Generic Object Services (GOS) provide different functions in various applications for many business objects. You can find a detailed description of the different services in the SAP Help Portal.

One of those business objects is the ‘Business Partner’. In SAP S/4HANA, the Business Partner is the leading object to maintain Customer and Supplier data. Please see SAP note ‘2265093 – S4TWL – Business Partner Approach’ for an overview.

This blog post discusses the possibility to attach documents to Business Partner, Customer, and Supplier data in SAP S/4HANA On Premise compared to SAP ECC 6.0.

GOS Document Attachments in SAP ECC 6.0 for Customer and Supplier Data

In SAP ECC 6.0 it is possible to create GOS attachments for customer and supplier data on different levels. For example, a user can assign a PDF of a contract to a customer on a sales area data level and another user can assign a map of the customer’s premises on a general data level.

The following table shows the relevant customer and supplier objects.

Taking up the example of the contract PDF, you need to access the respective customer’s sales area data with (e.g.) transaction VD02, use the GOS toolbox on the top left corner of the screen, and then add the PDF using the file import dialog pop up.

To be able to do so and to later look up this attachment, you need to have the corresponding authorization profile to access customer master sales area data (business object KNVV) whereas for a document attached to the company code data of a customer (business object KNB1), a user needs a different authorization.

The link between the business object and the document in GOS is stored in table ‘SRGBTBREL’, ‘Relationships in GOS Environment’.

Our example is the third entry in above screen shot, the Instance ID being the customer number concatenated with the sales area. As you can see, there were other attachments made for the same customers but on different levels.

GOS Document Attachments up to SAP S/4HANA 1909 OP for Business Partner, Customer and Supplier Data

As mentioned in the introduction, the Business Partner is the leading object in SAP S/4HANA to maintain customer and supplier data. The single point of entry is SAPGUI transaction BP and SAP Fiori Apps ‘Maintain Business Partner’ as well as ‘Manage Customer Master Data’ and ‘Manage Supplier master Data’. Customer and Supplier data are accessed using Business Partner roles. Furthermore, with the new Business Partner concept, it is possible to merge customer and supplier data into one Business Partner for the same legal entity.

Up to SAP S/4HANA 1909 OP it was only possible to attach documents using GOS for object Business Partner itself (business object BUS1006) using above transactions and SAP Fiori Apps.

With SAP note 2446970, the BADI implementation GOS_BP_CUSTVEND for  BADI GOS_MULT_PUBLISH was provided so that the document attachments done in ECC for customer and supplier objects can be displayed based on BP role and organizational unit in SAP S/4HANA after conversion from ECC.

So, from a document attachment point of view, it is not possible to differentiate between customer and supplier and it is not possible to attach a document to (e.g.) the customer accounting view as part of a Business Partner.

GOS Document Attachments in SAP S/4HANA 2020 OP for Business Partner, Customer and Supplier Data

With SAP S/4HANA 2020 OP it is now again possible to attach documents to the customer and supplier business objects. The solution is based on BP roles and the organizational levels (general, company code, sales area, purchasing area).

Let us make some examples:

• Attachment for Business Partner itself:
  If you access a Business Partner with transaction BP and role ‘000000’, ‘Business Partner (Gen.)’ and add an attachment, the attachment is related to business object BUS1006.
• Attachment for Customer, General Data:
  If you access a Business Partner with transaction BP and role ‘FLCU00’, ‘FI Customer’ (or any other customer related BP role) working on a general data screen (e.g. the Address tab) and then add an attachment, the attachment is related to business object KNA1.
  
• Attachment for Customer, Company Code Data:
  If you access a Business Partner with transaction BP and role ‘FLCU00’, ‘FI Customer’ working on a company code related data screen (e.g. the Account Management tab) and then add an attachment, the attachment is related to business object KNB1.
  

You could now do the same for sales area data using BP role FLCU01, for supplier related data using BP roles FLVN00 and FLVN01. Ultimately, the links between the documents and the different business objects are again stored in table SRGBTBREL, Relationships in GOS Environment.

Here, you see the attachments made to the different objects using transaction BP. The instance ID contains again the object key (Business Partner/Customer/Supplier number plus organizational units if applicable.

Conclusion

With this solution in SAP S/4HANA 2020 OP, it is now possible to assign GOS document attachments according to business needs and according to the user’s authorizations similar to the possibilities in SAP ECC 6.0 but adapted to the new Business Partner concept in SAP S/4HANA.

The functionality is currently available in SAP S/4HANA 2020 OP in SAPGUI transaction BP and in the SAPGUI for HTML Fiori App ‘Maintain Business Partner’.

Update on November 17, 2020: Downport of above mentioned functionality to SAP S/4HANA OP releases 1610 to 1909 is now available with SAP notes 2954598 and 2980139.

About this Blog Post

This is a copy of Blog Post Generic Object Services (GOS) Attachments for Business Partner because Urs Henle is not active at SAP any more.