Automatic Roles 

Purpose

The automatic roles provided in the standard SAP system represent a large part of the SAP Easy Access menu. They are configured such that they fulfill all necessary prerequisites for use as roles in SAP NetWeaver Portal or SAP NetWeaver Business Client. You can use the SAP automatic roles as a template for grouping your own automatic roles.

Usage in SAP NetWeaver Portal

The menu structure of an automatic role provided in the standard SAP system contains one specific subarea of the SAP Easy Access menu. Using a portal as a user interface for all tasks that your employees must perform on the PC offers significant advantages for your users. In a portal, you can combine any business and commercial applications and make them available to your users.

You use automatic roles to offer the standard transactions that SAP provides with the ABAP Web GUI in a simple way in a portal and integrate them for the individual user groups in your portals. To do this, you use the transaction Role Maintenance (PFCG) to group the roles in the SAP back-end system or you use the automatic roles provided by SAP. You then transfer the roles to the portal using an upload tool. For this reason, the SAP Easy Access menu was subdivided into approximately 350 areas. You can use the Upload tool to transfer the automatic roles to SAP NetWeaver Portal and provide them to the application there as portal roles.

Usage in SAP NetWeaver Business Client

Using SAP NetWeaver Business Client (NWBC) enables you to access your business applications. You can display and use Web Dynpro applications as well as SAP GUI applications uniformly. Additionally, SAP NWBC can be enriched with external user-specific content such as dashboards, websites, maps, Web 2.0 media, and so on.

SAP NWBC provides direct access to the roles in Role Maintenance (PFCG) in the back-end system. The roles that you assign to the user in the back-end system are displayed directly as applications in SAP NWBC.

SAP NWBC is especially suitable for users who primarily work in individual back-end systems.

Implementation Considerations

To be able to work with the automatic roles, you must fulfill the following system prerequisites:

●      You implement SAP ERP 6.0 with at least SPS08.

●      You implement SAP NetWeaver Portal or SAP NetWeaver Business Client:

○       SAP NetWeaver Portal

You can set up and use the automatic roles in SAP NetWeaver Portal and in SAP NetWeaver Portal Core.

○       SAP NetWeaver Business Client 3.0

Alternatively, you can use SAP NetWeaver Business Client as a desktop installation or as a client for HTML. For more information, see SAP NetWeaver Library and choose SAP NetWeaver Business Client. For release restrictions, see SAP Note 1029940.

Integration

Automatic roles are available in the cross-industry applications of the following areas in addition to various industry-specific applications: Cross-Application Components, Accounting (RW), Logistics (LO), and Human Resources(HR). The industry-specific applications each contain only the delta roles; meaning, only those automatic roles that are required in addition to the automatic roles of the basis applications. The entire functions for an industry-specific application therefore consist of the sum of the automatic roles for the basis applications and the industry-specific delta roles.

Automatic roles are available for the following industry-specific applications:

●      SAP for Automotive (IS-A)

●      SAP for Aerospace & Defense (IS-ADM)

●      SAP for Media (IS-M)

●      SAP for Mill Products (IS-MP)

●      SAP for Oil & Gas (IS-OIL)

●      SAP for Public Sector (IS-PS)

●      SAP for Higher Education and Research (IS-PS-HER)

●      SAP for Retail (IS-R)

●      SAP for Telecommunications (IS-T)

●      SAP for Utilities (IS-U)

For an overview of the automatic roles up to SAP enhancement package 2 for SAP ERP 6.0, see the attachment (Excel file) in SAP Note 1000291.

Features

In the standard SAP system, automatic roles are available for the following areas of the SAP Easy Access menu (S000):

●      Cross-Application Components

●      Logistics

●      Accounting

●      Human Resources

The names of the relevant automatic roles correspond to the sample SAP_EP_<Classification>_<Area>.

Naming Convention for Automatic Roles Contained As Standard

Part of Name	Content
SAP_EP	Prefix, stands for SAP Enterprise Portal
<Classification>	LO = Logistics RW = Accounting HR = Human Resources ISxxx = industry-specific classification
<Area>	ID of area menu (ID and name can be displayed with transaction SE43) or unique term

Automatic roles therefore exist with the following names, for example:

●      SAP_EP_RW_FDMN (Accounting – Financial Accounting – Accounts Receivable)

●      SAP_EP_LO_MM_MRM0 (Logistics – Materials Management – Logistics Invoice Verification)

●      SAP_EP_LO_SD_VF00 (Logistics – Sales – Billing)

●      SAP_EP_HR_PC01 (Human Resources – Payroll – Europe – Germany)

For an overview of assignment of the automatic roles to the SAP Easy Access menu up to SAP enhancement package 2 for SAP ERP 6.0, see the attachment (Excel file) in SAP Note 1000291.

Constraints

Automatic roles are not available in the standard SAP system for the following areas:

●      Office

Functions from this menu area are available via the every user portal role.

●      Information Systems

Functions in this menu area are an extract from other menus and are therefore redundant.

●      Tools

Functions from this menu area are used predominantly by system administration and software development. Automatic roles are not provided for this.