Welcome to the year 2023 – another year of numerous innovations and enhancements supporting your journey to the digital enterprise. In this era of growing globalization and digitalization, the fastest way to adapt to the ever-changing environment is going SaaS. Therefore, next to a new name and the announcement of the general availability of our SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302 release, I have another announcement to make today:
After more than 30 releases from our former COO of SAP S/4HANA and Head of Product Success, Sven Denecken, it is an honor to walk you through the highlights of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302 release in this blog post from my account. One thing that never changes: Our team of experts keep working tirelessly to offer our valued cloud customers a large variety of innovations to help your business run tomorrow smoother than yesterday.
Take a look at the video below to get a first glimpse into the many, many highlights we ship in this release:
https://youtu.be/G-EH-IdPBUo
SAP User Experience
Like last release, collaboration is top of mind in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302. The first features for the Collaborative Cloud ERP bring collaboration to the next level: I am happy to announce that the “Share as Chat” option as part of the Microsoft Teams Integration is now generally available. In our last blog post, Sven explained how this feature facilitates collaboration among all SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition users by allowing you to share content based on SAP Fiori elements apps directly to Microsoft Teams.
Additionally, we are rolling out the “Share as Tab” option through an Early Adopter Care Program. This feature makes collaboration even easier by letting you share business data with your co-workers through Microsoft teams channels as Tabs in real time! Your co-workers can instantly work on the given tasks and make informed decisions thanks to better visibility and simple access to up-to-date filtered information.
Sign up here to test this feature and provide your feedback before anyone else!
Find more UX innovations in maria.silipo's blog post and video.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_0i61kdt6
Figure 1: Sign up via the Early Adopter Care program to test the next feature of the Collaborative ERP; the "Share as Tab" option in Microsoft Teams.
We stay with the theme of collaboration with the next innovation: With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2208, we introduced a seamless integration with Google Workspace, which makes exchanging and editing SAP data in real time super easy. It allows you to connect core SAP software operations in the cloud with Google Sheets. The process works as follows: First, you download a template to Google Workspace and open it in Google Sheets. After filling in all relevant info, you can then upload and post it to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.
In the last release, the table export and table import for General Journal Entries have been released as first scenarios. Building on this functionality, end users now have the possibility to choose their desired format for the table export and import from Google Workspace. Additionally, the file browser dialogue provides some additional features such as sorting and the creation of new folders. Moreover, the table import from Google Sheets to SAP S/4HANA is now also available in the ‘Upload Tax Rates’ application and users can decide where the template should be stored using the file browser dialogue.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_10uhb7lt
Figure 2: We've made updates to the integration with Google Workspace to let you easily select where to download and upload the template to via a file browser dialogue.
Finance
In the finance area, we’re introducing our new business process for Engineer to Order (ETO). This process is enabled based on valuated project stock to fulfill the needs of sales order-based projects with product and system. It begins when the company receives a sales order with the specifications for a new product and connects the required steps between a project and its follow-up processes such as sales, purchasing, and manufacturing, ensuring successful project management and controlling. The ETO-process provides full costs and revenue insights at project level for a valued project stock scenario and supports project profitability analysis based on event-based revenue recognition and event-based product costing solutions. This end-to-end process bears some great advantages in the finance area such as viewing the event-based production cost postings on a project including overhead, variance, WIP, conducting event-based revenue recognition, and running margin analysis of the project’s profitability.
Check out ulrich.hauke's blog post and watch his video to find out more.
Figure 3: The new business process for Engineer to Order (ETO) helps to fulfill the needs of sales order-based projects with product and system.
Developer Extensibility
We keep strengthening our developer extensibility options by allowing you to easily create your own ABAP code on top of the code SAP is shipping. On September 1, 2022, our SaaS solution went live with the three-system landscape for new customers, providing more flexibility to cover the ever-changing business needs. With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302, we offer more than 4,700 APIs and almost 300 released objects which you can leverage for your development projects. Visit the SAP Extensibility Explorer and try it out for yourself! Learn how to create your own custom code and find sample scenarios which are published there.
Figure 4: New developer extensibility options make it possible to create your own ABAP code on top of the code SAP is shipping.
Manufacturing
The new ‘Capacity Evaluation’ SAP Fiori app for capacity planning & scheduling is all about flexibility! This app offers more flexible options for capacity analysis to better suit your area of interest by providing you with an overview of offered or available capacity based on a flexible defined timeframe. For more detailed information, you can get insights on offered or available capacity based on flexible aggregation options, too!
Read this blog post by gerhard.welker and watch his video to learn more.
Figure 5: The new 'Capacity Evaluation' SAP Fiori app offers more flexible options for capacity analysis to better suit your area of interest.
Supply Chain
This release brings a new feature for the ‘Transfer – In Plant’ app: It is now possible to scan barcodes which are configured with GS1 barcode standard. For this, you can scan barcodes with your device’s built-in camera as well as an external scanner. This new feature helps you to scan combinations of materials, batches, or GTINs, and enables a faster and more-efficient processing of inventory operations.
You can find more details in this blog post by gerhard.welker and this video by m.oertelt.
Figure 6: You can now easily scan barcodes with the new feature for the 'Transfer – In Plant' app.
Service
In in-house repair, we give you the ability to consume serialized parts through service and repair confirmation. The feature allows efficient tracking and increased transparency of spare parts consumed during repair and service operations. During repair and service confirmation, a service technician will be able to enter the serial numbers for stock service parts in the confirmation line item. Once the status of the confirmation is set to ‘Completed’, the serial numbers are posted to the goods movement for the service part. As a pre-condition, the service parts should have a serial number profile assigned with the serialization procedure MMSL in the product master data.
Read this blog post by dequan.xu to find out more.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_otwvm1gw
Figure 7: Through the in-house repair feature, it is possible to track and increase the transparency of spare parts consumed during repair and service operations.
Governance, Risk, and Compliance
As you might know, SAP Financial Compliance Management is our controls solution in the cloud and offers a rich predefined business content for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition. The beauty of the new GRC business content hub for SAP Financial Compliance Management is that it allows partners to also become business content providers by building own business content which they can sell as standardized business content packages on the SAP Store to a multitude of customers. And for customers, the GRC business content hub means that they enjoy a much larger portfolio of business content that they can consume on demand.
Check out this blog post by katrin.deissner and watch her video to learn more.
Figure 8: The GRC business content hub lets you build and share business content easily.
Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management
Prior to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302, the production order-related costs in an Engineer-to-Order scenario used to reflect in the project only once the delivery and goods issue to the customer have been fulfilled. Now we’re enabling the display of production order cost in the project cost report. From this release on, by including the production orders in the project cost report, the project financial controller gets visibility into real time costs recorded against the production order. The aggregated view gives an overall statistical view of the total costs incurred against the project at any given point in time. Production Orders are displayed in the project hierarchy along with planned costs and actual costs. Also, the line-item levels provide details to gain further insights for both WBS and production order and in case the project financial controller wants to see more details, it is possible to navigate from the project cost report to the ‘Production Order’ app.
Find out more in corina.reisenauer’s blog post and video.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_9wwq8kml
Figure 9: With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302, it is now possible to display the production order cost in the project cost report.
Professional Services
In the area of Professional Services, we ship an enhanced search help for WBS elements in Concur. In the past, in order to add a WBS element to an expense report in Concur, the traveler had to pick the WBS element from a list of WBS elements which had been replicated to Concur. Now, the traveler is offered a search help that allows them to search WBS elements directly in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition system. The enhanced search help utilizes the most recent date and adheres to the WBS element access rules which are set up in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition system. It considers staffing information and limits the results and selection fields to those WBS elements that the traveler is allowed to see and use.
Read more about this innovation in this blog post and video by katharina.stopf.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_48bj8sxd
Figure 10: An enhanced search help for WBS elements in Concur allows you to search WBS elements directly in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition system.
Solution Order Management
In solution order management, we have enhanced our customers’ ability to sell solutions by providing an out-of-the-box integration to SAP CPQ. In SAP CPQ, salespeople can create complex product configurations and quotes more efficiently. With this new integration, the full set of CPQ capabilities can be leveraged to generate solution quotes from which solution orders can be created. Configurable and non-configurable sales and service contract products are supported. The integration also supports the initial creation as well as read, update, and delete operations when integrating SAP CPQ with solution order management through an OData API.
Check out this blog post by ghutcheon and watch his video for more details.
Figure 11: The integration with SAP CPQ enhances your abilities to sell solutions.
Sales
In sales, we enable you to configure role-based access to price and cost details in sales orders. With this feature, you can set up the system to automatically control the access that business users have to price elements in a sales order header or item. The feature affects price elements in the price elements area on user interfaces for sales orders. The system controls the access based on your configuration of access levels and your settings for any role that has the business catalog Sales - Sales Order Processing (SAP_SD_BC_SO_PROC_MC) assigned. This way, it provides you with the flexibility to restrict access to sensitive price and cost information and to control change capabilities in sales order processes.
Read christian.vogler2’s blog post and watch his video for further information.
Figure 12: With this feature, it is possible to configure role-based access to price and cost details in sales orders.
Asset Management
When I mentioned that we are all about collaboration in this release, I was not promising too much. Also here, we have an innovation focusing on collaboration: We are facilitating external collaboration with service providers and subcontractors using external catalogs. In the last release, we have made it possible to call up external catalogs directly from a maintenance order and copy components and services from a catalog to an order operation. However, until now only the configuration options in the ‘Settings for Web Services’ app were available. To better meet the requirements in maintenance management, several new configuration activities have now been included in your configuration environment. For instance, you can assign the specified catalogs to one or more combinations of maintenance order types and maintenance planning plants.
Learn more in this blog post by gerhard.welker.
Figure 13: In this release, we facilitate external collaboration with service providers and subcontractors using external catalogs.
Sourcing and Procurement
With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302, we deliver a dunning reminder for purchase orders to support a purchaser in creating and sending goods or services delivery reminders to their business partners to remind them of overdue delivery dates. The purchaser can print or email the dunning or urging letters with unfulfilled quantities and overdue dates. This offers an improved interaction between buyers and suppliers to ensure timely goods delivery or timely fulfilment of services while minimizing the manual workload that comes with those tasks.
Check out katharina.doerr’s blog post and her video for more information about this feature.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_s9tmzh7v
Figure 14: In this release, we deliver a dunning reminder for purchase orders to support a purchaser in creating and sending goods or service delivery reminders.
Sustainability
With SAP Product Footprint Management, we have recently introduced the capability to calculate freight transport footprints. With this update, the user can get insights about the environmental impact of the transportation of goods according to greenhouse gas protocol (GHG) Scope 1 (own fleet), 3.4 (upstream), and 3.9 (downstream). To perform these calculations, the user may perform mass uploads and calculate the freight transport footprints of the company. We have also provided built-in analytics enabling reporting on different levels as well as mapping service based on geolocation, enabling visualization of transport flows and routes with related emissions.
Read the blog post by syedtalalhussain and watch his video to find out more.
https://sapvideoa35699dc5.hana.ondemand.com/?entry_id=1_xsw2q9sa
Figure 15: SAP Product Footprint Management makes it possible to calculate freight transport footprint in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302.
Product Compliance
The dangerous goods filling process for tanks and bulk containers supports the handling of dangerous goods transported in tanks and in bulk containers. The process of classifying dangerous goods that are transported in tanks or in bulk containers is different from the process of classifying already packed dangerous goods. For packed dangerous goods, you need, for example, information about the packaging such as the code and quantity of the dangerous goods package and information about inner package. For this, we have new placeholders to support the filling process, revised description templates for the enclosure variants ‘UN portable tank,’ ‘UN bulk container,’ and ‘regulation-specific tank’, and new entries in the configuration tab ‘description of dangerous goods packages’. This lets you maintain compliance and reduces risks and liabilities.
Check out this blog post by christian.vogler2 and watch his video to learn more.
Figure 16: The dangerous goods filling process for tanks and bulk containers supports the handling of dangerous goods transported in tanks and in bulk containers.
Environment, Health, and Safety
We ship a new SAP Fiori app, 'My Emissions Declaration', to collect, store, and calculate relevant emissions declaration data, which will later be used for regulatory reporting required by the German regulation ‘Emissionserklärung nach 11. BImSchV’. It enables a new type of compliance scenario for emission declarations data, including emitted substance activities.
Learn more in christian.vogler2's blog post.
Figure 17: Collect, store, and calculate relevant emissions declaration data with the new SAP Fiori app, 'My Emissions Declaration'.
Two-Tier ERP
In SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302, we ship Master Data Replication using SAP Master Data Integration (MDI) service for two-tier ERP. As you know, Master Data Replication between headquarter and subsidiary is the most critical aspect for smooth functioning of two-tier ERP scenarios. You can use SAP MDI service, which is a multi-tenant cloud service on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), providing a consistent view of master data in a hybrid landscape. SAP MDI service is based on SAP One Domain Model where objects can be mapped to a central domain for applications speaking different languages and can align configuration and transactional data. SAP MDI uses hub and spoke model to enable standardization in master data integration and supports extensibility with customer specific fields. Thus, it sets the foundation for integration and extension scenarios.
Read this blog post by swati.balani and watch her video for further details.
Figure 18: Master Data Replication between headquarter and subsidiary is the most critical aspect for smooth functioning of two-tier ERP scenarios.
Localization
Find more details in katrin.deissner's blog post.
Figure 19: We deliver three new local versions with Egypt, Argentina, and Greece.
Identity and Access Management
Also for Identity and Access Management, we have great innovations. Let’s first start with identity management where we offer a new guide called ‘Identity Management for SAP S/4HANA Cloud and Integrated Products‘ which provides reference architectures and step-by-step instructions for identity management in a SAP Cloud landscape (incl. SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and integrated products). For access management, we deliver several new apps and features for mass maintenance. To mention one example, the new app ‘Maintain Business Roles Group’ allows you e. g. to create business role groups to which multiple business roles can be assigned. This makes it very easy to organize and search for business roles of certain categories and enables mass handling of business roles belonging to the same business role group.
Read this blog post by katrin.deissner and learn more.
Figure 20: The new app 'Maintain Business Roles Group' makes it very easy to organize and search for business roles of certain categories and enables mass handling of business roles belonging to the same business role group.
SAP Activate
In this release, SAP Activate delivers improved guidance for the use of SAP Cloud ALM in your SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition deployment project. In total, 36 Activate tasks have been enhanced with procedures to help you use Cloud ALM better. You can see how these SAP Activate tasks relate to apps in SAP Cloud ALM, whether it is the setup of the project, capturing and managing requirements, testing, release management, and operations. SAP Activate now gives you prescriptive steps on how to get most value from using SAP Cloud ALM in your SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition project. For additional details of other improvements in SAP Activate, check out the SAP Activate Community.
You can find more info in this blog post by jan.musil.
Figure 21: The SAP Activate Community is the best spot to find out about the improved guidance and other improvementes.
SAP Build Process Automation
Since our last release in August, we have doubled the amount of cloud studio bot templates leveraging machine learning available for users starting on SAP Build Process Automation. These pre-delivered bot templates help you to get started quickly and on the most on-demand use cases in SAP S/4HANA. They can be further extended with workflow elements such as business rules or approval forms in order to flexibly automate larger, more complex business processes and involve more stakeholders beyond individual use cases. Check out our SAP Build Process Automation Store and SAP Best Practice Explorer to find out how hundreds of bots can help you to meet your automation goal.
Check out this blog post and this video by yannick.peterschmitt as well as this blog post by har1234 to find out more.
Figure 22: Find bots most suitable for your business needs in our SAP Build Process Automation Store.
More Topics
HR Connectivity
Check out this blog post by sonnenb and watch her latest video to find out all about the enhancements in HR Connectivity with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302.
Discrete Industries
m.oertelt showcases an end-to-end process for discrete industries in his blog post. Also, watch his video for more.
Test Automation Tool for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition
Check out anurag.nayak's blog post to find out what enhancements we deliver for test automation tool for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.
Watch the Replays of Our SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition 2302 Early Release Series!
We’ve hosted a series of compelling live sessions from the heart of the SAP S/4HANA Engineering organization. Missed the live sessions? Watch our replays on demand!
Here, you can find 20 replays and presentations as well as demos for the topics listed in this blog post and many more as part of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302 release. For more information on the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition Early Release Series and how to sign up for it, see this link.
Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast
As always, I would like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast “Inside SAP S/4HANA”. This podcast leverages the unique knowledge and expertise of SAP S/4HANA product experts, partners and customers to address objects of interest by sharing product insights and project best practice. There is no customer success without product success and project success; we share all ingredients with you to get to the next level and make your SAP S/4HANA project a success. Subscribe now and benefit from the shared knowledge.
openSAP microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA
Our openSAP microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA offer an exciting new learning opportunity. What began with a small batch of 20 videos, has now become a channel with more than 50 microlearnings that have generated over 20,000 views since then. Today we cover multiple lines of business such as finance, manufacturing, and supply chain, and key technology topics like Master Data Management, extensibility, SAP User Experience, and upgrade management. We are continuously adding new microlearnings to the SAP S/4HANA channel, so make sure you check them out.
Your Voice Matters!
If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition Community – now fully integrated with SAP Community. The community brings together customers, partners, and SAP experts and has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions. We invite you to explore the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition Community ‘one-stop shop’ as the central place for all resources, tools, content questions, answers and connect with experts to guide you through your journey to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.
More Information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition:
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition release info here
- Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition release blog posts here and previous release highlights here
- Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
- SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
- Early Release Webinar Series here
- Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
- openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA here
- Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition Community: here
- Feature Scope Description here
- What’s New here
- Help Portal Product Page here
Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via LinkedIn or Twitter.
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