With the evolving nature of CRM and SAP’s strong focus on business integration, it comes as no surprise that something like the employee master is now supported by two different sources. For those of us who have worked with SAP CRM since the early design days, the employee master took its first foothold on the SAP CRM platform. However, were you aware that the HR module is also considered a strong contender for employee master data?

There are two primary scenarios in which you use employee master data:

• SAP CRM stand-alone environment (scenario 1)
• SAP ERP-SAP CRM integration (scenario 2)

The second scenario presents options as well. The differentiator is whether you use or plan to use HR in the SAP ERP system (known as SAP ERP Human Capital Management [SAP ERP HCM]). If you are already using SAP HR or if it is a planned scope item, then you should use the SAP HR employee master over SAP CRM. Nevertheless, there are pros and cons to each approach, but your project team should evaluate which options are a good fit for your company.

In this evaluation, you identify a primary system to host and maintain your employee master data as opposed to maintaining data in two separate systems. SAP CRM, in this case, becomes a receiver and can access all the necessary tasks, whereas SAP ERP HCM drives the quality and integration of the data. If you are implementing a project in scenario 2 and SAP ERP HCM is in your horizon, I’ll show you the steps required to integrate the employee master between these two systems. The processes in this article apply to mySAP CRM 4.0 and later, and SAP R/3 Enterprise (4.7) and later.

The 10-Step Process

Begin by launching an SAP CRM session and addressing the integration via IMG menu path Customer Relationship Management > Master Data > Business Partner > Integration Business Partner-Employee > Set Up Integration With HR. Then follow these 10 steps to enable business partner integration between SAP ERP HCM and SAP CRM:

Step 1. Activate integration with SAP ERP HCM

Step 2. Set up integration with Organizational Management

Step 3. Generate the SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) distribution model to act as a message type of data for distribution between SAP ECC and SAP CRM

Step 4. Add a message type

Step 5. Define the filter set for the message type

Step 6. Generate the partner profiles in SAP ECC for your new distribution model

Step 7. Activate Application Link Enabling (ALE) delta status

Step 8. Transport the distribution model view from SAP ECC to SAP CRM

Step 9. Generate the partner profiles in SAP CRM

Step 10. Replicate employee master data from SAP ERP HCM to SAP CRM

Step 1. Activate integration with SAP ERP HCM. Initiate the minimum settings that promote data integration between the SAP ERP HCM application components with SAP CRM. What this means is that all your HR master data from your SAP ERP system is replicated to SAP CRM via ALE middleware. In turn, SAP CRM receives this data and creates new business partners with the role Employee.

Figure 1 shows five key settings that you need to instantiate integration between HR and CRM:

• HRALX/HRAC enables the activation of master data between SAP ERP HCM and SAP CRM
• HRALX/OBPON is required for programs related to the ALE setup in SAP CRM, which only works if this setting is activated
• HRALX/PBPHR controls whether integration between employee and business partner is active. By switching this setting to ON, you create a business partner with the role Employee each time you create a new business partner.
• HRALX/PNUMB specifies what number range is used when creating new business partners
• PLOGI/PLOGI is an organizational model setting that identifies the plan version that the employee master data uses when integrated with the organizational model in SAP CRM to ensure consistency and integration between the two components. This setting should be set to 01.

Figure 1

The five primary settings in SAP CRM to set up integration with SAP ERP HCM

When you finish these five settings, save your work and exit by pressing Shift + F3.

Step 2. Set up integration with Organizational Management. Create the settings necessary to integrate business partner data with SAP ERP HCM master data. Follow IMG menu path Customer Relationship Management > Master Data > Business Partner > Integration Business Partner-Organization Management > Set Up Integration with Organizational Management.

You need to focus on two settings here. CPERS/EEALE = X confirms that employee data is distributed and read via ALE and not SAP CRM (Figure 2). This setting lets the SAP CRM system know that SAP ERP HCM is the employee master in this case and that all data created in SAP ERP HCM needs to be distributed to SAP CRM via ALE accordingly.

Figure 2

Set SAP ERP HCM as the source system

This setting also disables the user’s ability to create employee master data in SAP CRM, so you have one system as the source system for employee creation, in this case SAP ERP HCM. This ensures that data quality standards are met and synchronization of clean data always occurs.

The second setting, CPERS/PROLE = BUP003, identifies the role that SAP CRM should use for creating employee master data received from SAP ERP HCM (Figure 3). Save your work and exit after you have entered these values.

Figure 3

Identify the business role that SAP CRM should use to create employee master data from SAP ERP HCM

Step 3. Generate the SAP ECC distribution model to act as a message type of data for distribution between SAP ECC and SAP CRM. From a Basis perspective, this ensures that SAP ECC has an active communication structure in place to distribute data and also knows what type of data to distribute to SAP CRM.

In SAP ECC launch transaction BD64, click the edit mode icon, and then click the Create model view button. Enter the Short text and Technical name using your standard naming convention (Figure 4). Click the green check mark icon to confirm your entries. You should now see your new distribution model in the list of available models (Figure 5).

Figure 4

Set up the SAP ECC distribution model

Figure 5

HR_EMP now appears as an available distribution model

Step 4. Add a message type. Select your model and click the Add message type button. In the corresponding screen, enter the Sender, Receiver, and Message type (Figure 6). For Sender and Receiver, enter the equivalent logical system that you use to transfer data between systems. Set the Message type to HRMD_ABA. This is the message type that the system uses as a data container to pass data to and from each system. Click the enter icon to continue.

Figure 6

Add a message type for the HR_EMP distribution model

Step 5. Define the filter set for the message type. This ensures that only objects of interest are replicated (e.g., employees). Fully expand each node and double-click the No filter set node (Figure 7).

Figure 7

Double-click No filter set

In the Change Filter screen that appears, click the Create filter group button.

Expand the Data filtering node and double-click the Object type node. In the following view, click the insert row icon to add the P value list setting (Figure 8). P represents the category “person” and is necessary to synchronize the employee master data. Click the enter icon to continue.

Figure 8

Add the “person” category (P) to the Value list

You should now see the P value available under Object Type (Figure 9). Click the enter icon to go back to the Distribution Model menu. The data filter is now active (Figure 10). Now click the save icon in the menu bar or press CTRL + S to save your work before proceeding to the next step.

Figure 9

P is available as an Object Type

Figure 10

The data filter is now active for HRMD_ABA

Step 6. Generate the partner profiles in SAP ECC for your new distribution model. Partner profiles are parameters that support the electronic exchange of data between systems and are required for communication purposes. Go to the menu area and select Environment > Generate Partner Profiles. In the next screen, enter the Partner system and ID and then click the execute icon (Figure 11). The Partner system is the logical system name that SAP ECC uses to connect to and send data to SAP CRM. You should assign the ID field to a system user for the proper handling of connections.

Figure 11

Enter the Partner system and ID

Upon execution, the system generates a CRM partner profile as shown in Figure 12. You can exit out of the session because your distribution model is now active in the system.

Figure 12

View the newly generated partner profile in SAP ECC

Step 7. Activate ALE delta status. Immediately following the activation of your distribution model, you have to trigger change pointers in the system. Change pointers consist of system events, which monitor adjustments in the system applicable to a particular task or utility. Setting the Active flag improves the speed of writing data during delta events significantly. Use transaction BD61 and verify that the setting Change pointers activated – generally is selected (Figure 13). Save your changes and exit the transaction.

Figure 13

Verify the general change pointers setting

Next, use transaction BD50 and activate change pointers for your message type, which in my case is HRMD_ABA. On the Activate Change pointers for Message Type screen, click the Position button and enter the value HRMD_ABA. Then confirm your selection and the search finds that particular entry from the table. Check the active flag for this entry and save your changes (Figure 14).

Figure 14

Select the active setting for HRMD_ABA

Step 8. Transport the distribution model view from SAP ECC to SAP CRM. Launch transaction BD64 in SAP ECC. Find your distribution model (HR_EMP, in my example) and mark it for selection. Then go to Edit > Model View > Distribute. In the subsequent screen, select the logical system for SAP CRM from the list shown and click the Continue button. When the execution process has completed successfully, the model view replicates to SAP CRM with the same exact name and reference. Now you can exit the transaction.

Step 9. Generate the partner profiles in SAP CRM. To maintain consistency between the two systems you must generate an SAP ECC partner profile for the distribution model that you recently transported from SAP ECC as explained in step 8. Use transaction BD64 in SAP CRM and select the HR_EMP distribution model. Go to Environment > Generate Partner Profiles. On the Generate Partner Profile screen, enter the logical system for SAP ECC as the Partner system and press F8. Exit the transaction after you have verified your settings (Figure 15).

Figure 15

View the newly generated partner profile in SAP CRM

Step 10. Replicate employee master data from SAP ERP HCM to SAP CRM. Use transaction PFAL in SAP ECC for this step.

Enter the following minimum values for replication to occur and after entering the data click the execute icon to initiate the program (Figure 16):

• Plan version: 01
• Object type: P
• Object ID: The Object ID represents the employees. You can choose to replicate on a case-by-case basis or replicate the entire employee master. In my example below I am replicating a single employee.

Figure 16

Set up the replication of data from HR to SAP CRM

Finally, go to SAP CRM, launch transaction BP, and enter the employee number. You can see that your employee master in SAP CRM is now updated.

There may be occurrences in which the replication of data from SAP ECC does not yield favorable results in SAP CRM. To ensure the proper integration between SAP ERP HCM and business partner master data you need to create a background job in SAP CRM for program HRALXSYNC. This program performs consistency checks in the data that address ALE integration issues. Ask your Basis personnel to create a background job for this program to run daily to keep your systems running optimally.

Gil Magana

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