I had a great talk with an old colleague this Friday. The topic was how to build a new EDI platform. They did not have any EDI yet on the SAP platform since they used an old platform for it. So they had to start over with SAP as the backend.
I have been doing EDIFACT and X12 implementations since I started with SAP XI using the Seeburger tool and lately looked at how to use the B2B Add-on from SAP to handle the EDI part on SAP PO. The tools differ in structure and how they work, but they work the same way. They can take some XML and convert it to the EDIFACT/X12 files and the other way. SAPs platform has been focused on how to make it native in SAP PI/PO, where Seeburger was a new way of the building the platform.
I have created a video that shows some of my questions and concerns on the topic of creating EDI with S/4 Hana.
Watch on YouTube Have you done EDI with S4 HANA and how did it go?
I was starting to talk about the different IDOCs and which EDIFACT documents they referred to. Then we talked about how they were doing a new S/4 HANA on-premise implementation. S/4 HANA cloud, which is the premier SAP product, is where all development is going on. There are only a few whitelisted IDocs for some scenarios like synchronizing data with your existing SAP ERP system and some warehouse. The EDI IDocs are supposedly not available, so you cannot use them.
Since all development is on S/4 Cloud and the on-premise version will get the updates after a few months/years, there is not going to be any development going on the EDI Idocs. There has probably not been developed much on them over the last 10-15 years. SAP would like to move their customers to the cloud version to make it faster for them, and customers cannot live without their flexibility. So we will have to see where it will end.
An option was to use the Enterprise Services (E-SOA) that also worked on the process. I have heard about a few organizations using it, but it requires a strong leadership and some skills to go use them. Since Enterprise Services is a dead topic now, I guess it does not make sense to focus on it. It seems as if it has been inspiring the new SOAP APIs from SAP so it is not in vain, and you probably have an easier option to migrate them.
API is a big focus area for SAP for some reasons.
- In S/4 Cloud you cannot develop so you have to use APIs to extract and use data
- It is easier to explain APIs to non SAP developers, because they have a common form of documenting
- You can expose them online and secure them
All the APIs SAP has created are on the SAP Business Accelerator Hub, which is SAP’s API portal. On the portal, you can find all SAP APIs on the different systems and you can easily try them out there. I did find an SOAP service for sending Purchase Orders from S4, but am currently not able to find it. One of the documents you can find is the Scope Item 2EJ, which is covering the purchasing process on how to configure it and steps involved in configuration. So it is fairly easy to get started with.
So it is possible to use the APIs to expose the purchase process for EDI.
EDI from the new APIs
So it is possible to create an EDI solution based on the new APIs. Then what does it require?
A good place to start would be to use the Integration Content Advisor (today Integration Advisor in SAP Integration Suite, see SAP Community), which is SAP’s way to make the B2B Mapping faster based on Machine Learning. I have not seen or used the tool yet, but the idea is pretty cool. It could speed up the mapping of data with the EDI formats. At the time, it required the Enterprise Edition of SAP Cloud Platform Integration; today it is part of SAP Integration Suite. You can though run the flow on your local PI. The alternative approach is to use the normal EDI Mapping on SAP PI/PO and use the B2B Add-on in connection with the Trading Partner Management (TPM). If the Content Advisor works it is probably the fastest way to deal with things.
It still brings up the question of whether the new APIs are strong enough to be able to handle the processing. And how will the errors be resolved since they cannot be handled in BD87. S/4 will come with AIF (SAP Application Interface Framework) for some scenarios, which is a tool that enables different kinds of error handling and mapping. It may be suited to some of the normal EDI error that you will see like customer try to send an invalid material number or delivery data. It will require some training to enable users to use it. AIF is a more powerful solution than BD87 since it allows you to add rules and validations.
My recommendation would be to give the new interfaces an attempt to get the process working on it. It would give freedom to upgrade to S4 Cloud and just have one interface for the integration process. I would also imagine that the new interfaces are easier to extend or you can make lookups to get information that is missing.
Have you tried the new S4 way of integration and does it work?
