Thoughts on following scenario

[Former Member]

Hey All,

I have a scenario and just wanted to get some feedback on the integration directory part before I try and re-invent the wheel. I do not have any experience with B2B communcations so any thoughts would be great. Basically, we will be sending out PO's to many vendors via XI, converting the data to xCBL3.0 format. So basically it is

IDOC>XI>xCBL(via HTTP)

So,

1) the sender service is my R/3 business system.

2) the receivers will be business services for each vendor

right?

3) Since they are business partners, do I have to use 'with party', or can I just do 'services without party'.

4) the conditions on the receiver determination will determine who gets each message and what mapping are called

5) A couple of vendors want to give me a syncronous response, while other will not. How best to handle this?

thanks in advance for the ideas,

chris

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

1) The R/3 system could be a Service without party/Business System

2) You could have one business service which is assigned to many receivers, via Receiver Determination and Interface Determination. Or you could create business services for each party. I'd recommend the first approach. We do this in RosettaNet Scenarios where many VENDORS can receive the PO via the same service ( ie PIP3A4_V0202 )

3) I think and recommend you use "with party". In RosettaNet scenarios, we create multiple parties VENDOR1 & VENDOR2 using the same business service PIP3A4_V0202.

4) Yes, in addition to your Interface Determination, and Receiver Agreement.

5) no recommendations. In rosettaNet, everything is asynchronous.

good luck! james

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris,

to addition on James remarks:

5) you will have to create two different interfaces

one for the async communication and one for the sync communtion and use content based routing to route it to the right interface.

Cheers,

Frank

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris,

Yes , you will have to do 2 diff interfaces. We are dealing with async communication using cXML to vendors. I am using party with business service for the receiver.

Hope it helps.

-Teresa

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Teresa, Frank and James,

Thank You for your responses! I gave you all points for giving me very helpful information!

I will use one business service for PO exchange with our vendors. I will setup each vendor as a party in XI and assign the business service. Within the receiver determination I will use content based routing to send the PO's to the correct vendor and correct interface.

Quick question about using a party since I haven't dealt with it before. Lets say that I am doing business with Dell and the backend SAP partner number for Dell is 123456. Should I setup the party in XI with the same number? So the XI identifier would be 123456? Or should I just call the party Dell in XI. I don't have DUNS or other identifiers for Dell, so I was wondering why i should use a party.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Dear Richard-

You could use "Dell" as the XI party identifier. Using this construct you could also assign other identifiers for Dell within XI if you had multiple ID's for Dell or different divisions of Dell in your other backend systems. By using the party it's clear in your scenario that you are conducting a B2B transaction.

If you are using the IDOC adapter to receive the ORDERS05 interface in XI then you could define in your XI party object "Dell" with the following:

Agency: <Business System> (ie R/3 as an XI Service without party)

Scheme: ALE#LI

Name: 123456

This assumes that the "123456" value is the Lieferant or Vendor in MM on the PO.

Please try this if you are using the IDOC adapter.

Cheers, james

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks James!

Your answer was very clear. I will follow the construct you selected! If I have any problems I will post.

Regards,

Chris