Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 with MTA and Workflow Version 1.7 December 11, 2002 Contents: A) What's New in Version 1.7 B) System Requirements C) Install and Uninstall Considerations D) Installing the Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 1.7 E) Uninstalling the Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 1.7 F) Operational Considerations and Known Issues G) Documentation Errata H) What's Been Fixed in Version 1.7 ______________________________________________________________________________ A) What's New in Version 1.7 The Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 Version 1.7 is an update to the Version 1.6 Connector that enables it to be used by both Domino/Notes R5 users with LEI Release 3.2 and Domino/Notes 6 users with LEI Release 6 product streams. Being a point release, it also contains various hot fixes, accessibility compliance updates, and product enhancements. This release of the Lotus Connector for SAP includes the following: - Improved installation utility The Lotus Connector for SAP uses an improved install and uninstall utility. - Added support for Domino 6 The Lotus Connector for SAP version 1.7 can be used in conjunction with the following configurations: - LEI Release 6 or DECS on Domino 6 - LC LSX on Domino 6 or Domino Release 5.0.10 - LEI LSX on Domino Release 5.0.10 (for LEI Release 3.2 or 3.1a) - LEI Release 3.2 or DECS on Domino Release 5.0.10 (on Win32) - LEI Release 3.1a or DECS on Domino Release 5.0.10 (on UNIX/iSeries) - ESB 3.0.4 - Support of new LEI/DECS Virtual Fields activities LEI Release 6.0 enables you to create Advanced RealTime Activities. These three new RealTime Activities are Virtual Fields, Virtual Documents, and Virtual Agents. The Virtual Fields Activity supersedes the past-release RealTime Activity within both LEI and DECS. This Connector supports only the Virtual Fields Advanced RealTime functionality when used in conjunction with Domino 6 and LEI Release 6. The Connector does not support the Virtual Attachments or Integrated Credential features in the LEI Virtual Fields activity. - Support for Domino 6 Lotus .dcx Connector files In addition to the Lotus .lcx Connector files supported by Domino R5, this release supports the Lotus .dcx Connector files supported by Domino 6. - IBM product family name changes All references to the AS/400 platform have been changed to the term "iSeries". - Return of output parameters upon update or insert using Direct Transfer (LEI) and Virtual Fields (LEI and DECS) activities LEI recently added support for the return of output parameters on update or insert into the date source. Fields designated as OUT or IN/OUT in a stored procedure can be returned to LEI upon completion of its task. You can enable output parameter support in order to update a field in the data source when the data transfer to the target is successful, for example to obtain a tracking code when an order is placed. Using destination metadata as a stored procedure, LEI now allows the destination database to send data back to the source database. This feature is implemented by each Connector uniquely. This functionality is presently supported in the Direct Transfer and Virtual Fields activities and by the Lotus Connector for DB2 and the Lotus Connector for SAP Release 1.7 only. - Improved user interface to enhance interaction with assistive technologies The LEI and SAP integration products user interface and online help/documentation continue to more fully comply with IBM and United States Federal government guidelines for handicap accessibility. - User documentation set The term "backend" has been superseded in the user documentation by the term "external system". - Support for mapping multiple fields of the same name Support for the mapping of multiple fields of the same name has been added. In the past, duplicate fields have been removed, however with this release duplicate field support is possible. To properly use this capability, you must prefix a number value to the fields and the screens to which they correspond in the Connection Properties field of the SAP Connection Document as detailed in the Lotus Connector for SAP User Guide. - Updated Domino Access to SAP Business Workflow This product is designed for use with the Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 Release 1.7. Its installation and usage is described in the wfhelp.nsf file supplied with the release. - Updated Lotus Domino Mail Transfer Agent for SAP R/3 This product is designed for use with the Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 Release 1.7. Its installation and usage is described in the mtahelp.nsf file supplied with the release. - Additional platform support Windows XP and Windows 98 are now supported platforms for the Connector and for Domino Access to SAP Business Workflow. They remain unsupported for Lotus Domino Mail Transfer Agent for SAP R/3. B) System Requirements This release of the Connector supports the platforms and configurations listed below. * Lotus Software Version Support * The Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 with MTA and Workflow supports Domino 5.0.10 or later and Domino 6 or later. LEI Release 3.2 is supported with Domino 5.0.10 or later. LEI Release 6 is supported with Domino 6. ** Hardware Requirements ** Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 - 10MB disk space Domino MTA for R/3 - 15MB disk space Domino Access to SAP Business Workflow ** Operating System Version Support ** - Windows NT 4.0 with SP 6a - Windows 2000 - Windows XP* - Windows 98* - AIX 4.3.3 and 5.1 - Solaris Sparc 2.8 - OS/400 V5R1M0 for iSeries Windows XP and Windows 98 are supported for the Lotus Connector for SAP and the Domino Access to SAP Business Workflow client only. The Domino MTA for R/3 is not supported on these platforms. For LEI on Solaris, the Solaris 2.8 patch cluster is required. See IBM Technote 175748 for description of known issues with Windows NT 4.0 service pack 6a. ** SAP R/3 Version Support ** The Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 version 1.7 supports SAP R/3 3.1I and later. The Domino MTA for R/3 product supports SAP R/3 3.1I and later. The Domino Access to SAP Business Workflow product supports SAP R/3 4.0A and later. Read all Domino documentation regarding the specific patch-level Domino requires for its server. The patch level required by Domino is a prerequisite for successful LEI installation. Patch requirements are updated periodically. See the Domino documentation for details. ** Lotus Software Version Support ** The Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 Version 1.7 is available for use with the Domino/Notes 6 and Domino/Notes R5.0.10. The Connector requires the following: - Notes 6 client with Domino 6 server In this configuration, the LEI Release 6.n product stream is supported. The LC LSX and DECS versions that ship with Domino 6 are also supported. This configuration uses Lotus .dcx Connector files. - Notes R5 client with Domino R5 server In this configuration, the LEI Release 3.x product stream is supported. The LC LSX and DECS versions that ships with R5 are also supported. This configuration uses Lotus .lcx Connector files. - Notes R 4.67 client with Domino R 4.67 server In this configuration, the LEI Release 3.n product stream is supported. The LC LSX and DECS versions that ships with 4.67 are also supported. This configuration uses Lotus .lcx Connector files. - Client libraries are not required by either the Connector or the Domino MTA for R/3. Client libraries are only required when using Domino Access to SAP Business Workflow. In that scenario, client libraries must be installed on the Notes client. SAP client libraries need not be installed on the LEI server. C) Install and Uninstall Considerations - When installing the Connector to a Win98 machine, a warning may appear at the end of installation stating that one or more license agreement files was not created properly. This will have no effect on the functionality or behavior of your Connector. - If you receive a message during Connector install or uninstall instructing you to reboot, please do so. Adverse effects may otherwise occur. - If you a performing an upgrade and are asked to uninstall first, and should that uninstall process require a reboot, you must reboot before re-running the installer. Failure to do so could lead to the nsap.lcx or nsap.dcx files being deleted from your system after your next reboot. You should reboot after uninstall and after install/re-install to avoid this undesirable behavior. - Except for the Domino Access to SAP Business Workflow application, a SAP client is not required; the Lotus Connector for SAP is self-contained. - For SAP licensing questions, contact your SAP representative. D) Installing the Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 Version 1.7 - The Connector installation utility was built with InstallShield Multi-Platform edition. - Before installing to an iSeries platform, you must do the following establish the correct access rights in the Notes ID file. The ID file must share its password with other Notes-based programs. - The Notes client must be running when the installer runs. The install process is described fully in the Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 Installation Guide supplied with your Connector. E) Uninstalling the Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 Version 1.7 - The uninstall process is described fully in the Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 Installation Guide supplied with your Connector. - The uninstall process does not remove the Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 from the iSeries platform. This allows a single Windows system to install to multiple iSeries Domino systems. F) Operational Considerations and Known Issues - In LEI Release 6, Virtual Fields and Direct Transfer activities support output parameters as stored procedures. You can save a document such that its fields are sent to SAP and SAP sends a message (such as action status) back as an output parameter. To see the output parameter in the active/open Notes document (and not on the next opening of the Notes document), refresh the document by pressing the F9 key. - In Virtual Fields activities, after a Create event, a refresh (Open) event is automatically triggered. This performs data integrity checks and keeps the view summary data current. When a SAP connection is used, this trigger does not work, as an Open event has nothing to do with a Create, Update, or Delete event. Although the activity log will display many errors because of this, the Lotus Connector for SAP is actually working and successfully performing the Create, Update, or Delete event. - Using the MTA and opening an SAP-originated mail message in Domino that was sent to multiple users with the return receipt option enabled, will cause errors. In order for return receipts to work on messages that originate in SAP and are delivered to multiple users, both inside and outside of SAP, messages addressed to Domino users must be addressed to their Distinguished Notes User Addresses. For example, if you want to send mail to two Domino users, Tina Hanson and Page Gil, be sure to use their distinguished names - which are Tina_Hanson/Boston/IBM@LOTUS and Page_Gil/Boston/IBM@LOTUS. If you only address the mail to tina_hanson@lotus, the message will arrive but the return receipt, which is generated when Tina first opens the mail message in Domino, will be from Tina_Hanson/Boston/IBM@LOTUS, and this will not match in SAP when SAP tries to match this return receipt with a given user found in the original message's SendTo list. G) Documentation Errata - LEI Release 3.2 was released on the Win32 platform only. For UNIX and iSeries platform users, please subtitute the term "LEI 3.1a" in place of "LEI 3.2" globally in the Connector user documentation. H) What's Been Fixed in Version 1.7 The following issues have been resolved in this release. > Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 < Issue: In the LC LSX, the SystemNo property of the LCConnection object is initialized after calling the SetPropertyInt method. Resolution: The COMMIT_FREQUENCY property of the Lotus Connector for SAP is not supported. Issue: The uninstaller appears to delete SAP connections. Resolution: The uninstall utility does not delete SAP connections (Connection Documents) from LEI or DECS. The connections are available to LEI and DECS after a SAP Connector uninstall. Issue: Mapping multiple fields of the same name is not possible. Resolution: See the "What's New in Version 1.7" section of this readme above, as well as the "Lotus Connector for SAP R/3 User Guide" supplied with this release. Issue: There is an SAP currency problem in LEI 6 Direct Transfer activities that use Z_DATATYPES. Additional digits are being added erroneously to the right of the decimal point. Resolution: This data type has been changed from a NUMERIC to FLOAT to correct this problem. Issue: Using the LC LSX (LCXExecute) and/or an LEI Scripted activity with an SAP connection with data fields containing very large numbers (example, EXPORTSBIGTYPP=123456789012345678.9999) yields erroneous results (example, EXPORTSBIGTYPP= 1.23456789012346e+017) Resolution: This has been corrected. Issue: Stored procedure output parameter support in the LEI Direct Transfer Activity is not currently available for the SAP Connector. Resolution: This functionality is now available as documented in the LEI user documentation available at http://www.lotus.com/ldd. Issue: Field names that are substrings of other field names are not always correctly used. Resolution: This problem has been corrected. Substrings are now automatically converted to strings and are correctly processed. Issue: Unable to set an import value to "" (a null value). Resolution: Added code to check for "" strings. This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: SAP sometimes returns numbers with an appended negative symbol. This can cause problematic trailing spaces if the value is positive. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: The sample LC LSX script supplied with the SAP Connector contains an error. Resolution: The RFC_READ_TABLE example now correctly fills out Notes text lists. Issue: If the number of records found is less than the number of fields requested, the records found count will be the number of fields requested and not the number of rows found. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: It is not possible to call an RFC that does not contain IMPORTS, EXPORTS or Tables. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: As of Version 1.7, an error message appears in the LEI 6 or DECS 6 console when running a Virtual Fields (or other LEI Advanced RealTime) activity that uses an SAP connection. This is caused by the refresh methodology in those activity types. Resolution: This has been deferred for correction in a future LEI release. Issue: In Version 1.7 Beta, the Solaris installation of the Connector could not locate the installed DECS application. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: Decimal data value is incorrectly converted to integer value RFC_NUM_INT. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: Data transferred to SAP R/3 is corrupted when using multiple input tables. SAP Connector incorrectly translates a Notes data type Numeric to a SAP R/3 data type TYPNUM. This results in invalid value being passed to R/3. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: An agent using the SAP Connector doesn't release virtual memory when the task is completed. This leaks leads to crashing. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: The SAP Connector causes validation failure for RFCs and BAPIs with correct input parameters sent to R/3 for processing. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: A SAPGUI 6.20 change breaks the exiasting capability for launching the SAPGUI from the SAP Connector or the LC LSX. This has been seen using pre-release versoin 6.20. The SAPGUI now requires a new function to be available in the RFCSDK DLL. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. > Lotus Domino Mail Transfer Agent for SAP R/3 < Issue: Replying with history from Domino to an SAP message results in mail failure. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: When a user creates a mail in SAP not from SAP Office, but directly from transaction SP01, the message arrives with no body when the first object found in the message is a PDF attachment. Since normally the first attachment is the contents of the body field, but instead a PDF file is found, the MTA returns that PDF is not a supported message body format. Resolution: This has been corrected. The node in transaction SCOT now accepts PDF files. Issue: Non-duplicate user addresses are removed from the SendTo field on mail messages sent from SAP to Domino. Resolution: All names now display correctly in SendTo, CC, and BCC fields. Issue: SendTo, CC, and BCC fields don't show names that are not delivered from Domino to SAP. When sending a mail from Domino to SAP, it is possible to show users in the SendTo, CC, and BCC fields who are not found in the SAP system. Prior to release 4.6 of SAP, the MTA object client skipped these names. However, Release 4.6 of SAP allows these names to be visible. Resolution: All names now display correctly in SendTo, CC, and BCC fields. Issue: Some international characters are incorrectly handled in the message body when sent from SAP to Domino. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: An incorrectly implemented buffer was allowing SendTo names from one mail message to be added to the SendTo field of another (unrelated) mail message. For example: 1. Send a mail to two Notes users from SAP and to two SAP users. 2. Now send a second mail to just two Notes users. 3. The mail will be delivered to just the two Notes users, but the for display on SendTo field will show also the SAP users from the previous email. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: Sending a mail message from Domino to SAP sometimes yields a delivery failure notification in Notes, even when the mail was correctly delivered to SAP. Issue: If a message is sent from Domino to the following address format - "Any String" - it will be delivered to SAP but will also send a delivery failure message to the Notes mail sender. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: If mail is sent from Domino to SAP with multiple domains, the mail will not actually be sent. For example, send a mail from Domino to muster@sapaix@nt4dom5. It will not arrive. The Object Client should remove the outside domain (@nt4dom5) before sending the mail to SAP. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. Issue: Attempting to send a mail that contains an empty SendTo field crashes the objclnt task. Some mails arrive with no SendTo field value, just a recipients field. The ObjCLnt was not prepared for this possibility. Resolution: This problem has been corrected and no longer occurs. > Domino Access to SAP Business Workflow < Issue: When the workitem is not found in SAP, but the user has a workitem notification in their SAP view, an error message should appear stating that the SAPGUI will not process the workitem. Resolution: The message now appears. ***************************************************************************** Under the copyright laws, neither the documentation nor the software may be copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated, or reduced to any electronic medium or machine-readable form, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of IBM Corporation, except in the manner described in the documentation or the applicable licensing agreement governing the use of the software. Domino, Notes, IBM Lotus Enterprise Integrator for Domino (LEI), LotusScript, Lotus Connectors, and Domino Enterprise Connection Services (DECS) are trademarks of Lotus Software, IBM Software Group. AIX, DB2/2, DB2, and IBM are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. 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