Travel desk application in SAP travel management

[Former Member]

Hi All,

We have a below requirement in travel management.

When the travel request is approved by the manager, travel desk will get an email notification about the flight and hotel bookings.

The travel desk books necessary flight and hotels offline and communicate to the employee. Here the client requirement is Travel desk should have an application to maintain the status of each request coming for flight and hotel booking. Ex: How many requests are pending, how many are booked, cancelled etc.  We are wondering if there is any application or option in SAP for travel desk to do all these activities to track the requests.

Please advise if this is possible from SAP.

Appreciate your assistance.

AJ..

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

Hi AJ,

as far as I know, there is no standard reporting for all the requirements at once which you outlined. Instead, you'd have to use two different reporting tools: There is TA S_AHR_61016288 for the tracking of planning data (only actual planning data, this does not include the pre-planning data from the travel request) and there is S_AHR_61016401 for tracking of general data from Travel Requests/Expense Reports which you could use to filter for trips with status 2-1.

If this is not sufficient for you, I would most probably go for custom development which polls data from PCL1-TE, then poll data from FTPT_REQUEST for pre-planning data (i.e. what planning services are requested by the traveler) and then feed S_AHR_61016288 with a background submit to receive actual planning data and put all that in a shiny table or something.

Cheers, Lukas

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Lukas,

Thank you for the information. But the reports is not the requirement. Let me try to elaborate the scenario.

The requirement is to maintain all the trip numbers in the SAP system which can be accessed by the travel desk in a separate screen with only travel data available in it (Flight and Hotel booking requests from employees) from travel requests. They should be able to update and track the booking status at in the system once they do the same.

Currently all the bookings are done out of SAP by the travel desk. No travel planning in scope. Customer wants to have an application in sap to maintain all the travel booking information to eliminate manual data maintenance of travel desk team.

Please advise if there is any way we can maintain flight and hotel booking details with the status in SAP.

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

Hi AJ,

what you describe (automated planning data transfer to SAP) is FI-TV-PL with integrated OBEs. Otherwise, if you don't have integrated OBEs (as far as I understood you use a standalone third party solution) you can still maintain planning data manually within scenarios such as WDA Application FITP_PLANNING, but that would result in redundant information.

Unless I misunderstood, there is no standard solution for your requirement (except FI-TV-PL with integrated OBEs).

Cheers, Lukas

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Lukas,

Yes, you understood it correct. There is no FI-TV-PL with integrated OBEs and all bookings are done out of SAP.

As there is no standard solution for this requirement. Would you suggest any alternate solution to meet the customer requirement?

Appreciate your valuable inputs.

Thank you,

AJ

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

Hi AJ,

well, in case the third party solution has some kind of Interface / API / Webservice, you could poll the booking data from there, read it into the SAP system (e.g. via PI/PO or diretcly via SOAP) or post booking data from SAP to the third party system. I.e. you would be building your own integrated solution. To be honest, however, I wouldn't recommend doing that, because it would probably end up in higher maintenance cost of the custom solution than the effort you have at the moment with manual data maintenance.

Even the standard solution with FI-TV-PL is highly struggling to stay in running order and staying up to date which I've already ranted about on the forums some months ago:

So, in my opinion, bite the bullet with the manual maintenance effort of your external system and let sleeping dogs lie ;-/

Cheers, Lukas