B2B AddOn and SFTP PGP (secure connectivity addon) SP1 released
Business to business Add-On and Secure connectivity add-on SP1 is released with lot of new enhancements.
Installation: All existing customers who are on SP0 can use standard SAP tools (MOPZ to download the latest SP) and install it using SUM/JSPM tools. All new customers can directly go to SMP, download SP1 from support package and patches area and install it using SUM/JSPM tool. For more details, please refer to SP1 installation guide on SMP. You should have installed SP1 of secure connectivity Add-On first before installing B2B Add-ON.
Documentation:
- Configuration guides (Application Help) is now available at help.sap.com (along with NetWeaver PI documentation). Corresponding links are:
http://help.sap.com/nw-b2b-addon
http://help.sap.com/nw-secure-connect - Installation/Master/EDI Content/Security guides are available at https://service.sap.com/instguides > SAP NetWeaver > SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration, secure connectivity add-on > SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration, secure connectivity add-on 1.0 SP01/business to business add-on SP1
What’s New:
Secure Connectivity Add-on (SFTP PGP Add-on)
- Operating System Command support has been introduced for both the sender and receiver channel.
- Polling interval has been changed from minutes to seconds
- User defined time configuration option has been introduced for duplicate check
- PGP Module has been enhanced to indicate an error in case of wrong choice or missing algorithm instead of choosing default algo.
Business to business Add-on (B2B Add-on)
All Adapters: Acknowledgment handling and Monitoring:
- A new XI message can be created from the received technical acknowledgment. These options are provided in the receiver communication channels of OFTP, AS2 and sender communication channel of X400. The created XI messages can be configured based on receipt of both negative and positive or only negative acknowledgments. Such XI messages are processed by newly introduced special ack sender communication channel modes in AS2, OFTP and X400 adapters.
- Local message monitoring of PI has been enhanced to support monitoring of acknowledgments as well. You can monitor sent/received technical (MDN, ERP, Delivery Reports) acknowledgements and functional acknowledgments (Control, 997) related to the XI messages via local message monitoring. Both consolidated and detailed status views are available. For more details, refer to SAP Note 1815991.
- Now you can search and view all related messages. You can use this option to display all the correlated or referenced messages (Original bulk message and corresponding split messages by EDI Separator, original message and technical acknowledgment messages created as new XI messages).
- MDN, ERP and Delivery Report definitions are shipped as part of ESR content.
AS2 Adapter:
- AS2 adapter has been enhanced to provide SHA-2 signature algorithm support for messages and MDNs.
- Incoming HTTP(s) authentication is made mandatory.
- Duplicate message check has been introduced on sender channel with user defined time duration based configuration.
OFTP Adapter:
- Duplicate Message check has been introduced on sender channel with user defined time duration based configuration.
- Both sender and receiver channel have been enhanced to provide archiving at different stages (incoming/outgoing raw wired message, encryption/decryption, encoded/decoded).
- Few parameters are made optional in AMD for flexibility.
EDI Separator and Functional Acknowledgments
- Support of CONTRL has been introduced with different levels and flexible configuration options.
- 997 support has been enhanced with multiple configurable options.
- EDI Separator is enhanced to accept any of the four predefined message types EDIFACT, X12, ODETTE, VDA in one communication channel (earlier you had to select from drop down and only once EDI format as supported per receiver communication channel).
New Generic adapter module: New adapter module is introduced that can be used with both sender and receiver channels. It automatically detects the predefined EDI formats supported by SAP and process them accordingly. Now you can use one communication channel for receiving/sending multiple EDI formats.
New Customization UIs: New intuitive UIs have been introduced to maintain, view and customize the EDI content with version control mechanisms. This UI is role based and is restricted by authorized access.
All Converter Modules (including new Generic module) are enhanced to provide new adapter module parameters like encoding, indent, copy etc.
New EDI Content:New EDI messages types have been introduced for VDA (4921) and many more for EDIFCAT. Please refer EDI Content guide available on SMP for more details.
B2B Integration Cockpit: A central page has been created to access all B2B tools (NRO, EDI Content Manager, OFTP Log Viewer). You can access it via http(s)://host:port/b2bic
NRO and Archiving Module: NRO configuration values can now be dyncamically configured/customized by APIs. You can also use these APIs for mass configuration/migration. Archiver module now supports multiple archive files for different use-cases.
Performance Optimizations: Cache optimizations have been done for various EDI converters.
Hi Piyush - Thanks for a very informative article. fyi - the link to the b2b add-on does not appear to be working (http://help.sap.com/nw-b2baddon/).
Cheers - Jeff
Hello Jeff,
Thanks for the information. It is fixed and should work now.
Regards,
Piyush
Very well articulated ...
Good to know that lot more features in store with SP1 for the B2B...
Regards
Rajesh
Nice info Piyush.!
Keep updated with its enhancement and features with more elaborated way in coming days.!
Regards,
Sunil
Hi Piyush. Link for downloading SP1 isnt working or I would say we can't find it to download. Any idea..
Thanks,..
Hello Gaurav,
Please refer the below SAP notes for the required information.
Regards,
Piyush
Hi Piyush,
Many Thanks for yours response, few thing i wanted to check.Please Advise.
1) With SP1 SAP has added functionality of CONTRL message which can be auto generated in response to an inbound message received by ours system.
But has SAP added any fucntionality to receive/process inbound CONTRL/997 messages like if customer wants to send us CONTRL/997 for the invoice they have received from us, Please suggest if there is any SAP standard solution or how to proceed.
2) While creating Sender communication channel for EDI Separator for EDIFACT message, I could find ZZZ as sender/receiver qualifier provided in Drop down but no "ZZ" which means mutually defined, is it something we need to raise OSS with SAP.
Thanks,
Gaurav
Hello Gaurav,
1) Incoming CONTRL was already supported in SP0. It is just like any other incoming EDIFACT message and you can use the EDIFACT module to convert it into XML and process it the way you want.
2) You can use * from the drop down to get ZZ processed. If you want specifically ZZ, then you can raise an OSS message ans ask for a fix.
Regards,
Piyush
Hi Piyush,
Many Thanks for yours response.
Reg1) If we process inbound CONTRL message in this way then we may have to map it to some custom mapping or someother way, I was expecting SAP would have provided some standard solution Like I had earlier use one Middleware called as GENTRAN from (Sterling Commerce/later IBM) so using that middleware once u send outbound message the message status will show "Awaiting Acknowledgement" and once we receive 997/CONTRL from partner for same interchange control / GCN/Messaegtype/Document number automatically status of document will change to "Acknowledged" automatically and every things was written in GENTRAN itself to support this, as well as that tool has fucntionality to manually reconcile documents .
I was actually expecting some standard way by SAP like this so we do not have to keep track of Ack's.
Reg2) Thanks .. I will open up a case with SAP.
Thanks,
Gaurav
Hello Gaurav,
There are two parts:
1) Monitoring of acks.
Yes. That is the functionality provided by B2B AddOn as well. PI 7.31 SP7 local monitor is enhanced to display the status of functional as well as technical acknowledgment. You can see the modes like waiting, required, not required, received etc along with the status.
Similarly for outgoing CONTRL messages, you can see the status in monitoring wherther CONTRL was requsted or not and whether it was sent or not and status which describes Accepted, Rejected or partially accepted .
2) Processing of acks
In case you want to process incoming CONTRL, you are free to define mapping for it wherever you want to map it to (either back to ERP, or some file system etc.). Incoming CONTRL will be processed as any other message type
Regards,
Piyush
Is a key of 1024 or 2048 supported?
Yes, it is supported since SP0 release. You need to install unlimited JCE policy as mentioned in installation guide.
Regards,
Piyush
Nice blog! I'm already a fan of SP1 🙂
I also wrote a blog about it: http://scn.sap.com/community/b2b-integration/blog/2013/04/23/the-sap-pi-b2b-add-on-edi-capabilities-unveiled
Kind regards
Dimitri
Hi Piyush,
In our Sender AS2 adapter ,we don't get option of Duplicate Handling ,so We downloaded B2B Addon toolkit SP1 ,even then I don't see option of duplicate handling .
Could you please throw some light here .
Thanks,
Madhu
Hello Madhu,
Not any one but all your components should be on SP1 for secure connectivity add-on and B2B Add-ON as these are dependent. Toolkit is just one component. If any one is not correct, it can lead to inconsistencies. It is clearly writenn in the B2B SP Upgrad/update guide on SMP.
a) You need to make sure all the SCA are on SP1 with latest patches.
b) You need to make sure if you have imported latest SP1 AMD in ESR of all adapters from SMP
c) And, also .b2b content files for SP1. It is recommended to use SP1 content files as it contains many new fields and new message types. Your existing configured scenarioson SP0 will run as-is. No change is required
You will get the option of Duplicate check in AS2 sender channel.
Regards,
Piyush
Is there a support for AS4 protocol?
Hi Piyush,
Nice Article with components wise summary 🙂
Thanks,
Siva