SAP Business Network for Logistics 2406 Release – What’s New?

[CorinnaKramer]

This blog post continues my monthly series on SAP Business Network for Logistics release highlights and gives you an overview of the 2406 release. The blog is intended for shippers and solution owners, carriers, and data providers as well as sales and presales colleagues who already have a detailed understanding of SAP Business Network for Logistics. 

Before we dive deeper into the 2406 release highlights, I would like to point you to the ‘in-between’ release we had on May 31st, 2024. This special release marks an important milestone. As our new functions around managing your business profile are the first evidence of the convergence of the previously separate networks in the areas of procurement and supply chain collaboration, assets, and logistics.

From now on, maintenance of company profile and onboarding of carriers and data contributors will be done on the new platform serving as the foundation of the SAP Business Network. This is the starting point for many integration scenarios that our customers are waiting for.

There is a separate blog post on the May ‘in-between’ release. Make sure you read it to learn more around this exciting change!

... back to the 2406 release.

Cross SAP Business Network for Logistics

New integration platform for SAP Cloud Integration enabled for test tenants

In April, we announced that the Neo environment on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) has been deprecated. As a result, you need to migrate your existing connections to the new integration platform hosted in SAP BTP, multi-cloud environment. For a recap, please read this blog.

Now, we enabled the migration to the new integration platform in your test tenants.

From the 2406 release onwards when shippers create a connection in their ‘System Connections’ app (test tenant), the connection will now point to the new integration tenant and not the old one. This means that the SAP Business Network for Logistics destination URL that they need to maintain in their backend SAP system will be a new one. Outbound cloud connector configurations would also differ as the new integration tenant needs to be added in the customer’s cloud connector instead of the old one. Customers can continue using the existing connections until the sunset (announced as May 16, 2025) and no impact should happen for any current integrations. Please note, that at any point in this migration activity shippers should not delete their existing connections.

Carrier specific changes are minimal. Carriers might need to enhance the whitelisting/allow-listing as the new platforms are hosted in a different data center. Details regarding the same are also linked in their ‘System Connections’ app.

Please migrate to the new integration platform as soon as possible to see if any incompatibilities or issues arise. This will help us resolve potential issues before enabling migration to the productive tenants.

Detailed steps to migrate are described in the following guides:

• Integration Platform Migration Guide for Shippers and Solution Owners (applicable for Freight Collaboration, Global Track and Trace and Intelligent Insights)
• Integration Platform Migration Guide for Carriers and Data Contributors (applicable for Freight Collaboration, Global Track and Trace and Intelligent Insights)

Migration changes will be made available for productive tenants in an upcoming release.

Enhancement to ‘Consumer API for Order Tracking’

In the ‘Consumer API for Order Tracking’ (FC) and ‘Consumer API for Order Tracking’ (GTT), the field "ISORegionCode" is added to standardize the way of specifying the region of stops in a shipment. The values will be populated from the list of ISO 3166-2.

SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration

Contracting: Vendor ID added as filter criteria and worklist item

Filtering and displaying of the vendor ID was already available in the ‘Freight Order for Confirmation’ and ‘Freight Order for Reporting’ applications. Now, the vendor ID was also added as filter criteria and worklist item in the carrier applications ‘Freight Request for Quotation’ and ‘Freight Quotations’.

 Please note, the vendor ID was also added to the ‘Consumer API for Freight Tendering’.

Dock appointment scheduling: Changes in default settings for new loading points

‘Enable Time Slot Setting’ for new loading points in the ‘Manage Entities’ application is now disabled per default.

Settlement: New validation checks for ‘Provider API for Invoicing’

When carriers submit an invoice via the ‘Provider API for Invoicing’, there are now multiple validation checks enabled (resulting in an error or warning):

• Rate amount and final amount must be the same for unplanned charge
• Rate amount currency and final amount currency must be the same for unplanned charge
• Quantity will be ignored for an unplanned charge
• Percentage rate is not allowed for an unplanned charge
• Invoice amount cannot be less than zero
• Final amount cannot be zero for charge lines
• Tax amount cannot be negative
• Sum of all the pricing elements and item taxes is not equal to the item gross amount
• Sum of all the tax amount not matching with total tax amount

Settlement: Enhancement to ‘Provider API for Invoicing’

For invoices created via ‘Provider API for Invoicing’, you can now see the item details.

SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace

Built-in support modernized

The built-in support has been enabled on the Fiori launchpad of SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace. It provides an integrated and modernized support experience. You can now enjoy the following key services without leaving the launchpad and applications:

• Search for information in multiple SAP support knowledge bases, such as SAP Help Portal, SAP Notes, SAP Community, or SAP Help Portal.
• Report issues to SAP and review your issues.
• View a list of recommended helpful documentation links.

To gain full access to all built-in support services, you must activate your S-user, following the steps described in Activating Built-In Support Services.

Please share and amplify our new features!

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The above summarizes the key innovations for 2406. We hope you enjoy the new capabilities. Thanks for reading the blog post and stay tuned! 

A full overview of the 2406 release can be found in the following link.

To learn more about SAP Business Network for Logistics visit SAP - Business Network for Logistics.

For further questions and feedback related to the blog, please check the Q&A area and feel free to post your questions in the link with the tag SAP Business Network for Logistics.