Here's an excerpt from the doc. Hope this helps.
The %SYSRPUT statement is submitted with SAS/CONNECT to a remote host to retrieve the value of a macro variable stored on the remote host. %SYSRPUT assigns that value to a macro variable on the local host. %SYSRPUT is similar to the %LET macro statement because it assigns a value to a macro variable. However, %SYSRPUT assigns a value to a variable on the local host, not on the remote host where the statement is processed. The %SYSRPUT statement places the macro variable into the global symbol table in the client session.