Fault and Incident Response: Accelerate the reporting and handling of maintenance issues, enabling quicker resolution and less downtime.
Increased Efficiency: Streamline operations and boost productivity by leveraging AI-driven automation for routine asset management tasks.

Key features:

AI-Assisted Notification Creation: Use Joule to generate maintenance notifications by simply providing key details (description, technical object, priority) in natural language.
Integration with SAP Fiori App: Access and manage created notifications directly in the new SAP Fiori app “Manage Maintenance Notification (F5777)”
Conversational Order Creation: Accept requests and convert notifications into maintenance orders within a single conversational context.
Natural Language Processing: Perform operations and interact with the system using everyday language, making the process faster and more accessible.

For more information, see: What’s new for Joule – SAP Help Portal

Manufacturing

7.1. AI-assisted production routing proposal and copy routing (release 2602)

Save time and reduce errors by letting AI do the heavy lifting! Now, you can quickly generate new production routings by reusing existing ones—no more repetitive data entry.

Benefits:

Streamlined Process: Production engineers, planners, and master data specialists can easily create and edit routings, ensuring consistency and accuracy every time.

Key features:

Use AI to find similar routing based on material name, description, and bill of material to propose close matches
Get recommendations of routing that you can copy or reuse, based on similarity
Copy and edit the proposed routing to arrive at the new routing

As a prerequisite, you need to enable the related ISLM scenario. For information on setting up the ISLM scenario, see this blog post. For general information on ISLM, see: Intelligent Scenario Management.

For more information, see:

7.2. Manage production orders - Production Planning and Operations agent (beta)

With this feature, you can start the Production Planning and Operations agent from the worklist of the Manage Production Orders app. The app now includes the Joule Release button that enables you to release your production orders assisted by agentic AI technology.

Benefits:

Reduce manual work with automated validation of material, capacity, and scheduling availability
Keep production moving with recommended workarounds for material and scheduling conflicts
Boost production throughput by cutting order-processing delays and minimizing downtime between order releases

Key features:

Assisting the production planners and supervisors in releasing up to 20 production orders at a time.
The agent automates prerequisite checks necessary for releasing production orders, including component availability and alternatives as well as work center capacity checks.
The agent also proposes rescheduling when the prerequisites for release are not met.
Once all criteria are met, the planner can confirm the proposed order changes, and the agent will complete the production order release.

For more information, see: Manage Production Orders - Production Planning and Operations Agent

Discovery Center

Joule For Consultants

Clearer Source Citations
SAP Joule for Consultants now makes it easier to see where information comes from. Citations are more visible and, when relevant, include results from public web searches. This gives you a transparent view of the sources behind every answer, helping you trust and verify the information you receive.

Expanded Reference Data
The SAP Enterprise Architecture Reference Library (EARL) is now partially available in Joule conversations. As more EARL content is added, you’ll see even richer and more accurate answers, with relevant references included right in your responses.

SAP Joule for Consultants Console

The SAP Joule for Consultants Console now offers new tools for both standard users and administrators. You can access the latest SAP release notes, usage statistics (for admins), a built-in Prompt Library, and system settings—all in one place

Access to Knowledge Base Articles and SAP Notes
Joule for Consultants now includes Knowledge Based Articles (KBA) and SAP Notes. If your company’s service agreement covers these, you’ll have access automatically—no extra steps needed for end-users. Administrators just need to make sure the right email addresses are assigned.

New Private Content

Simplification List: Stay up to date with changes in SAP S/4HANA. The Simplification List shows which features have changed, been removed, or replaced, so you can plan and adapt smoothly.
IMG (Implementation Guide): Easily find documentation and step-by-step activities to configure SAP functions for your organization, using a clear, structured navigation.

Quick Links for Faster Access
The “Show Prompt Guide” button is now “Quick Links.” This gives you instant access to the Console, Prompt Guide, and Prompt Library—all with a single click.

Longer Conversations Supported
You can now enter up to 10,000 characters in a single conversation—five times more than before. This is especially helpful for sharing longer code snippets or detailed questions.

Richer, Refreshed SAP Public Content
Joule for Consultants has updated and expanded its public SAP content. You’ll now find more detailed information and a wider range of insights from SAP Learning, SAP Help, SAP News, the AI Feature Catalogue, and more

For more information, see: What’s New for SAP Joule for Consultants

Discovery Center

The Future is Intelligent

The 2602 release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud demonstrates our commitment to building an ERP that is not just a system of record, but a true partner in your success. By embedding AI across the suite, we are helping you unlock new levels of productivity, enhance decision-making, and create a more intuitive and enjoyable user experience for everyone.

This is just the beginning, and I can't wait to see how you leverage these new capabilities to drive your business forward.

📽️ Watch the replays of our SAP Cloud ERP 2602 Early Release Series!

From January 12-16, we hosted a series of 22 expert-led live sessions to highlight the exciting innovations shipped with the SAP Cloud ERP 2602 release. Missed the live sessions? We've got you covered! Take advantage of the entire series or pick and choose the sessions most relevant to you. You will find the recording and presentation for Artificial Intelligence as well as 21 other topics of interest. Don't miss this chance and watch them on demand–anywhere, anytime.

🔎 Find all our assets

We at Cloud ERP and SCM Product Success offer a service as versatile as our product itself. Check out the numerous offerings our team has created for you below:

The Top 5 Things You Always Wanted to Know About Situation Handling

2026-02-11T15:26:17.458000+01:00

Situation Handling let’s you alert appropriate users about critical business issues requiring their attention. If you're curious about how it works or need more details, this blog post is for you. Additionally, we've enhanced our documentation - be sure to take a look here: Documentation.

1) How does it really work?

Situation Handling detects business issues in your systems. The detection works for issues with either business objects or error and warning messages. In the following, these will simply be referred to as “objects”. An issue is typically defined by specific conditions or events happening that are assigned to the objects. – and then, voilà, either a routine daily batch run or business event monitoring identifies the objects with issues.* It can be, for example, an expiring sales contract, an overbooked flight, and many more. This leads to the next question:

2) How do I specify the business issues to be addressed by Situation Handling? How is the setup done?

Let’s understand this first: Situation Handling can detect issues from only one object or between two associated objects. If only one object is involved, that’s quite easy – the object triggering an issue, with certain conditions or events, is the very same object that helps to solve it by changing itself in a specific app. One example would be a sales quotation that has expired and needs to be checked for purchase details in order to get back to the customers.

How two associated objects work: One is usually triggering the situation. For example, the situation is triggered because the object is newly created, extends a certain value, or expires. The other object is the one that needs to be changed because it’s the one affected. This is also called the anchor object, as it “anchors” the situation. For example, a change in the processor may cause a purchasing document item to require a review. Alternatively, missing supplier confirmations make operational purchasers check the schedule lines of purchase order items again.

For the Situation Handling engine to detect situations, it needs to know what to look for. The objects with their conditions, events, and possible mappings between them need to be defined. Your business area may have very specific business issues – we got you covered with a wide range of ready-to-use situation templates. They are called “templates” because elements (like conditions) are predefined, while others (like condition filters or your specific situation texts) can be adapted by you. Just copy a template into your personal situation type and enable it.

I can already anticipate your next question: What if my case is not on the list? No problem at all – with our new framework, you can define all parts of Situation Handling yourself. It’s called “extended framework” because of its extended functionalities.

3) And how do I alert someone? This seems complicated.

I’m not gonna lie, it seems complicated. It’s seems complicated at first, because we’ve provided all the different ways to alert someone that we (and you!) could possibly think of. First, your company’s organizational structure – a lot of customers want to alert specific team members based on their job functions. But we also offer the possibility to alert people depending on the data a situation provides – for example, the creator of a sales order, its processor, or other field values. For more information, check out the documentation.

4) Let me try it 🤩

Now you must be wondering: Can I check this out? Sure – all SAP S/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition customers have Situation Handling included. Just assign the “Business Process Specialist” role to your user and open the “Manage Situation Types” app. Our situation template “Sales Order Is Close to Expiry” is auto-activated, which means you can immediately check it out under “Situation Types”.

If you want to try setting up something very simple, we recommend following the test script from SAP Best Practices of our Situation Handling scope item (31N) under “Accelerators”. If you’re more interested in our extended framework, we’ve even built three demo situation templates and our own demo app for creating dummy data. Check it out in this blog post.

5) Uff… I have issues (and I don’t mean my business issues 😫). I did all the setup, and Situation Handling doesn’t seem to work. No one gets alerted.

No worries at all. There’s already a very well-written blog post that provides a lot of guidance.

6) What next?

Interested? Great. We have a lot more to offer.

Let’s get started 😊 Check out all situation templates to see if any fit your business issues. For the setup, check out Getting Started.
Already a pro? Check out how you can improve your Situation Handling by monitoring it and changing certain parameters in this blog post.
Interested in AI? Stay tuned 😎
Need more help with Responsibility Management and alerting relevant users? There’s also a blog post series available.
Start creating your custom use cases (if you haven’t done so already): Blog post

Last but not least: I’m one of your technical writers for Situation Handling. Not only do I provide you with six steps when you only expected five, I’m also always happy to help 🫡This is our documentation (quick link: http://help.sap.com/s4_ce_situationhandling for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and http://help.sap.com/s4_op_situationhandling for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition/SAP S/4HANA) and we love to hear your feedback.

Don’t forget to comment on anything you didn’t get, missed, would have loved to explore further – I promise, we will react! And of course, comment on all the things you liked – then we know what to keep. Thank you 🫶

More questions? Comment on this blog post, and we will try to answer them 😊

@Christiane_Poreski
@angelika_salmen
@sebastian_doeweling
@axel_spriestersbach
@Dr_Joerg_Rett
@Vidya_Shetty1
@NisargaPuttegowda

_____

* For sure, monitoring business events is way more elegant than a batch run, as it catches issues right away (with some delay due to system load though, but still fairly recent). But obviously, not all conditions can be detected through events, so a once-a-day batch run is performed on the objects to identify those with issues. A batch run also has its advantages, for example, it sends controlled information once a day with no spam by frequent events.