This Blog Post is a functional perspective of how we can archive the Asset Management objects in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition.

Background:

The Business Scenarios differ, but in most cases in the Asset Management Line of Business, you want to remove records from the system so that they are no longer shown in your embedded analytics and list based apps. An example of this might be Functional Locations which have an older structure indicator, or have been sold.

For a simple scenario, we have one Functional Location called TEST_DELETION below, that was created in error, and we want to archive this to remove it from the system.

Functional Location – System Status: CRTE

How to:

The Archiving / Data Destruction process is explained in detail for each Asset Management object in help.sap.com, the following is a summary of this information, with screenshots to guide.

1. Pre-requisites – Setting up Information Lifecycle Management

Archiving uses SAP Information Lifecycle Management (SAP ILM) to manage the lifecycle of live and archived data. For full details on this capability, refer to the help.sap.com guide.

Ensure that you have the role SAP_BR_DATA_PRIVACY_SPECIALIST assigned to your business user so that you have access to the relevant ILM apps.

Apps enabled by SAP_BR_DATA_PRIVACY_SPECIALIST

To do a check on the ILM setup to see that the Asset Management objects are available to archive, navigate to the Manage Archiving Variants app, and search for PM in the Archiving Objects. If you can see the Asset Management objects (such as Functional Locations), then move onto ‘Step 2 Pre-requisites – Asset Management (Functional)’

Checking Asset Management objects are available to archive

If they are not available, it is likely that the Asset Management objects have not been assigned to an Audit Area (which is a dependency to seeing them in this app). For full details refer to help.sap.com

In this case, you would need to navigate to the app ILM Audit Area and either assign the objects to an existing Audit Area, or create a new Audit Area as per the below. Note that you can filter on objects with PM* to save time searching the list.

Audit Area with Asset Management Objects

2. Pre-requisites – Asset Management (Functional)

The following prerequisites need to be fulfilled before a functional location can be archived:

• The functional location master record must have been flagged for deletion.

Navigate to the Find Technical Objects app. Filter for your objects, and use the Change Status quick action to set the deletion flag.

This will set the System Status of our Functional Location to DLFL (Deletion Flag)

Set Deletion Flag for Technical Objects

• All mandatory checks must have been completed and any issues must have been resolved.

The system performs these checks automatically, but as a functional user, refer to help.sap.com to see the linkages that are checked.

At the end of this step, our Functional Locations should have System Status DLFL – Deletion Flag active.

3. Defining Preprocessing Variant

In this step, we use the the app Manage Archiving Variants to set the deletion on Functional Locations so that they can be archived.

Navigate to the Manage Archiving Variants App, create a new variant, and put in the parameters for the selection of Functional Locations that you want to archive. In my example below, as I just have the one Functional Location to archive, I entered it directly in the Functional Location field.

Functional Location – Preprocessing Variant

Click Save, you will notice that the new Variant appears in the Functional Location Variant list.

Now we need to Schedule the Archiving, to do that, click on the Variant and there will be an action to Schedule Archiving, followed by a toast message that the archiving has been scheduled

On the same screen, there is a action to Monitor Archiving Jobs, this will navigate us to the Monitor Archiving Jobs app, where we can see when the scheduled job will be run.

To check that the job has worked successfully, go back into the Find Technical Objects app, and the status of your Functional Location should now be DLT – Deleted

Functional Location – System Status: DLT

4. Defining Write Variant

Perform exactly the same steps as step 3, only this time, set the Variant Type = Write

You have two actions available; Archiving & Data Destruction.

In my example, as it is some test data, I will just choose Data Destruction as it’s not worth Archiving.

Action – Data Destruction

Now we need to Schedule the Archiving, to do that, click on the Variant and there will be an action to Schedule Archiving, followed by a toast message that the archiving has been scheduled

On the same screen, there is a action to Monitor Archiving Jobs, this will navigate us to the Monitor Archiving Jobs app, where we can see when the scheduled job will be run.

The Final Result:

The Functional Location has now been removed from the system, and no longer appears in the Find Technical Objects app.

Functional Location – Deleted from System

If you have any questions, the Q&A area at the SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Asset Management community is a great starting point for all members to see and respond to all queries.

Otherwise, let me know in the comments if you’ve got some of your own tips & tricks when it comes to archiving the Asset Management objects, and I will update the blog post accordingly.