Business Partner Role (BP Role) 

Use

The basis for the definition of a business partner role is a business transaction. The attributes of the BP role depend on the particular transaction involved. The data that is available for a transaction also depends on the business partner category.

 

Transaction	BP Role
Sales order	Sold-to party
Delivery of goods	Ship-to party

In addition to the central BP roles, which are delivered in the standard system, there are component-specific roles, for example:

·        IS-U: Contract partner, installer

·        IS-IS-CD: Contract partner

·        BCA: Account maintenance officer, account holder, authorized drawer, bank statement recipient

·        CRM: Sold-to party, ship-to party

·        EBP: Bidder, portal provider

It is possible to create a business partner in one or more BP roles. Central data such as name, address and bank details only has to be created once.

The central BP role General Business Partner is automatically assigned to a business partner. Depending on the function of the business partner in question, you can also select the following BP roles:

·        BP role contact person

·        BP role employee

·        BP role organizational unit

·        BP role Internet user

Integration

All the business partner roles supplied are displayed for selection in the business partner screen.

In the same way, you can replace the standard description of BP roles with user-defined descriptions, and determine at which position the relevant BP role should appear in the dropdown box.

Make these settings for the SAP GUI in Customizing.

With the help of field groupings in Customizing, fields can also be displayed or hidden via this role.

An extension of the BP roles to include customer-specific attributes is possible. In theory it is possible to define other BP roles but this should only be considered if a customer has developed customer-specific applications. For more information, also see the Business Data Toolset.

Prerequisites

Make the necessary settings for the BP role in the Implementation Guide (IMG) in Customizing of the Business Partner under Basic Settings ® Business Partner Roles.

Features

A range of functions is available to you, which you can set in Customizing and use in the context of the BP role concept.

The business partner view is defined in the Business Data Toolset (BDT) and is used for the purposes of screen control, which is established by assigning a BP role to a BP view. In this way you can establish, among other things, which data should be displayed for a business partner in the dialog when the relevant role was selected.

You can group roles, which you can then select in the dialog, together in a business partner role grouping. For more information see BP role grouping.

You can use the business partner role category as well as the business partner role grouping category for program requirements within an application, for example.

You can group roles together in a business partner role exclusion group in order to ensure that a business partner cannot take on certain roles at the same time.

Permitted transitions between particular roles allow you to establish which sequences of roles in the dialog should be permitted.

 

The following diagram provides you with an overview of the different elements of the role concept.

You can use the following functions for displaying and maintaining BP roles in the dialog:

·        Overview of all the roles that have been assigned and that are valid on a key date

·        Display and maintenance of a validity period for a role

·        Deletion of a role assignment

·        Where-used list for a role

The where-used list allows you to check whether it is possible to delete the assignment of BP roles to business partners that form part of a business partner relationship. If these roles are defined at the relationship category and form a prerequisite for creating a relationship, then the assignment cannot be deleted.

·        Change history of a role