Sending purchase orders by EDI

The buyer side of EDI is a conversation. Contoso Motor Co. sends a purchase order (X12 850 or EDIFACT ORDERS), the supplier answers with an order confirmation (855 or ORDRSP), then announces the shipment (856 or DESADV) and finally invoices (810 or INVOIC). This course covers the first three messages with Contoso's rotor supplier Lakeside Components. Supplier invoices are covered in sap-edi-205.

In SAP terms, the purchase order leaves as an outbound IDoc of message type ORDERS with basic type ORDERS05. Process Orchestration 7.5 in XP1 maps it to an X12 850 and sends it to Lakeside. Contoso's interfaces stay on Process Orchestration until after hypercare, so every test in this course runs through XQ1 in the test landscape.

What triggers the IDoc

Saving a purchase order does not create an IDoc by itself. Output processing decides that this purchase order, for this supplier, should go out by EDI, and then the IDoc interface uses the supplier's partner profile to build and send the IDoc. SAP S/4HANA has two output solutions for purchase orders, and you choose per application object in Customizing under Cross-Application Components, Output Control, Manage Application Object Type Activation.

Contoso is a conversion, and its 25 or so IDoc interfaces are mapped in Process Orchestration against today's IDoc structures. For hypercare, purchasing EDI to Lakeside keeps the message control setup carried over from ECC: output type NEU, medium 6, process code ME10. Moving supplier EDI to output control is planned together with the move to SAP Integration Suite, so each partner is retested only once. Note that SAP's output control documentation reserves its IDOC channel for intercompany billing and uses the EDI channel for other electronic messages, so check what the EDI channel produces for purchase orders in your release before you plan that move.

The outbound partner profile

In WE20, Lakeside Components is maintained as partner type LI (supplier) with its supplier number 17300001. The outbound parameters for message type ORDERS hold the technical route and the link to output processing.

The first gap catches many testers. If the condition record is missing, the purchase order simply prints or emails. If the partner profile is missing or does not match the output partner function, the output fails on the purchase order and no IDoc exists, so the IDoc monitor shows nothing. Always start an outbound PO investigation on the purchase order's output log, then move to the IDoc.

Master data the 850 depends on

The IDoc can only carry what the purchase order has. Lakeside's order entry matches on its own material numbers, so the purchasing info record for CMC-RTR-200 and Lakeside must hold the supplier material number; it flows into the PO item and from there into the IDoc's object identification segment. The supplier master needs the partner functions the output uses, and the plant address for 1710 Detroit must be complete because it becomes the 850 ship-to. During cutover, Contoso checked all info records for EDI suppliers for supplier material numbers and confirmation keys, because both were incomplete in ECC for older materials.