How does a supplier punch-in to my Ariba Procurement Solution from the SAP Business Network?

When supplier users access your Ariba Procurement Solution from their SAP Business Network account, this generates a user profile (UP) form in your site. These supplier users are assigned to the AribaSupplierNetworkUser password adapter. If these UP forms require no approvals, supplier users can access your application immediately and get assigned to the applicable supplier-specific groups.

If you require approvals for UP forms, then supplier users do not automatically gain access to your application, but receive an error message stating that approvals are required on your side before access can be granted:

Cannot access the customer's site. Your buying organization must approve your access to their system before you proceed with this action. Please try again later.

The UP form generates in your site, and the approvers on the flow can approve or deny the request. If approved, supplier users are created and can punch-in to your site successfully on the next attempt.

Some situations when a supplier may access your Ariba Procurement Solution directly from the SAP Business Network follow:

• Managing time and expense sheets. Based on access, the supplier can create new or view previous time and expense sheets in your site.
• Creating contract invoices. This action takes the supplier into the application to create the invoice directly against the contract.
• Responding with a proposal to collaboration requests. This action takes the supplier into the application to create the proposal document and send any applicable messages to your organization.

If you do not wish to allow suppliers to access your application for the previously stated purposes, then, you should keep the Allow suppliers to access your Ariba procurement applications for collaborative invoicing, requisitioning and managing time and expense sheets option within your SAP Business Network account unchecked (Manage Profile > Default Transaction Rules):

Even if you choose to disallow supplier access for the aforementioned tasks, suppliers can still access your application to view your catalog validation rules. This is enabled, by default, and cannot be disabled. This feature is only available for buyers using Ariba On-Demand Procurement Solutions, such as Ariba Procure-to-Pay. Otherwise, the Catalog Validation Preferences option will be greyed out for suppliers, and suppliers may receive the error message, Authentication failed for Sender [AN01000000001] at Domain [NetworkID], when attempting to view catalog validation errors from the Catalogs tab.

Please see the following solution for more information about how suppliers can access your site to check catalog validation rules.

Core Procurement > Core Administration > Core Administration User Management
Purchasing > Services Procurement
SAP Business Network for Procurement & Supply Chain