How to add custom BO facets to C4C Account 360 screen – Part 1

Our Cloud professional services team recently brought the customer live on Cloud for Customer project. The customer needed  to standardize their selling process and provide greater transparency to their pipeline. One key requirement was to provide visibility to sales history  from a disparate system  and to capture sales forecast all in one place. The customer had decided that they wanted to have custom data objects that could be placed into the C4C account  360 views.

The team explored the  capabilities  of using a Cloud Data Source within the Business Analytics work center;  however the customer required additional UI functionality as well as data validation rules.  Therefore, two custom objects were created.  One object was to capture Sales Actuals and the second captured Sales Budgets /Forecasts that were read only except for forecast column that could be edited.

Here is how we set out to provide this data to users –

We will describe how to develop and deploy this Sales History and Planned Sales in SAP C4C solution.

In summary, the steps are:

1. Develop a new Work Center in C4C to manage each
   of the new business objects – Sales History BO and Planned Sales BO
2. Develop a list UI component to display of BO in
   the Accounts Tab
3. Implement the file input of each BO
4. Configure the file input job in C4C

Since both the Sales History Bo and Planned Sales BOs are quite similar, our guide will focus on the steps for Sales History BO.

1. Develop a new Work Center for Sales History.

In the SAP Cloud Applications Studio, we started with a new solution, and added a new BO.  We defined the Sales History BO as:

import AP.Common.GDT as apCommonGDT;
import AP.FO.BusinessPartner.Global;
import AP.PC.IdentityManagement.Global;
import AP.FO.ProductDataMaintenance.Global as apProdGlobal;

businessobject SalesHistory raises MsgProductErr, MsgSoldtoErr, MsgEndUserErr, MsgEmployeeErr,
                     MsgProductBlank, MsgSoldtoBlank, MsgEndUserBlank, MsgEmployeeBlank {

message MsgProductErr text “Product &1 does not exist” : ProductInternalID;
message MsgSoldtoErr  text “Sold To &1 does not exist” : BusinessPartnerInternalID;
message MsgEndUserErr text “End User &1 does not exist” : BusinessPartnerInternalID;
message MsgEmployeeErr text “SalesPerson ID &1 does not exist” : apCommonGDT:EmployeeID;

message MsgProductBlank text “Product must be filled for record &1” : ID;
message MsgSoldtoBlank text “Soldto must be filled for record &1” : ID;
message MsgEndUserBlank text “EndUser must be filled for record &1” : ID;
message MsgEmployeeBlank text “Employee must be filled for record &1” : ID;

  [AlternativeKey]
  [Label (“Sales History Key”)]
  element SHkey : ID;
  [Label (“Fiscal Period”)]
  element fiscalper : YearMonth;
  [Label (“Calendar Period”)]
  element calendarper : YearMonth;
  [Label (“Sold To”)]
  element soldto  : BusinessPartnerInternalID ;
  [Label (“End User”)]
  element enduser  : BusinessPartnerInternalID ;
  [Label (“Product Family”)]
  element productfamily : ID ;
  [Label (“Product Category”)]
  element productcategory : ID ;
  [Label (“Product Type”)]
  element producttype  : ID ;
  [Label (“Product ID”)]
  element productID  : apCommonGDT:ProductInternalID ;
  [Label (“SalesPerson”)]
  element salesperson  : apCommonGDT:EmployeeID ;
  [Label (“Transaction Date”)]
  element transactiondate : Date;
  [Label (“Weight MT Actual”)]
  element weight_mt_act  : DecimalValue ;
  [Label (“Weight ST Actual “)]
  element weight_st_act  : DecimalValue ;
  [Label (“Revenue”)]
  element revenue_act   : Amount ;
  [Label (“Est. Avg EBITDA”)]
  element est_avg_ebitda  : Amount ;
  [Label (“Avg EBITDA”)]
  element avg_ebitda_percent  : Percent ;

    // for end-user only
  association ToEndUserCustomer to Customer;
  association ToMaterialSH to Material ;
  association ToRespEmployee [0,1] to Employee;
  association ToCustomerSH to Customer ;

  // action
  action DeleteSH ;
}

In the above ABSL code, we have defined the error messages needed for validation, the structure of the BO, the associations for related data in other master BOs, and an action to handle deletion of a row.

Once this BO is saved and activated, do a right-mouse click on the .BO and select Create Screens (see below).  We are using the automated screen creation to setup a full set of Work Center (WC), OWL, TT, TI and other screens with navigation fully linked and working.

The screen type we want is the Screen Scenario with Thing-Based Navigation:

Once the screens are created, be sure to activate the entire solution.

The newly created WC will provide the ability to update data in the BO, add rows and delete rows for administrative use only, especially if incorrect data was imported.   The user will not have access to this WC.

This is a good milepost to test the Sales History WC.  You can edit your user id, and add the WC.

2. Develop a list UI component to display of BO in the Accounts Tab

In the Accounts 360 screen, you can add a new facet (aka tab) by using available slots in the Studio on the Account TI screen object.  In this new facet, we can place a custom UI component – called embedded component (EC) – that displays a list of the Sales History rows.

Since the Account 360 screen is showing only 1 account, we will need to send current account ID as a parameter to theEC to retrieve only the Sales history for that account.

First, let’s build this EC, which is a list of the Sales history and will accept a parameter.

• In the solution, we add a New Item from the Embedded Component type.

• The object SalesHistoryEC.EC.uicomponent is added to the solution, and double-clicking on the .EC.uicomponent will bring up the UI Designer.

• In the UI Designer, drag and drop the Advanced List Pane to the left side – into the UI box. The Advanced List Pane is available from the Toolbox.

Afterwards, it looks like this with 3 columns:

We update the 3 columns and add the remaining ones.

Click on the upper left corner of the list box – see below.

Click to go the Properties tab.

Click on ChildElements->ListColumns.  It brings up the Column editor – see below.

Let’s map the Column to one of the data elements in the BO.

Click on Data Information->Value->./Column – and it brings up the DependentProperty
Editor

In the Select BO-Model prompt, select the Sales History BO.  Then select the field that this UI column maps to.

In this case, we will choose the field fiscalper which shows the fiscal period.

It will prompt to use the associated Backend Text.  Click Yes.

Repeat the above association steps for the remaining 2 fields.

We will walk to add a new column and an example of showing the Product Description, available by association we defined in the BO, since the user may not be familiar with the Product ID.

Click the Addbutton.  It adds a generic named Column as shown below.

Click on Data Information->Value->./Column – and it brings up the DependentProperty Editor

We look in the BO list of attributes – one of which is the ToMaterialSH, which is our gateway to the Material BO and the description text.  See below.

We continue to add the remaining fields of the BO to the EC.

As a last step, make sure all the columns are read-only by setting the Behavior->ReadOnly value to true, as shown here:

In Part 2, we will cover how to create the query to retrieve the data list based on the customer ID – being shown in the C4C screen in context.

Please note – the associations will need some coding when each Sales record to maintain the relationship to the other master data BOs.  I leave this as an exercise for the reader.