Business Partners are governed and maintained in the SAP MDG hub environment, however, there are a few roles like Credit Management which SAP does not fully support in MDG. Hence, it’s essentially maintained in the S/4 operational instance.

Problem

The OTC team updates the BP by adding Credit Management role UKM000 in the SAP S/4 environment. Let’s assume the same BP undergoes maintenance in MDG hub via a Change Request process where the Credit Management role is not added. After the Change Request is activated, this BP gets replicated to S/4 via SOA DRF. Now when the BP is displayed through either BP transaction or Maintain Business Partner app in Fiori, the Credit Management role that was added by the OTC team is seen to have gotten deleted.

Solution

This problem can be overcome by making use of DRF filters in the S/4 side. Define a replication model in the S/4 (target) system, and add BP roles to the exclusion filter criteria that are going to be maintained only in S/4 environment e.g., Credit Management role – UKM000.

Below are the DRF configuration steps: –

Step 1: Execute DRFIMG in S/4 (target) system.

Step 2: Define Custom Settings for Data Replication > Define Technical Settings for Business Systems.

Step 3: Add an entry for the MDG business system and check Disable for Replication (for not sending the BP back to MDG hub).

Step 4: Define Replication Model.

Step 5: Add an entry for replication model from S/4 to MDG. And make sure it’s Active.

Step 6: Add Outbound Implementation for Business Partner – 986_3.

Step 7: Assign target system to the replication model i.e., the Business System defined in step # 3.

Step 8: Execute transaction DRFF in S/4 system. Choose the Replication Model to add the filters.

Step 9: After clicking on the Create button, we’ll land up on this page. No filters are maintained at the Object level.

Note: BP role UKM000 is added to the segment filter criterion’s exclusion list so that the maintenance of Credit Management remains exclusive to S/4 system only.

Step 10: Click on the button – Show Segment Filters (9) and choose Business Partner Role – 98601 to add the filter criteria at the segment level.

Step 11: Maintain segment level filter criteria.

The idea is to configure Data Replication Framework in the S/4 environment same as we do in the MDG Hub with the exception of restricting replication of the BP to MDG system by checking the Disable for Replication flag mentioned in step # 3. Once the filter(s) are added to the exclusion list in the S/4 system, the replication of BP from MDG system will not cause deletion of the Credit Management role or the roles maintained in the segment level exclusion list in the S/4 environment.

Demo

Let’s add a Credit Management role – UKM000 to the Business Partner in S/4 system.

Next, we will update the same Business Partner in MDG hub via Change Request process. After the Change Request is activated, the data will get replicated to S/4 system. Below are the BP roles assigned to the Business Partner in MDG Hub.

Add value in Search Term 1 UI attribute and submit the Change Request to start the governance process. Once the Change Request status is Final Check Approved (Activated), the value of Search Term 1 will be updated in MDG hub and eventually get replicated to S/4 environment.

Open the Business Partner in S/4 environment through BP transaction again.

As seen in the above BP Change Document history, the Search Term 1 value that was updated in the MDG hub, is successfully replicated to S/4 system, while still preserving the Credit Management role in S/4.

Below are the OSS Notes/KBAs referred while figuring out a solution to this problem:
3000593 – Business Partner roles are deleted when replicating data from C4C to S/4HANA
2966571 – Partial (reduced) data model for business partner web service (SOAP)