Signature Process Flow (Components Involved)

Use

The process explains how the components involved work together in a signature process:

Application: for example, EA-APPL
Digital signature: SAP_ABA
Secure Store and Forward: SAP_BASIS

Process

Signature Process (Components Involved)

From within the business context of a user's application, he or she starts a process that requires a digital signature (for example, the approval of deviations in a process instruction sheet).
The document to be signed is called by the application and forwarded to the signature tool in SAP_ABA.

The signature function is opened in SAP_ABA. The system displays the dialog box for executing the digital signature.

Note

In your application, you can specify whether the document to be signed is to be managed by the application itself or the signature function.
You enter your user ID and password.

The user ID and password are either checked in the system (if you are using the system signature) or on the smart card by the external security product (component SSF).
The signature tool runs the following checks:
- Authorization check
  
  The tool checks whether the user has authorization to execute the digital signature.
- User data check
  
  The tool checks whether the required user data such as first and last name and the time zone were entered correctly in the system.
- Duplicate key check
  
  If the user has already provided a signature as part of a signature strategy, the signature process is canceled and an error message displayed.
- Authorization group check
  
  The authorization group check determines whether the user has selected the correct role in accordance with his or her assignment to an authorization group in the authorization profile.
- Sequence check
  
  The sequence check determines which signature steps the user can select from before entering his or her user ID and password.
- Release check
  
  The release check ensures that all necessary signatures were provided to complete an approval or signature process successfully. Particularly in the case of an asynchronous signature strategy, the system informs the application which status (status Completed/ Not Completed) the signature process has. When you use the synchronous signature strategy, all required signatures must be provided in the same SAP R/3 session.
  
  Note
  
  In the case of the simple digital signature without a signature strategy, the authorization check, sequence check, and release check are omitted.
When the signature process has been completed successfully, follow-up actions can be started in the application.