ERP Connector Solution Starter for Project Server 2007
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The ERP Connector Solution Starter for Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 shows how to integrate Project Server with other enterprise resource planning applications. The solution starter integrates with the mySAP™ ERP Human Capital Management (HCM) and the mySAP ERP Financials solutions as examples. The download includes the source code and components that you need to create a working system for testing or demonstration, and the documentation shows you how to install, configure, and test the ERP Connector.
Download The ERP Connector Solution Starter is included in the download for the Project 2007 Software Development Kit. The Project SDK download includes the setup files for the sample Project Server implementation, the complete Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 solution with six component projects, test files with sample XML data, ABAP™ scripts for the custom modules in mySAP, eight merge modules for building the installer, and the setup project. The SDK download also includes a sample configuration file for the Sandcastle Help File Builder application and the HTML Help file output from the ERP Connector source code comments. For a link to the Project SDK download, see Welcome to the Microsoft Office Project 2007 SDK.
The ERP Connector for Project Server 2007 is completely rewritten to use the Project Server Interface (PSI) and to provide a more flexible plug-in architecture, but it uses the same schemas for XML import and export files that the ERP Connector for Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 uses. For more information about the previous version, see Overview: Project Server 2003 to ERP Connector. For information about building MSDN-style HTML Help files, see the Sandcastle Help File Builder on CodePlex.
About the ERP Connector Solution Starter
The ERP Connector Solution Starter is designed so that you can modify it to support differing business requirements. The software architecture also allows you to adapt the solution starter to a wide variety of other enterprise resource management applications.
The ERP Connector allows automatic synchronization of data between Project Server and the mySAP ERP HCM and mySAP ERP Financials solutions. After you properly modify it for your organization, the ERP Connector provides synchronization of human resources data and organizational structure information, and it provides financial management of projects across the enterprise. Project Server 2007 enables centralized and detailed project management operations and reports. The ERP Connector enables you to integrate Project Server with mySAP ERP to avoid duplicate data administration:
Human resources integration. The human resources component (SapHRPlugIn) in the ERP Connector integrates Project Server with mySAP ERP HCM and enables you to synchronize resource and organization data. The human resources component also automatically maps resources to the organization structure (the resource breakdown structure or RBS) within Project Server.
Finance integration with project and task creation. The mySAP ERP Financials solution includes connections to subsystems for cost accounting with internal orders (the CO subsystem) and project/task accounting (the PS subsystem). The internal orders and cost accounting component (SapCOPlugIn) creates projects from internal order data and helps to provide data consistency, reduce the effort of managing data manually, reduce data corruption, and increase efficiency in updating data.
Finance integration with WBS accounting. The degree of integration of Office Project Server with the mySAP ERP Financials solution can vary according to your specific needs. The finance component (SapFIPlugIn) exports data to mySAP Financials at the project level or the task level. The project level includes only the exchange of project accounting data. SapFIPlugIn provides optional integration at the task level to include work breakdown structure (WBS) data from the mySAP ERP Financials PS subsystem. For both types of data exchange, SapFIPlugIn enables Project Server to export work actuals to the mySAP ERP Financials CO and PS subsystems.
You can install and configure the SapHRPlugIn component of the ERP Connector independently from the SapCOPlugInand SapFIPlugIn components. In most cases, the SapHRPlugIn component needs no modification, so the compiled SAPHRPlugIn.dll is ready to use.
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The ERP Connector Solution Starter is an example provided only for testing and demonstrations. The solution starter is designed to be modified and adapted for your organization's requirements and for other ERP applications. We strongly recommend that your business specialist for mySAP ERP Finance (or other ERP application) review the functional specifications of the SAPFIPlugIn and SAPCOPlugIn components for integration with the mySAP ERP Financials CO/PS subsystems. Because of specific accounting processes and data requirements in each organization, in almost all cases you need to modify the SAPFIPlugIn component that exports work actuals from Project Server and the ABAP scripts that import the data into mySAP ERP Financials before you install them operationally. Before installing the DLLs on a production system, you must make any necessary modifications and then recompile the SAPCOPlugIn, SAPFIPlugIn, and setup projects for the ERP Connector. |
The ERP Connector for Project Server 2007 can be run manually for testing or automatically by the ERP Connector 2007 Service application when XML request files are added to a drop folder. The ERP Connector setup application installs XML configuration files for specifying data exchange parameters and default values. Installation also uses dialog boxes for initial configuration of the ERP Connector. There is not a separate Web page for configuring the ERP Connector in Project Web Access, as there is in the ERP Connector for Microsoft Office Project Server 2003.
In This Section
For more information about the ERP Connector Solution Starter for Project Server 2007, see the following documentation in this section:
ERP Connector Concepts and Architecture explains the scenarios and general architecture for the ERP Connector.
ERP Connector Setup and Configuration shows how to install and configure the ERP Connector components on Project Server and on mySAP ERP.
Functional Specifications of the ERP Connector includes the functional and technical specifications of the ERP Connector components.
Testing the ERP Connector describes testing scenarios and tests that should be performed for acceptance and invalid input, and includes a reference for all of the installed test files.