Imagine you’ve been asked to make large-scale changes to Personnel Development (PD) objects in R/3. As part of a restructuring, your boss needs you to change the object validity ending date for all 2,000 positions that are related to a specific organizational unit and its subordinate units. You know that R/3 contains a standard transaction that allows you to set new ending dates for objects, but running this transaction 2,000 times would be extremely time-consuming.

Instead, you can use evaluation paths, which provide a way to read the relationships among objects and only return positions in the affected organizational units. With a fundamental knowledge of how object relationships work, you can build and use evaluation paths to make your PD maintenance and structural security more efficient and effective.

Relationships

In R/3, a typical organizational structure is made up of individual objects (organizational units, positions, jobs, and persons) that are connected by relationships. Relationships are unique three-character alphanumeric codes that define the interaction between two different objects, whether they are objects of the same type or two different types. These relationships tell you, among other things, which unit is subordinate to which and who reports to whom across the structure. Relationship codes are configured in table T778V via transaction code OOVK (IMG menu path Personnel Management>Personnel Development>Basic Settings>Maintain Relationships).

Table 1 shows examples of relationship codes taken from standard R/3 configuration. Within the relationship code, a single letter (either “A” or “B”) is used to indicate the direction of the relationship. Each relationship that is configured in table T778V has both “A” (bottom-up) and “B” (top-down) descriptions. As a relationship is created between two objects, this equivalent inverse relationship is automatically produced. Figure 1 demonstrates an example of the specific reciprocal relationships that are used to describe the interaction between a position and the organizational unit it manages.

Figure 1

Example of a reciprocal relationship between position and organizational unit

In the example shown in Figure 1, if you create the A 012 relationship to indicate that the director of finance “manages” the finance department, a B 012 relationship is automatically created to illustrate that the finance department “is managed by” the director of finance.

Evaluation Paths

Relationships are the links between objects that allow you to get to the desired end result of a formal structure or hierarchy. Once that structure is in place and objects are related, the next goal is to be able to use the object orientation you have built to evaluate the structure for certain patterns or sequences of object relationships. R/3 provides evaluation paths to assess object structures and relationships.

Evaluation paths contain a series of instructions that tell R/3 to look for particular object relationships and report back the results or use the results in a pre-determined manner. R/3 contains a large number of predefined evaluation paths in table T77AW. However, if audit or reporting requirements necessitate a structure view that is not contained in these predefined evaluation paths, you can create a new evaluation path by accessing table T77AW via transaction code OOAW (IMG menu path Personnel Management> Personnel Development>Basic Settings>Maintain Evaluation Paths).

To change or view individual evaluation path configuration, highlight the evaluation path you wish to use in T77AW and double-click on Evaluation Path (individual maintenance). Table 2 contains a brief description of each field that needs to be configured for an evaluation path.

Evaluation Path Examples

To demonstrate the use of evaluation paths, let’s view an organizational structure via three different evaluation paths. My sample organizational structure contains a root node (Corporate Office) and three subordinate organizational units (East, West, and Marketing). Each organizational unit contains positions, jobs, and persons. For each of the three scenarios, I’ll show you the evaluation path used to display the structure and explain how the evaluation path returns the results. The display of the results shown for each of these examples was achieved using standard R/3 report RHSTRU00 (transaction code S_AHR_61016528) and each of the evaluation paths described below.

Example 1 The Goal:

To display a specified root organizational unit, its subordinate units, and all related positions and holders across a structure. (See Table 3.)

How It Works:

Step 1: R/3 begins its evaluation at the root organizational unit specified in your report selection parameters.

This first step examines the root organizational unit and identifies those positions related to the root by a B 003 Incorporates relationship.

Step 2: The positions identified in step 1 are evaluated to determine which person is currently related to the position via the A 008 Holder relationship.

Step 3: All organizational units related to the root by a B 002 Is line supervisor of relationship are determined. The first two steps are repeated for each subordinate unit until there are no more B 002 relationships found that are subordinate to the root.

The Output:

When using the evaluation path shown in Table 3, report RHSTRU00 produces a graphical representation of the root organizational unit, its subordinate units, and all related positions and persons, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Example of a reciprocal relationship between position and organizational unit

Example 2 The Goal:

To display a specified root organizational unit and all related positions and holders. Do not display any subordinate units across the structure. (See Table 4.)

How It Works:

Step 1: R/3 begins its evaluation at the root organizational unit specified in my report selection parameters. This step examines the root organizational unit and identifies positions related to the root by a B 003 Incorporates relationship.

Step 2: Next, the positions identified in step 1 are evaluated to determine which person is currently related to the position via the A 008 Holder relationship.

The Output:

Figure 3 shows the output from report RHSTRU00 using the evaluation path displayed in Table 4. This evaluation path produces a graphical representation of the root organizational unit and all related positions and persons. Unlike example 1, this path did not take any subordinate organizational units into account when evaluating the structure. This was accomplished by removing the third step in example 1, which searched for organizational units related to the root by a B 002 Is line supervisor of relationship. The absence of this step limits the output to the root organizational unit.

Figure 3

Output displayed using report RHSTRU00 for example 2

Example 3 The Goal:

To display a specified root organizational unit, its subordinate units, all cost centers assigned to those units, and all related positions, jobs, and holders across a structure. (See Table 5.)

How It Works:

Step 1: R/3 begins its evaluation at the root organizational unit specified in pay report selection parameters. This step examines the root organizational unit and identifies those positions related to the root by a B 003 Incorporates relationship.

Step 2: Any jobs that are related to the positions found in step 1 are determined by evaluating the positions for any B 007 Is described by relationships with job objects.

Step 3: The positions identified in step 1 are further evaluated to determine which person is currently related to the position via the A 008 Holder relationship.

Step 4: The organizational units that fall in the path are evaluated for an A 011 Cost center assignment relationship to a cost center object.

Step 5: All organizational units related to the root by a B 002 Is line supervisor of relationship are determined. The first four steps are repeated for each subordinate unit until no more B 002 relationships subordinate to the root are found.

The Output:

Figure 4 shows the output from report RHSTRU00 using the evaluation path in Table 5. This path produces a graphical representation of the root organizational unit and its subordinate units, all cost centers associated with those organizational units, and all related positions, jobs, and persons. It differs from example 1 because it also evaluates for jobs that are related to the positions in the path and for cost centers that are assigned to the organizational units. It is a good example of how a view of a structure can change based on which related objects you include in your evaluation path.

Figure 4

Output displayed using report RHSTRU00 for example 3

A.J. Whalen

A.J. Whalen has successfully combined more than two decades of global business expertise with in-depth experience in the strategic development, management, and delivery of large-scale projects and education for SAP ERP HCM. Prior to his current role as SAP Marketing Director at Velocity Technology Solutions, he served as lead consultant for several global SAP implementations and engagements as well as an SAP Conference Producer for Wellesley Information Services. A.J. has been invited to speak at nine annual SAP educational events and holds an MBA degree from the Stern School of Business at New York University.

You may contact the author at whalen.aj@gmail.com.

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