With the advent of cloud technology, many HR and Payroll processing applications have captured the market. Companies like ADP are popular in managing the complexity in this area very nicely. In these cases, it might be useful to integrate these external applications with SAP.
The foremost sync needed in these kind of assignments is to exchange Personnel Master information. Since SAP is usually the system of records, it is important to be able to send this information from there. SAP Human Capital Management (SAP HCM) is a module in SAP which manages entire life-cycle of an employee right from hiring till termination. Following are the crucial information contained in the SAP HCM module.
Read this ultimate guide on best practices while integrating SAP with third party application. This is so crucial when you have a landscape with multiple applications including SAP. Integrating the platforms provides insight into other areas of business and to handle specific business functions where SAP may not be the chosen platform. Some of these third party applications could lie in e-commerce, customer relationship management and human resource areas. In this article, we will see how to exchange Personnel master data from SAP to a non-SAP system.
Integrating third party providers with SAP HCM – Skills Required
Following are the basic skills should possess before distributing data.
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- Work experience on ALE-IDOCS (IDOC is a standard interface to transfer data which is similar to XML in purpose. IDOCs can be helpful in integrating SAP with another SAP system or a non SAP application.
- Strong understanding of HR processes and master data concepts.
- Finally, the consulting team needs to have an HCM Functional consultant.
Considerations before integrating the HR applications
Following are the basic requirements, before proceeding further. Before distributing the personnel master data, you might need to create the personnel information along with relevant info-types. If you are wondering what are info-types this article may help. Some of the important info-types are PA0000, PA0001, PA0002, PA0006, PA0022.
Distribution of Master Data from SAP system to Non- SAP system
IDOC is one of the methods to integrate SAP with third party applications. It is a standard data format defined by SAP used to exchange information between SAP and non-SAP applications. It is simply a data container used to exchange data to and from SAP. In the SAP System, IDOCs are stored in database. Every IDOC has a unique number (within a client). To identify the individual client with whom we transfer the data using IDOCS, a logical system needs to be created in SAP.
Step 1: New RFC Destination of Type G
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- Enter transaction code SM59 and click on create button of connection type ‘G’.
- Provide the following inputs. (If you don’t have the Agent set up as of now please provide a dummy value in Target Host and Path Prefix fields which can be updated later). Please ignore any warning message like Query string now allowed and save the information.
Step 2: A new port needs to be configured for IDOC communication
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- Go to WE21, place your cursor on XML HTTP Port and click on create.
- Enter the following values. Please note that RFC destination is a drop-down which needs to be selected (we created it in the above step) and save the information.
Step 3: Define Agent as a logical system in SAP
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- Go to transaction BD54. (This will create a workbench transport). Click on new entries.
- Provide the below details and Click on Save.
Step 4: Maintain partner profile (WE20) for the relevant IDOCs.
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- Go to WE20, select partner type as logical system and provide partner no as same as we defined above and click on create.
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- Add outbound parameters for the following outbound HRMD_A and SYNCH.
Step 5: Now create a distribution model using transaction code BD64 and add HRMD_A
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- It may be required to put some filter conditions in the distribution model. For example if you want to restrict the exchange of information to personnel belong to a specific department, an appropriate filter could be set. In the above example. We have not set any filter.
- If we want to distribute data from a particular Info type, we can set it in filter, For example If you want to distribute data for Info type 0001 then set it in a filter which distributes all the data in Info type 0001 will be distributed to the external system.
How to send personnel master
When you send the data from SAP to third-Party system and if you use message type as HRMD_A then in PFAL (To send HR master records) the destination system details will come in F4 automatically.
- To send the data to third-party application, enter transaction code PFAL.
- Enter Plan Version as 01, object type as P, Object ID, transfer mode, Receiving Partner and then click on execute.
It might be noted that this is a basic tutorial and not meant to be a complete guide. Further integration are possible by extending the learning obtained in this tutorial and using other standard / custom IDOCs. It must be noted that RFC calls can also be leveraged to integrate SAP with third party applications.
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