What is new in SAP Application Interface Framework 4.0

SAP has shipped a new release of the SAP Application Interface Framework in April this year. The new features that have been introduced with release 4.0 are mainly around data protection and privacy requirements. With the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union which becomes effective from 25th of May 2018 on, customers need to carefully plan their activities to control and protect personal data in their system landscape. SAP Application Interface Framework can actually help to comply with data protection regulations in general and GDPR requirements in particular.

How AIF can help to control and protect personal data

In a nutshell, the following features and enhancements have been shipped with release 4.0:

• The Master Guide has been enhanced with a new chapter about Data Protection and Privacy, see Master guide at help.sap.com
• A new object has been introduced to define external contacts
• Read access log has been introduced that logs any access of personal data
• The change log has been enhanced for logging any changes of the content of data messages, value mappings, and external contacts
• New archiving objects and archiving programs for data messages, file adapter, and all related data
• New SAP Information Lifecycle Management objects for data messages, value mappings, and external contacts which allows you to manage the blocking and deletion of personal data according to your legal obligations

Besides this, there are a couple of other features which have been supported already in previous releases which can help to protect your personal data such as limiting access to personal data via dedicated authorization objects, key field-specific authorization objects, hide structures and particular fields of structures, etc.

For more information about the new features, check out the release notes.

Also check out the latest blog from my colleague Britta Mangei about how to use the AIF Read Log functionality. And there are more blogs to come soon.

What else is new?

You may know that SAP Application Interface Framework has been started as a customer development project a couple of years back. Since January this year, the SAP Application Interface Framework has moved from custom development to the standard development organization. SAP Application Interface Framework is an integral part of SAP S/4HANA for interface development, error and monitoring handling. And it is also shipped as add-on for the SAP Business Suite.

Hope the new SAP Application Interface Framework features are adding value for your business. Stay tuned.