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 Partner

Definition

Partners (business partners) are internal and/or external organizational units. For example, internal partners can be logistics and sales departments that perform services. External partners can be customers as service recipients and vendors as supporting service providers. A partner can be a natural or a legal entity. You can use partners in CS- and PM processing.

Structure

Partner Type

The following partner types are delivered with the Standard System:

  • Customer

  • Contact person

  • Vendor

  • User

  • Personnel number

  • Organizational unit

  • Position

Partner Function

You define partner functions in Customizing for Plant Maintenance and Customer Service. They are freely definable and always refer to a partner type. Standard functions exist (for example, goods recipient) and you can also define your own functions.

Partner Determination Procedure

The partner determination procedure is a grouping of partner functions. It specifies which partner functions are permitted or must always be specified for a particular business transaction (for example, for the processing of a service or maintenance order). In Customizing you define the partner determination procedure and assign partner functions to it. If functions are assigned to the partner determination procedure, you can assign the partner determination procedure to an object (for example, to a notification type).

Integration

You can assign partners to the following objects:

If you have defined in Customizing for Plant Maintenance and Customer Service under Start of the navigation path Plant Maintenance and Customer Service Next navigation step Master Data in Plant Maintenance and Customer Service Next navigation step Basic Settings Next navigation step Partners Next navigation step Copy Partner Functions to Master and Movement Data End of the navigation path , which partners you want to copy, the system copies the respective partner functions when creating the notification with a technical object. For example, a particular technician, who performs a service to a piece of equipment, is assigned to a customer. This technician can be specified as the partner in the equipment master record. In this case, the system copies the partner data into the notification.

For more information on partner data in serial numbers see Management of Serial Numbers in Partner Data .

Note Note

The system offers you different search helps depending on the partner function. In the Standard System up to now, you could select organizational units using a search term. If the partner function of category Employee has been maintained in Customizing, you can search for organizational units using tasks as of Release 4.6C. The system displays a hit list of the organizational units which fulfill this task.

End of the note.