Technical Articles
SAP PO B2B EDI Content uploader
Hi experts,
This time I want to share another experience regarding to the SAP PO B2B add-on, in certain scenarios you may need to use version & messages that there are not present in the SAP PO B2B add-on, and unfortunately the official SAP answer is “do it yourself using message editor” part of the SAP PO B2B add-on, that answer could fit if you have 1 message to add and you want to take the risk to do it all manually, but if you have 30 missing messages you need another approach( automation!!!!! ).
Message editor:
Message details:
I was investigating why SAP force you to do it manually via “ message editor“, and I discovered that the “b2b” file that you import/export in/out of the EDI content manager is “encrypted“.
So for most of the people that is enough to start to doing it manually or apply another solutions( java mappings or whatever a developer imagine to make it work ).
My personal approach was to see how to the encryption& decryption of “b2b” files works in the system, and what kind of data is part of the “b2b” files, after understanding them, it was pretty easy to build a custom tool to generate “b2b” content files to automate the generation of EDI messages for the SAP PO B2B add-on.
This custom tool is capable to read EDI message definitions from an external middleware, map the segments, fields, hierarchy of the messages generating a unique “b2b” file to be imported in your SAP PO system in just one click.
My questions for SAP are:
-Why did you encrypt the “b2b” files?, why did you close a powerful door to automate the import of the EDI content into the SAP PO B2B add-on?.
And just a few questions for the SAP PO consultants reading this:
-Did you have this issue?, how did you solve it?( manually?, java mapping?, creative solution?).
Not forget be curious! ?
Max.
Maybe solutions are not considering mass activities or preload activities. Maybe you have to inquiry how SAP integrated this B2B Cockpit to its solutions. Generally, SAP buy parts of small solutions that fit its requirements and if the work is done is ok for them. They are not considering to facilitate things. In this case they asume this will be a custom requisite.
Take into consideration that if SAP would like to make things easy, SAPLink for example, should be an standard utility. The point is, this is considered a Z thing. Z things are not part of SAP. So, your developed add-on, for SAP, is a Z thing that only your client need.
I'm more of the way of think that, Z things are not only for someone, I think Z things are the "everybody" things, they are solutions that nowadays are problems.
Posts like this are this kind of things collaborating with solutions for the problems.
😀