SAP® Business Workflow

Exception Handling in SAP® Business Workflow

By Suresh Kumar Parvathaneni

From the release of SAP® NW04 version, SAP® has introduced many new features among which exception handling is one.

This document details about the usage of Blocks and the approach to trigger and handle the exceptions. 

Pre-requisites

Overview of Blocks

• Blocks could be treated as folders combining a group of dependent work items. They are shown as folders in the workflow log.
• Each block would have start and end nodes.
• Blocks can be deadline monitored (only Latest End)
• Blocks can catch exceptions

Following are the screenshots representing how a “Block” appears in the workflow definition and in the workflow log:

Fig: Appearance of “Block” in the Workflow definition.

Fig: Appearance of “Block” in the Workflow log

A “Block” is completed only if the dependent work items are complete or in the final state. If a “Block” is cancelled, all its dependent work items are cancelled.

Each “Block” can have its own container elements. All the parent container elements are visible within the “Block”.

Defining a Block

• Start a new workflow definition using the transaction SWDD
• Double-click on the “Undefined step” and select “Block”.

• Enter the step name and leave the block type as “Standard”. Press Enter. The workflow definition would be appearing as follows:

All the dependent steps could be defined with in the Block start and Block end.

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