A Succession Management Tool for SAP Sourcing

[Former Member]

Definition

What happens if a potential SAP Sourcing user leaves the company? How will the ownership of their documents they worked on be reflected and tackled going forward?

Typically SAP Sourcing already does, built-in, provide possibilities to do this. I.e. typically you could either do an Ownership change of a business document via the UI (which certainly would only make sense if but a few documents were to be changed) or alternatively for large scale changes imports can be served with this purpose. SAP note 1092321 (Can you update collaborators on documents) does elaborate on this approach. While working however it may be time-consuming to perform the necessary steps to fill the import template and hence, should this be a recurring task, a more proper UI solution could be thought of.

This is where this implementation of a Succession Management Tool (in this context to be understood as a tool handy to change Ownership on business documents within SAP Sourcing) comes in. Note that this is based on this post here (Leavers and joiners policy ideas) if you wanted to investigate the original idea.

Installation

This implementation is delivered as follows in the attachment called (SMT with UDO - please rename the .txt extension again to .zip as this had to be done to be able to attach this here):

a) a system manager user workbook (as the SMT tool is using the User Defined Master Data 2 object by default)

b) an enterprise manager user workbook that contains the rest of the logic

c) the actual scripts that are being used and are referenced in the "script_definition" tab of the enterprise manager workbook

For the "script_definition" tab in the enterprise manager workbook make sure to check/adapt this to your local preferences/settings. Note the business context and the location of the scripts. The scripts need to be in a directory that the application server, where SAP Sourcing is deployed, can access.

Workflow

1) Log in as the Enterprise Manager user and find on the Master Data tab the SMT tool

2) Create new ownership change documents that are being used to trigger the ownership change. Here you can also see the customized columns.

3) The UI is split as follows - the actual logic is to be found under "Scripts" (once in "Edit" mode) whilst the from and to Ownership change is found below. The extension collections do show the Determined Documents for change(s) and also, once updated, will update their respective detail extension collection with the document/template ids that have been changed.

4) Determine the documents by using (in "Edit" mode) the respective "Determine..." scripts

5) This will then look like this

6) Then let`s update (aka change the owner to the from/to values) e.g. the Projects

7) Which yields the ID of the changed document

Note: In general if you have access to it I found it advisable to use the Enterprise Manager user for this task. If you do use a normal user (either of the affected / from the from/to fields) you a) may not get any notifications of the ownership change and b) if the security profile settings are not configured you may run into security issues upon ownership change attempt.

I hope this idea/implementation can help in managing this particular occurrence with the SAP Sourcing application. As always, with all posts, remember that this is provided "as is" and that as such no responsibility for any damages incurred can be taken. If you are in doubt please contact a SAP Sourcing consultant or similar resource.

Regards,

Joerg Lippmann