SAP S4H Upgrade 760 -770 Impact on UiPath BAPI Automation

[SantoshSundar (Santosh Dorai Sundar)]

Hello Team,
The Client SAP Systems are being upgraded from 760 to 770 and we are currently testing all the automations for any impact. In doing so, we found that the BAPI based background process are not working. The robot just hangs at the stage where the BAPI_XMI_LOGON is triggered. So we disabled this BAPI and tried with other BAPIs and all of them have no response from SAP.
We dont see any errors but the code execution doesn’t move forward. I was curious to know if anyone has experienced similar errors or does UiPath recommend checking/upgrading any underlying dependencies.

Other pointers:

1. we are on latest UiPath Studio version and use SAP.BAPI.Activities 2.2.5 package.
2. There is an error whenever we try to connect a BAPI with SAP which is attached here.
3. The underlying SAP_NCo Dotnet connector is the latest one and has been working all these days.

We have amended other automations where the selectors had issues and this is the only pending issue for which we are unable to arrive at a solution.

Please suggest if you have any ideas. @LevKushnir @loginerror

[StefanSchnell]

Hello @SantoshSundar,
in my opinion you are mixing two different things. The upgrade of the client from 7.6 to 7.7 has actually nothing to do with an S4H upgrade. Did you do both upgrades, front- and back-end at the same time? Please look at the log as it is described in the error message.
We have discussed an equivalent error here, but without a result.
Best regards
Stefan

[SantoshSundar (Santosh Dorai Sundar)]

Hello @StefanSchnell,

You are right, Sorry for the confusion. The S4H is being upgraded from 1610 to 2021. and the SAP GUI is being upgraded from 760 to 770. So, it’s both front end and back end upgrades.
Upon analyzing this and checking the SAP threads, SAP_NCo Connectors seems to be the possible impact. Please see the below thread.
I am going to install the latest NCo Connectors and test this again. Will keep you posted.

Connection to SAP fails with the following message. “Element EX_FUNCTIONS of container metadata RFC_METADATA_GET unknown” (338281) (oneidentity.com)

Regards,
Santosh Sundar

[LevKushnir]

HI @SantoshSundar

SAP WinGUI 7.60 - > 7.70 has no impact on BAPI automation, as SAP WinGUI is all about UI Automation. So, lets exclude this point from the discussion.

SAP 2016 → 2021 this is the key topic. And here you see, that the jump was 5 years. This is huge. The functionality of SAP has evolved dramatically in the last 5 years

The issue is with 99,9% on SAP BAPI side, not even on connector side.

• Why not connector → because you can connect. The connection works.

Read this message, I have a feeling, that BAPI fields has changed, maybe some new were coming, maybe some of them does not exist anymore…

I would investigate in this direction

@StefanSchnell your thoughts?

Thanks, Lev

[StefanSchnell]

Hello @SantoshSundar,
thanks for your reply and the hint to the interesting SAP OSS 2956253. The symptoms are not described so precisely, but an update of the NCo is certainly a good and correct step. Let us know your result, I am very interested.
Best regards
Stefan

[StefanSchnell]

Hello @LevKushnir,

thanks for your reply. Yes, five years is a long time, it did not seem that long ago for me.
Here a link to blog with a very interesting image of a timeline of the S4H development.

You are right, this exception also occurs if the function module invoked returns a table or a nested structure in a parameter, which is not defined in the metadata used for that function module. It is definitely worth a look.

Please take a look at the OSS note named above, obviously the current version of the NCo has been improved here, unknown parameters are now always ignored.

Best regards
Stefan

[SantoshSundar (Santosh Dorai Sundar)]

Thank you both so much @StefanSchnell and @LevKushnir.
We are looking at both the options.

1. Today, we are going to upgrade the connector from 3.0.21 to 3.0.24 as suggested on SAP Blogs.
2. If the above hasn’t worked, then there is a mention about an object called EX_FUNCTIONS that is references in the metadata of this BAPI call.

Below are couple of images of how we arrived at this. I’ll keep you updated on this thread on which of the above fixes the issue.

The left image is the new upgraded environment of DE1 and on the right is the old DT1 system which doesnt have reference to the EX_FUNCTIONS.

Regards,
Santosh Sundar

[StefanSchnell]

Thank you very much @SantoshSundar for this valueable information.

[SantoshSundar (Santosh Dorai Sundar)]

Dear @StefanSchnell and @LevKushnir,

I am happy to share the good news that the new SAP Connector for Microsoft 3.0.24 (32bit x86)
fixed the issue we were having. Once the connector was installed, the robot was able to establish a successful connection with SAP with a session ID and also was able to run the BAPI jobs as the Metadata and mandatory parameters are handled in this connector.

We also noticed that the Stateful Connection = True in the SAP Application Scope activity is necessary to ensure the connection. The other errors were minor and mostly at the robot end (which we have fixed).

Thank you both for your immense support and guiding us in the right direction.

Regards,
Santosh Sundar

[StefanSchnell]

Hello @SantoshSundar,
thank you very much for this interesting information.
Best regards
Stefan

[StefanSchnell]

Hello @LevKushnir,
my suggestion is to update your SAP BAPI Activities Pack documentation about this insight. The latest version of the NCo should always be used, because it is constantly being improved. Ignoring unknown parameters is one of this great features.
Thanks and best regards
Stefan