Integration of C4C with SAP ERP with Custom SOAP Webservice: Resolve Party with External Numbers

[markusskergeth]

Dear community,

We are extending the integration between C4C and SAP ERP to replicate custom business objects between the systems.

The custom business object includes a subnode (1:n) with an element of type PartyID and an association to Party. This subnode can hold the reference to all involved parties (Customer, Main Contact Person, etc.).

When a new instance is created in SAP ERP, the new instance is sent to C4C with all involved parties with their respective ERP IDs (referred to as "external numbers" in this scenario).

For most comparable scenarios we have been using the OData service ObjectIdentifierMappingCollection to resolve external numbers to the InternalIDs used by C4C. While using the separate OData service ObjectIdentifierMappingCollection does work, we are wondering whether we can improve our integration implementations with a different approach.

One reason why I am asking the question here is that I found some attributes in the generated SOAP webservices which I do not fully understand and can't seem to find comprehensive documentation about.

These are the attributes schemeID, schemeAgencyID, schemeAgencySchemeID and schemeAgencySchemeAgencyID:

<!--1 or more repetitions:-->
<Party>
    <!--Optional:-->
    <Key schemeID="?" schemeAgencyID="?" schemeAgencySchemeID="?" schemeAgencySchemeAgencyID="?">?</Key>
    <!--Optional:-->
    <PartyRoleCode>?</PartyRoleCode>
</Party>

To conclude, does someone know about the specific uses of the above SOAP attributes in the Party segment of a custom SOAP webservice?

Is it possible to use these to send the external number to C4C instead of the internal ID?

And if not, are there any other ways to optimize a "Replicate In" scenario to ideally a single web service call?

Thank you in advance for any input!

Best regards,

Markus Skergeth