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Michael_W
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
The 2305 release of SAP Variant Configuration and Pricing is planned to be deployed to customer tenants on May 3rd.

In this blog, we are covering the following planned innovations:

  • Variant Configuration service – Expose variant tables

  • Variant Configuration service – Create external configuration by date

  • Pricing service – Display replicated pricing records

  • Pricing service – Support modular pricing procedures for automatic inclusion of price conditions

  • Pricing service – Support new S/4HANA Cloud customer hierarchies

  • Pricing service – Enhanced support for S/4HANA Cloud product hierarchies



The information in this document is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. This document is provided without a warranty of any kind:

 

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The information in this presentation is confidential and proprietary to SAP and may not be disclosed without the permission of SAP.

This presentation is not subject to your license agreement or any other service or subscription agreement with SAP. SAP has no obligation to pursue any course of business outlined in this document or any related presentation, or to develop or release any functionality mentioned therein. This document, or any related presentation, and SAP’s strategy and possible future developments, products, and platforms, directions, and functionality are all subject to change and may be changed by SAP at any time for any reason without notice. The information in this document is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. This document is provided without a warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. This document is for informational purposes and may not be incorporated into a contract. SAP assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in this document, except if such damages were caused by SAP’s willful misconduct or gross negligence.

All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates, and they should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.

For all recent and planned innovations, potential data protection and privacy features include simplified deletion of personal data, reporting of personal data to an identified data subject, restricted access to personal data, masking of personal data, read access logging to special categories of personal data, change logging of personal data, and consent management mechanisms.

 

Variant Configuration service – Expose variant tables


Using constraints with variant tables is the recommended approach to model your products to decouple the maintenance of allowed value combinations from coding the rules.

With that, variant tables contain valuable business information that might not only be needed in the configuration engine but also be of interest in the calling application. For example, displaying the table content gives the user an overview in advance about the possible combination of options or implications of choosing certain options.

For that, the Variant Configuration service’s knowledge-base APIs will be enhanced to expose the variant tables.

The enhanced endpoint GET /api/v2/knowledgebases/{kbId} will return a list of variant tables that are contained in the knowledge base:


The new endpoint GET /api/v2/knowledgebases/{kbId}/variantTables/{variantTableId} will be introduced to read a variant table’s structure (basic data and columns) and the table’s content:



The enhanced endpoint GET /api/v2/knowledgebases/{kbId}/translations will also return variant table names in different languages:


With that, the variant table content can be displayed and used outside of the configuration engine.

Please note that in general it is not necessary to use Variant Configuration service to get access to variant tables. You can also use the corresponding ODATA services that you can find on api.sap.com:


But if you are using Variant Configuration service and need access to variant tables contained in a knowledge base, then the new endpoint mentioned above should be used.


 

Variant Configuration service – Create external configuration by date


When creating a new configuration from an external configuration via endpoint POST /api/v2/externalConfigurations, a knowledge-base id must be provided. In future, the configuration date can be provided as an alternative, which will let the service determine the knowledge-base version that is valid at the given date before creating the configuration.

The configuration date will also be stored with the configuration results and returned by endpoint GET /api/v2/externalConfigurations/{configurationId} as part of the external configuration response.

 

Pricing service – Display replicated pricing records


In the administration UI, it is possible to add a pricing procedure for replication and then open it and navigate through the pricing steps, condition types, access sequences, down to the condition tables. With the current release, it is  not possible to see the actual condition record in such a table and with that it is not possible to check if a changed price was really replicated from the back end into the cloud.

With the next release, the replicated pricing records can be queried and displayed via the administration UI’s menu Replication -> Pricing.


Condition Type Details


A new button Search Conditions will be added to the condition type screen and the access sequence screen:


Access Sequence Details


A new search screen will list all the columns of the condition tables as search criteria:


Dynamic Query Parameters


The KONP price detail will only be displayed in search results if the new role PricingDataAccess was assigned in addition to role BusinessExpert:


Replicated Prices




Pricing service – Support modular pricing procedures for automatic inclusion of price conditions


In SAP S/4HANA, pricing conditions of type inclusion point were recently introduced. An inclusion point is added as a pricing step to a main pricing procedure and as first step to one or more sub-procedures. During runtime, it is determined which sub-procedure is relevant and then this sub-procedure’s condition types are inserted after the inclusion point into the pricing steps of the main pricing procedure.

This approach shall reduce the number of pricing procedures in S/4HANA and reduce maintenance efforts, as you would for example not need one full-blown pricing procedure per country, each with different tax conditions, but you would just need one main procedure with an inclusion point for taxes, and then some small sub-procedures with country-specific tax conditions, which would then be chosen during runtime depending on the country used in the sales document.

For more information see Modular Pricing Procedures for Automatic Inclusion of Price Conditions | SAP Help Portal or Automatic Inclusion of Price Conditions Using Modular Pricing Procedures | SAP Help Portal.

The Pricing service will support those new pricing conditions of type inclusion point: During runtime, it will recognize those inclusion points, trigger determination of a sub-procedure, and then insert the sub-procedure’s condition types into the main pricing procedure’s pricing steps.

The Pricing service will only support the standard determination rules, no customer rules.

The Pricing service’s customizing endpoints will be enhanced to also return possible sub-procedures per inclusion point and to simulate sub-procedure determination to get a list of required pricing attributes.

New endpoints and API enhancements will be documented on SAP API Business Hub and in the Development Guide on SAP Variant Configuration and Pricing | SAP Help Portal.

Restrictions will be documented in SAP Note 2894167.

 

Pricing service – Support new S/4HANA Cloud customer hierarchies


In release 2208 of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, a new customer hierarchy was introduced using the universal hierarchy framework. For more details, see Customer Hierarchies in Sales | SAP Help Portal.

Price conditions can be defined for various nodes of a customer hierarchy. The Pricing service allows to provide the customer hierarchy as a new item input structure customerHierarchy and supports condition finding based on the provided customer hierarchy.

Enhanced endpoints will be documented on SAP API Business Hub and in Development Guide on SAP Variant Configuration and Pricing | SAP Help Portal.

Restrictions will be documented in SAP Note 2894167.

Please note that we are not aware of an interface that currently allows these new customer hierarchies to be exported from SAP S/4HANA Cloud to another application. If such an interface does not exist, the data cannot be passed from the application to the Pricing service, and you should not use it in pricing in SAP S/4HANA in combination with the Pricing service.

 

Pricing service – Enhanced support for S/4HANA Cloud product hierarchies


In release 1911 of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, a new product hierarchy was introduced using the universal hierarchy framework. For more details, see Product Hierarchies in Sales | SAP Help Portal.

Price conditions can be defined for various nodes of a product hierarchy. The Pricing service already allows to provide the item’s product hierarchy as price attribute since it was released in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. It used to support only condition finding from root node to leaf node, ignoring the specified distance. Now, it also considers the distance and supports direction leaf node to root node.

More information will be added to Development Guide on SAP Variant Configuration and Pricing | SAP Help Portal.

Remaining restrictions will be documented in SAP note 2894167.

Please note that we are not aware of an interface that currently allows these new product hierarchies to be exported from SAP S/4HANA Cloud to another application. If such an interface does not exist, the data cannot be passed from the application to the Pricing service, and you should not use it in pricing in SAP S/4HANA in combination with the Pricing service.

 

With that, you have a good overview about what innovations are planned for the May release. Please check updated roadmap and release notes after the release date to see which of those features could be delivered as planned.
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