A component under SAP xApps, ‘Duet’ is a first-of-its-kind software solution from SAP and Microsoft that enables users to easily and quickly interact with SAP business processes and data via their familiar Microsoft Office environment. The result of a groundbreaking collaboration between SAP and Microsoft, it is the first joint product created by these two industry leaders and is designed to revolutionize how IT workers interact with enterprise applications.

Duet enables:

• Budget Monitoring: Schedule time-critical alerts and notifications to monitor cost centers or internal orders, which are delivered directly to Microsoft Outlook.
• Demand Planning: Create and use planning sheets, as well as analyze and manage demand planning data from the SAP System using Microsoft Excel.
• Duet Reporting: Schedule reports to be delivered regularly to Microsoft Outlook, receive individual reports on an as-needed basis, and view reports in Microsoft Excel.
• Leave Management: Add leave requests as Microsoft Outlook calendar items that integrate approval guidelines in the SAP System and enterprise-defined processes.
• Sales Management: Manage CRM accounts and contacts, create business activities, and access sales analytics information using Microsoft Outlook.
• Team Management: Access up-to-date information about yourself and employees, open positions, and organizational structures that are integrated from the SAP System into the Microsoft Outlook contacts area.
• Time Management: Record time in the Microsoft Outlook calendar, streamlining time entry while ensuring time-reporting compliance in the SAP System.
• Travel Management: Create a travel request and a travel expense report in the SAP System using Microsoft Outlook.

The ‘SAP xApps’ family of composite applications enables continuous business innovation—and provides the flexibility necessary to respond quickly and profitably to business changes. They extend the value of core business investments and maximize the return on strategic assets: employees, knowledge, products, business relationships, and IT. SAP and SAP certified partners deliver these composite applications that drive specialized  business processes, provide comprehensive business insights, and focus on the needs of a variety of industries.

All these applications combine Web services and data from multiple systems in an application design made possible by the SAP Composite Application Framework within the SAP NetWeaver technology platform. This framework includes the methodology, tools, and run-time environment to develop composite applications. It provides a consistent object model and a rich user experience, and gives developers a productive way to create composite applications on top of a set of heterogeneous applications.

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The SAP ‘NetWeaver’ platform allows organizations to build new business solutions rapidly while realizing more business value from existing IT investments. SAP NetWeaver supports new cross functional business processes and helps to lower the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by reducing the need for custom integration. It offers complete life cycle management for all of your applications. It is also the foundation for Enterprise Services Architecture (EAS) and helps align people, information, and business processes across organizational and technological boundaries.

• SAP was founded by five former IBM employees, in 1972, to develop a standard business application software, with the goal of processing business information in real-time. The company, SAP GmbH, was started in Mannheim, Germany.
• During 1973, the company released its first financial accounting software, ‘R1’ (the letter ‘R’ stands for ‘Real-Time Processing).’
• In the late 1970s, SAP ‘R/2’ was released with IBM’s database and a dialogue-oriented business application.
• R/2 was further stabilized during the early 1980s and the company came out with a version capable of processing business transactions in several languages and currencies to
  meet the needs of its international clientele.
• SAP GmbH became SAP AG in 1988. Later on, the company established subsidiaries in countries such as the United States, Sweden, Denmark, and Italy.
• The 1990s saw the introduction of SAP ‘R/3,’ with client-server architecture and GUI, which ran on almost any database, and on most operating systems. SAP R/3 heralded a new era in enterprise computing, moving from a ‘main frame’ to a 3-tier architecture (Database- >Application->User interface), which became the new industry standard.
• By 1996, the company had more than 9,000 installations worldwide. By the end of the 1990s, SAP had introduced the e-commerce enabled mySAP suite of products for leveraging ever-expanding web technology.
• SAP began the twenty-first century with the Enterprise Portal and role-based access to business information.
• SAP continues to evolve and innovate, bringing cutting-edge technologies to business information processing. SAP has already introduced SAP NetWeaver, which is based on Enterprise Services Architecture (ESS) with application integration across diverse platforms for providing one-stop end-to-end business processing. With NetWeaver, companies can now integrate people, information, and processes.

1. Define the major organizational hierarchy elements within the Financial Accounting module and explain the relationship between each of them.

The hierarchy, from the highest organizational unit to the lowest, is the Client, Chart of Accounts (COA), Company Code and the optional Business Areas (BA). Two other optional areas include the Dunning Area and the Credit Control Area (CCA). Credit Control Areas come above the Company Code, and Dunning Areas come below the Company Code. There is only one Client and its values are the same across all Company Codes that are attached to it. Every Company Code is a legal independent entity. Business Areas can be shared among Company Codes (many-to-many relationship) and they are used for internal reporting purposes. Each Company Code is assigned a COA. The COA may be the same for multiple Company Codes, but each Company Code may only use one COA.
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