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Identity Management for SAP SNC: Central Creation of UsersLocate this document in the navigation structure

Use

With SAP NetWeaver Identity Management, you can trigger automatic generation of users and business partners for SAP Supply Network Collaboration (SAP SNC). This is relevant in the following use cases:

  • Creation of users and business partners for employees

    An expert in Human Resources (HR) creates a new employee in the HR system of the company running the SAP SNC system. This new employee also needs a user in SAP SNC, which is solved as follows: The user creation in the HR system triggers the automatic creation of a new identity in the SAP NetWeaver Identity Management system. A user administrator assigns a business role to this new identity. As a result, SAP NetWeaver Identity Management triggers automatic user and business partner creation in SAP SNC for the employee.

  • Creation of users and business partners for external users

    An external business partner, who is maintained as a business partner of type Organization in SAP SNC, requires access to the system. An administrator creates new external identities in the SAP NetWeaver Identity Management system and assigns them to the external business partner. SAP NetWeaver Identity Management triggers automatic user and business partner creation in SAP SNC for the users of the external business partner.

In addition, you can also change and delete such users centrally with SAP NetWeaver Identity Management.

Business partners use SAP SNC to plan and execute collaborative processes in the supply chain, such as Supplier Managed Inventory or Responsive Replenishment. For more information about users and business partners in SAP SNC, see the SAP SNC documentation on SAP Help Portal at http://help.sap.com.

Note

The description of the use cases assumes that SAP SNC is installed at one of the business partners' sites that use SAP SNC. If SAP SNC is hosted by a third party not involved in the collaboration, the use cases also apply. However, in this instance, the Creation of users and business partners for employees use case would not apply to the business partner that physically hosts and runs SAP SNC. Instead, it applies to the business partner who can be considered as leading the collaboration. In customer collaboration scenarios such as Responsive Replenishment, the leading business partner is the supplier. In supplier collaboration scenarios such as Supplier Managed Inventory, the leading business partner is the customer.

Prerequisites

For more information about prerequisites, see Master Data and Settings for Identity Management with SAP SNC.

Features

Creation of an Identity in SAP NetWeaver Identity Management

A new identity can be created manually or automatically (see use cases above). An administrator assigns a business role to this new identity. The business role contains general information such as the PFCG roles and profiles in SAP SNC. For SAP SNC, there are two business partner types that you assign, as follows:

  • Business partner of type Person

  • Business partner of type Organization

    This business partner represents either the company the employee is working for and is thus the same for all employees or it represents an organizational unit such as an internal department. The organizational unit is not necessarily related to an HR organizational unit. In the case of an external identity, it is the business partner of type Organization in SAP SNC that represents the company for whom the external user is working. Depending on the use case, you can determine the assignment of business partners of type Organization as follows:

    • Creation of users and business partners for external users use case

      The assignment of a business partner of type Organization in SAP NetWeaver Identity Management is mandatory.

    • Creation of users and business partners for employees use case

      The assignment of a business partner of type Organization in SAP NetWeaver Identity Management is optional. You can also leave this field empty. In this case, SAP SNC assigns the business partner of type Organization that has been maintained in Customizing for SAP SNC.

      Recommendation

      For the Creation of users and business partners for employees use case, we recommend that you use SAP SNC Customizing to determine the business partner of type Organization.

Generation of Users and Business Partners in SAP SNC

In all use cases, SAP NetWeaver Identity Management distributes the new user to SAP SNC as follows:

  1. Generation of a user in SAP SNC

    SAP SNC generates the user automatically in the background. The role that you have assigned to the identity in SAP NetWeaver Identity Management is automatically assigned to the user in SAP SNC. Note that this can be any role that is available in SAP SNC. For more information about available roles in SAP SNC, see SAP Library for SAP SNC on SAP Help Portal at http://help.sap.com.

  2. Generation of a business partner

    The business partner is generated and automatically assigned to the Internet User partner role. If a business partner of type Person already exists in SAP SNC and this business partner is already assigned to the identity in SAP NetWeaver Identity Management, SAP SNC does not generate a new business partner. Instead, it takes the existing business partner.

    SAP SNC creates the business partner ID as follows:

    • It takes the first ten characters of the user name. If a business partner with such an ID already exists, the system adds a running number.

    • If you have implemented the BAdI /SCMB/MDL_PARTNER_GEN_ID, the system can use your own logic for determining the business partner ID. For more information, see the Prerequisites section.

  3. Assignment of the business partner

    SAP SNC automatically assigns the business partner of type Person to a business partner of type Organization that represents the business partner to whom the user belongs. For external users, this is the business partner of type Organization that you have entered in SAP NetWeaver Identity Management. For internal users, the assignment depends on the Customizing or on what has been maintained in SAP NetWeaver Identity Management, in the following order:

    1. If you have assigned a business partner of type Organization to the user in SAP NetWeaver Identity Management, SAP SNC takes over this business partner.

    2. If no business partner has been assigned in SAP NetWeaver Identity Management, SAP SNC checks if you have implemented the BAdI /SCA/IDM_PARTNER_OWN. With this BAdI, you can implement your own logic for assigning business partners to users.

    3. If no business partner has been assigned in SAP NetWeaver Identity Management and no BAdI has been implemented, SAP SNC takes over the business partner that has been maintained in Customizing for SAP SNC. For more information, see Customizing for Supply Network Collaboration under Start of the navigation path Master Data Next navigation step Integration with SAP NetWeaver Identity Management Next navigation step Define Leading Business Partner for Identity Management End of the navigation path.

  4. Assignment of a visibility profile to the user (optional)

    In addition, the user administrator can assign visibility profiles to the users. Visibility profiles control in SAP SNC which master data the user is able to see. For more information about visibility profiles in SAP SNC, see SAP Library for SAP SNC on SAP Help Portal at http://help.sap.com.

Changing and Deleting Users

If you change or delete users, SAP NetWeaver Identity Management also distributes the user change or deletion to SAP SNC, with the following constraints:

  • The assignment of a user to a business partner of type Person cannot be changed.

  • When you delete a user, the assignment of the user to a business partner of type Person is also deleted. The business partner of type Person, however, remains in the system.

Mandatory Set of Data to Be Transferred from SAP NetWeaver Identity Management to SAP SNC

If you want to create or change a user in SAP SNC, the following data must be transferred from SAP NetWeaver Identity Management to SAP SNC:

Attribute Name

Provisioning Task

Comment

SU01–Relevant Attributes

Create, update

First and last name, full name, address, search terms, and user name

SCMSNC_BP_ORG_ID*

Create, update

Business partner of type Organization (internal: organization, external: business partner)

* This is optional for internal identities, and not recommended (see the Generation of Users and Business Partners section).

More Information

For more information about SAP SNC, see SAP Library for SAP SNC on SAP Help Portal at http://help.sap.com.