Step 1: Define Correspondence Types

Correspondence types used in the Communication Preferences feature in SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities, must be maintained in Customizing under  SAP Reference IMG Cross-Application Components General Application Functions Correspondence Define Correspondence Types .

This Customizing is cross-client and the following three correspondence types are used in the delivered Customizing for communication preferences:

0019 and 0031 are standard correspondence types for SAP FI-CA. The UMCO is the new correspondence type for SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities and should be used for demo purposes only.

Step 2: Define Communication Preferences Category (Correspondence Roles)

Communication Preferences Category is based on the Correspondence roles. To define the Communication Preferences Category, you need to do the following:

Step 3: Define Allowed Send Methods

You must define send methods for each communication preferences category by doing the following:

Step 4: Define Correspondence Types for Communication Preference Category and Address Determination

The Correspondence Types for each Communication Preference Category need to be maintained in Customizing under  SAP Reference IMG Cross-Application Components General Application Functions Correspondence Configure Address Determination .

In the standard Customizing that is delivered with SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities, the following entries are maintained:

In the standard SAP FI-CA Correspondence feature, a correspondence type could be assigned to multiple Correspondence roles. However, in the Communication Preferences feature delivered with SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities, the correspondence type can only be assigned to one Correspondence role specific to the SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities application. Otherwise, the system returns a system error with code E043(ISU_UMC_ODATA).

Step 5: Define Correspondence Variants

The standard delivered communication preferences Customizing is illustrated in the following diagram:

Since there are 4 allowed send methods and 3 allowed send methods for two communication categories in SAP Multichannel Foundation for Utilities, a total of 12 combinations are available for the CommunicationPreference object like it is represented in the following table:

Since the invoicing function in the SAP IS-U system uses the SAP FI-CA dispatch control without using the correspondence variants, the communication preferences category UMCB related to the invoicing document is not included in the combinations.

To model those combinations of communication categories and send methods, the following 12 correspondence variants must be maintained in Customizing under  SAP Reference IMG Cross-Application Components General Application Functions Correspondence Configure Correspondence Variants .

All variant IDs in the combination set must have the same 2 characters as prefix. The prefix is defined in the BAdI implementation method GET_CORRESPONDENCE_DEFAULT by the property MV_VARIANT_PREFIX. When a new variant combination set used for communication preferences is created, you must ensure that the prefix is unique and not used by any other variant. The prefix for the standard delivered variant set is “UM”.

An OData Service retrieves only variants with the prefix defined in Customizing. If a variant has the correct prefix, the service returns values of the communication preferences defined by this variant. If the variant name is different, the user sees that their communication preferences are not maintained.

In order to help the system administrator to set up the correspondence variants correctly, the report ISU_UMC_MAINTAIN_VARIANT has been developed to generate all variant combinations based on the current Customizing and BAdI implementation.

Step 6: Activate BC Set for the Customizing

You have to activate the BC Sets ISU_UMC_CORRESP_DISPATCH_CONTROL and ISU_UMC_CORRESPONDENCE by using transaction SCPR20. Based on the delivered example, you can maintain your own Customizing for communication preference categories and generate a new variant using a different variant prefix.