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With the business functions, SAP provides new features and enhancements in self-contained units for your existing SAP ERP installations. This enables you to use new developments and enhancements for your different business processes in Accounting, Logistics, Human Capital Management, and for your industry solution. The changes only become active in your system when you activate a business function.

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites apply if you want to use the business functions of the enhancement packages (second generation business functions):

  • Before installing the enhancement packages, you have obtained information about the business functions that you want to use for your business processes.

    For information about the business functions see SAP Service Marketplace (for example, at service.sap.com\releasenotes) and on the Help Portal (help.sap.com) under   SAP ERP Central Component   <number of the enhancement package>   SAP Library   Business Function Sets and Business Functions  .

  • You have implemented the relevant technical components in your SAP ERP installations dependent on the required business function.

Features

First generation business functions

The first generation business functions are available for full releases of SAP ECC (for example, SAP ECC 6.0). You use them to activate a number of industry-independent and industry-specific applications and business processes for each business function. They are available as Enterprise Extensions and as components of the industry-specific business function sets.

Second generation business functions

The second generation business functions are a component of the enhancement packages for SAP ERP. They are tailored to individual, self-contained business processes. They are available in the form of Enterprise business functions and as components of the industry-specific business function sets.

With regard to the second generation business functions, we distinguish between the following types:

  • Enterprise business functions

    These business functions contain functions that you can activate and use in an ABAP-based system independently of any industry enhancement that you use. They include both industry-specific and industry-independent business functions. You can use the functions contained in the Enterprise business functions parallel to other industry-specific or industry-independent functions.

  • Industry business functions

    These business functions contain functions that belong to the industry enhancements introduced with SAP ERP 6.0. They are part of the industry business function sets. You cannot activate industry business functions of an industry business function set parallel to other industry business function sets in an ABAP-based system.

For each second generation business function we have defined which individual technical components of the enhancement packages you have to implement in your system landscape in order to be able to use the content of the business function. And you have to implement only these technical components in your existing SAP ERP installations in order to be able to use the content of the business functions.

The following technical components contain new developments and enhancements that are available for a second generation business function:

  • Software component versions of the ABAP-based ECC system

    Dependent on the required business function, you only implement that software component version in your existing installation that you need for the required business function, for example, EA-APPL 602 or EA-HR 602.

  • Software component versions for Java-based applications

  • Portal content

    A business function can cover new or enhanced portal roles. Therefore, new versions of the business packages are available for the enhancement packages:

    The version of an enhanced business package covers the following portal roles:

    • Portal roles in the version that was available for the previous full release (for example, SAP ERP 6.0)

    • Changed portal roles that are used in a business function. In addition to new iViews, the new version of a portal role can also cover iViews that were already part of the portal role of the full release.

    This means that if you use the enhancement packages, you can still use the existing portal roles even if you do not use the related business function.

  • Business Intelligence content (BI content)

    In your BI system, new or changed objects as of the enhancement packages are stored in own InfoAreas. In addition, the documentation of the individual objects contains information about the enhancement package from which the objects are available and for which business function.

  • SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure content (XI content) and Enterprise Services

    As part of the enhancement packages, in addition to the Enterprise Services available with the ECC-SE add-on, you also receive further Enterprise Services. The implementations of these Enterprise Services are in the software component versions of your ABAP-based ECC system. In the XI system, these Enterprise Services are grouped in own software components and namespaces for the enhancement packages. For information about these Enterprise Services, see the documentation of the business function and the related release notes.

For information about the technical components required for a business function, see the documentation. For more information, see Business Function Documentation and the Master Guide for the enhancement packages.

When you implement a new enhancement package or upgrade to a higher full release, your business functions and the related settings in your ABAP-based ECC system remain. After the installation, the business functions that you previously used are activated automatically.

Activation of the business functions in an ABAP-based ECC system

You can provide the new developments for a business function in your ABAP-based ECC system by activating the required business function with transaction SFW5.

Note Note

  • You cannot undo the activation of a business function.

  • The business functions are only visible in transaction SFW5 if you have implemented the related ECC software component versions.

  • The processes that run in the background when you activate a business function need a certain amount of time (approximately 1 hour). This means that you cannot see the changes in the system immediately after you activate the business function.

End of the note.

You call transaction SFW5 in your ABAP-based ECC system from the first node in your Implementation Guide. It provides a series of functions that simplify the use of the new developments for you:

  • When you have activated a business function, the following changes and new developments are visible:

    • Menu entries

    • New fields on the application interfaces

    • IMG activities required for the implementation

  • For the second generation business functions you also have access to additional information and functions that make the decision to use a business function and the implementation of the applications contained therein easier:

    • Navigation to the documentation of the business functions

    • Navigation to the release notes relevant for the business function

    • Navigation to the sample test catalogs for the business function

      For more information, see Working with Test Case Templates

    • Notes about the dependencies between business functions

      For some business functions you must also activate additional business functions. For notes about this see the related documentation and the Dependencies column in transaction SFW5. It is not technically possible to activate business functions that exclude each other.

  • From a technical view, the business functions consist of individual switches that can be used to activate coding strings, menu entries, and Customizing activities in the Implementation Guide (IMG). For more technical information about the business functions and transaction SFW5, see Switch Framework.

    Caution Caution

    If you implement own enhancements to enhancement points or enhancement sections for the second generation business functions, a subsequent release or enhancement package can make these ineffective or can lead to errors. We therefore strongly recommend that you do not use enhancement points or enhancement sections for customer-specific enhancements. For second generation business functions, SAP does not guarantee that the interfaces and the existence of enhancement points and enhancement sections in the coding will remain stable. Here, customer-specific implementations have the status of modifications.

    Instead, use the standard interfaces that SAP provides for customer-specific enhancements (for example, Business Add-Ins (BAdIs) or Enterprise Services).

    End of the caution.