CCM Create a second Master Catalog impact on old templates

[Former Member]

We currently have in production a supplier catalog that contains material master items. They are mapped to the MASTER_CATALOG and the master catalog has been published.

We now want to replace the supplier catalog by a Product Catalog (SRM_EXTRACTED_CTLG). If we take the approach to delete the supplier catalog, load the product catalog, map it to the master catalog and then publish the master catalog, we would need to stop the users from shopping for a large period of time (i.e. Delete takes 8 hours, Load takes 8 hours and publish takes 6 hours).

We have tested the following approach and it works well:

1-Change in SPRO (Specify Settings for Master Catalog ID and Fuzzy Search), the name of the Master Catalog to something else. This converts the current master catalog to a procurement catalog. However, the current master catalog is still published and is accessed within SRM shopping carts.

2-Create the Product Catalog and map to new Master Catalog

3-Publish the new Master Catalog. At this point there are two master catalogs published. The Integrated Call Structure in config still points to the old one.

4-Modify the Integrated Call structure to now point to the new published master catalog. The shopping carts now refer to the new master catalog.

5-Delete the Supplier Catalog and Delete the old Master Catalog

This approach will allow us to prepare everything ahead of time and then the downtime is not even necessary as changing config for the call structure is a 5 minute job.

We only have one concern with this approach. Since SRM and CCM store data using GUIDs, we are not sure what the full impact is on copying old templates containing material masters. Because the GUID of the published Catalog changes, will the copy old templates function work and will it pick up the latest information from the new published catalog? Does anyone have the full undertstanding of the Globally Unique identifier?

Thanks,

Elvira

[Former Member]

Serguei is absolutely right and he's the forum master, but also, I would like to point out that you cannot upload a "product" catalog to overwrite your "supplier" catalog. The new catalog IS a "supplier" catalog. This leads me to say that the best way to setup your scenario is to use the master catalog as it was meant to be used...to map, not publish. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. You don't necessarily have to map by UNSPSC or eClass. You could call your first category ID in the Master Catalog Schema "MATERIALS" and your second category ID "PRODUCTS" if you wish to keep your naming convention here. Then you can force your mapping respectively through these to Procurement Catalogs that you then publish saving you from 8 hour deletes, cutovers, etc.

[Former Member]

Galen,

Please see my response to Serguei.

In addition, we originally went live with a supplier catalog using .csv files, which really contained our material masters with several characteristics. We did this because we were not XML ready. Once we had XI available, we wanted to move towards having a product catalog (with our material masters) and then create supplier catalogs coming from the outside vendors.

To create a Product Catalog (SRM_EXTRACTED_CTLG) you must run a program from within your SRM system or ERP2005. Since our R/3 system is a 4.7 version and all the characteristics we require are in R/3, we decided to create the Product Catalog from our R/3 system via a User Interface.

The following has been implemented at our site:

a) R/3 ABAP interface program is run daily to extract changes made to material masters since the last run (that meet specific criteria);

b) The same R/3 Interface does an RFC call to XI (passing it the delta changes for the day)

c) XI will perform a mapping for CCM and builds the xml code

d) An RFC to PROXY call is submitted to CCM to load the product catalog.

So as of mid October, any changes to material masters in R/3 are passed daily to CCM and it is fully automated with no manual intervantion.

Best Regards,

Elvi.

[Former Member]

Dear Elvira,

actually i wanted to know how u have migrated the material master data to CCM supplier catalog?

In my case i need to maintain the R/3 master data (materials and services) in CCM such that users can do all the procurements through catalog ( we could have gone for "internal goods and services" in EBP) but it doesn't give a chance of multiple selection.

Moreover I need to constantly update the ccm data as and when there is a change in R/3 master data.

How do i achieve my objective?

Regards,

Abhishek

[former_member544585]

Elvira: in my book, you are taking the most risky option. Re-creating the Master Catalog is only advised in rare (and bad cases.

Instead, my advice is to re-visit your original plan (Delete-Load-Map-Publish).

When you think of it, users don't really need to be stopped from shopping. Your Delete, Load and Map operations (16 hours) have no impact on the shopping users - they will still see the old content. That leaves only publishing.

More good news , to achieve absolutely seamless (and risk-free) transition, you can create a temporary Procurement catalog, map old content from Master to it, and publish it. Then temporarily change your call structure to point to this procurement catalog, until your Master catalog is published with new content.

As far as GUIDs, my gut feeling is that in either scenario (re-creating Master or publishing new content in the same Master) you will lose the GUID links in old templates, since those will be new items from new source.

Cheers,

Serguei

[Former Member]

Serguei,

After considering your comments and reviewing the project implementation plan, we still decided, for this time only, to proceed with recreating a new Master Catalog.

We went live on October 14, 2006 with this approach and we had no problems. We were able to do this because our users don't copy old templates to create their new shopping carts. All our testing showed that when you copy an old template, after having made the change to a new master catalog, the old characteristic values are copied. The system does not re-get the values from the new published master catalog. This was the only risk for us and the impact was minimal.

We agree that the approach was risky but we tested it in 3 other clients before doing it in production.

We really appreciated your comments and they were very helpful. If we could have afforded more down time, we would have followed your suggestion. With the approach we took, there was absolutely no down time for the shoppers.

Thanks again,

Elvi.