Filter Substitute for EBP Approval Inbox

[Former Member]

Hello Gurus,

I have the issue surrounding substitution functionality in EBP.

SRM Substitution allows all users to be set up as Substitute. It does not make sense setting up SU01 user as substitute who is not a valid EBP user. We want the substitution to show up possible Agents List only the EBP users instead of all SU01 users.

SAP has adopted the same design of R/3 for the Substitution in SRM.

Certainly this is not acceptable from SRM point of view when we know all users cannot approve or reject and they need to be valid EBP users within SRM.

I knew Forwarding can be restricted if i setup General Forwarding not allowed for workflow task. Certainly I cannot use Forwarding as alternative to substitute. I am looking something similar to that for substitution.

Anyone has any comments / experiences.

Thanks & Regards,

Jay

[Former Member]

Hi All,

As per original problem of Jay where he want only EBP user and more specifically the approver to be visible as substitue, this can be achieved by setting the general forwarding not allowed for the workflow task. and then put the option as role. so only users with specific role would be seen as substottute users.

As per the reuiremnet to show the substitue based o higher or same level approval authrity , some custom development need to be done as various customer will have difeerent criteria for approval authority.

However i am also interested in what SAP comes back with.

Thanks

Iftekhar alam

[Former Member]

Hello, i have developed a specific program for approver change.

[Former Member]

Hi Jay -

What option did you end up going with - the core mod or the custom transaction - and did OSS ever give you a decent response? We are encountering the same issue right now and I'm interested to see what other people have done.

Thanks so much!

Abby

[Former Member]

Jay-

Greetings stranger! I have run into the same requirement - as you have probably seen the substitution program appears to have no BADIs to control the logic - see function group BW02, Screen 1382, Module 1328_handle_action - in here you can see SAP has made no accommodation to verify the EBP validity - we have the desire to limit the substitutes to users of the same or higher signing authority.

Thus at this point it seems you have 2 options -

1. Modify the existing program to incorporate your own checks -

2. Create a new substitute maintenance transaction which can include your own required checks

Option 1 would be much easier to implement but I think a mod at this program level is too risky. We have the custom tcode to maintain the substitutes under consideration - we would be using standard function modules to set the substitutes etc. but we would remove the standard substitute option from the inbox.

This is what we have come-up with at this point - I am very interested to know if others have been presented this issue and how they managed the issue.

Regards-

b

[Former Member]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for your reply. Like you said, we wanted the substitution function only to allow Spend Approver of same level or higher. Open substitution to anyone, client complaince about SLA, SOX issues.

Your second option is good one, will try that.

Also, I had opened OSS Message with SAP in parallel as we think the substitution should be more than leave of absence in SRM.

Regards,

Jay

[Former Member]

Hi Jay

Any news from your OSS note?

I am interested as we have the same issue here.

About the change of program can you give a little more explanation how I can do that?

Thanks

RD

[Former Member]

Jay,

Our company would also like to use substitution but restrict the search by signing authority. I am investigating possible modifications but was also planning on opening a message with SAP. If you check this post, I'd be interested to know what sort of reply you received in your message.

Thanks,

Lycia