PPM – HCM Integration with Business Partners

Overview about PPM resources & business partners are explained in the below link and details about HCM integration will be explained in this blog.

PPM Resources (Business Partners) – Different ways of creation

One of the options of creating business partners is through HCM integration. This integration is quite simple with few steps as given below.

1. Set-up integration
2. Automatic creation of business partners for new employees
3. Run report to create business partners for existing employees

1) Set-up Integration:

Configuration of Integration can be done directly by maintaining the system table ‘T77S0” with group ‘HRALX’ or by following below IMG paths.

SPRO–>Personnel Management–>Personnel Administration–>Interfaces and Integration–>Integration with SAP Business Partner–>

SPRO–>SAP Portfolio & Project Management–>Project Management–>Resource Management–>Business Partner–>Set Up Integration with HR

• The integration is activated with the main switch HRALX/ HRAC = X
• To activate the integration between business partners and employees addresses, switch HRALX/ OADRE=ON must be set
• To activate the integration between business partners and employees, switch HRALX/ OBPON=ON must be set
• To replicate employees from HR system to business partners, switch HRALX/ PBPHR=ON must be set.
• To assign numbers for the business partners, switch HRALX/ PNUMB= 3 must be set (PNUMB=1 is used for automatic internal number generation for BP, PNUMB=2 is used for specific number range and PNUMB=3 is used to have prefix characters with specific number range)
• If HRALX/ PNUMB- 2 or 3 is selected, then HRALX/ PSUBG must be activated with the specific number range interval
• To activate the integration between business partners and employee user id, switch HRALX/ USRAC = X must be set
• To import qualifications & assign it to business partners, HRALS/PQUAL=X must be set

If the switch HRALX/ PNUMB is assigned with switch value 2 or 3, Specific number range specified by customer in “Transaction code-BUCF” and “Table T77S0- HRALX/PSUBG” is considered for creating the business partners.

Maintain number ranges for business partners

The number ranges for the Business Partner can be maintained either through TC- BUCF or by using the below IMG path.

SPRO–>Cross Application Components–>SAP Business Partner–>Business Partner–>Basic Settings–>Number ranges and Groupings

A new number range as required can be created here and then it has to be linked in BP grouping. But I always recommend to match HR-Personnel number’s number range, so that we can easily identify the employee using business partner numbers also. If you are configuring HRALX/PNUMB=3, then you need to add the prefix as you wish in the number range (In the above screenshot, I have used EE has the prefix for identifying employee business partners – Prefix is added to the number range, so that when business partners are created, the number of the business partner will have an prefix “EE-Employee” and next 8 numbers will be the HR personnel number)

Maintain BP grouping

Once number range is created, a BP grouping has to be created which is in turn linked to HRALX/PSUBG.

The number range object and the interval used to assign numbers are dependent on the switch value. For switch value 1, the default internal interval is used. Otherwise (for switch value 2 or 3), the interval is defined by switches HRALX/PSUBG and HRALX/PNUMB.

Additionally for switch values 2 or 3, a grouping must be created (transaction BUC2) for these intervals. The system can then connect the grouping and number range interval, the name of the grouping must be identical to the name of the corresponding number range interval (the name of the grouping is in the first column of the table)

If these steps are carried out successfully, then the integration with HCM is complete and our next step is validate whether business partners are getting created for new employees and creation of BP’s for existing employees.

2) Automatic creation of business partners for new employees:

System will automatically create a Business Partner whenever a new Personnel number (New employee hiring: PA40) is created in HR, within the number range provided in backend system. To enable this, the switch HRALX/ PBPON=ON must be set.

The above switch also helps to transfer all the changes made to info types and objects. Standard system transfers the field values of the Info types IT0000, 0001, 0002, 0006, 0105 and HRP1000.

3) Create business partners for existing employees:

SAP has provided a standard program to create Business Partner objects for existing employees.

ECC: HR_SYNC_PERSON or HRALXSYNC

The HRALXSYNC report should be executed using either the Central Person (CP) id or the employee id of the person (If do not provide any input & execute, then all CP/Employee will be used as input for creation).

Following are Pros and Cons of this HCM integration…

Pros

• Time & effort of manually creating Business partners for all employees is saved

Cons

• If BP’s are manually created for an employee before integration, then when you run the report, the integration creates one more BP for the same employee.

That’s it as far as the integration is concerned. Hoping that, this will help our community members and feedback to improve this content is welcomed.