SAP

Interface Toolbox for HR: Integrating SAP with External Systems

Sergey Ignatov

31 Jul 2017 • 4 min read

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Версия на русском: Interface Toolbox for HR. Интеграция SAP с внешними системами

SAP provides several tools for integrating with external, non-SAP systems. These include:

The vendor's documentation offers a fairly detailed comparative analysis of the possible use cases for each of these tools.

See: Technology for Interface Scenarios

In this article, I suggest exploring the Interface Toolbox for HR as a means of exporting HR master data to an external system.

Interface Toolbox for HR can be used in several scenarios:

I will briefly cover the first scenario. I should note that there's a lot of material on this topic, and—as always—very little time. So, the following is a short demonstration of what this tool can do in the context of the first scenario.

Objective

Create an interface for exporting the following master data from SAP to an external system.

Infotype 0001 – “Organizational Assignment”:
Fields:

PERNR – Personnel Number
BUKRS – Company Code
WERKS – Personnel Area
PERSG – Employee Group
PERSK – Employee Subgroup
BTRTL – Personnel Subarea
KOSTL – Cost Center
ORGEH – Organizational Unit
PLANS – Position

Infotype 0002 – “Personnel Data”:
Fields:

NACHN – Last Name
VORNA – First Name
FAMST – Marital Status Key

Output file format: plain text (TXT).

Interface Format

Let’s begin by defining the interface format. Launch transaction PU12—this is the entry point for working with the Interface Toolbox.

Enter a name for the new interface and click Create.

On the next screen, define the country grouping for the interface being created.

Check the Master data checkbox.

Select the infotypes you want to export. In this case:

0001 – "Organizational Assignment"
0002 – "Personal Data"

On the next screen, click Suggest Values so the system automatically assigns program names.

Select the fields to be included in the export, and remove any unused fields. To delete fields, either double-click or press F9.

Repeat the above steps for all infotypes included in your interface. The result should look something like this:

Specify which records should be selected for export by clicking the Table Entries button.

See: Selecting Table Entries

For each exported field, you can apply a conversion rule.

See: Conversion for Field Objects

For example, I applied a conversion rule to the FAMST field.

Activate the necessary attributes for your scenario by clicking the Attributes button.

See: Attributes in the Interface Format

Now you can generate the interface by returning to the PU12 screen and clicking the Generate button.

File Layout

Now, define the structure of the output file. In the selection screen of PU12, activate the File Layout option, provide a name, and click Create.

Select the interface for which you’re creating the file format and provide a description.

See: File Layout

Specify which fields will be exported to the text file for transfer to external systems. Below is a video snippet demonstrating the creation of the file structure. In the video, I refer to a text editor to remember which fields to include. Apologies in advance for the repetitive nature of the steps shown.

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Notably, after each field I added the constant _DELIMITER_n, which contains five spaces. This constant acts as the delimiter between exported field values.

Click the File Layout Program button and generate program names by pressing Suggest Values.

Generate the file format by returning to the PU12 main screen and clicking the Generate button.

Export

Now you can try exporting data in the required format. To do this, go to the Export tab in transaction PU12 and select the interface you created.