RISE with SAP: Multi-layer Defense in Depth Architecture of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition

Introduction: The SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition is at the core of “RISE with SAP” offering which holds customer’s mission critical data and business processes. SAP Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS) provides a managed private environment with multi-layer defense in depth architecture handling infrastructure and technical managed services. This includes end-to-end SLA for the full solution stacks and a proven security architecture, minimizing risk for our customers. Multi-layer security requires security to be handled at people, process and technology levels. In this blog, we will discuss high level multi-layer "defense in depth" architecture offered to customers. For the sake of simplicity, only high level and abstracted approach is presented.

Approach to Multi-Layer Defense in Depth Architecture:

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition is a “single tenanted” managed private environment for customers where SAP creates a separate account (AWS) or subscription (Azure) or project (GCP) for each customer. The applications and database virtual instances are solely dedicated to a single customer. Security by Design and Security by Default are deeply embedded into the multi-layer architecture.

Testing SAP S/4HANA Cloud Implementations

To accelerate testing activities, SAP S/4HANA Cloud comes with a test automation tool, detailed test scripts, and prepackaged standard automated tests (called test automates) for most business processes.

The test automation tool and test automates are ready to run as part of SAP S/4HANA Cloud and can be used without prior automation tool experience. The tool offers a simplified way to develop custom test automates to achieve automated testing for specific customizations of business processes. Considering the delivery pace of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP extends support for automated testing by triggering tests in SAP S/4HANA Cloud customer quality tenants with each upgrade using the tool called the post upgrade test. Furthermore, while the test automation tool is native to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, you can also use this tool with SAP Cloud ALM.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud integration with SAP Integration Suite, Advanced Event Mesh

In this blog post you will learn the current best practice to directly connect with SAP Integration Suite, Advanced Event Mesh (AEM) for exchanging business events relevant to SAP S/4HANA Cloud release 2402. Hint: Screenshots in this blog post are taken from an SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2402 developer test system.

Please note that the use of SAP Integration Suite, Advanced Event Mesh (AEM) is not supported on the trial offering of SAP BTP. It is based on a productive (paid) account on SAP BTP.

For those who are already familiar with SAP S/4HANA Cloud’s Enterprise Event Enablement, integration with the SAP Advanced Event Mesh is now additionally available through the two new Communication Scenarios SAP_COM_0492 and SAP_COM_0493.

Integrating SAP Cloud ALM and the test automation tool for SAP S/4 HANA Cloud

In this blog post I will explain how SAP Cloud ALM integrates with the test automation tool for SAP S/4 HANA Cloud.

SAP Cloud ALM provides (among other capabilities) test management, including manual testing as well as test automation integration.

This simple picture gives an overview of the SAP Cloud ALM Test Orchestration capabilities:

Converting Simple Date format to JSON date format with User Defined Functions (UDF)

As an SAP Integration Developer working with SAP S/4 HANA API’s with JSON Schema format, I encountered the necessity to adeptly convert simple date formats received from both SAP and non-SAP systems to JSON date format prior posting the payload to SAP S/4 HANA for required operations.

In this case, if payload posted to S/4 HANA consists of simple date format (DD/MM/YYYY), it reverts with date-related errors that arise due to unrecognized formats by the system.

To address this issue, I couldn’t find an existing guide, prompting me to share my approach with fellow Integration Consultants.

SAP S/4HANA Business Partner – Address Management at Contact Persons

Introduction

With introduction of Business Partner at SAP S/4HANA and CVI (Customer-Vendor-Integration) an additional object level in addition to old/known Customer and Contact Person concept has been implemented.

Customer Master and Contact Person is using BAS (Business Address Service) for many years by using central address tables. Business Partner is using BAS as well with own address data sets. This makes whole address management complex.

Migration Monitor (FINS_MIG_STATUS) – How to analyze errors and information and recommend possible solutions.

As Part of the conversion process to S/4HANA, the migration monitor (FINS_MIG_STATUS) is responsible for coordinating the migration of Finance data into the new S/4HANA data model. To access details about a data migration run, click the Overview tab and see the list of activities and their respective statuses.

Incomplete steps or those with errors are displayed with a red status. The data migration process stops, preventing any subsequent tasks from being executed by the system. To continue with the migration, it is critical to fix the errors found in these tasks. The omission of this activity will delay the migration process.

Customer Aging and Supplier Aging Reports at the Line Item Level using Analytical Query in S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition

Introduction

Functional consultant or a business key user can effortlessly generate supplier and customer aging reports using the Custom Analytical Queries App for the scenarios outlined below.

Scenario – Accounts Payable Aging:

Your client requires a supplier aging report that displays the aging at different levels: Supplier level, Reconciliation G/L level, Supplier Region level, and Profit Center level. Additionally, they would like the option to access the aging information at the accounting document level in the same report.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, ABAP environment case introduction

Since the introduction of a 3-system landscape (3SL) in September 2022 for the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, SAP added a new pillar to the Extensibility landscape: Developer Extensibility, also known as SAP S/4HANA Cloud, ABAP environment. But what can Developer Extensibility do? Can we do classical ABAP programming in SAP S/4HANA Cloud? Can we debug the code? Will Key User Extensibility (in-app extensibility) be of no use anymore? … Lots of questions come to our mind. Today, I would like to present some differentiation scenarios we implemented using Developer Extensibility for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, hoping it can give you some concrete ideas on the capabilities of Developer Extensibility and the typical business scenarios we can solve using Developer Extensibility.

How to authorize Direct Debit Payments outside SEPA in Contract Accounting

Did you ever face the issue when SEPA mandates can’t be used for the authorization of direct debit transactions in non-euro currency? Do you wonder how to collect money with direct debit transactions outside SEPA? If so, this blog post is dedicated to you to answer such questions.

Introduction to Direct Debit Mandate (DDM)

Figure 1: Direct Debit Mandate process

RISE Migration with Tenant Copy Strategy

The most particular case about migration is the downtime, estimate the windows that customers need to achieve and perform a good project, but this not always happen and with the native HANA methodology of HANA System replication (HSR) we can mitigate some risk about Downtime, but as you well know to execute HSR is necessary to have the same SID in both HANA Nodes (and others prerequisites – help.sap.com – General prerequisites for HANA System replication),  when the customer already have the same SID of HEC/RISE is good because we review the others prerequisites and we can move forward but when the it cannot be completed we will face issues and the downtime is impacted.

One of this common scenarios is when a customer has already on HEC all infrastructure and wants to move on RISE Contract, if the SID of BD HANA for example is D01 On premise and RISE is D10 and 10TB of size in HANA DB and the Business windows is just 24hrs, in this scenario we cannot move with HSR and is when enter Tenant Replication (Copy / Move) , with this new feature in HANA DB we can move or copy a tenant in few hours (Depend of the bandwidth), for this case mentioned above is possible with good VPN of 100MB/s transfer the tenant to RISE in just 4 hours and later perform the finalize replica and startup the HANA DB in the new target (RISE), then we will proceed with the next steps in app server, post migration and deliver to RISE for post activities migration, we can explain in more details but first we need to fill the prerequisites:

Advanced Foreign Currency Valuation in S/4HANA Cloud (Cloud ERP)

Advanced Foreign Currency Valuation

Advanced Foreign Currency Valuation is part of Advanced Valuation in Financial Accounting. Advanced Valuations support you in following accounting standards, for example, IFRS9. The following processes are part of advanced valuation and are realized as job templates in the Schedule General Ledger Jobs app.

1. Post Discounting of Long-Term Assets and Liabilities

2. Advanced Foreign Currency Valuation

3. Post Credit-Risk Based Impairment

4. Post B/S Reclassification

Event Based Revenue Recognition – Sell from Stock (1K2)

The concept of this scope item is to help speeding the revenue recognition process in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud.

The classic problem is that the revenue is not always recognised at the same time as COGS as the COGS is posted during Goods Issue to customer and then the revenue will be posted during the billing.

With this new feature of Event Based Revenue Recognition – Sell from Stock, system automatically posted the revenue adjustment at the time of Goods Issue (depends on the EBRR Key that you have selected but in this example, I will focus on the Revenue Recognition Key – SFS.

Technical Setup guide for the Co-PIN Integration between SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Cloud for projects, project collaboration service

Business Purpose and Flow

The integration allows you to integrate the SAP S/4 HANA Cloud with the application SAP Project Intelligence Network. With this integration, you connect with project owners, engineering service providers, contractors, subcontractors, and building material suppliers on a single BIM collaboration platform to eliminate waste and rework and increase productivity with the SAP Project Intelligence Network application.

◉ Cloud deployment

◉ Single repository of construction information

◉ Shared digital twin that supports open BIM standards

◉ Source of reusable operations information

Getting Started on your SAP S/4HANA implementation

Starting line

Are you ready to modernize your information technology platform because it is a set of outdated legacy systems that no longer supports your business adequately? Today’s technology provides innovative solutions that bring more value, streamline processes, improve business agility, accelerate efficiency, and improve the bottom line. They can help scale, grow, and transform your business into an industry-leading entity. Many organizations are migrating from SAP ECC to S/4HANA or implementing SAP for the first time with S/4HANA. The key to success is getting started the right way.

Extensibility Guide for SAP S/4HANA Cloud: SAP Extensibility Explorer

When I first started looking into various ways to extend SAP S/4HANA Cloud, I found a wide range of information from multiple sources. As a result, finding the most recent extension choices required me to browse through several blog posts, which was a cumbersome task. So, I recently came across SAP Extensibility Explorer tool which has various options, and I could find all the information together.

In this post, I wanted to share my knowledge and experience about the SAP Extensibility Explorer tool.

How can a single Supplier can have multiple Contact Persons in SAP S/4HANA Cloud?

Lately, we have received queries on single supplier having multiple contact person belonging to different sales orgs who raises Purchase Orders in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

In this blog post, we shall see how to set-up the use case in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Step 1: Login to SAP S/4HANA Cloud system with user: BUPA_MASTER_SPECIALIST.

Step 2: Once logged in search for the app “Maintain Business Partner“.

Linking Contract Accounting with an operative service system (Disconnection and Reconnection of Services)

Ever wondered how to link your sub-ledger accounting with an operative service system? My blog article will show you how to use the Disconnection and Reconnection of Services function in SAP S/4HANA Cloud  (also available in on-premise versions) and how to configure it to your own solution!

Content:

◉ Understand the feature

◉ Understand the process

◉ Master data

◉ Disconnection of services

◉ Reconnection of services

◉ Transfer disconnection and reconnection requests

◉ Monitoring of disconnection and reconnection requests

◉ Understand the configuration

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Content Federation with SAP BTP Launchpad Site

In today’s world end-users are spending valuable time accessing multiple access points to gain access to their required apps and content. Even business processes are often spanned across multiple entry points and do not provide this single point of entry that users require.

With companies adopting the Two-Tier strategy, SAP is also providing various deployment options for realizing this two-tier ERP strategy. Two-Tier provides enterprises with an opportunity to standardize the end-to-end business processes across multiple tiers. By using SAP S/4HANA Cloud for their Tier 2, customers get the benefit of Software as a Service (SaaS) which can be implemented by standard template, thereby reducing the cost and ancillary IT expenses by having pre-configured solution. But this also introduces an additional entry point from an end user perspective.

A central entry point for business applications simplifies access and increases user productivity. Designing and configuring a central point of access to SAP and third-party solutions (both cloud and on-premise), in particular accessing multiple SAP S/4HANA systems from one common launchpad on SAP Business Technology Platform alleviates a lot of the pain points mentioned above for end-users

Data migration from SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP HANA Smart Data Integration

Background

This blog post is aimed to share my experiences working on data migration activities migrating data from a SAP S/4HANA Cloud system to a SP S/4HANA On-Premise system and the usage of SAP Migration Cockpit together with SAP HANA Smart Data Integration (SAP HANA SDI) helping on this purpose.

There are a few challenges on this scenario for data migration:

◉ Extract data from SAP S/4HANA Cloud

◉ Transform the data extracted (in files) to use as a source data for Migration Cockpit