Three Major Functionality Upgrades in SAP S/4HANA Interface Monitoring

By Murali Mahalingam, Murali Mahalingam, PMP, Principal Consultant, Consumer Industries, Rizing

As the number of connected systems in the IT landscape grows, so too do the number of messages that flow between the systems. The SAP Intermediate Document (IDoc) has been and is one of the default routes for message transmission in most customer environments. SAP built capabilities to review these inbound and outbound messages since the days of R/3. But the functionalities were basic and lacked the ability to query the messages by business data. Earlier functionalities available in the interface monitor were technical in nature and this activity was typically handled by the support team. This has been vastly improved in the SAP S/4HANA environment because business users can now perform activities that were previously left to the technical team, thereby reducing IT dependency and significantly increasing productivity.

While the original functionalities to review messages (WE02, WE05) are still available, new capabilities are available as business functions in the interface monitor with the release of Enhanced Package 4 of ECC. In previous versions, the business function had dependencies on other business functions to be implemented (IS-Mill related), meaning that customers would have to activate additional functions to get the benefit. From SAP S/4HANA 1511 On-premise version onwards, this is now an “always on” business function, meaning it is activated and readily available for users to run.

The functionality has 3 components:

1. EDI monitor for inbound sales orders – Transaction EMORD
2. EDI monitor for inbound ASN – Transaction EMASN
3. EDI Monitor for Forecast Delivery Schedule and JIT Delivery Schedule – Transaction EMJIT

As you can see, splitting up the monitors by functional area also brings in the ability to segregate the responsibility between sales analysts and shipping specialists. Here are the major functionality upgrades in the new monitor:

1. Searching the message by business content is now available. The messages can be searched by sold-to party, ship-to party, and customer material number. The search can also be done by the customer purchase order number.
2. Standard organization elements like sales organization, distribution channels, and sales office are now available as part of the selection.
3. Multiple types of messages can be searched at the same time. For example, for a customer, the orders, requests, and order changes can all be pulled up with a single search, just by inputting the customer number and selecting the type of messages to retrieve. No need to remember the basic types and message types.

The screen for the transaction EMORD and key components are highlighted in Figure 1.

Figure 1—Screen of EMORD transaction

 

In conclusion, these new capabilities are focused on increasing user productivity and reducing the time needed to review monitoring results. As these capabilities are already active, users can start using them right away.