Timing, changes and cancellations

An ASN that arrives after the truck is useless, and an ASN that arrives before the truck is loaded is often wrong. Great Lakes' supplier guide (a Contoso partner document, so its rules are this course's canon) states the window: the 856 must arrive within 60 minutes after the truck leaves Contoso and before it arrives at the depot. That rule decides the trigger, and the trigger decides most of the design.

Picking, packing or goods issue?

Contoso triggers at goods issue. In message control that takes two settings. The LAVA condition record for Great Lakes uses dispatch time 4 (send immediately) from sap-edi-202. The LAVA line in the delivery's output determination procedure carries a requirement that is met only when goods issue is posted, so LAVA is not proposed, or not processed, before then. Many systems use the standard requirement 1 on the shipping procedure for this purpose, but routine numbers and their logic differ by application: open the routine in VOFM (requirements, output control) and read what it checks before you rely on it. The alternative, dispatch time 3, waits for a user or job to run the "Output from Deliveries" function, which SAP documents in its EDI procedure for deliveries; it suits partners who want one batch per day, not Great Lakes.

Delivery or shipment?

The GL-NORTH truck carries Great Lakes' delivery and deliveries for two other fleet customers. Some partners want one ASN per truck, built from a shipment document; others want one per delivery. Great Lakes' guide allows one 856 per delivery with BSN02 equal to Contoso's delivery number, which keeps Contoso on the delivery IDoc. A partner that requires per-truck ASNs needs a shipment-based design and its own test pack; do not discover that requirement in the partner test window.

Changes, re-sends and cancellations

The 856 has a purpose code in BSN01: 00 original, 01 cancellation, 05 replace, 07 duplicate. EDIFACT says the same in the BGM message function: 9 original, 1 cancellation, 5 replace. Which of these a partner accepts is a guide question, and many retail and automotive guides forbid changes after the truck leaves. Great Lakes accepts 01 and 05, but only before the truck arrives.

Three situations come up in every hypercare. Re-send after an outage: if Process Orchestration lost the message, repeat the LAVA output from the delivery, which creates a new output record and a new IDoc (sap-edi-202). Tell Great Lakes first, because a second 00 for the same shipment may be booked twice. Goods issue reversed: if the truck did not leave, goods issue is reversed with VL09, and the ASN Great Lakes already holds is now false. Delivery split: when only 44 of 50 can ship, EWM triggers a split of the delivery (sap-ewm-203), so the ASN for 80001234 reports 44 and the six pieces get their own delivery and their own ASN later.

SAP's IDoc route does not document an automatic cancellation ASN when goods issue is reversed. Contrast this with the SOAP service Notify of Outbound Delivery, where SAP documents output type DSNO in place of LAVA and an automatic cancellation message when a delivery whose DSNO was already sent is deleted. On the IDoc route, Contoso built its own: an output type copied from LAVA (named ZLAC at Contoso) whose requirement checks for a reversed goods issue, a second DESADV row on KU 17100001 with a message function that marks it as a cancellation, and a rule in the PO map that sets BSN01 to 01 when that message function is present. It is custom, so it has its own test cases and its own line in the partner spec.