The surprising (read challenging) world of CRM Middleware

[ajithkumar_krishnakumar]

Anything can happen in the world of middleware. No matter how good you are at configuring the system word-to-word following the best practices and ensuring all the pre-requisites are met, there is always the surprise factor that SAP will have in store for you.

I was configuring the system to set up a Controlling Integration scenario and was wondering what went wrong right from the first step. Not a single bdoc was getting generated for the service orders that were created in CRM.

Went through innumerable blogs and sources on SDN. Went through best practices. No luck. My search results didn't get me what I needed.

Started re-checking all the middleware config from scratch. I knew the sites and subscriptions were working fine as the BP replication and the Product Master replication was working correctly. So whats up with the service orders ? Some object specific settings? This SDN forum gave some really good tips:

http://scn.sap.com/thread/3149675 . But they were only for the master data.

Alas, with great determination in mind, and armed with the skills of a technical consultant, I decided to debug two separate CRM systems in parallel to find out. (This was only after I checked all the configs in both the CRM sandbox systems and was satisfied that they matched each other correctly. In the latter system, I could see a bdoc getting generated for any save to the Service Order).

This was the main difference:

{ please note: Having two sessions of the debugger open parallely is definitely a pain. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless its the only way out. And yes, you would definitely wish you had a extra wide screen }

Ignore the z implementations; they are irrelevant. But note the key missing implementation CRM_BUS20001_UPLOAD. I checked in the system and saw that it was inactive. And it contains the code to invoke the FM 'CRM_UPLOAD_BUS_TRANS_MSG' which ultimately generates the BDOC BUS_TRANS_MSG.

So far I was searching for service order replication, middleware replication, bus_trans_msg etc in the forums. Now it was time to find out if CRM_BUS20001_UPLOAD had anything. And voila! It did.

Came across 1604621 - No Bdoc created for sales transactions

Interestingly, this had the validity from 28.06.2011. So I'm not so far behind! :smile:

Anyways, the resolution was simple:

Resolution

1. Transaction SE18 enter badi ORDER_SAVE
2. From the menu bar select Enhancement Implementation and from drop down list Overview.
3. Activate implementation CRM_BUS20001_UPLOAD.

So all is well that ends well! Hopefully any of you guys having such an issue in future would be able to get this blog post in your results list!