Actions

The concept of action in SAP CRM:

• Within SAP CRM, Actions refer to the Post Processing Framework (PPF) Basic Components
• Actions can automatically trigger output, follow-up activities or workflows
• Action processing can be used by different applications such as transaction processing (CRMD_ORDER), billing (BILLING), case management (CRM_CASE), etc. in SAP CRM
• Actions replace Output Determination of the SAP ERP System
• Actions can be determined for the whole transaction (Transaction Type) at header level and also for an individual item (Item Category)

Example of an important use of actions is for instance triggering an approval workflow if the discount on an order is beyond a fixed threshold.

Another example would be an action to change the status of the current transaction. This would for instance be interesting if certain transactions should be closed automatically.

Implementing actions in SAP CRM consists of three steps.

• Defining the action

• Implementing schedule and start conditions for the action

• Assigning the action profile to the document type.

Defining the action

Defining the action means that you customize what type of action we are dealing with. So, what does the action do, what are the parameters it expects, can it be triggered manually by the user, or just automatically by the system etc.

Implementing conditions for the action

After creating the action definition, you have to add scheduling conditions to the action. This is done in a separate step in customizing. Even if the action is only to be triggered manually, you should still enter schedule conditions to the action.

Schedule conditions are only evaluated when saving the document. This means that when saving the document, the system looks at the current situation, and decides whether an action is to be scheduled or not. Note that if the system decides not to schedule an action, it will not re-evaluate until the document is saved again.

Start conditions can be used to postpone scheduled conditions. You might want to schedule an action to be triggered a week after saving the document (or even a year if it concerns for instance a trigger to the sales manager to start contract discussions one year after the previous sale).

Start conditions usually contain a comparison of a date in the document with the current date.

Maintaining schedule and start conditions is a very precise exercise. You have to think of many reasons why an action should or should not be triggered, for instance:

-Status of the document

-Current date

-Attributes of the business partner (i.e. country, ID-numbers, classification, availability of an email address etc)

Setting the schedule and start conditions can become quite complex, depending on the needs of your process.

Assigning the action profile to the document type

When you have maintained the action profile, you can assign it to the transaction type (or item type, depending on your requirements). This is done in the transaction customizing.

Now depending on the schedule and start conditions as well as on the specified processing time, the action will either automatically be triggered based on the conditions or can be manually triggered by the user.