Introduction

Within the lifecycle of an electronic document (a.k.a. eDocument), errors may occur and will be returned to eDocument processors after eDocuments have been submitted to legal/tax authorities/agencies (thereinafter referred to as tax authorities) in compliance with government regulations.

If you are unfamiliar with the SAP Document and Reporting Compliance solution, and you want to know how this solution could help with your electronic document processing and your business, you may first check this blog:  A Walkthrough of SAP Document and Reporting Compliance App: Manage Electronic Documents

If you have tried our eDocument Cockpit on SAPGUI before, now let us treat you with our newest Fiori experience: Manage Electronic Documents. From eDocument Cockpit to Manage Electronic Documents: Better user experience, more powerful features

Now, eDocument processors must find out what went wrong, and where it happened, correct them, and resubmit them to tax authorities. They repeat this process over and over again until no more errors present themselves in SAP Document and Reporting Compliance.

Error statuses slow down a process, thus decreasing efficiency. The Manage Electronic Documents app comes with Error Analysis that assists you in troubleshooting errors, so that errors can be handled faster, and with much less effort. Now let’s take a deeper look at how Error Analysis came to be of help.

A Real Case

Chandler, eDocument processor at a huge multibillion-dollar global enterprise. Having businesses with their suppliers and customers gave them hundreds and thousands of business documents every day that need to be made compliant with government regulations and submitted to tax authorities. So obviously, they chose SAP Document and Reporting Compliance solution to help them with document management and submission.

One morning, Chandler arrived at the office and went into the Manage Electronic Documents app.

Document process status overview in the app

“Okay… 126 document errors need to be fixed… not as many as yesterday…”

Chandler clicked on one erroneous document under an Australia company code and went to the Document Details page. Under the Attachments tab, there’s the error message in the format of XML, which tax authorities sent back.

Document Details of one eDocument

This is what the error message XML looks like.

Error XMLs

“Is this even for HUMANS to read?! I feel like I’m being punished here… Anyway, looks like the error message is hidden under <DeliveryReport>, then under <Error>, then under <ErrorText>, then under <SchematronValidationResult>, then … got it. under <message> tag… OK… now I find them.”

Monica, Chandler’s manager.
“Chandler, take care of document errors in Italy first! It’s very urgent!”

“I hate Italian error messages! I don’t know Italian! …  and where to find the message in the gibberish XML. It is SO different from the error XMLs of Australia”

Error XMLs

Seems like the error messages come in different structures in XML because we have different tax authorities in different countries and they operate in different ways. This does trigger a huge problem if eDocument processors work on multiple country cases like Chandler.

“This is too much work. I want to quit! I spent 4 hours going into each of those 126 documents to find out what went wrong with them. And now, I have to spend, maybe, another 2 hours to email each document’s responsible person to let them fix the issues.”

Error Analysis to Help

Let’s give Chandler a break. Luckily, we have Error Analysis now.

Key message extraction

Error Analysis has error extraction capability built in. The Manage Electronic Documents app now displays the most important error message content. Users don’t need to go through the error message XMLs that are not designed for human beings to read. The app extracts and displays only the business-oriented information for an error message with both business-oriented information and technical details (lengthy XML details).

Extracted error message in “Error Analysis Results” column

“Wow! Now I don’t need to go into the XMLs. I can instantly know what went wrong with those documents at first glance”

Easy Notification

If you think someone can fix the errors with certain documents, now it’s easier to notify the person about the erroneous document. You can send them an email with document details from the Error Analysis page easily. You don’t need to copy the link to the document and compose the email content yourself anymore.

“Send Email” action button  

With Error Analysis, you can choose one or more documents on the Error Analysis page and send an email to the source document creator or the person you specify with just one click, and you don’t need to jump out of the Manage Electronic Documents app.

It didn’t stop just there. The Manage Electronic Documents app wants error handling even more friendly to eDocument processors like Chandler.

Document Grouping

The documents can be grouped by their error messages.

Documents Grouped by error messages

What’s more awesome is that you can Group Documents by Error Code. The Error Code column on the Error Analysis page shows the error code for eDocuments. If a document has multiple errors belonging to different error codes, then the system concatenates the error codes and displays the concatenated error code in the Error Code column. You can group eDocuments with errors by error code displayed in the Error Code column. Simply choose Settings  Group and then select Error Code. This way, you identify all the documents with the same errors at a glance. You can find error details in the Error Analysis Results column.

Documents grouped by Error Code

You can also select a different grouping attribute that meets your business needs in the Group dialog.

“These documents could be handled in the same way.  Now, I can handle them with just one click! I will directly inform Dan of those documents he created. Stupid Dan! He made the same mistake 25 times! If I didn’t have the Error Analysis feature, I would have to click into those 25 documents before I found out it was all him!”

Document Grouping with Custom Error Category
with Automatic Notification*

Now, you may ask if documents with different error messages/codes can be grouped together on the basis that they could be handled in the same way. Why not?

You can group eDocuments with errors by custom error categories, such as master data error and communication error. Error categories, which display in the form of tabs, are the top-level groupings of documents on the Error Analysis page. On a tab, you can find a list of the documents with the errors belonging to that error category. You can further group the documents there, for example, by error code.

In addition, you can define the person responsible, their email address, and a solution proposal for an error category. This information is displayed on the top of the tab for that error category. It helps users fix errors or find the person responsible easily.

Documents grouped by customized error category: Configuration Issue

“Some errors pop up constantly. I know how to solve them. I know who is responsible. Now with some simple configuration steps, those issues will be handled by the Manage Electronic Documents app automatically. It identifies the documents with those errors, groups them, finds the responsible persons, and notifies them automatically*. My workloads are cut in half! ”

To achieve that, all you need to do is two simple configuration steps:

Configuration Step: Define Error Categories

Configuration Step: Assign Error Codes to Error Categories

J, the responsible person
“Oh, yeah. I did get the notification in the Launchpad and it directly took me to the eDocument”

Notification in Fiori Launchpad *

* Automatic Notification feature is planned for release, coming soon.

Spoiler Alert: Intelligent Error Analysis

In a future Manage Electronic Documents app release, document errors could be automatically categorized in terms of how document errors are handled, with no need for manual configuration. This is powered by machine learning technology.

“Does it mean that I would have to do literally nothing at all for my work??? ”

I guess…. in a way… yes.

Conclusion

Error Analysis in Manage Electronic Documents app makes eDocument processing faster, and with much less effort. Just try it!

If you have any question, you can also check

– A Walkthrough of SAP Document and Reporting Compliance App: Manage Electronic Documents

– From eDocument Cockpit to Manage Electronic Documents: Better user experience, more powerful features

– More Blogs on SAP Document and Reporting Compliance 

or simply just leave a comment to me!