Complete Guide to Learn

Organizational Plan & Role

Resolution in Workflow

Applies to:
SAP ECC 6.0 and onwards.

Summary
Through this document the reader will be able to get a basic idea about the Organizational Plan involved in
business organization to run the business efficiently and also the concept of role resolution to run the total
business work process is clearly mentioned through this document.
Authors: Saumik Bhattacharya, Sunil Ojha and Truptimaya Mishra
Company: Capgemini Consulting India Pvt. Ltd.
Created on: 3 January 2008

Author Bio
Saumik Bhattacharya is currently working in Capgemini Consulting India Pvt. Ltd. as a Consultant. He has
experience in SAP ABAP & Workflow.

Sunil Ojha is a XI certified workflow consultant. His current engagement is with Capgemini
Consulting India Pvt. Ltd.

Truptimaya Mishra is an ABAP/Workflow consultant. He is currently working with Capgemini Consulting India
Pvt. Ltd.

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 Complete Guide to Learn Organizational Plan & Role Resolution in Workflow

Table of Contents
Organizational Plan Overview ............................................................................................................................3
Organizational Unit: ............................................................................................................................................5
Position: ..............................................................................................................................................................7
Job:..................................................................................................................................................................8
Person:............................................................................................................................................................9
User:................................................................................................................................................................9
Role Resolution...............................................................................................................................................9
References: ......................................................................................................................................................13
Disclaimer and Liability Notice..........................................................................................................................14

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 Complete Guide to Learn Organizational Plan & Role Resolution in Workflow

Organizational Plan Overview

An organizational plan in SAP describes the organizational structure of a company. It represents the task-
related, functional structure of your enterprise, created using tools from the Organizational Management
component. The functions to create and maintain organizational plans are part of the Personnel Planning
and Development (PD) part of the SAP HR module, but we do not need to implement HR to use them in
Workflow.
Any organizational plan consists of five kinds of classifications:
Organizational units:
• Positions
• Jobs
• Users
• Persons
Go to the transaction PROCE to create the Organization Plan.

Following screen will appear where we have to define the validity period for the
Root organizational object.

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 Complete Guide to Learn Organizational Plan & Role Resolution in Workflow

Now the next screen appears where we can create the organization and staffing.

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 Complete Guide to Learn Organizational Plan & Role Resolution in Workflow

Organizational Unit:
Organizational unit represents a functional unit in your enterprise, marketing department, for example.
According to how tasks are divided up within an enterprise, this could be a department, group or project
team, for example.
It differs from other units in an enterprise such as personnel areas, company codes, business areas etc.
These are used to depict structures (administration or accounting, for example) in the corresponding
components.
To define characteristics of an organizational unit, we can store time-specific data for the following areas in
the Organization and Staffing view:
• Basic Data
• Account Assignment
• Cost distribution
• Address
• Work schedule
• Quota planning
Go To transaction PO10 to create the Organizational Unit.

Fill the Plan version.

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 Complete Guide to Learn Organizational Plan & Role Resolution in Workflow

Select an info type and define the time period. Now click on Create button.

Fill the required information like object abbreviation, Object name etc and Click on the save button to bring
the newly created Organizational unit.

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 Complete Guide to Learn Organizational Plan & Role Resolution in Workflow

Position:
Position represents a post that can be occupied by a person (employee) in the staff assignments of an
organizational unit, purchasing administrator, for example.
It differs from jobs. A job is not concrete but rather the basis for the creation of various positions with similar
tasks and characteristics. We represent the personnel capacity (headcount) of an organizational unit using
positions.
Positions can have the following statuses:
• Occupied: if a person (employee) or user is assigned to it
• Vacant: if a person (employee) is being found for it the position is marked as vacant in applicant
administration in the Recruitment component.
• Unoccupied: and not vacant, if no person (employee) is being found for it
• Obsolete: if the position will no longer be required in the future
To define characteristics of a position, we can store time-specific data for the following areas in the
Organization and Staffing view:
• Basic Data
• account assignments
• Address
• Cost distribution
• Work schedule
In the Organization and Staffing (Workflow) view, we can store basic data.
Go to transaction code PO13. Fill the Plan version. Select an info type and define the time period. Now click
on Create button. Click on the create button.

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 Complete Guide to Learn Organizational Plan & Role Resolution in Workflow

Fill the required information like object abbreviation, Object name etc and Click on the save button to bring
the newly created Position.

Job:
Jobs serve as job descriptions that apply to several positions with similar tasks or characteristics.
When creating a new position (purchasing administrator, for example), we can relate it to a job that already
exists (administrator, for example). The position then automatically inherits the tasks and characteristics of
the job.
If there is no corresponding job, create one and assign it tasks and characteristics. This will then be available
when we add new positions.
We can store basic data for a job.
Go to transaction code PO03. Fill the Plan version.
Select an info type and define the time period. Now click on Create button.
Click on the create button.

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Fill the required information like object abbreviation, Object name etc and Click on the save button to bring
the newly created Job.

Person:
An individual, who is listed as an employee in Personnel Administration.
A person (employee) can have tasks assigned to them.
In the Organization and Staffing view, we can display data on the following:
• Basic Data
• Qualifications

User:
By assigning a user to a position , we determine,
• Where a user is organizationally (functionally) assigned in enterprise
• Which tasks are assigned to a user
• Which users are to be forwarded tasks in a workflow

Role Resolution
SAP Business Workflow can be used on the basis of roles and a number of roles are supplied for this
purpose. The roles supplied cover the activity fields of the groups of people that work with SAP Business
Workflow. A role defines rules by which selected agents can be determined at runtime through role
resolution. Role resolution restricts the number of possible agents.
When a default role is specified at the task definition level, or a standard role is specified for responsibility at
the workflow step level, role resolution occurs at runtime. For example, a default role for approving a
vacation request would be the supervisor of the user submitting the request. At runtime, role resolution
would determine, from the set of all possible supervisors, the specific supervisor of the user submitting the
request. This specific supervisor would be the selected agent for approving the request.
• Role resolution is performed through function modules or organizational objects. The input values to
the role resolution function module consist of role parameters. Role parameters create elements in
the role parameter container.
• At runtime, the role container is filled with all necessary information through the binding definition
from the workflow container or task container to the role container. The role container is a parameter
of the roles function module.
• The role resolution process executes the function module. The algorithm in the function module
determines selected agents and inserts them in an internal table that is a parameter of the function
module. This is returned directly to the workflow runtime system.

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 Complete Guide to Learn Organizational Plan & Role Resolution in Workflow

The following workflow roles are defined:

• Process consultant
• Workflow developer
• Workflow system administrator
• Workflow agent
• Process controller
The role-based procedure model

The process consultant identifies the business processes in an organization, which are to be mapped with
workflow technology. The workflow developer then implements these processes using the definition tools of
SAP Business Workflow.
At runtime, the workflow is evaluated and managed from a technical perspective by the workflow system
administrator. The process controller caters for this from a business perspective. The end user in the
workflow context is the workflow agent, who processes the tasks assigned to them in their workflow inbox.
Process Consultant: A process consultant is the person within the system of workflow roles, who analyses
the existing business processes, identifies those that are suitable for SAP Business Workflow and maps
them onto a business process model.
For this purpose following roles has to be assigned to the user-
• SAP_BC_SRV_USER
• SAP_BC_BMT_WFM_PROCESS
Workflow Developer: Workflow developer implements the workflow based on the business process model
developed by the process consultant and using the SAP Business Workflow definition tools.
For this purpose following roles has to be assigned to the user-
SAP_BC_BMT_WFM_DEVELOPER
Workflow System Administrator: Workflow system administrator is responsible for the technical
maintenance of the development environment and the runtime behavior after automatic Customizing.
For this purpose following roles has to be assigned to the user-
• SAP_BC_ENDUSER
• SAP_BC_SRV_USER
• SAP_BC_BMT_WFM_ADMIN

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Workflow Agent: Workflow agent is the end user in productive workflows. Workflow agent’s starts workflows
and processes work items. Their work area is the Business Workplace.
For this purpose following roles has to be assigned to the user- SAP_BC_SRV_USER
Process Controller: Process controller evaluates the workflow from a business perspective at runtime, and
is also responsible for suggesting improvements.
For this purpose following roles has to be assigned to the user-
• SAP_BC_SRV_USER
• SAP_BC_BMT_WFM_CONTROLLER

Enter the transaction code SU01 and click on enter.

The next screen appears like following. Fill the user name as required i.e. here we have used
WF_DEVELOPER and click on create button.

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 Complete Guide to Learn Organizational Plan & Role Resolution in Workflow

Here we can assign the various roles as per requirement. For example, we are assigning the user
WF_DEVELOPER developer role SAP_BC_BMT_WFM_DEVELOPER.

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References:
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/92/bc26a6ec2b11d2b4b5006094b9ea0d/frameset.htm
http://www.sapdevelopment.co.uk/
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn
http://www.saptechnical.com/Tutorials/Workflow/WorkflowTutorialOne/WorkFlowTutorial1.htm

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Disclaimer and Liability Notice

This document may discuss sample coding or other information that does not include SAP official interfaces and therefore is not
supported by SAP. Changes made based on this information are not supported and can be overwritten during an upgrade.
SAP will not be held liable for any damages caused by using or misusing the information, code or methods suggested in this document,
and anyone using these methods does so at his/her own risk.
SAP offers no guarantees and assumes no responsibility or liability of any type with respect to the content of this technical article or
code sample, including any liability resulting from incompatibility between the content within this document and the materials and
services offered by SAP. You agree that you will not hold, or seek to hold, SAP responsible or liable with respect to the content of this
document.

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 Complete Guide to Learn Organizational Plan & Role Resolution in Workflow

Disclaimer and Liability Notice

This document may discuss sample coding or other information that does not include SAP official interfaces and therefore is not
supported by SAP. Changes made based on this information are not supported and can be overwritten during an upgrade.
SAP will not be held liable for any damages caused by using or misusing the information, code or methods suggested in this document,
and anyone using these methods does so at his/her own risk.
SAP offers no guarantees and assumes no responsibility or liability of any type with respect to the content of this technical article or
code sample, including any liability resulting from incompatibility between the content within this document and the materials and
services offered by SAP. You agree that you will not hold, or seek to hold, SAP responsible or liable with respect to the content of this
document.

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