Background: You are utilizing the Universal Worklist and presently have configured a substitution rule which is no longer valid e.g. the assignee is no longer with the company. Despite you're best efforts you seem not to be able to delete or remove the substitution rule.
Errors: With such an occurrence exceptions can be quite generic and may sometimes grammatically appears as "Cannot Connect to Provider " or "Problems Reported (Repairable).
Creating Substitution Rules (Landscape Effect)
- When substitution is invoked on the Manage Substitution UI, it happens for all connectors. So if you have 7 systems set up in the Universal Worklist Administration there will be 7 calls to each respective system to try to invoke a substitution. If there is any issue whatsoever, with the id, password, * etc, substitution will not work and will not be set up.
Problems Reported (Repairable)
- If you see a link appearing as "Problems Reported (Repairable)" in the rule activation column. Then in this case there is no mapped user to the backend user.
- In many cases the reason the "delete" action for substitution is not working properly is because of "problems reported". This means that there is an issue with the connection.
Trying to Delete a Substitution Rule
- If you are maintaining substitution from the UWL, the rules should *only* be deleted from the UWL. It is not support to mix substitution maintenance between the UWL and the backend.
How to Approach the Removal of a Substitution.
- The general method to delete a substitution revolves around checking the entries in Database table KMC_WF_SUBSTITUTE in Portal DB and then subsequently deleting any entries against the user.
- So a method of manual deletion must be done for every system that the UWL (Universal Worklist) is connecting to.
Removal Steps
- Go to System Administration->System Configuration->Universal Worklist & Workflow->Universal Worklist - Administration and for all the R/3 systems that are registered there go and delete the records for substitutions in all the HRUS_D2 tables connected to the deleted users and the user * is experiencing the problem - as substituting and as substituted users.
- Delete all the records in the java engine's database table: KMC_WF_SUBSTITUTE, that are connected to the deleted users and the user * is experiencing the problem.
- Clear the cache for all system from the Universal Worklist - Administration.
- Restart the engine
- If the problem is no longer reproducible, recreate the substitution rules for the user is experiencing the problems using UWL's Manage Substitution Rules.
- Please ensure that the connection to the backend system is working ok, as this is one of the prerequisites to substitution.
Remember!
- Substitutions are kept in all systems
- Always try to disable rather than delete an inactive user who's maintained in a substitution setup as deletion can cause inconsistencies.
Good Reference Points:
- SAP KBA: 1577579 - Facts and limitations about substitution in the UWL
[2016-Blog1]