Flow Builder: Understand the difference in trigger mechanisms: manually created

job, event based job and technical job

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One Exposure is the central storage which targets to all actual and forecast
operational business transactions, it plays as the single source of truth for all
financial risks from operations. The SAP Cash Management is using One Exposure as
it’s storage for the apps.

Flow Builder is one of the available programs, tools that will generate flows by
parsing accounting documents (via document chain). With respect to the data volume
of the real business, the flows generated by Flow Builder is the majority among all
source application.

Flow Builder provides the running type ‘Delta Run’ which targets to handle the new
posted or modified accounting document. The integration point between Accounting
Document is via traditional RWIN modules. With this design and given an ideal
environment (all configuration are correct and no Flow Builder is running), once an
accounting document got posted, Flow Builder shall be triggered as a background job
to perform Delta Run.

This blog tries to reveal all three different trigger mechanisms used by Flow
Builder cross different releases:

When we introduce Flow Builder first time in Simplified Financials 200, the
trigger mechanism is actually the ‘manually’ created jobs. We provided a utility
program which allows you to control the job’s creation:
The checkbox ‘Trigger Job Automatically’ is the switch. Via other parameters,
it can control the delay times, job variant, and background job for authority
checking.

There is also one kind of famous job for Flow Builder with suffix ‘_SUB‘. It’s
a designed behavior for ‘manually’ created job mechanism. Those ‘SUB’ jobs are
triggered by Flow Builder itself. The logic behind this is, Flow Builder (with
Delta Run) will take seconds to finish the flow generation, it could happen that
there are new accounting documents posted in the same period. Flow Builder will
recheck the delta table after it finished the current task, if there are new
entries, Flow Builder will trigger one ‘SUB’ job for itself. Imagine a very busy
system in which documents got posted each second, the ‘SUB’ job will be keep
triggered by Flow Builder itself.
Within S/4HANA OP 1610, we updated the previous manually created job to event-
based jobs via SAP Note 2256759.

And another Note 2560395 was provided to guide setup the event manually. The
change applied in that Note use event SAP_FCLM_FLOW_BUILDER to control the Flow
Builder’s startup. And, as the influence of the change of trigger mechanism, Flow
Builder won’t provide job control anymore. Please be aware that, this Note only
applies to OP1610, it won’t impact the higher release.
Since S/4HANA OP 1709 and higher releases, we decided to use ‘Technical Job‘ as
the trigger mechanism for Flow Builder. The new defined Technical Background Job
FCLM_FLOWBUILDER_JOB is also event-based one, we use a different name
SAP_FCLM_FLOWBUILDER_TRIGGER to avoid misuse of event-based job mechanism above. We
also define the new created technical job as scope dependence to reflect the facts
not all clients need Flow Builder. Therefore, after you upgrade to OP1709 or
higher, you need to define the scope to enable Flow Builder in the specific client.
 Ensure the FCLM_FLOWBUILD_JOB was inserted into scope as following:

Please be aware that the standard ‘Technical Job’ defined here using the
default program variant for Flow Builder: ‘SAP&BG4’, which using the chain step 4.
If you need a different chain step, you have to perform: (a) Do NOT insert scope as
showing above and (b) create a manual job for program FCLM_FLOW_BUILDER and your
preferred variant via SM36, and ensure the newly created job started condition is
‘After Event’, use Event SAP_FCLM_FLOWBUILDER_TRIGGER and use the current client as
its parameter.

Hope this blog can help understand the different trigger mechanism of Flow Builder.
Feel free to leave a comment here in case there is something unclear in this post.

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Assigned tags

FIN Cash Management

_SUB
background job
event
Flow Builder

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6 Comments
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Author's profile photo Daniele Saiani

Daniele Saiani
December 11, 2019 at 10:47 am

HI,

what is the oss note that detail step by step how activate the job
flow_builder? I have the job with status GREY et not green so FCLM_BSEG_DELTA is
not empty and the job not work, we are in 19.09 release.

Thank a lot

Daniele

Like(0)
Author's profile photo Ilona Karasova
Ilona Karasova
January 13, 2020 at 5:58 am

Hi Daniele,

We had the same issue. Please check if the user SAP_SYSTEM is existing in
the system. For more information see the Note 2339022-Maintain Default Step User
for SAP S/4HANA Job Repository (On-Premise scenario).
Like(0)
Author's profile photo sonali kakrayne
sonali kakrayne
March 30, 2020 at 12:11 pm

Hi,

This blog was useful.

I have one query: Is it possible to execute Flow Builder on the background job
in the real time when FI/MM document is posted?
Like(0)
Author's profile photo Hongjun Qian
Hongjun Qian Post author
March 31, 2020 at 8:04 am

Hi,

Yes, Flow Builder can be triggered as 'real time' for FI/MM posted.
Actually by default, it is triggered in real time in most cases.

Like(1)
Author's profile photo sonali kakrayne
sonali kakrayne
April 1, 2020 at 5:46 am

Hi,

Thanks for your help. I have a follow up question:

Where can I check real-time settings? I'd like to know configuration
point.
Like(0)
Author's profile photo Daniele Saiani
Daniele Saiani
April 17, 2020 at 5:33 pm

HI

use tx SJOBREPO - Job Repository check if there is job

FCLM_FLOWBUILD_JOB with two status green and flag job scope=x

if Status job on le right is grey try

try to regenerate the loading classes as note 2369432 - Flow

Builder- Generate and Assign Loading

check the table FCLM_DELTA_BSEG if it is empty or with document,

after a payment made by f110, if you see the document fi payment number in table
FCLM_DELTA_BSEG hte job don'to work.

Finally create a manual schedulate the job as indicate in the

following blog by tx SE36

https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/29/how-to-set-up-the-ff7an-flow-
builder/
Go to transaction code SM36;
Press ‘Job Wizard’ button in the toolbar
Press ‘Continue’ button in the ‘Create a job’ pag
Input a job name and set its Class accordingly. We would
suggest you use name like ‘FCLM_FLOW_BUILDER_EVENT_{client}’ with Class ‘B – Middle
priority’. Press ‘Continue’ button after you finished the input.
Select ‘ABAP program step’ in ‘Job definition: Job step’ page,
press ‘Continue’ button after you finished the input.
In ‘ABAP Program Step’ page, input ‘FCLM_FLOW_BUILDER’ in ‘ABAP
Program Name’ field; Input a user-defined variant or our default one ‘SAP&BG4’ in
Variant. You can also setup ‘Print Parameters’ and ‘Spool list recipents’ if it is
necessary. Press ‘Continue’ button after you finished the input.
In ‘Multi-step option’ page, just press ‘Continue’ button.
In ‘Job definition: Start conditions’ page, choose ‘After
event’ and press ‘Continue’ button;
In ‘Def. of start after event’ page, choose
‘SAP_FCLM_FLOW_BUILDER’ in ‘Event ID’, and select ‘Period’ checkbox. Press
‘Continue’ button;
Press ‘Complete’ button to complete the wizard in ‘Set job’
page.

In this way you can configure the Job of transaction FF7AN, so that
it is updated automatically.

check if job work by tx sm37 after you have to make a F110 payment
and FCLM_DELTA_BSEG if empty