SAP Process Integration Business-to-Business Add-o...

former_member241946 · ‎2018 Dec 20

Introduction

We are proud to announce the availability of Process Integration Business-to-Business add-on (B2B) release 2.0 for SAP NetWeaver PI/PO from November 23^rd, 2018. The add-on allows you to simplify and accelerate B2B integrations with your Trading Partners and extend your business processes in an easy and quick way. You can run B2B processes as part of an existing SAP NetWeaver PI based integration hub. It includes a set of B2B protocol adapters, converter modules and B2B infrastructure services for serving the B2B/EDI integration needs of most industries.

One major change in the new release is that B2B Add-on 2.0 switched to be compatible with PI and PO versions 7.31 SP18 or higher, taking advantage of the latest improvements in PI. It does not require Secure Connectivity Add-on 1.0 as a prerequisite before installation.

Major features included in PI B2B Add-on Release 2.0:

Dynamic Configuration Routing of EDI Separator Adapter

Disable Message Split of EDI Separator Adapter

AS2 Adapter Improvements

Component Based Message Alerting for OFTP and X400 Adapters

Number Range Object Import and Export

Number Range Object API Extension

Support PI / PO with Integration Content Advisor

Important Documentation

Release Notes

Configuration guides (Application Help)

Installation Guide and Update Guide

SAP Note 2720040 : Download location of SAP Process Integration, business-to-business add-on 2.0

SAP Note 2709410: Compatibility Matrix: SAP Process Integration business-to-business add on 2.0

Now, let’s take a closer look at the enhancements of PI B2B Add-On 2.0

B2B Adapters

EDI Separator Adapter

Dynamic Configuration Routing

This feature extends the capabilities of EDI Separator Adapter by providing an option to use the value of Dynamic Configuration header for message routing.

With the usage of such configurable dynamic parameter, messages can be routed to an appropriate scenario based on for example:

TPM header information

VAN provider data

Information from a particular EDI message segment

Adapter specific message attribute

predefined static information (like scenario Party or region) – a way to achieve better isolation between different EDI scenarios

For more information refer to Dynamic Configuration Routing of EDI Separator documentation at help.sap.com

Disable Message Split

The EDI Separator always does a message split of EDI bulk messages. In some scenarios the original batch EDI message is required in the mapping or needs to be transferred without changes to the receiver system. This functionality is now included in B2B Add-on 2.0 Support Package 0. It contains the option not to split the bulk EDI messages in the EDI Separator Receiver channel. This feature is available for all the supported standards ANSI X12, EDIFACT, EANCOM, ODETTE, VDA, TRADACOMS and PLAIN. The Adapter validation functionality is intact, and the EDI bulk messages can be validated if validation is configured. For more information check the documentation at help.sap.com – Disable Message Split in EDI Separator.

AS2 Adapter Improvements

Enhanced Error Handling for Message Notification Disposition (MDN)

AS2 Adapter in case of outbound scenarios improved its behavior when MDN is not delivered on time. A new AS2 application parameter is introduced for configuring the period of time that the Adapter will wait to receive the requested MDN until an alert is raised. The default value of this parameter is 60 minutes.

The generated alert has the following format:

Error Code: MDN_NOT_RECV

Error Text: "Message Delivery Notification (MDN) not received for AS2 message with ID = <AS2_MESSAGE_ID> within last <TIME_INTERVAL> minutes. AS2 Message is sent by PI at <SENT_TIME> as an attempt to send XI Message with ID = <XI_MESSAGE_ID>"

For more information check SAP Note 2652481 - New Feature: MDN not received on time.

Build-In integration with IDOCs, SAP and/ or EDI Documents

AS2 Adapter provides the option the requested from the Partner AS2 Acknowledgement (MDN) to be correlated with the generated SAP Document, IDOC or EDI message using the standard identifiers. This is accomplished with additional XML Node with name "DocumentIdentifiers" in the shipped with B2B TOOLKT Software Component AS2 MDNDeliveryReport Data Type. This node can contain more than one element named "DocumentIdentifier" holding the identifier of each document sent by the AS2 Adapter within single AS2 message.

In case of correlating IDOCs the AS2 Adapter retrieves the information about the identifiers of all sent documents by reading certain dynamic header of the processed XI message. By default, the full name of this header is: http://sap.com/xi/XI/System/IDoc_AAE/DOCNUMS. This header is added automatically by the IDOC Sender Adapter since PI / PO 7.31 SP23 and 7.50 SP13. The value of the header contains all IDOC numbers inside a single XI message, separated by comma.

In case of correlating SAP or EDI documents the AS2 Adapter provides the option to specify the Dynamic Configuration header that will be used for storing the identifiers. Here are the parameters for specifying the Dynamic Configuration header details:

identifiers.dc.namespace – this parameter determines the dynamic header namespace

identifiers.dc.key – this parameter defines the dynamic header name

identifiers.separator – this parameter specifies the proper separator used for the list of identifiers as part of the dynamic header value.

These three parameters can be set globally for all scenarios or per AS2 receiver/sender channel as additional attributes.

More information how to use this feature can be found in SAP Note 2630804 - New Feature: Correlate AS2 MDN to original document (IDOCNUM).

Component Based Message Alerting for OFTP and X400 Adapters

This feature gives the option to configure Component-Based Message Alerting for OFTP and X.400 communication channels and to get notified about adapter specific errors. The following table describes the different types of errors for which alerts are triggered in X.400 and OFTP adapters:

Adapter	Error
X400 Adapter	Received is no ReturnResult
OFTP Adapter	SFNA Received
OFTP Adapter	NERP Generated
OFTP Adapter	ESID Generated
OFTP Adapter	ESID Received

In order to use this functionality, the PI /PO system should be updated as per SAP Note 2709507.

Number Range Object Import and Export

The Number Range Object (NRO) Maintenance page now includes the functionality to export already created NROs and import them into another system. It can be also used to keep a backup of the objects. The functionality can be accessed directly from the NRO Maintenance page in the B2B Integration Cockpit after upgrading the B2B Add-on to release 2.0. There are two new buttons Export and Import that are located at the top left of the window:

The Export button triggers an export of the selected Number Range Objects to a file with .nro extension.

The Import button opens an Import wizard. During all the steps you will be able to view the NRO objects included in the selected for import .nro file. Upon that information you can decide which of them to import. The option 'Reset Value on Import' enables the reset of the current values of all the selected for import NROs to the defined 'Minimum value'. After the Import process is completed, the Import Results table is visualized. It shows whether each of the selected NROs has been successfully imported or no.

Number Range Object API Extension

New method called 'retrieveAllNumberRangeObjectNames' is added to the Number Range Object API. It returns a list containing the names of all the available Number Range objects in the system. For more information how to use the NRO API and the new method check the below links:

2707796 - New Feature: Number Range Object API extension

2035054 - Number Range Object API for User Defined Functions

Support PI / PO with Integration Content Advisor

Another major step in reaching the goal of leveraging the implementation of B2B scenarios is the integration between SAP NetWeaver PI/PO and Integration Content Advisor (ICA). The latter is a cloud-based design-time solution that unifies all the required tasks for creating and maintaining B2B content based on a comprehensive knowledge base and machine learning. With its current release ICA now supports generation of Mapping artifacts that can be consumed in SAP PI/PO and together with B2B add-on customers can achieve fast and efficient B2B integration. There is a blog that explains the steps to accomplish the integration between the two products.

Summary

This blog is an overview about the Process Integration Business to Business Add-on release 2.0 and the new major features that it contains. Stay tuned for more interesting blogs in regards of the PI B2B Add-on.