Mass deletion of Product Categories

[Former Member]

Hi Gurus,

I am working on SRM 5.0 with ECC6.0 as my backend system. We have no product ids loaded in SRM system.

Currently, the client has replicated all the product categories from ECC to SRM system , which are about 22000 in total. Now, they want to keep only about 800 of them in SRM. Rest of them have to be deleted.

Will the replication of Product Categories again from the R/3 system after the unwanted catagories are deleted from R/3, cause a deletion of those categories from SRM system, even if they are not used in any shopping cart?

If no, then how can I delete them from the SRM system after they are deleted in R/3? (I hope deleting the SRM product categories after the R/3 material groups have been deleted, won't create a problem in SRM system.)

I know I can use COMM_HIERARCHY to delete each of them, but is there any mass deletion program in SRM? Else, it would be a cumbersome task.

I have checked programs:

COM_HIERARCHY_DELETE_SINGLE, COM_HIERARCHY_DELETE_ALL : But these programs are for hierarchy deletion. And all of the product categories in my client are under a single hierarchy.

COM_PRODUCT_DELETE_SINGLE, COM_PRODUCT_DELETE_ALL : But, these programs are for product ID deletion.

Also, I cannot set the product categories selectively in Extended attributes, as all the 800 categories are to be used by all. There is also no specific range that I can set which can be used by all.

Can anyone help me out with this?

Thanks & Regards,

Ancy

[Former Member]

HI Ancy,

I see that you marked this post as "answered", but don't see a solution.  I am wondering the same thing - is there a way to mass delete a specific selection?  Did you ever find a workable solution?

Thanks,

Matt

[masa_139]

Hi,

Just technical info.

Tables:

COMM_CATEGORY Category

COMM_CATEGORYDEL Categories To Be Deleted (Temporary) in Download

COMM_CATEGORYH Category: History

COMM_CATEGORYT Category Description

COMM_CATEGORYTH Category Description: History

COMM_CATEGORYWL Category GUIDs and User for Worklist COMM_HIERARCHY

Function Group:

COM_CATEGORY_API APIs for Reading/Maintaining Categories

COM_CATEGORY_API_INTERNAL

COM_CATEGORY_DB Category (Database)

Regards,

Masa

[former_member183819]

Teja is correct.

you would have filtered desired one initially

Try to delete in ECC only and sync in with R3AS.

I believe report and COMM_hierarchy TRANSACTION dont help to delete the backend product category in SRM.

Try in training box and confirm them.

if it is numeric product category from to option available or if it is alpha numeric manuall entry is required for 800 categories in Extended Attributes.

or

[Former Member]

Hi Both,

No, deletion from R/3 does not delete the product category from SRM on resending the product category object by R3AS. I tried it for one category in development client.

Is there any other way to mass delete the product categories in SRM?

I can delete each category individually in COMM_HIERARCHY (though the system gives a warning message that I need to delete the category in ECC first, it does not stop me from deleting it from SRM). But, I am looking for a mass deletion program.

Can anyone guide me?

Thanks & Regards,

Ancy

[robin_janke]

Go to SE38 and try with the following report: COM_HIERARCHY_DELETE_SINGLE. Don't know if it will work. Product categories should be deleted if they are not filtered though. So I don't know if you created a filter already?

Regards,

Robin

[Former Member]

Hi Robin,

The program you are suggesting is to delete a hierarchy, and not product categories. As mentioned earlier, all product categories are listed under one hierarchy, so I cannot use this program.

Regarding setting of filter, I have deleted the material group in R/3 and then did the R3AS transfer. But, the product category was still there in SRM.

So, the filter setting would be redundant for deleted product categories of R/3.

Let me know if you have any other suggestion that I can try.

Regards,

Ancy

[robin_janke]

Still, set a filter so the deleted product categories fall outside of that filter and play around a bit with the settings. Our logic sometimes isn't the same as SAP's. So it's something I would try, it can't hurt anyway and it will take you less than an hour.

Regards,

Robin

[Former Member]

Hi Robin,

I tried that way too, but it does not delete.

Anyone knows any other way?

Regards,

Ancy

[Former Member]

Program COM_HIERARCHY_DELETE_ALL should be able to delete all product categories in SRM. I did that many times in the past and it worked. Then you can replicate the required product categories into SRM.

Did you create product hierarchy manually or it got created with the initial replication of product categories. By standard it creates withy initial replication. If that is the case then the program should work.

Thanks,

Jagadish

[Former Member]

Hi Ancy,

You can delete product categories as long as they are not used in any transactions and no products (materials) exist for them.

In case there are products (materials) already existing for the categories to be deleted first delete those materials / products and delete the concerned product categories.

In case the requirement was not to send all product categories and products to SRM system then you should have used filtering concept while transfering prodcut categories from ECC to SRM using R3AC3 transaction.

After deleting the products and product categories in ECC, try doing a transfer again using R3AS.

Please check this approach in your development or test system before doing it in your production / live system.

Let us know in case of any further clarifications.

Regards,

Teja