Basics of PIPE Monitoring – Part I

Basics of PIPE monitoring – Part 1

Introduction

POS Inbound Process Engine (PIPE) is currently an integral part of SAP’s retail solution portfolio. Use of PIPE in retail solution ensures high quality of complex sales data coming from POS system. PIPE resides in SAP which can be monitored from via POS Workbench. This document aims to provide an overview of the POS workbench and step by step solution to correct common errors.

POS Workbench

POS data when passed through PIPE goes through intense checking for Profiles which hold currencies of sales and all small codes used in retails POS like Discount types, Transaction types, Taxes, Means of payment, Goods movement type, Financial transaction type and also undergoes validation of articles. PIPE requires all the above values to be maintained prior to process it.

The transaction for PIPE monitoring is /N/POSDW/MON0 where we can display data based on stores and posting date combination.  The selection screen appeared below also gives you flexibility to minimize your data view by selecting only erroneous records, warning and unprocessed records.

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Next Screen

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1. Small Codes Correction

I am showing this examall code error by taking an example of Discount type.

Step 1 (a)

You need to click on red traffic light to get details of error under Sales movement selected for store and posting date combination.

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Click on message tab to see error message. This part of PIPE configuration which we need to see PIPE IMG in the next step.

Step 1 (b)

Discount type coming from POS file is not maintained in PIPE IMG as shown in the below screen shot.

Once this maintained follow steps 2 (b) to process it to receivers i.e. SAP BI RSA7, SAP ERP etc.

We need to maintain this in PIPE IMG under appropriate sections considering in which profile it will assigned to and to transport across landscape. This Information is provided by the business team of organization for which you are implementing. Other small codes and Store can also be treated and corrected in same way.

2. Monitoring of Article and correcting (Do not require transport)

For processing transaction containing article, PIPE checks its availability in material master data in SAP BI.  Here the source of material table generally is business content DataSource from SAP ERP retail or MDM flat file depending on design of retail solution.

Step 2(a)

Click on transaction for details and select the item in which material exist and check that article identifier is loaded in to SAP BI master data table 0MATERIAL.

If this is not maintained in 0MATERIAL, these SKU number needs to be mapped to the corresponding article number and have to be loaded to MDM/ERP followed by 0MATERIAL before this article can be corrected in PIPE.

After this value gets uploaded to 0MATERIAL, you need change the value of article identifier as per the value in 0MATERIAL and save the records. In the next step we need to reprocess this transaction from PIPE.

Step 2(b)

Highlight the erroneous line & select at POS workbench monitoring.

Select the Change task status Icon , to change the status from ‘Error’ to ‘Ready’.

If you have more than one red transaction per store day combinations repeat steps for all. After changing status of all transaction select and process using execute button. This data then will process to corresponding receivers.

3. Other Errors

Here are some more errors which may encounter during PIPE monitoring. The typical messages that monitoring screens display are.

1. ‘Sum of items does not equal the payment sum’. It happens when sum of amount in Item number does not tie back to amount of transaction. The possible cause of it may be problem in XI mapping. You need to compare values in original file and need to correct XI mapping.
2. ‘POS transaction for DD.MM.YYYY, index XXX already exists for DD.MM.YYYY with index XXX’. PIPE does not allow any transaction to be processed twice. This error message comes when you try to processed already processed transaction. If you need to reprocess any set of transaction you need to delete them using transaction /N/POSDW/DELE.

Note:

• In case of stable live environment we rarely get error of Store and Small codes as there is always process do maintain them prior to store opening. The most commonly occurring error is ‘Unknown Material Number’.