Is Sky The Limit : The Technical

Moved To New Technical Blog

2009-09-12T10:36:00.003+08:00

Dear all,

We grew old each day, and it has been in my mind to upgrade this blog too. Today, I upgraded my blog and now it has moved to a new blog as follows :

WILLIAM WILSTROTH - DEVELOPMENT

As there are still some unpublished entries, which I was still in the midst of writing, it will be published in the new blog. Time has moved one, this blog will move on too so it reflects my motivation to keep contributing to this technical blog of mine.

Thank you for all your support to this day. I hope you will enjoy more of my technical blog at the new site. Please provide your feedback and advice, if you have one...

Yours truly,

William Wilstroth

SAP ECC6.0 : Associative attachment error...

2009-08-13T15:11:00.005+08:00

Associative file error, is a common problem if your programming to attach a file without an extension in your send email attachment. This function module is 'SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_ATT_SEND_API1'.

There are 2 steps you can check whether if your file association (extension is supported):

1. Go to Control Panel, Default Program, Set Associative. Check if your file is supported.

2. If your file is supported in Set Associative, the go to your coding, particularly at parameter OBJECT_HEADER. Make sure your file has an extension otherwise the above error popup will appear.

Is sky the limit... associative error

SAP ECC6.0 : SO-DO (No Pricing Display)

2009-08-07T20:43:00.011+08:00

Recently I had an issue that cracked my brain left and rigth. An Sales Order(SO) created that will initiate a DO in the background (Rush Order). In the event of doing so, this DO will automatically print a Pre-Invoice form. Unfortunately, the price was not display and as a result, the total price became zero. So I had to figure out the root cause. First few days of troubleshooting the SO to DO was painstaking. I loose patient as I am not sure which part was causing it. Several question popped here and there.

1. Is it the print program that causes it?
2. Is it the upgrade that cause the print program to loose it mind?
3. Is there any difference between ECC6 standard print program and the customized one?
4. Did we forget to transport certain versions of the print program?
So I had to take out my gloves and grind and till the land until my glove gone and my hand bruised! One big hassle if the price suddenly gone somewhere after an upgrade. It was working fine in 4.6c. After the upgrade the price was missing. So where had it gone to?

Tracing it wasn't easy though as it being produced by DO in the background. I couldn't make the system to stop at the break-point even though I'd put more than 10 in it. TCODE JDBG was helpless. SM58 was not stopping at correct points because SO was travelling at unknown location towards DO. So it was brain crushing! The hell was it I still need to prove that the print program was fine!

As tracing was helpless, I took another option to put in some trace log in the print program so at least I can trace data movement to SAP Directory AL11. Proven as good as it is, the standard function module "RV_PRICE_PRINT_ITEM" was not getting any pricing condition out at all by the print program. So the conclusion was simply : during the process of saving DO at the background, Sales Order's SO number (VBELN) and Pricing ID (KNUMV) had not yet COMMIT WORK. That's a pretty straight guess! So it had to be it. Afterall, I can get back my pricing condition if I did the DO manually or after that. So, while SO was not committed to save, the print program will forever not be able to retrieve it's pricing condition.

Now I had to go out to the jungle to find the ultimate root cause why the function module "RV_PRICE_PRINT_ITEM" unable to retrieve pricing condition back from SO while its generating DO at the background. So its like finding the golden needle in the haystack!

All over again, but I had only question in mind as I race against time to get that root cause:

Where the hell happen?!

It took me painfully the next 4 days to track and hunt the error. Adding salt to the situation, the error had gone from thin air in the development system. Out of nowhere had it gone to and my functionals had their heels on me whether I had fixed anything or done anything. My answer was NO. So all over again and again, several questions add to another unsolved question:

Who made the changes?
What changes was made?

Time was running out and I was running out of ideas and ways to solve this problem day by day. My boss kept coming to me if it will be solve. Given any day or any moment my answer to him was always YES. Unfortunately, this issue is a real mess and if things go disappear suddenly then I can say this is a serious X-files! Bear in mind, SAP problems always had a cause and an explanation behind but you need to take the pain before you gain it. So I had to force myself, this time, I repeated this time, I will go line by line and open up each door to see what was behind the mechanism.

As I went to each line, I was determined that someone, had to be a person, from another team who did something to a user exit, an enhancement-point or a BADI that suddenly make the DO to correctly print the price out.

You would have said, "Hey buddy, wait for the next transport of whatever into the quality system and production system to correct the error!" However, this will not be the case, things just do not dissappear for a reason. I need to find that out. Furthermore, the quality system and production system still having the error. So it need to be fix pronto even though development is correct! Anyway, I went along thousand of lines of ABAP coding, I found an alternative solution instead of the root cause.

I will make use of the following :

1. USER EXIT->MV45AFZZ->USEREXIT_SAVE_DOCUMENT
2. A customized TABLE
3. Modified the PRINTPROGRAM

Before I go on to explain why I would use such crude way, it is best that you follow my trace below.

01. SAPFV45K->FV45KFKD_VBKD_BEARBEITEN->VBKD_BEARBEITEN
02. SAPMV45A->MV45AIAK_VBAK_FUELLEN->VBAK_FUELLEN
03. SAPFV45K->FV45KFKD_XVBKD_LESEN_DIREKT->XVBKD_LESEN_DIREKT
04. SAPFV45P->FV45PFAP_VBAP_BEARBEITEN_VORBE>VBAP_BEARBEITEN_VORBEREITEN
05. SAPFV45P->FV45PF0K_KALKULATION_BEARBEITE->KALKUlATION_BEARBEITEN_ENDE
06. SAPMV45A->MV45AF0B_BELEG_BEARBEITEN_ENDE->PREISFINDUNG_GESAMT_BELEG_ENDE
07. SAPMV45A->MV45AF0P_PREISFINDUNG_GESAMT->PREISFINDUNG_GESAMT->(38)
08. SAPMV45A->MV45AF0P_PREISFINDUNG_GESAMT->PRICING_COMPLETE(61)
09. SAPMV45A->MV45AF0B_BELEG_BEARBEITEN_ENDE->BELEG_BEARBEITEN_ENDE->(315)
10. SAPMV45A->MV45AF0B_BELEG_SICHERN->BELEG_SICHERN->NUMBER_GET_NEXT(654)->GET VBAK-VBELN
11. SAPMV45A->MV45AF0B_BELEG_SICHERN->BELEG_SICHERN->NUMBER_GET_NEXT(792)
Editor's note : Yes I took my pain ass going around the merry go round to get those traces out. Yes, MV45AF0B_BELEG_SICHERN is the standard include file that is for SAVING THE SO! Mind me, I haven't finish tracing to DO!

Look at item 10 onwards, this line gives me that idea to use an user exit to solve the problem. This line 10 and line 11 is the important part of the standard coding that SO begin to create a SO no. and KNUMV id. But bear in mind standard internal tables XKOMV still not updated with the new KNUMV id though it had its pricing determine.

So at this point, I have a new SO number, a new KNUMV number and a table of pricing condition not tied to the new KNUMV yet. Three new things that is untied of each other. Therefore, I had to tied these three together and make the DO's form to print them out.

1. A new SO no.
2. A new KNUMV
3. A table of determined pricing condition with no KNUMV yet.

The userexit (MV45AFZZ->USEREXIT_SAVE_DOCUMENT and CUSTOMIZED TABLE) now come into role. I wrote a piece of logic to combine these three things into the CUSTOMIZED TABLE. The customized table has underlying KONV structure and added VBELN and a RUNID to it. This whole portion will be use by the print program.

At the print program and just after the function module "RV_PRICE_PRINT_ITEM", I will make use of the customized table. If RV_PRICE_PRINT_ITEM can get the price condition out, this customized table will not be use. Else, it will be processed and fill back the TKOMV adn TKOMVD tables. TKOMV and TKOMVD are table parameters of "RV_PRICE_PRINT_ITEM".

So that's the alternative solution that I had implemented for the time being. Now back to those questions:

What happend to DO's Pre-Inv, during background creation by SO, unable to capture those pricing condition out by the function module RV_PRICE_PRINT_ITEM?

It is stil an unanswered question till today. Anyone out there who knows this mysterious issue?

is sky the limit... SO->DO->RV_PRICE_PRINT_ITEM...

SAP ECC6.0 : IDOC stuck at status 30

2009-05-12T16:14:00.009+08:00

Certain assignments will require you to purpose write a program to send out IDOCs to your business partner to process data. So you will need to process your Partner Profiles information, deciding which segments, basic type and message type to use. However, you will not run away from not using Function Module 'MASTER_IDOC_DISTRIBUTE'.

This function module will help you to issue out IDOC (send) to your customer and business partners. However, there is a problem to using this function module. You need to use another function module together with 'MASTER_IDOC_DISTRIBUTE'. This function module is 'EDI_DOCUMENT_DEQUEUE_LATER'.

As per HELP.sap.com description, if one wants to sent out IDOC with '03' status, function module 'EDI_DOCUMENT_DEQUEUE_LATER' need to be process after distributing IDOC then only COMMIT WORK.

1. MASTER_IDOC_DISTRIBUTION

2. EDI_DOCUMENT_DEQUEUE_LATER

3. COMMIT WORK.

If you do not want to use 'EDI_DOCUMENT_DEQUEUE_LATER', then your partner profile's port should be set either to FILE or CPIC. Futhermore, TRFC will not direct send your IDOC (status 03) even though you select 'Transfer Immediately'. As of ECC6.0, function module 'EDI_DOCUMENT_DEQUEUE_LATER should be use between 'MASTER_IDOC_DISTRIBUTION' and COMMIT WORK.

Reference:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/52/16adef543311d1891c0000e8322f96/content.htm

OSS Notes:

150202, 1097730

is sky the limit... status 30 to 03...

SAP R/3 : Constructing form with style

2009-02-17T17:55:00.003+08:00

Detailing the form either portrait or landscape can determine if the form can display more information to the user and at the same time can even save paper.

1. It is very important that only certain information are display or user requires. Therefore, user requirement should be carried out in detail so the developer can come out the correct form. However, SAP does provide standard templates according to specific business solution (module). These SAPScript templates are developed by developers as required by users in the industries that has been used for many years all over the world. Hence, these templates eventually assimilated into SAP modules as standard templates.

2. In every form, there should have at least a header, a body and a footer but the body is a must and should exist in every form development. Every form in SAP referring SAPScript and SMARTFORMS. I am not too sure about PDF Forms that is now the rave among SAP Developers. I will surely look into it when time permits. Continue on, as repeated, a header in a form depending on the module it might display information differently. A Sales order, the header will display Sales Order Number, Date Document, Partner address, Delivery address, Company name and address and so on. Each of this can be display separated in a window. This window is not the MAIN window. A MAIN window is a fixed window that usually displays ITEM HEADER, LINE ITEM and ITEM DETAIL. ITEM DETAIL usually display items such BATCH No, SERIAL No, Component dates like Delivery Date, Expiry Date, or even Batch Description.

3. In SD module, it is pretty straight forward, the print program or program that drives the flow and display nature of the form is accordingly GET_DATA, OPEN_FORM, DISPLAY_HEADER, DISPLAY_ITEM_HEADER, DISPLAY_ITEM, and CLOSE_FORM. Each of this subroutine plays a distinctive role in coming up of Sales form. Get DATA normally retrieves primary data especially sales data like price header condition, sales partner and sales document information.

4. In SAPScript, there is one part call PARAGRAPH Element that derives the font attributes and tab alignments. You can do adjustment at this part. Moreover, apart from this adjustment, you can use SAPScript command or TAGS. TAGS for word, text or characteristics specific manipulations are on limited to Bold, Italics and Underlines and ending with forward slash tags . Apart from using tags and SAPScript commands, you can use SAPScript STYLE to manipulate SAPScript templates.

5. SAPScript templates are normally stored in client 000 and if required you can copied them out to your specific client development. Or, you can developed up from scratch only if your requirements are fulfilled. SAPScript development requires not only the basic understanding of form but technique to come up with a stable form. Stable forms will display line items, boxes, lines, and other information accurately (including text remarks, sub totals and grand totals when there is a page break or protected section of a window).

6. It's a good practice to always process your data in the print program before it is display in the form. FORM should always display information only. If FORM should meddles into processing data during display it might get messier and your coding can get disorganize. I am saying the PERFORM of subroutine in INCLUDE from FORM which appears most of the time in MM module. Managing MM forms can be tedious and one should be very careful when managing MM forms especially PO forms because it involves a lot of PERFORM calling from the FORM itself.

7. Lastly, a good UNDERSTANDING of the flow and logic of the print program is important to FORM modification and FORM development.

Below are transaction codes that you can use to create/maintain SAPScript:

SE71 - SAPScript Layout Create/Change

SE72 - SAPScript Styles

SE73 - SAPScript Font Maintenance

SE74 - SAPScript Format Conversion

SE75 - SAPScript Settings

SE76 - SAPScript Layout Translation Sets

SE77 - SAPScript Translation Styles

is sky the limit... SAPScript Concern

SAP R/3 : QM BADI

2009-01-16T21:00:00.004+08:00

INSPECTIONLOT_UPDATE is a very good BADI to enhance TCODE especially QA11, QA12 and QA13. It has all the following methods that you can use in your enhancement:

CHANGE_AT_SAVE
CHANGE_BEFORE_UPDATE
CHANGE_IN_UPDATE
CHANGE_UD_AT_SAVE
CHANGE_UD_BEFORE_UPDATE
CHANGE_UD_IN_UPDATE
CREATE_AT_SAVE
CREATE_BEFORE_UPDATE
CREATE_IN_UPDATE
SET_UD_AT_SAVE
SET_UD_BEFORE_UPDATE
SET_UD_IN_UPDATE

It is a very important BADI if one needs to do assignment on updating Inspection Lots and Usage Decision. You can even use this BADI in ME23N from another use exit to auto create Inspection Lot, update Usage Decision and also Shelf Life Expiry Date.

is sky the limit... qm badi

SAP R/3 : READ_TEXT and WRITE_TEXT

2008-11-23T09:50:00.009+08:00

In any SAP modules' standard screen functions, users and functionals get to maintain certain text like remarks, vendor notes, and others important elements in the header. These extra notes are stored somwhere in SAP's transparent table. Furthermore, SAP forms and customize forms also make use abundant of such feature like having a certain format of signature stored somewhere at a specific location and later read out to the template for printing or viewing.

These are what I call free texts that is non specific that is not specifically catered by SAP to be saved by certain fields. Hence, these texts are not similar to fields like BUKRS, MATNR, or MEINS but its of RAW format.

"RAW text is a machine readable form of characters or string of characters that is before being process by any analytical software, in this case our very own SAP"

RAW text is gibberish to any developer's view. User or functional will not be able to read it straight from SE16. SE16 won't even show this field that contains RAW format. RAW format for this entry I am referring to non other tables than STXH and STXL. All your free text wheter used in SAPScript or standard screens are stored here in STXL. TCODES such as SO10 and SE75 are both tools for you to create text. Underlying code that keeps such data are RAW format. So the question will be how do i see those RAW text without using those TCODES?

You will need the following functino module : 'READ_TEXT', 'EDIT_TEXT', 'WRITE_TEXT' and so on. You can always refer to this function module's documentation to know more about STXH and STXL tables. Afterall, this is one functino module provided by SAP for you to see RAW format.

This function module is an analytic processing logic to read RAW formatted string of characters. As an ABAP developer, this function module is your next best girl friend to develop/maintain your SAPScript fonts or programs that need to extract long text out from the system.

Another alternative, you can go to SPRO to maintain it.

SPRO->IMG->TO CONFIG TEXT ID

STXH is the text header transparent table

STXL is the text line transparent table

STXD is the text file header

In addition to the above, I found several tables that normally associates itself to RAW format are as follows :

1. VBBP (Billing)

2. EBAN (Requisition)

3. BELEG (JV)

4. PMS (Project and WBS)

I list the following above in the following order of what I usually get acquainted with my daily assignments.

Here's a link that I'd found:

1. Fuller(MIT)

is sky the limit... read text and write text for RAW

SAP R/3 : LOTUS Notes Receive .SCR File

2008-10-16T18:05:00.002+08:00

Editor: This will be a simple entry. Source of error is directed at email format receiving at your email end has error.

Email content displayed as .SCR. Recently, my development with SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_SEND_API1 had a problem which my email display its content incorrectly. Instead of the content I wanted, it was attached with a file. This file is a .SCR file. I am using LOTUS Mail and this error had occured at my workplace. I am not sure if any of you guys using other type of email servers having this error. Maybe Microsoft Exchange does not have this issue at all.

Nevertheless, if you come across this issue, you can check out this OSS notes 171698. Again, the attachment in the email display your contents with .SCR file format. This normally occurs if your developer uses SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_SEND_API1 to send notification to users. The problem is not restricted to this FM but other send email function modules too.

OSS noteNote 171698 - SAPconnect: Formats, conversion, and device type.

is sky the limit... 171698, Email as .SCR

SAP R/3 : Spelling Currency to Words

2008-10-16T17:57:00.007+08:00

There are a few ways to spell currency into words. However, it is limited to few languages and its denominations that you can maintain in the T015Z table or your server's language. In order to spell a string of currency, for example, USD 102034.00 or VN 23,000 then you will either need to use an SAP standard FM or you might need to write it out yourself. Here are some options:

1. Call function 'SPELL_AMOUNT'
2. Call function 'HR_IN_CHG_INR_WRDS'
3. Customized a function to convert currency that is not supported by SAP

PS: Another option is check SCC4 for your language/currency or see table T015z or TCURC for currency.

is sky the limit... currency to wordings

SAP ECC6.0 : Proper customer table creation...

2008-09-20T11:39:00.007+08:00

Editor: I will not touch SE11's EVENT MODIFICATION under Table Maintenance Generator. I will probably do it at a later period.

Every company have their own customize development guidelines for customer table developments. Specific naming convention and specific type of data declaration. All this are part and puzzle of development team rules. Unfortunately, I observed that this doesn't really help much when it comes down to gist of realization of what fields should be included into a customize table. I emphasized here about what fields should be used because we are only, as usual, informed which fields will be required by our functionals. Essentially they only want to see and use that particular fields. However what of other additional fields that is required for your proper development? This entry, I want to share with you of my experience in customize table development.

A proper customized table as required by functionals should always has the following structure:(I did not purposely come out with this recommendation because of ECC6, I'd practiced doing this since 4.6c. Moreover, this practice was passed it down from one of my seniors who is now in Singapore!)

MANDT (this is to tell which data belongingto which client)
KEY FIELD 1 - CHECK TABLE (it can be your required field)
KEY FIELD 2 - CHECK TABLE (it can be your required field)
...
KEY FIELD n
non key field 1 - CHECK TABLE (it can be your required field)
non key field 2 - CHECK TABLE (it can be your required field)
...
non key field n
CHECKBOX 1 (optional)
...
CHECKBOX n
CREATED ON
CREATED AT
CREATED BY
CHANGED ON
CHANGED AT
CHANGED BY

Observed those additional fields especially CREATED ON until CHANGED BY fields. Those fields will help your user to especially keep track of line data's accountability. With these fields users are able to monitor who at a certain period created this or update the line item. This can be important when it comes to troubleshooting and determination of responsibility and safety (compromised?). It may not be as important but there may be expectation that this fields can be made use in future (who knows) to be use part of report filtering.

Yes, you may not need to do this, because at the SE16, you can view your CHANGE LOG feature. This feature is only guaranteed if your customized table had its "Changed Log" checked at Technical Attributes in SE11. So it is still fine that those additional fields are put in. As i said, you might never know when an executive or someone from the department comes over to you and ask "Who change the table's data?". So credibility on this part plays a great deal!.

Though now we had moved from 4.6c to ECC6, SE11 had made several changes which included a new feature called 'Enhancement'. You can actually regulate your customize program whether the next developer can change the fields, specific fields, or cannot change the customize program at all. Look it up, my friend. You won't miss it because everytime you activate your customized table, there will always be a WARNING message telling you that this table is not set for certain enhancement!.

is sky the limit... proper customized table

SAP R/3 : ALV Limitation...

2008-09-16T22:37:00.004+08:00

ALV report itself is a nice tool that allow developers to quickly come out with a nice report that does not require much of programming to build columns, pump in data, sort it, or providing it a few icons or additional instructions. Allowing you to focus on processing data only. Unfortunately, ALV report itself presents a few problems or limitations that somehow hampers our requirements when it comes to large and long report that user wants.

OSS Notes : 857823

Detailing that cells with CHAR or STRING type are truncated after 128. This affects ALV Grid function control and some other SAPGUI display. This is a standard behavior.

OSS Notes : 910300

Next, this notes detailing (UNICODE) that it is also a program limitation for ALV Grid that truncates text. The only solution is to modify the program to only take in a maximum of 42 character for a cell.

OSS Notes : 959775

Also, ALV GRID column of text based cells are truncated or replace '...' so to display that there are more text after that position. This is considered by SAP as an error. You might include the layout method optimize_colwidth = 'X' but it is not the solution but applying SAP Patch.

PATCH : SAPGUI 640 PATCH 21 (Release since 6.0)

OSS Notes : 78401

In addition, last year, I did mention there's another limitation to downloading xls from ALV. Here is the link: http://isskythelimittechnical.blogspot.com/2007/02/sap-r3-spool-converting-report-to-xls.html

Reference : 857823, 910300 and 959775 and obtain from https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/thread?messageID=4770708#4770708

is sky the limit... alv grid limitation...

SAP R/3 : Overcome ALV limitations...

2008-09-16T21:32:00.011+08:00

As an alternative solution to make your icon in ALV to download xls file smoothly as a result of a few notes due to http://isskythelimittechnical.blogspot.com/2008/09/sap-r3-alv-limitation.html

I would normally recommend a few options:
1. IF your ALV is a list (not GRID), and your xls downloads are messy, most probably, the spool does not recognize the vertical lines from the list. Spool buffers often recognize ALV grid's vertical line as the optical border to help it separate the columns neatly. Solution: convert your report to grid.

2. IF your ALV GRID, present a problem during xls downloads, you might want to consult BASIS to enable the spool to collect more than its limited number of column. Or, you can go to SPAD and modify the spool column.

3. IF your ALV GRID, present a problem during xls downloads, and your BASIS does not want to modify it for fear of other situations - you can custom your standard ALV toolbar's xls icon to download using FM GUI_DOWNLOAD.

(Use SE41) Modifying ALV toolbar is not difficult. You can disable certain ICONS from the ALV toolbar which you do not want user to use it. You can even enable a custom ICON into the standard ALV toolbar so to fullfil user requirement. Thus there are two objects that you need to know in order to custom standard ALV toolbar:

Program : SAPLKKBL
Status : STANDARD*

Copy that status and re-paste it to your custom program. Copy button will popup a dialogue that allows you to transfer that copied ALV status to yours. From there you can edit the toolbar's icon you like.

You will know which icon to modify because xls button is easily recognized by its excels spreadsheet avatar. At the function portion for that xls button, change the function code to your own zXXX so you can use it during CALLBACK from your ALV report.

However, there are 2 things you need to do before you can use your custom xls icon. First, at your ALV function module, you call I_CALLBACK_PF_STATUS_SET to set your copied status so your custom ALV toolbar appears at the report. Second, use I_CALLBACK_USER_COMMAND to trigger your GUI_DOWNLOAD to download your excel files. I_CALLBACK_USER_COMMAND will throw your icon's function code to sy-ucomm.

There you are, in conclusion, a neat step to overcome your ALV problems. I hope there will be more solutions being handled by SAP ECC6.0. Any one who has other alternative solution or some steps I miss you can email to me personally.

is sky the limit... managing your excel download...

SAP R/3 : GET PERNR or SELECT or PROVIDE...

2008-09-16T20:49:00.004+08:00

To access employee's record in HR module are multiple ways of doing so. You can use GET PERNR, SELECT, PROVIDE or even function modules. However, the question lies on the difference of each of this syntaxes that allows you to access employee information when we are using it for reporting, enhancement and other data queries.

First, GET PERNR is a macro that contains PROVIDE statements and a logic of filteration based on the logical database PNP. GET PERNR allows you to focus on processing data immediately and less worry on the data selection because the PNP automatically provide a set of predefine group of selection screens. You can even modify and set your own selection screens using HR Report Category and still able to use GET PERNR. HR macros are all stored in this table TRMAC. You will see that each of this line items in that table are specific ABAP coding. GET PERNR should be use when your reporting does not max out the database processing (where there is many read and write) or mass processing. Mass processing will not be very suitable to be queried by GET PERNR. GET PERNR gets each record of an employee of a cycle. Each cycle in GET PERNR does 4 events that will listen to set handler to get data, process data, present data and lastly checking if there are user exit or enhancement to the GET PERNR.

Second, SELECT statement/syntaxes are more suitable to query for large data (mass processing) especially if you are downloading employee data at one shot to a text file or to an IDOC for data transfer. You should use SELECT statement to select a lot of employees for a certain condition so to minimise table read transaction so your performance in an ABAP program can focus more on ABAP processing. In my personal opinion, getting side topic a bit, analysis result yield by SE30 after checking a certain ABAP program should have its performance shoulder towards on ABAP processing side. In other words, it is okay to see the percentage falls towards ABAP processing rather than sliding towards database read. High percentage of database reads indicates your program contains a lot of SELECT SINGLE and a whole START-OF-SELECTION filled with SELECT-END SELECT statements. Worse, there might be a possibility that your program contains NESTED SELECT statement. You should group your SELECT statement in one place and gather all data before going to processing stage.

Third, a good mixture usage of GET PERNR and INFOTYPE syntax can help you ease your HR report processing reading your infotype tables a great deal. At each read of GET PERNR, INFOTYPE syntax will be automatically filled with data related to the particular employee so it helps you to reduce coding and in one way, getting correct rows of record for an employee that is time dependent. Time dependent in HR meaning each record of transaction for an employee has a trace of time that dictates the time and date that affect that record. Not all infotype is dependent time. Infotype like 0000 (Action) is time dependent because it can tell you when an employee is recruited, confirm, transfer, promoted, terminated or on leave.

GET PERNR and SELECT statement should be used accordingly to reporting condition. GET PERNR sometime can slows down your report. Also, instead of using PROVIDE statement, you should use GET PERNR because PROVIDE is in the macro itself.

is sky the limit... GET PERNR/PROVIDE/SELECT

SAP R/3 : Trailing The Pricing Condition

2008-05-14T19:52:00.003+08:00

Last several weeks, an unusual incident occured at the area of pricing condition in which one of the pricing (condition type) is not populating price correctly. Initial coding were done in one of the user exit to recorrect the value. However, the value was not updated as the functional wanted. So I had to follow the trail of Indiana Jones by tracing the standard program. So below is one of the gruesome steps on how the pricing condition was determine during invoice creation (VF01).

Put a break point accordingly to each of the path below:

1. SAPMV60A (Travel Here)

*****>MV60AF0X_XKOMFK_ENDE

**********>RV_INVOICE_CREATE

2. SAPLV60A (Travel Here)

*****>LV60AU01

********>PERFORM FAKTURA_ERZEUGEN

3. SAPLV60A (Travel Here)

*****>LV60AA26

********>PERFORM FAKTURA_LIEFERBEZ0GEN

4. SAPLV60A (Travel Here)

*****>LV60AA22

********>PERFORM FAKTURAPOSI_LIEFERBZ0GEN

5. SAPLV60A (Travel Here)

*****>LV60AA21

********>PRICING_COPY
******>(INITIALLY JIN1 KWERT IS STILL 0.00)<br>
6. SAPLV60A (Travel Here)

*****>LV60AA60

********>PRICING
******>(At this point, JIN1 KWERT WAS REINITIALIZE TO 0.22 -> Which We do not WANT!)<br>
7. SAPLV61A (Travel Here)

*****>LV61AU01

********>PERFORM XKOMV_BEWERTEN
******>(How all 0.22 started)

8. SAPLV61A (Travel Here)

*****>LV61AA55

********>XKOMV_BEWERTEN
******>(91 - LOOP AT XKOMV - WHERE IT ALL HAPPEN!)
******> KSTEU and KMPRG (This is the two brothers that caused it!)

Therefore, we had the good owner to initialize the KSTEU and KMPRG to a certain value so it the value can be remain as the Functional wanted to meet the requirements.

is sky the limit... pricing procedures rocks!

SAP R/3 : User Exits in VF01

2008-05-14T18:28:00.004+08:00

Something to help everyone on all the userexits and BADI for transaction code VF01. VF01 is to create invoice. Below are the list of all userexits and some BADI invoke (maybe). In which of late, i had a headache to check out why VF01 had problem in creating invoice successfully.

EXIT_SAPLV60B_006
EXIT_SAPLV60B_002
EXIT_SAPLKBER_002
COPA_CALL_CUSTOMER_EXIT_KEAB04
EXIT_SAPLKEAB_003
SD_CIN_LV60AU02
EXIT_SAPLMCS6_000
EXIT_SAPLMCS6_999
EXIT_SAPLMCS6_001
BADI_SD_DOCUMENTFLOW
IDOC_OUTPUT_INVOIC
SDVFX010 - for those who wants to do something during SAVE

In any way, if you find this user exit unable to help you and would want to know more if there are other user exits. You can always punch up the ST05 to do an analysis on your VF01.

is sky the limit... user exits on VF01

SAP R/3 : Sending Multiple PDF Invoice From Output Type

2008-05-06T21:49:00.011+08:00

Sending email with an invoice attached to it has never occured to me if it can be done without the working mechanism of business workflow. The requirement was fairly simple during discussion and it was seriously sounded simple enough to put it straight to development immediately. However, I am not very familiar with business workflow. So the question now was how am I going to send an email out with an invoice attach to it. So here is the requirement in question:

"When user create an invoice via VF01 or from a customized IDOC that creates invoice, several output types are created and one of them is an outbound IDOC that will send back to the sender to let them know invoice has been created. Now, after the invoice and IDOC has been sent out, there should be a mechanism to check whether the outbound IDOC is successfully send out. If it is successfully sent out, the mechanism will grab that invoice, convert it to PDF, attach it to an email and send it to responsible recipients..."

Oh boy, it sounds easy to one who is not aware of the workaround behind or does it sounds very technical to one who has minimal working knowledge on it? I was the latter. So below are some of the questions which had formed in my brain:

1. How do you grab an invoice which has been produced by the system (VF01)?
The CLOSE_FORM function module will return a spool no when the SAPSCript has finish processing and display.

2. How do you convert an invoice to a PDF?

The CONVERT_OTFSPOOLJOB_2_PDF function module take the input of SAPScript and returns in PDF format.

3. How do you attach a PDF to the email?

The SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_ATT_SEND_API1 function module will hold the PDF

4. How do you send an email?

The SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_ATT_SEND_API1 function module will hold the PDF and send the email

After giving some thoughts to those questions above, now comes the big part of the whole mother of all questions:

How on earth at which point in the VF01 should I initiate this whole process?

So the my mind start to processing again. The answer to this might be using USER EXITS or Business Add-Ins (BADI). These two solutions seem to be the most absolute answer to the problem. However, when I revealed a solution at the end of this entry, you might find it with disbelief. But to the very few people who started with that solution was real good! Now, let me tell you what I had implemented initially to cater to that problem.

I went ahead to ST05 to get down all the USER EXITS and BADI from VF01 so I see which of them are more suitable to initiate this process. Doing so, I'd found one, it was XXXX. At this point, my imagination went beyond. Somehow, it is sometimes bad to venture too far from my own imagination. Because the next step I wanted to know how do I check the outbound IDOC's status from this USER EXIT XXX. It was simple, I used transparent table NAST and EDIDC to check the outbound IDOC's status. If its status are 03, 30 and XX, then it should go ahead to process the invoice convertion and IDOC send out. For the time being I'd solved 2 major problems.

Next, I need to get the latest invoice to do conversion. Unfortunately, with the current USER EXIT, I might not be able to get that SPOOL ID because it has not been created yet. VF01 has to be finished first. This pose another problem, how do I let VF01 finish off so I can get the SPOOL ID? After an overnight sleep, I decided that creating another RFC function module in the USER EXIT will do the trick. An RFC that executes with a new process created in the background. Thus, with this RFC initated as a new process run and letting the VF01 to finish processing, I can get the SPOOL ID.

Hence, I was definitely sure that my concept will surely work. However that will not work. Because of the RFC that i am using, it will cause overlapping. If you ever do my silly method, you will come across overlapping problem. RFC does not care if your PDF has been generated and sent by previoius document. It will just grab and resent everything including the new. Thus, my way does not work.

The only solution is to have the PDF converted, attached and sent from the print program. Not only does this eliminate duplicates of document but will ensure that it will not sent out duplicate copies of form due to overlapping. Printprogram should be any program that is used to process and display your SAPScript. For any standard program that prints forms, you can go to NACE to find out which program and form that it is using for print out. This way you also know the output type that is used by the standard program.

is sky the limit.... print, converting and sending...

SAP R/3 : Tracing Outbound IDOC

2008-05-06T21:44:00.006+08:00

Troubleshooting outbound IDOCS can be very exciting and interesting activity. You get to see the wonders of sending data out of SAP to some other 3rd party systems. If you are unaware of some technicalities and behavorial of outbound IDOCS then testing it can be quite a challenge. Recently, I had this problem of trying to trace an outbound IDOC.

Previously, I could trace the outbound IDOC with minimal difficulty in WE19. If you put a break-point in your outbound process code or function module, the WE19 will stop at that point. But, what if WE19 fails to stop at that point? You will be scratching your head until you reach to a certain point you want to write an extra program just to trace the outbound IDOC. That is just what i did. Read my statement, I wrote an extra program to do that.

Though its a bit consuming but if you know which table and which fields to use then the concept will work just like the my now ever loving standard output type program RSNAST00. I shall have to thanks one person who let me know this existing program. But first, I would like to let you know what I'd gone through the latter method.

To developed an extra program to trace outbound programs is not as difficult as it seems. All you need is declare three tables i.e. NAST, EDIDC and EDID4. NAST is the output type control table that stores all of your 6 output types from printout to telefax. EDIDC is the IDOC control table. EDID4 is the IDOC data table. Therefore, you need to access the first table, NAST, in order to get the output type that you are supposed to execute. After you had obtain the necessary data from NAST, you will need to approach the EDIDC to get the DOCNUM and subsequently the EDID4 for its data. Then you pass all these three data selected data to your outbound's function module. Therefore, you can primitively test your outbound data. However, you will still need to set your output type to be scheduled run at other time.

Now, let us move on to life saving method to test your outbound IDOC or output types. In any of your standard programs that can send out IDOC, Telefax, Print out, set it to 1 (scheduled run at other time) in the FURTHER DATA section. Then you turn to RSNAST00 program where you put in your APPLICATION, OBJECT KEY, MEDIUM and OUTPUT TYPE. Before executing, put a break-point at your function module. Then you are ready to trace your outbound IDOC.

A note, the RSNAST00 does not only let you trace your outbound IDOC it is in fact a standard program that let you execute output types that you have schedule for later run. Hence, a very great thanks to Vincent Teoh from the SD (Sales and Distribution) module team. The RSNAST00 had definitely helped me a lot. Though I am still keeping my old program for reference. Concept still work very the same like RSNAST00.

is sky the limit... RSNAST00 and NAST, EDIDC, EDID4

SAP R/3 : Payroll Detail and Field Symbol

2007-11-03T00:19:00.000+08:00

Very similar to a past report which I had done and requires it to display dynamic numbers of column and it occurs to me maybe I should just put a template here and share it with everyone who are using it. The report which I had just completed displayed list of employees with all of their basic pay, allowance, deductions and employer contribution from left to right.

Thus, any employee at one point might not have the same number of wagetypes [allowance/deductions] with hers or his peers. So the list that displaying those wage types will need to be very flexible when its display an employee and spreading their wagetypes to right of the report. Here goes the coding that I used to display it dynamically.

Assumingly your field for wagetypes in a structure looks like below:

DATA : BEGIN OF ta_wage,

pernr like pernr-pernr,

col001(010) type c,

col002(010) type c,

col003(010) type c,

col004(010) type c,

...

col050(010) type c,

DATA : END OF ta_wage.

As you see the above data structure has 50 columns. Each of this columns will hold a number of wagetypes [allowance/deductions] for an employee. So it should be dynamically to recognize a column that is occupied and to append it with the next employee's wagetype. Otherwise, it will use the next column.

Thus the coding to recognize the degree of each column that spread from left to right is as follows.

DATA : tp_ind(003) TYPE n.

CONSTANTS : cn_col(011) TYPE c VALUE 'TA_WAGE-COL'.

FIELD SYMBOLS : TYPE any.

LOOP ta_wagetype.

DO VARYING tp_value FROM ta_wage-col001 NEXT ta_wage-col002.

IF tp_ind = 50.

exit.

ENDIF.

CONCATENATE cn_col tp_ind INTO tp_dyncol.

ASSIGN (tp_dyncol) TO tp_value.

[add your logic here]

ADD 1 TO tp_ind.

ENDDO.

ENDLOOP.

Notice that i had declared an index variable to hold the count of item; a constant to assign to a field symbol to capture the column dynamically; and the field symbol to move contents fluidly (in my terms not SAP official explanation).

After that i perform a DO VARYING in the INTERNAL TABLE ta_wagetype so that for each employee, I can scroll the columns dynamically to the right and get the content. As I go to the right of each column's content I can actually assign a new value, shift left or shift right and determine which is the last column that it last stop.

is sky the limit... do varying and field symbol...

SAP R/3 : Transaction Codes

2007-10-18T10:58:00.001+08:00

I have gathered a few important transaction codes along the way in my projects and it had helped me a lot. Here are the following and I hope it will help you like it had helped me in the past, the present and the future:

SE43 - Menu Customization

SE93 - Transaction Code Maintenance

SE16N - Enjoy Screen version of SE16 for data viewing
SCC1 - Transport Copy

SE18 - Class and Methods templates for creation and maintenance

SE19 - Class and Methods maintenance

PA03 - Payroll Run - Release

FS00 - GL master data maintenance (create, change, delete, display)

FK03 - Display vendor master data

FK01 - Create vendor master data

FK02 - Change vendor master data

F-02 - FI posting

S_ALR_87012086 - to be confirmed

PC00_M99_DKON - GL account and wage type display (payroll)

PE01 - Schema maintenance

PA40 - HR maintenance
RSTXSCRP - SAPScript Export/Import

is sky the limit... transaction codes

SAP R/3 : FI Posting 1 (Conversation)

2007-10-17T09:56:00.000+08:00

Lately, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine who had several years of FI consulting experience and below is what I found out from him:

Wilstroth: Hi, Therry I need your help in FI… I need to know a few things...
Therry: okay shoot

Wilstroth: When user says update vendor GL, say, 323XXX, it means I go to F-02 to do a posting key 40… then 50 right?
Therry: First, what kind of transaction they want to post?

Wilstroth: The transaction is regarding to payroll
Wilstroth: DR vendor
Wilstroth: CR bank

Therry: can you tell me the description of GL 323XXX?
Wilstroth: It’s reimbursement.

Therry: I assumed the vendor is the employee, correct?
Wilstroth: yes, you are right!

Therry: Okay, can you go to TCODE FS00?
Therry: Then type that GL 323XXX…
Therry: Check that GL with your specific company code…
Therry: Choose TAB "Control Data"…
Therry: Choose the Display icon first…
Therry: Then only choose “Control Data”…
Therry: Is there any field called "Recon. Account For Acct Type"?
Wilstroth: Yes, there is…

Therry: Are they referring to Vendor?
Wilstroth : Yes, they are!

Therry: You can post directly to 323XXX with posting key 40…
Therry: And 50 for the bank account (credit)…
Wilstroth: ic... ic...
Therry: Ok now... find the vendor master data first.
Wilstroth: ok...

Wilstroth: How do I search for the vendor master data?
Therry: The TCODE is FK03.

Wilstroth: From the list given by user, the vendor (employee) GL is 11000XXX.

Therry Mully: Type this TCODE S_ALR_87012086.
Therry Mully: and type the company code
Therry Mully: choose DYNAMIC SELECTIONS button
Therry Mully: on the right find reconciliation acct…
Therry Mully: then fill it with 11000XXX… and execute it (F8)
Therry Mully: you will see all vendors under that 11000XXX GL account
Therry Mully: Okay, now about the posting…
Therry Mully: usually it began with this journal entries:
Therry Mully: Dr. (40) Expense
Therry Mully: Cr. (31) Payable (Employee vendor)
Therry Mully: then it will be cleared with these journal entries:
Therry Mully: Dr. (25) Payable (Employee vendor)
Therry Mully: Cr. (50) Bank
Wilstroth: Okay... Now I see the picture!

Therry: you cannot use posting key 40 or 50 for vendor since you cannot post directly to 11000XXX!
Therry: 11000XXX is reconciliation account I assume, under this account you have employee vendor accounts and you only can post into the sub ledger or vendor accounts
Wilstroth: Yes, you are right!
Therry: please check 11000232 account again with tcode FS00, the one previously I taught you
Wilstroth: ok... hold on
Therry: check whether it is reconciliation account or not

Wilstroth: but its not existing
Therry: hah?

wilstroth: yeah i am at QAS
Therry: then let the user know

wilstroth: so there will do it right?
Therry: if they use the same concept i told u for salary...

Therry: then they should have payable account and employee vendor under it
wilstroth: ... ok let me go check further... thanks man...
Therry: welcome...

wilstroth: because i am doing update part on DR(25) and CR(50)... i will be using posting key 25 and posting key 50 right?
Therry: yes

wilstroth: that is the only part i am doing... journal entries... will be done by user
Therry: but you need the first journal entries before you do 25-50 posting
Therry: otherwise, the payable account will have OPEN status

wilstroth: ok.. i take note of that

is sky the limit... a conversation with FI consultant

SAP R/3 : GUI_UPLOAD with # as SPACE...

2007-10-10T22:39:00.000+08:00

There are many times when we need to upload a text file into an internal table we are not aware that the SPACE among the line of strings in the text file is represented as '#'. When we unknowingly get a row of items and started to split it, using SPLIT syntax with the normal '#' symbol, into the columns of your internal table then we get garbage or unreadable contents in the internal table.

That is because the space is not recognized during upload by GUI_UPLOAD function module. The SPACE among the strings of line items will be replace by '#'. However, this hash or '#' is not your average character '#' but it is an ASCII character of value 09. Thus it showed as '#' in your strings of line items.

Therefore, you will need to do something in your coding so you can SPLIT your string of items properly with the '#'. So, you have to declare a variable with X and value of 09 at the begining of your code. Then only you can use it in your SPLIT syntax. For example, the code below.

Data : tp_hash TYPE x VALUE '09'.

Data : tp_result1(15) TYPE c.

Data : tp_result2(15) TYPE c.

Assuming variable tp_file-item contains 'WILLIAM#WILSTROTH' and obtained via GUI_UPLOAD.

SPLIT tp_file-item AT tp_hash INTO tp_result1 tp_result2.

Write : / tp_result1, tp_result2.

Thus, it now shows:

William Wilstroth

is sky the limit... split with ASCII 09... not #...

SAP ECC6.0 : GEN - RSTXSCRP

2007-07-19T08:40:00.000+08:00

There is a need when you had created a SAPScript in one server and you need to move that SAPScript to another server. Or, you wanted to download the SAPScript and later upload it back to another server. Maybe, you wanted to copy one SAPScript from one to another server. The solution to this is this transaction code : RSTXSCRP. This program is called the 'SAPScript Export to Dataset OR Import from Dataset'.

It allows you to capture the following SAPScript items:

1. Form

2. Style

3. Standard Text

4. Device Type

Thus, this program is very handy when you need to do a copy from one server to another server.

is sky the limit... RSTXSCRP

SAP ECC6.0 : Payroll - DELIMIT

2007-05-30T16:40:00.000+08:00

This is i must put credit to Hisyam who shared this knowledge with me on how to delimit a record in a table. Needless to say, one of my original requirement needs this feature so we go straight to the procedure:

1. I assume that you have created a master table

2. I also assume that you had made the table maintainable.

3. Go to table generator maintenance.

4. click "generate time dependent" button.

5. Click "maintenance object" then "Generate".

There you are, your table can be maintain...

is sky the limit... delimit your record

SAP ECC6.0 : Payroll - SAPMail Function Module

2007-05-29T08:41:00.000+08:00

Sometimes you might want to include an email alert to users when they run their program. Recently, I was asked to provide an email alert if one of the records failed to process when run overnight. Thus in the morning, they can get feedback and proceed with their next course of action. So the very nice function module which you can use is below:

FM : SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_SEND_API1

To use this function module, fill up the following parameter:

1. DOCUMENT_DATA : obj_name, obj_descr

2. OBJECT_HEADER : line.

3. OBJECT_CONTENT : line.

4. RECEIVERS : line. (SAP Users)

Then you are ready to send. Check your email in your SAP Business Workplace at the main menu or you can use TCODE : SBWP.

is sky the limit... you've got mail...

SAP ECC6.0 : TAX - EC Form Enhancement

2007-05-29T08:37:00.001+08:00

Annually, Malaysians working either in private or public sector will received a tax form from their employers. Those working in the private sector will get the EA Form. Others in the public sector will get the EC Form. EC Form describes how much one earns and gets remunerated (benefits) as well as how much of one earnings gets deducted. Thus the calculation of taxable of one employee. Therefore EC/EA Form denotes all of this in one year.

EC Form which i had to modify to fill up some blank spaces which was not filled up by SAP standard program took me nearly a week or more. I had to go through the standard program and see how the SAPScript (EC Form) and the standard program goes together to process payroll information. Nevertheless, I had to enhance one include file and pump the data into the SAPScript EC Form.

Although SAP did provide 2 BADI for developers to enhance those forms but it only work on certain way and i find it hard to fullfil my functional request thus forcing me to activate enhancement on the standard program itself. This solved one issue over another. Perhaps I would like to meet people who have experience similar situation in modifying or enhancing the EC Form.

So here goes the famous BADI offered by SAP:
1. HRPAYMY_ECFORM - calculation for BIK (Benefit In Kind). This generally displays a lump sum of benefit in kind into the section B (Manfaat Barangan). Unfortunately, my request was to display the breakdown list of all the benefits to one person.

2. HRPAYMY_EAFORM - process to fill up EA Form header only.

Now for those who had not gone through the EC Form or just started to modify it, my adviced is to really go over the program thoroughly because SAP did provide us a EC/EA Form Breakdown List. You need not to modify it.

Yet, that does not solve my problem because the EC Form still does not display the total amount of earnings, benefit and tax deductible. Thus I have to enhance the standard program.

That took me another few days to trace so i can find the best logical and reasonable point to make the enhancement. As you see, enhancement does not allow you to modify the standard program but you may add your coding at the top or bottom of a standard function without modify the mid section part. If you get my point, enhancement only allows addition of custom code at the top and bottom of the standard code. That is where i have to think where is the best part. Not to mention, that customized code should not affect other process too. It should be safe. So far my enhancement has not yield any justifiable complain that will lead to taking off the code. God knows if that happens!

Note : RPCTEAL0 is the original version given by SAP. RPCTEAL0_01 in this context is the new version given to the customer by SAP after a report was make to correct a certain mistake in the past.

So, in order to enhance the EC Form, there is this INCLUDE file named RCPTEAL3_01 that you can enhance to fullfil the request as above mentioned. RPCTEAL3_01 is an include file that do all the calculation process and also assigning of data to SAPScript. That is where you can modify it. In the process, the following are what i have done:

1. Enhancing subroutine FUELLEN : FUELLEN is a subroutine that will pass data to the SAPScript. This portion i put control to certain feature of the SAPScript to only display a specific format of PERNR(PNALT).

2. Changing PERNR to display a concatenated version PERNR(PNALT) and pass it to FUELLEN.

3. Changing DEPT to hold WERK/TEXT and KOSTL/TEXT and pass it to FUELLEN. Currently the DEPT field in SAPScript is left empty even though SAP did provided logic to determine it.

4. Calculation of earnings and benefits from internal table IT_BLTAB and pass it to EC Form Breakdown List.

For points 1 to 4, enhanced subroutine Fill_HD_TAB to cater the changes.

For points 1, enhanced subroutine FUELLEN to cater the changes.

SAPScript involves:
1. HR_MY_TAXECLM05Y - EC Form
2. HR_MY_TAXEABL007 - EC BreakDown List

IMPORTANT: You will need to open up your SAPScript EC Form to see what fields are displaying your value as you do your enhancement.

is sky the limit... EC Form the best enhancement ever done so far....

SAP ECC6.0 : Payroll - Steps to create schema functions

2007-05-17T23:35:00.000+08:00

Just like previous assignment in this entry, an additional 6 more functions to be added to the Payroll Driver Malaysia to validate existence:
- IT0003 (Payroll Status)
- IT0009 (Bank Details)
- IT0185 (Personnel IDs)
- IT0196 (EPF)
- IT0000 (BackDated Pay)
- IT0198 (Check if record exist)

When you need to create or add functions to payroll driver of a certain country, you will need to know three things and there are:

- PE01 - Schema Directory

Schema directory allows you to include steps, constraints and functions to be group together (its like maintaining a group of belonging functions or steps). In a schema, it can have subschemas, processess and instructions. Schema directory must be created if you are customizing a new functions for standard payroll driver. PE01 does not only cater for payroll but time management too.

Steps to create a schema structure:

Step 1: Enter a name e.g. ZTSW

Figure 1.0 : PE01 Main Screen

Step 2: Click create to get into the schema attributes. (Note : Choose country grouping accordingly to which payroll is being used. E.g. 14 is for Malaysia because this example is using Malaysian payroll).

Figure 1.1 : Schema attributes.

Step 3: Choose program class either payroll or time management.

Figure 1.3 : Program class selection

Step 4 : Save and exit. (Note : For the time being we go to PE04 to create functions before we come back to link both of them up)

- PE04 - Maintain Functions and Directories

PE04 allows you to create functions/operations for either payroll or time management. This functions will be saved and enabled in the following program and link to the schema directory above. Thus completing your setting up of additional schemas to your payroll program.

Steps to create function(s) in schema functions

Step 1: create a new name e.g. zsub1.

Figure 2.0 : Create a function

Step 2: Click create to go into characteristics of function payroll. Provide description and country assignment should be according to which country payroll are being run by the client.

Figure 2.1 : Choosing country assignment and description.

Step 3 : Click Save. (Note : Ensure your country assignment is selected correctly.)

- PCBURZMY0

After performing the above steps, you can start to insert functions into include program (PCBURZMY0) of main program (RPCALCL0). Additional functions of payroll schema/driver are added to PCBURZMY0. RPCALCL0 will go through each of the functions in PCBURZMY0 when payroll administrator runs payroll.

is sky the limit... payroll driver... how-to

SAP ECC6.0 : Payroll - Integration for PA30

2007-04-27T14:23:00.000+08:00

A BADI (HRPADOOINFTY) activated to execute an external program that will capture payroll infotypes into a customized table when user click the 'SAVE' button.

It will take 5 types of table
IT0008 - Basic Pay
IT0017 - Tabung Haji
IT0198 - Income Tax
IT0014 - Koperasi
IT0196 - EPF

All these data when user modified and click the SAVE button will be captured and sent to a customized table. Eventually this data saved in the customized table can be utilized by another program.

However, one should take note that doing so, especially in implementing this BADI (HRPADOOINFTY), must be careful that it will not affect the payroll run program. Otherwise, this BADI is useless and not helping at all.

is sky the limit... HRPADOOINFTY to save the 5 tables

SAP ECC6.0 : Payroll - DME Enhancement - New Layout...

2007-04-27T14:12:00.001+08:00

Last month, i was required to modify DME (RFFOM100) standard program to add a new layout to the bank transfer file format.

DME is also known as international payment transfer

Although SAP provided a few standard file layout but as agreement between the client and its banks, the file was not supported by SAP. Thus a customized file layout was given to suit their needs.In order to modify this, there are a few requirements that you need to know:

1. In DME, under Output Control, Alternative Format must have the customized new file layout. In order to achieve that, go to OBF5 to add your customized file name. (Editor : Remember to set your ISO Code otherwise it won't go to your desired country specific customized alternative file format. Side Effect : it will make use of International MT100 if not set properly)

2. You will need to modify 3 function modules that will create the header file, item file and the trailer file. In order to do this, you can copy the following standard Malaysia file format (Malaysian Banking Berhad) and modified it. Thus, the standard are:
- DME_MY_HR_MBB_1(Header)

- DME_MY_HR_MBB_2(Item)

- DME_MY_HR_MBB_3(Trailer)

With this three standard function modules, you will copy and modified to become your custom file:
- ZDME_XXX_MT100_1(Header)

- ZDME_XXX_MT100_2(Item)

- ZDME_XXX_MT100_3(Trailer)

In each of this function module, please take note that certain lines you will need to retain and do some modifications so it could pass your parameters back to RFFOM100 (DME) program. The DME program will take this customized files and download accordingly to it.

3. Now, after you have modified your function module here comes the big question on how to link the alternative file format to your customized function module. Yes, you need to modify 3 more additional FMs. These FMs will tie your DME to your customized function module in step 2. Those FM are as follows:
- MT_MOD_MALAYSIA_1

- MT_MOD_MALAYSIA_2

- MT_MOD_MALAYSIA_3

In this three standard function modules, you do not need to copy and modified it. You just have to activate enhancement that is provided by ECC6.0. This feature is provided in ECC6.0 to make adjustment to standard programs easier. So to enhance the three function modules:

1. Open up enhancement feature by going to Function Module/Enhancement.

2. Go to Edit/Enhancement Operations/Show Implicit Enhancement Options

3. Then click on dotted lines indicating where enhancement is allowed on editor panel

4. Go to Edit/Enhancement Operations/Create Enhancement.

Now you can start to enhance the three standard function modules to call your customized function module to use your customized file format.

is sky the limit... DME (International Payment Transfer for Malaysia)

SAP ECC6.0 : Payroll – Payee Key for Alimony

2007-04-27T14:07:00.000+08:00

In one of a payroll process when an employee or an entity that is identified to include in the payroll run, certain amount will be deducted or added to/from their gross pay. Thus, payee key in this context is the number that will determine a certain deduction to their gross pay.

The payment code here refers to employees, for example, who has alimony, child care, and so forth that needs to be pay by the person. Thus, this derive the Nafkah or dependent care payment.

The feature in this design:

1. The first two prefix dictates the key for personnel deduction. For example AL and followed by six running digits. (ALXXXXXX)
2. Creation of this requires particulars such as bank key, bank account, country, reference key (payee code), name, date begin, date end, and payment method (restricted to P or S).

If payment method is P then bank key and bank account fields
are not required. Else payment method is S thus the reversed.

3. Either able to modify or display after payee key is created.
4. Delimit the payee key. Delimit actually restricts certain validity of the payee key in this context.

Unlike delimiting a record in a table which creating a few record with similar key and different dates.

Tables that are affected by the process are T521B (payee key) and T521C (check table payee key)

This program is very much similar cheque number program but purpose is to maintain payee key.

More on how to DELIMIT record.

Is Sky The Limit... Payee Key

SAP ECC6.0 : Payroll - Cheque Number

2007-04-27T14:02:00.000+08:00

This assignment requires a new infotype 9001 (Check Info) to store newly created cheque number(s). Each of this newly created cheque number is control by personnel area and is a running number too.

The cheque number is 6 digits in length.

In order to maintain cheque numbers, a dialog program is required to create, modify, display and delimit it by users manually. Currently, this program will be used by the conversion team to create cheque numbers by batch for testing. Other particulars that required by user is only the payee description.

This cheque will be use in the later stage when payroll department issue cheques to different personnel in personnel areas monthly.

Now, that you have a table that cater maintainence of cheque number, thus an infotype is required to support this information and tie to certain employee(s) when cheque numbers are allocated during payroll processing. This infotype will call PA9001.

I will explain more on infotype and infotype creation in the next entry.

In summary there are 3 portions to this development:

1. A customized table to hold cheque numbers

2. A program to maintain cheque numbers

3. An infotype to relate cheque numbers to payee.

is sky the limit... cheque numbers

SAP ECC6.0 : Payroll - Driver (Old wage type to new wage type)

2007-04-27T13:49:00.000+08:00

This assignment requires a customized table and a payroll schema to maintain old wage type. A customized table containing existing bank key and bank name, begin date and end date, and the new wage type and text for replacement.

At PE04 (schema maintenance for payroll and time management) will be used to create a new payroll function to replace existing wage type to the new wage type based on the above content in customized table. Thus, a payroll driver will be created to maintain old wage type with new wage type.

Known tables or structure involved:
1. RT Table (Result Table) - holds all income/deduction wage types for a person
2. BT Table (Basic Pay Table) - holds all basic pay information (ie pay method, pers. area, etc)
3. V_T012 – House Banks - view of all banks alias with the company/org.

After payroll function has been defined, the new function will be added in PCBURZMY0. (this will require a developer key).

In this new function, certain logic is required to differentiate its outcome based on the payment method. If the payment method is bank transfer denoted by the 'T' then the payroll driver's schema must take into consideration of bank's information. However, on the denotion of 'C' meaning payment method is cheque thus, the bank's information is not required when replacing the wage type.

is sky the limit... payroll driver

SAP ECC6.0 : Payroll - Summarized Bank Report

2007-04-27T13:41:00.000+08:00

In this second payroll program, it will display 3 types of report and there are the following:

Bank Cover Slip
Summary of Bank Credit Report
Summary of Employees Report

First, the bank cover slip will calculate the total number of amount payroll to be credited and the total number of employees to be credited. This is an overall calculated by the program when its process report 1 and report 2.

Second, the summary of employees report will display all the eligible employee for payroll. In this report, it will show the employee numbers (PNALT-PERNR), employee’s name, employee IC, employee bank account no and total amount paid. Each of this employee will be group according to a bank code. This bank code determine which bank will be credited.

Third, the summary of bank credit report, simply shows a list of bank and its total amount to be credited. The bank code, bank name and total amount are fields in the report.

is sky the limit... bank reports

SAP ECC6.0 : Payroll - Credit Control Statement

2007-04-27T13:37:00.000+08:00

I had started my new project a month ago in one of the main government sector on payroll only. Yes, I will be revisiting HR’s Payroll module for another two months, possibly, might get extended according to the work’s urgency.

My first assignment was to come out with a payroll control statement that will display every employees income and benefit and deductions in a list. This control statement will be group accordingly to its WERKS-personnel area and ANSVH-work contract. This is due to large number of department (with 9XK employees) or states to manage its payroll. In this control statement, the payroll department will be able to validate all of its recipient correct amount of take home wage types and deductible wage types.

Apart from this, the technicality behind this program can be found in my previous entry on flexible spending account.

is sky the limit… payroll revisited for two months

SAP R/3 : Profit & Loss Report - Part 2

2007-03-21T16:49:00.000+08:00

This profit and loss program has finally span to about one month and three weeks. Most of the time was spent in debugging and testing for additional requirements which were left out and accuracy in the reporting layout.

The very first amendment that took me quite some time after the first development was the reversal of FI documents (line items). FI modules in SAP allows reversal.

(Reversal meaning reversing a charge document in moments when there is a wrong charge or cancellation of order. This is my own definition and it could technically meant something else in a functional prospective as well as SAP's definition; so pardon me.)

All the six report in my program had to had the reversal mechanism following the standard SAP procedure so it took about one week and more. Apart from that the testing on the direct operating expenses took in the reversal and charge off too. So additional testing was required to ensure the accuracy of the report.

The second amendment came when the vendor reports related to cost codes being used in cost of sales report need to add an additional column. This amendment was a mistake not drawn in the layout but mention in the specification. So i was careless in this part; thus, a correction was immediately carried out in two days. So the vendors and its details are categorized accordingly to the cost code.

This project is a Project System (PS) and Account Receivables (AR), Account Payable (AP) combine reporting tool. Many late nights were carried out to complete this program. After all a 3000 line of codes really does worth my nights to make this program up and running smoothly. The best thing about this, the wholesome of AI logic taken in consideration when there is charge off, reversal, balance payment of direct operating expenses and most important, not to mention the ultra code that determine all mother of all problem, a certain cost code group that could take in other cost code groups only if it is not a VESSEL (This is another cost code group). This make the program a very challenging task and a lot of deployment of brain cells into activity.

Today, marks the last day of development for it has passed User Acceptance Test and will find myself less commit coming to maintain this PNL report. Unless, there are new requirements and another new challenging report that they are unable to report it out from SAP.

is sky the limit... profit a skill from this task and loss many sleepless nights!

SAP R/3 : EN-QUEUE... Becareful when using it...

2007-02-17T00:08:00.000+08:00

Three days ago, i was helping my colleague to troubleshoot his program. His program uses EN-QUEUE and DE-QUEUE functions to lock and unlock a transparent table that the program is using.

While I was troubleshooting, the application crashed indefinitely and it wouldn't budge. So i make the very wrong move by pressing, you know what, CTRL-ALT-DELETE. The all-mighty Microsoft GOD forbidden function to kill off crashed or stalled program. Why i would say it wrong or in fact you guys out there are shooting my brains off is because when an SAP or ABAP program is running, even though it may looked stalled, but behind it - IT IS STILL RUNNING...!

So i made the terrible mistake.

When i opened up the editor to edit the program, it was locked. So again, i went to SM12 to unlock the program. However, this doesn't really solve our problem. Why? Because, you have to remember that my friend is using EN-QUEUE and DE-QUEUE functions. It means, when your program has begun an EN-QUEUE function you must always DE-QUEUE it at the end immediately. Now, because i make the ever blunder CTRL-ALT-DEL before the ABAP program got the chance to DE-QUEUE it, the report will not execute properly in the next session.

So we were turning in cycles for at least one hour and looking for an answer until someone said, "Eh, you guys should check out SM51... maybe your process is still running" By GOLLY, it was still running and it was there. We delete the session and instantly everything came back to normal.

Lesson learnt :
1. Never use the almighty God Forbidden Microsoft invented CTRL-ALT-DEL to kill off your ABAP process. Think twice before doing it.
2. SM51 to maintain and monitor processes
3. SM12 to maintain and monitor locked programs or transactions.

is sky the limit... CTRL-ALT-DEL and EN-QUEUE vis DE-QUEUE...

SAP R/3 : Profit & Loss Report - Part 1

2007-02-09T15:36:00.000+08:00

In about three weeks from now, i have been holed up in a cubicle with two FICO functional consultants doing PS (Project System) enhancement. A massive report combining six reports (Revenue, Cost of Sales, Vendor, Vendor & Invoices, Profit & Loss, and Profit & Loss by Work Package) were plan, scope, design and implemented. The implementation was put into my hands. I developed six reports in that following three weeks. This report was crucial as it is an important requirement by company to be able to view its PNL report.

Although SAP via PS module provides the standard report to view its own PNL report but they were unable to do so due to customization of their WBS element in PS. As a result, a customized PNL is required and i had to crash my mind to come out with it.

Revenue report

A revenue report that show all of its customer by means of first and second level of project definition. It is henceforth segmented into billed and unbilled category. Billed will have the known revenue items and changed order. Unbilled is the known revenue items as well as the changed order. This will be regarded as the revenue report.

Cost of Sales report

The cost of sales report is further categorized into 3 types of report, namely, the summary of cost of sales, vendor and vendor & invoice reports. Each has its own functionality.

- Summary Cost of Sales
Based on Cost Code Group, GL account number and the unknowns (items that are bought but not specific to which project) are group into the cost of sales. Not to mention, this include known invoices which are already identified to projects.

- Vendor and Vendor & Invoice
It will display all related vendors and its invoice the summary cost of sales.

Profit & Loss/Profit & Loss By WP

Combining the Revenue report and Summary Cost of Sales report, this will become the PNL.

is sky the limit.... PNL

SAP R/3 : Spool CONVERTING report to XLS file error...

2007-02-09T14:58:00.000+08:00

A project costing report of my client recently had a problem downloading their report via spool into an excel file. The report was not align accordingly to the cells in the xls file. All records in the report were merge as one string and assign to a single cell at the first column in the xls file.

So we grouped together a few ABAP consultants and functional consultants to figure out what was the possible solution to enable the ABAP report to be downloaded into xls via spool correctly. So to say, we need to figure out how to make each column in the ABAP report correctly downloaded into each xls column as exactly as it is.

After several days of searching, the functional found an OSS notes, 78401, that describe our problem (symptom) and prescribed a solution. The solution was to provide the ABAP report to be optically identifiable by vertical lines so the spool knows what are the columns. Currently, the report in question was a classic ABAP report and no lines to indicate what were columns in the report. That makes sense. So an ABAP consultant was set to convert the classic report into an ALV report.

The result, it solves the problems. Now, the customer can happily download their report into xls format via the spool without any problem.

OSS NOTES : 78401.

is sky the limit... no vertical lines in report can make the spool blind.

SAP R/3 : Stock Status Program

2007-01-12T21:36:00.000+08:00

Stock status versus budget is the latest program that i recently developed for a client. Much energy was strained to developed it. In the early stage, only two programs were required to combine to become one. So to say, after client viewing, it has now become a very large program with additional of another two programs.

This stock status program versus budget requires the following combination:

1. Outstanding Order

2. Stock Ageing

3. Production Manufacture

4. Delivery Manufacture

So this will become a total in aggregate to product types to display columns of Received Order, Oustanding Order, Stock Level more than 6 months, and the budget.

Although currently the program currently is still in testing stage. Hopefully by this Sunday, it should be ok for usage. I can't speak much of it now. I need to get myself organize on this and return to this post later.

is sky the limit.. a large program for one!

SAP R/3 : Stock Balance Report

2007-01-12T21:28:00.000+08:00

I am now using SAP version 3.1 and the ABAP Editor is very crude. Its very different from the latest environment. Its totally different. Stock balance report was one of the report i maintained using this old system.

Added with a slow and unstable dial up connection, the maintenance was so troublesome and disheartening. Each testing and changes made will take half an hour or more. Ok, the report that i maintained today is a report that display a 5 line items.

1. The Opening balance

2. The Requirement

3. The Delivery/PO

4. The Balance

5. The Propose New PO

Each of this line item will display tonnage of stock that is used to monitor their stock level. The opening balance will show the leftover balance of stock including the safety stock. It will be calculated against the balance with item 2 and 3. The report will show the number of tonnage for 15 weeks in a row.

A few things were to take note when developing this report:

1. Less usage of SELECT... ENDSELECT to minimize burden to performance

2. More usage of FOR ALL ENTRIES IN and INNER JOIN.

3. Added and then removed GET_PRINT_PARAMETERS to control printing of blank pages.

is sky the limit... 3.1 is crude

SAP R/3 : Update ALV FieldCat... must check Layout Management

2006-11-30T11:26:00.000+08:00

Morning reach office and had the most wonderful headache ever. I added a new field to an ALV report but it was not showing the new field during run time.

Last time i had this similar issue with the grids. However it was so solve with clearing the ALV buffer (table GT_LTDXKEY and shared buffer EUINFO). By using this method, i still couldn't see my latest changes to the ALV report. So the best way would be Google around first. Hey, human invented Google right? In fact, everyday we Google. Why not Yahoo? Anyway, after some 15 minutes, i dropped off everything. I went for a break and think again of my coding. 'What went wrong?', i asked.

Well, my dear readers, the only thing that you must always remember to do when you change your FIELDCATS in ALV, you must ensure that the layout management is not holding any old layout from your tester, your functional or your previous ABAPer. I was brought to this resolution in SDN when Rich Heilman wrote in Raj Chinni's similar problem. Raj had the same problem like mine.

So, it was the layout management that was dissappearing my new changes...

is sky the limit... clear your layout management when you make changes to FieldCat...

SAP R/3 : TRIAD Vendor on Flexible Spending Account (FSA)

2006-11-20T16:47:00.000+08:00

One of the many things that i got to know about coding a program to download data on flexible spending account onto a specified file format are the following items:

1. Infotype 0170 - Flexible Spending Account
2. Function module 'CU_READ_RGDIR'
3. Function module 'PYXX_READ_PAYROLL_RESULT'
4. Infotype Payroll, Payroll Results, Payroll Results Table
5. Infotype 0000, 0002, 0041
6. Tables PCL2 to use Payroll clusters and functions
7. Transaction Code PC_PAYRESULT to see payroll result (Payroll result cannot be seen using PA30)

Given an employee number (PERNR), you will need to decide whether he or she is valid for the FSA file extract. In 0170 there will be a BEGDA and ENDDA, you need to compare against the payroll year for selection and the date selection in the program. Comparing against the payroll result, for period (begin date and end date) is a must so you will get the exact record.

To get the payroll result, you will need the function module called 'CU_READ_RGDIR'. This will give you the as you see in pc_payresult transaction code. The paydate, for-period, in-period, begin date, end date and so forth. Now to obtain the result table of a certain for-period record, you need to use the PYXX_READ_PAYROLL_RESULT. This function will return you the RT result table.

Using PYXX_READ_PAYROLL_RESULT, reader must take note that it returns table in structure, preferably use a field type to hold the result. Don't use internal table, you won't be able to see the result when you debug this function module. A better way to see how the result is work out, you can trace PC_PAYRESULT

Employee with health plan DCAP (dependent healthcare) and MCRP (employee healthcare) will be selected into the file. The program will calculate the effective date for the both benefit plan, the deductions and the stop date and annual contribution. The stop date is pretty unique here is that it require the programmer to do plus one record checking.

(Note : In VSP, PPO and TRIAD, all requires plus one record checking. Its just not only in TRIAD that require this feature)

Plus one record checking meaning you check the existent or availability of the next (future) plan from the existing current plan.

At the end of the result, the file should have all the valid employees entitled for FSA via legitimate DCAP and MCRP benefit plan. In contrast to VSP and PPO file that i had done last time, TRIAD file does not require row of records of dependent after employee record. However, TRIAD will not retrieve employees who are retired or terminated.

This program is my last program which was handed over to Mitchelle Yeoh for future maintenance. So far this is the best program i ever written cos all of it are include program and many subroutines for easy handling and maintenance.

is sky the limit... payroll result and result table for FSA

SAP R/3 : How to Create Dunning Proposal

2006-11-20T15:57:00.000+08:00

In order to create a Dunning and also see its result you need the following transaction code:

1. FPVA - Dunning Proposal
2. FPM3 - Dunning History Display
3. FPL9 - Account Display List

Let me explain a little bit about Dunning. Dunning is a method developed to insure collection of accounts receivable. So now what the hell is accounts receivable. It means the money owed to the company for providing their services to customers. Therefore, Dunning is a way to insure that any amount of money not paid by customers are made known (in other words, a gentler reminder to pay back money)

Dunning procedure in SAP are automated and you can configure the Dunning procedure in SAP.

However, this entry is not about configuring client's Dunning procedure. Its about how you can propose a Dunning to a contract account and displaying its history.

1. FPVA - program to propose an account contract for Dunning. You can do this by copying a past DATE ID and Identification related to a contract account and put it as the latest date for processing. However, you will need to reverse the past Dunned item in order to process.

- Once you have copy a previous contract account for Dunning, click the 'Save' button.
- Then click the 'Schedule for Processing' button. You will be ask whether to run now or later. You can click tick 'Process Immediately' option and click 'OK'.
- Your contract account will be processed. Remember to click 'Refresh' to see the result.

2. FPM3 - depending whether your Dunning proposal's contract account allowed you to Dun, it will be shown in FPM3. FPM3, a program that display either available contract account eligible for Dunning or for reversal. You can reversed a Dunning item here. To reverse Dunning, look for the thick red arrow pointing to the right.

3. FPL9 - to display all your contract accounts with items that has Dunning reversed and overall items that is debited and credited. You can checked in detail by double clicking the line items. In my assignment, an item is Dunned according to the following rules:

1. if clearing state is 8 and credit posting is less than zero and total balance is greater than zero, then it is Dunned.

2. if clearing state is 8 and credit posting is less than zero and total balance equals zero then no Dunning carried out.

3. if clearing state is 8 and debit posting is greater than zero and total balance greater than zero, then no Dunning carried out too.

Personal note : FFI_EVENT_1708 standard function module was modified to cater the changes mention above. Client wanted Dunning to vary according to the 3 rules above.

is sky the limit... Dunning procedure

SAP R/3 : Benefit - Vision File (VSP)

2006-10-11T17:18:00.000+08:00

A copied file of the PMI (medical) benefit file was being used to modify to suit VSP file and the logic was a little different from it. VSP is a vision plan benefit that will capture all employees eligible for its plan. Several changes was defined and required some minimal logic alteration.

1. The structure. There are two structures that VSP is using for file extraction. The employee and the dependent.

2. The logic. Several logic has been tuned and modify (minimal but heavy testing for quality assurance) was made to suit VSP. The process requires first, filteration of all employees who are active either in employment or in COBRA. Retirees or Terminated employees are excluded from the extraction. However, retirees or terminated employee with health plans (0167) and COBRA (0212) still valid, they can be included into the file. So far this is the only difference comparing to PPO file. Other than these, its the arrangement of items in the file. There are VSP Plan Date begin and VSP Plan Date end. End date should only be display if its within the selection period.

3. Other standard functions used in this program is the GUI_Download_File call function.

The work was scoped for 29 hours. Most of the hours were used for corrections and testing. Loads and loads of batch testing was conducted to minimize errors.

Is sky the limit... benefit vision plan file

SAP R/3 : Customizing ABAP report to have a Menu Bar...

2006-10-11T17:02:00.000+08:00

To create or customize a button onto your ABAP report requires you to use transaction code se41 (Menu Painter).

Here is a few simple steps:

1. I assume you have a report at hand for customization.

2. Go to se41 (Menu Painter)

3. Create a status, ZMHR_(description)

4. Declare a few function keys (you will need to do this before proceeding to step 5)

setting function keys

5. Declare the function keys in step 4 into your application toolbar.

6. Save and activate.

Then go to your ABAP program, just one line after Start-of-Selection, put this code:

set pf-status .

Finally, save and activate. You will see your created buttons on the menu toolbar.

If your buttons are somehow not displaying, go back to se41 and look around if you have correctly declared your function keys.

is sky the limit... setting your pf-status...

SAP R/3 : Debugging and using Breakpoint button...

2006-09-26T16:56:00.000+08:00

When we do development, we put a lot of breakpoints to test our programs. Sometimes, our breakpoints is spread far from each other. Thus, its can be difficult to keep track of our breakpoints especially when you are tracing Standard Programs that might go in very deep to other include programs and function modules. However, there is one way to keep track of all your breakpoints easily; as well as putting out some breakpoints that you no longer want to use.

Here are the steps:

Step 1 : Open up one of your programs and put some breakpoints onto your desired lines to trace (shown as below).

Step 2 : Execute your program. The debugger will trace to the first breakpoint like below:

Step 3 : Click the "Breakpoints" button on top of breakpoint display:

Step 4 : A summary of all the breakpoints will be display like below:

Step 5 : To see a specific breakpoint, double click breakpoint item 1 (not on the icon stop but double click the line) and you will see your breakpoint's location:

Step 6 : You can double click the stop icon to turn off the breakpoints then click save. The next time you run again it won't stop there.

There you are i hope this will help you in your debugging work.

is sky the limit... debug... debug... debug...

SAP R/3 : BADI HRPAD00INFO for PA40 - Extended

2006-09-06T13:47:00.000+08:00

note: Long entry. Please advice if there are mistakes or incorrect methods explained below. There is always room for improvement for us.

Recently, an ex-colleague asked me this question below,

"How do you find out which BADI is for which standard program? And, how do I know if that BADI is suitable to use?"

Before i moved on, in one of this portion of my answers will need to give credit to Padmini too as she improvise some of the method in searching for suitable BADI. Ok let us move on. BADI and User exits are readily provided by SAP's own respective standard module. In each of its own standard module those BADIs and User Exits are their own features and usage. Depending on how you want to use them is totally depending on your customer requirement. No point using one enhancement method when you can find it right? Probably you might need to look for alternatives. Alright, let say you have a requirement to concatenate a personal area and cost centre so it becomes the organizational key.

The first thing you should do as a technical consultant is to understand how the process flow and when will the organizational key is form. Some questions like, "Is it after i click update?", "Is it after i click create new employee", or "Is it only for display?" Some of this question may seem too trivia but it will help you along the way to implement enhancement. And another reason, a good one is, BADI and User exit normal have a PBO and PAI nature which meant event occur before or after user processes. Therefore, it is good to understand the nature of the implementation.

The second thing, assumingly you understood the nature of requirement, you need to see your options. There are a few ways, you might look up around all of the user exits. Unfortunately, it will be too long to scan. My advise here will be to get a searching program that can search for all user exits pertaining to one specific standard program. Here is one sample. (REF #1). This should make your searching more easily. Now that you have found some candidates of user exit for your enhancement.

Go over the available user exit. There are two and one things after that to take note. The first two things is to check the export and import parameters. By checking these two important parameters you will be able to know if the user exit is capturing your data for modification and able to display it out again. Then the other will be if the user exit is callable by the event of client's requirement. If this three conditions are satisfied then you can go ahead with it.

Sometimes, one need to have a bit of creativity in using user exit. This is because an enhancement might lead to using a few user exits under one user exit project to fulfill the enhancement. Sometimes, you may use other user exit or BADI to implement a scenario

Enough about user exit, for BADI, though i have still yet to find a program that could trace for available BADI with a transaction code but all its not in vain. There are two ways to do so. One is using SQL Trace Analysis or transaction code ST05 (REF #2). The latter will be looking at the standard program and look for the BADI.

In the first way, BADI are always buffered when executed. Therefore by selecting buffer trace, it will capture all available BADIS pertaining to one transaction code. Thus, the result is shown in the analytic result pane. After that go to SE18 to see the definitions. When you are it, try to look at the types of methods available and the parameters that is passing into the BADI for enhancement as well as any available parameters that allow you to display your results.

In the latter way, i could say its more brute force, the reason i am saying that is because you look at the standard coding and try to pinch out what are the available BADI. BADI called in standard program are normally called, "CALL CUSTOMER PROGRAM". In some cases, it is more easily to note as it will be bundled in one include file along with the user exits. This no doubt make your life easy.

Now when you are ready to implement it, you can implement it in SE19.

Reference:

1. SAP Professionals, Program to Find User Exit for a Transaction

Link: http://www.sapprofessionals.org/?q=program_to_find_user_exit_for_a_transaction

2. Using SQL Buffer Trace (ST05), by Padmini Narayanan and her credible source.

Additional information : 10/12/2006 - I just found out the source which how Padmini found out the usage of ST05 - buffer analysis to find BADIs. Her source could be found in Alwin Van De Put. He had an entry of a step by step guide how to trace or search for BADIs. So this is where she learnt it from. A very good way to look for BADI.

is sky the limit... i hope this will help you guys and gals out there in the battlefield...

SAP R/3 : Benefit - Dental File

2006-08-30T14:33:00.000+08:00

In a recent week of work, a program was required to extract employee data into a third party system. The very main requirement was to extract and process employees data into 4 record types.

The first record is known as the 10 record type. This first record types holds the eligibility of employee for dental. The second record is known as the 20 record type. This holds the address of the employee. The third record is known as the 30 record type. This indicates whether the employee is either terminated or still active. However, this 30 record type will not be generated if the employee is still active. The last record is known as the 40 record type. This will list out all the valid dependents belonging to the employee. Dependents can be his wife, children or relatives.

A specification was made out by the functional consultants detailing the relevant fields. The first record type are obtained via "GET PERNR". The second record type is obtain from infotype Addresses. The third from infotypes Action (0000) and the last will be the infotype COBRA Health Plan and Health Plan (0211, 0212 and 0167). Then the list of valid dependents from infotype Dependents (0106).

Though the program is fairly easy now but it was quite tedious because the program need to determine when a dependent was drop or added when user selects a range of date for reporting. That was arduous as I need to make the program smart. Dropping meaning the employees drop one of its dependent from his or hers Health Plan or COBRA Health Plan. Adding meaning employees adding one of its dependent into his or hers current Health Plan or COBRA Health Plan. Regardless of it, i took about 4 days to complete it and another 6 days for maintenance in order to improve the accuracy of the reporting.

is sky the limit... benefit dental file extraction

SAP R/3 : Field Exit from Vijayendra Rao

2006-07-27T16:57:00.000+08:00

I was searching the SDN forum on field exit for my latest attempt to modify SAP standard screen fields and I found one contribution from Vijay answering a question put forth by another ABAPer.

I find it is worth saving it up for later use so here is the particulars,

OSS NOTES: 29377

Vijay's explained that,

Field exits are frozen on the 4.6C maintenance level and are not further developed. This means that the existing functionality is kept with all restrictions (see also the last item below). Existing exits can be further used and are called at runtime as usual.Existing exits can be maintained using program RSMODPRF (run theprogram using transaction SE38).
more here

is sky the limit... field exit...

SAP R/3 : BADI HRPAD00INFY for PA40 – Org. Key (VDSK1)

2006-07-27T13:29:00.000+08:00

It was quite tedious when the requirement was slated to concatenate Personal Area (WERKS) and Cost Center (KOSTL) to be come an Organizational Key (VDSK1). I make one mistake in this issue while performing scoping. I was not careful enough when activating a BADI (Business Add-Ins).

In this issue, I have tried a different user exit that is made available by the main program in PA40 and include a question put forth to SDN forum.

There is one incident during my submission to ABAP Forum, a certain ABAPer told me that this (HRPAD00INFY) would not be call but just HRPAD00MGEACTIVATE. He was quite persistent on that matter that HRPAD00INFY would not be called up by PA40. So I had proof him wrong. Anyway, there is not much to argue in sdn.sap.com/forum on this issue as I have marked it as “Solve It On My Own”. Not to say that I underestimate him but one should get their facts right before one confidently point out to others.
-wilstroth, sdn.sap.com/forum/abap development-

Back to the lead, the concatenation was made possible in PA40 with the use of HRPAD00INFTY with one method called ~~After Input~~. (please refer to 27 July's Correction below) This method will be called when the user have made the necessary changes to the employee position. At this point, the ABAPer will need a little ingenuity in being creativity. In order to make the concatenation a success in this method, the method should update the PA0001 (Org. Assignment) transparent table. Of course, you will need to ensure that is just update once and correctly. As you see, the BADI is not being called once but twice. Therefore, the consultant will need a certain mechanism to prevent twice updating the table.

Finally, I have solve this problem. I found that searching for a BADI is not that difficult at all. A little pinch of patience and a little pinch of time is all you need in order to look for a suitable one. Not to mention a little pinch of carefulness in the work done.

27 July 2006, Correction:

Actually, the method that should solve the problem is "Before Output" in HRPAD00INFY

Is sky the limit… who says HRPAD00INFY cannot work for PA40?!

SAP R/3 : Data Archiving / ArchiveLink® - Part 1

2006-07-21T12:05:00.000+08:00

Just this week, I was requested to do a research on using Data Archive and ArchiveLink®. A project was being carried out on this two topic alone. A certain client from US wanted to archive their SAP system’s data.

Both of these feature is the fundamental archiving components in SAP. Data archive allows the writing and storing of collected data from master data into an archive object ready for archiving into a storage medium. On the latter, ArchiveLink® allows the storing of an archive object stored into an external optical storage medium. Not only it acts as a storage device but it enables scanning and storing, retrieval and digitizing of documentation.

These two basic components, as of from 4.6c above, that is the SAP version, these two grouped together as one function in SARA. SARA or SAP Archive Administration includes the above feature from writing, deletion to retrieval. This include management of data tables for archive, information system on archiving process, schedule and job logs related to archiving. Apart from that, SARA include another archive component known as SARI, SAP Archive Information System.

SARI allows a much greater and flexible retrieval of archived objects for later use. In SARI, one of the components are archive explorer which works like any windows explorer displaying archived objects. These archived objects can be visually display out.

In summary, archiving comprises:

1. Basic archiving tool:
- Data Archiving
- ArchiveLink®
2. Support tools that encapsulate above basic tool:
- SARA (SAP Archiving Administration)
- SARI (SAP Archive Information System)

Is sky the limit… SARA wears SARI!...

SAP R/3 : Jiving and Raving... still alive and kicking!

2006-07-20T11:04:00.000+08:00

Yup, i know it has been a two months long of absence from this technical blog whilst i still update my main blog. It has been a experiencing two months for me on my work.

Apart from trying to get more active in ABAP work itself, i have been involve in CMMI certification which have push my technical work to one side. Also fearing of leaving my team alone to their own things. As you know, that i am also assisting in the scoping of ABAP work; many things had happened. Good it is now that i am no longer doing the scoping. It might mean:

1. More work focus on ABAP.
2. More time on my own technical research.
3. CMMI... gosh... no comment!

I will be expecting more of ABAP work coming and some technical updates.

Oh shoot, i had totally forgotten about my whole MiniSAP installation deal. Yup, the two SAP WAS installation CDs and my SQLServer 2000 CD is still sitting on my desk in my study room. I am still figuring out the day i will harrass these CDs with my notebook.

is sky the limit... ABAP, ABAP, ABAP

SAP R/3 : Transporting Table and its content

2006-05-18T14:54:00.000+08:00

Recently, my colleague and me had a conversation on transporting tables and its data content. According to him in SAPFans' forum, transparent table can be transported from DEV to QAS together with its data.

To perform that activity:
1. Go to SE11 and choose a table or your test table.
2. Choose technical / Maintenance tab.
3. Select C as the delivery class. C option will enable you to transport data from DEV to QAS.

There are a few options in the delivery class that you might want to check it out. Click F1 to learn more about it.

is sky the limit... data transport...

SAP R/3 : ZHRI03 on 401K Plan List Download

2006-05-05T08:52:00.000+08:00

ZHRI03 is a report that downloads a list of employee who are contributing 401K plan. This file will then be send to AMVESCAP for further processing. In this ZHRI03 program, an HIRDT field was not obtaining the value accurately and the Functional does not know which infotype it was using. Upon investigation, the HIRDT field is a Hire Date and is using infotype 0000. In this infotype, the BEGDA is the value being fed to HIRDT.

"The 401K plan is a retirement plan for employees in US. Similar to us having EPF in Malaysia. For more information on 401K retirement plan please refer to this link: The 401K Help Center"

Another problem was the text file being downloaded was not showing the HIRDT value. Therefore, there were two problems pertaining to ZHRI03 (ZHRI0003).

Solution:

HIRDT value should be from infotype 0041 (Date Specification) using date type Z2 or Z1.

“One portion of the original code was modified and added so that the HIRDT field obtains accurate and correct date value”

The text file that is not displaying the value is modified at the later section in the ZHRI0003. The internal table that is used to pass data to the download function did not have that HIRDT field filled.

“That internal table named I_DOWN was modified so that the HIRDT field is filled accordingly from the I_DETAIL. I_DETAIL internal table holds the process HIRDT value.”

Development took at least 3 hours including testing and debugging. One hour was allocated to do investigation.

Is sky the limit… ZHRI0003

SAP R/3 : Activation Process (Conversion)

2006-05-05T08:50:00.000+08:00

In SAP system it is a must that developers perform activation after they are done with their modification or creation of a transparent table (this include performing table maintenance generator and the technical setting). While an active version of a transparent table is a version of a component of the runtime environment access but an inactive version will not reflect any latest update during the runtime event thus the active one will not reflect any changes.

In order to have transparent tables being reflected with the latest modification the activation process is carried out. This will change the inactive version into an active version. Activation process is not only for transparent tables but to any table types.

During the activation process, there are seven steps that the SAP system has behind it. This is not shown to the ABAPers nor the Functional. The process is automated and it will only show if it’s successful or have problems. Problems will be display and errors described in a report.

Condition:
Table X is enhance with a new field. Thus, we have one Active version Table X and one Revised version Table X. Revised version Table X will have the new field. Active version Table X is the old version. Now the activation process will activate Table X to have the latest changes. So below is the seven steps leading to the new Table X.

Step 1 : Set Lock
Active version Table X is locked against further structural changes.

Step 2 : Rename Table
Active version Table X is renamed as QCMTAB.
All indexes in QCMTAB is deleted.

Step 3 : Activating Tables
Revised version Table X is then activated as Active version Table X.
Active version Table X is now created in the database as QCM8TAB.

Step 4 : Reload Data
Data is then copied from QCMTAB to QCM8TAB.

Step 5 : Delete the QCM Table
QCMTAB is no longer required then it is deleted.

Step 6 : Rename Table and Create Secondary Indexes
QCM8TAB is renamed back to Table X.
Secondary indexes are defined back into Table X.

Step 7 : Remove the Lock
Table X is unlock and ready to use with new features.

Is sky the limit… Seven Activation Steps

SAP R/3 : Transporting FG and FM

2006-04-24T11:52:00.000+08:00

inLately, we had a problem transporting a function module into the QAS. The error kept on returning an 8 describing it is missing one function module. We confirm the missing file not included in the se10.

We did another transport. First the function group then only the function modules.

Still the result was negative.

Then again we decided to go into se10 and looked at the transport particulars. This time we force the particular always missing function module into the list of function module to be transported and re-transport it again.

This time, the result was positive.

From my point of view, it might be that function module was automatically generated but that particular missing one does not have a source code included to it and thereby the transport does not include it. It makes sense also with the first include it has source code and it was listed in the transport number.

For that part, i will need to analyze more on that part.

is sky the limit... transports

P2 Notebook on XP

2006-04-13T11:10:00.000+08:00

I will be resuming my MiniSAP installation later. I had just got rid off the virus from notebook that have been closing my antivirus program and duplicating each folder as application in the system.

Though you can put the system in safe mode, install a Registry Cleaner, update your Antivirus software and restore your Windows system files but I chose to reformat the whole drive and install another Windows. I am now using Windows XP SP2.

Later i will put in an SQL Server 2000, Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 for the sake of my projects.

My notebook is slow and it took me 4 hours long to install that damn XP. Yes, its about time to get a new desktop for greater speed and performance. However, this notebook has been my good companion for the last four years and it had survived many projects and including one latest virus threat.

Thanks to COM who sold me this second hand HP notebook. Otherwise, my days will be very much lonely.

MiniSAP installation will continue in a few days time.

is sky the limit... P2 on XP

Progress on Programming - DELAY

2006-04-10T08:57:00.000+08:00

Hi readers,

There will not be updates on MiniSAP Installation until i get a new desktop or my notebook fix.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Thanks
William Wilstroth
ISTL Technical

is sky the limit... when your notebook is broken

SAP R/3 : MiniSAP & MySQL - Part 1

2006-03-31T10:37:00.000+08:00

Today i got hold of a MiniSAP. It will be a great moment tonight. I shall be at my notebook and looking at the screen to figure out ABAP. Moreover, i also had just download a MySQL installer.

More will be reveal after tonight or this weekend.

is sky the limit... MiniSAP & MySQL

SAP R/3 : ZHRI0008 & SM69 - Part 2

2006-03-31T09:59:00.000+08:00

ZHRI0008's logic was change as a result of inaccurate report. Its result was compare against PT_QTA10 (Leave Balance Display). PT_QTA10 is a standard SAP ALV report. Calculation on the entitlement, taken, compensation and balance was not accurate. Therefore, it was suggested that the report would only take values from infotype 2006.

So I was back to the drawing board. Considering the fact i have to go through PT_QTA10 to understand its logic behind. It took me half a day to figure that out. This program uses a call function "HR_GET_QUOTA_DATA". This function will take out all the necessary leaves for an employee. It saves time.

However, on one hand, ZHRI0008 logic was already well written just that it is taking infotypes 2001, 2006 and 0416. The new design will eliminate process on 2001 and 0416. So this would my life much easier by focusing on 2006.

Details:

Infotype 2006, is an Absence Quota Time Record from HR module. It stores all the accumulated taken leaves, entitled leaves and also the compensated leaves for employee.

So the new program will be focusing on the three fields, ANZHL and KVERB. KTEXT is the balance equal ANZHL deducting KVERB.

As usual, the whole other interface and KRONOS OS Command remains the same. Only the logic for leaves calculation changes.

In summary:

1. ZHRI0008_ON_IT2006 was created

2. ZHRI08_IT06 transaction code was created

3. Two new include files were copied to distinguish the new and the old files.

4. Infotypes 2001 and 0416 were taken out.

5. Vacation and Sick calculation deleted.

6. Put in a new calculation based infotype 2006 only.

At the end of the day it took me 14 hours to investigate, implement and testing. So far it has been send for testing. For previous amendments, please click here for more of it.

is sky the limit... changing logic...

SAP R/3 : ZHRI0008 & SM69 - Part 1

2006-03-08T15:22:00.000+08:00

ZHRI0008 was quite a lengthy issue with a lot of in and out of emails between consultants. However, the issue was solve at end. It had cost me a lot of time and many misunderstanding in the emails.

ZHRI0008 is an ABAP program to interface with a third party software known as KRONOS. During the process, ZHRI08 or ZHRI0008 will determine whether files that is being used comes from the frontend or from the UNIX. Either two of this media storage type, the program will process the data by updating the latest leave (sick and vacation) by obtaining relevant row of records from infotype 2001 and 2006.

After all this process finish, the result is save to a file known as EMPBAL.TXT

This file is then use to interface with KRONOS. ZHRI08 will execute SXPG_COMMAND_EXECUTE to run a UNIX command so KRONOS will be able to use the EMPBAL file. This UNIX command being executed can be found in SM69 and SM49. SM69 is where ABAPer can create and make modifications to OS commands. While the latter displays job logs pertaining to OS Commands.

SM69 - External OS Command

SM49 - Job Logs External OS Command

Problem:

1. Balance were incorrect calculated and sent to EMPBAL.

2. KRONOS were not correctly interface in QAS system.

Solution:
1. I corrected the SELECT statement that finds records in IT2001 and IT2006

2. Reconfigure ZQUOTAS in SM69 ensuring that its OS command only runs back in its own system.

Edited - 31-03-2006

This program was later found not so accurate and the logic was changed. Please click here for more of it.

is sky the limit... SAP R/3

SAP R/3 : ALV Page Break

2006-03-08T15:20:00.000+08:00

It has been weeks and.. probably months having many attempts to solve the page break in an ALV report. We had tried using REUSE_ALV_GRID_DISPLAY_LVC and returning to use REUSE_ALV_GRID_DISPLAY but both still couldn't force...

more

is sky the limit... SAP R/3

SAP R/3 : Converting EXCEL into Internal Table

2006-03-08T15:07:00.000+08:00

Recently, i got an email requesting that how would one convert an EXCEL format report into SAP file system (internal table). Normally, ABAPer can use WS_UPLOAD to upload that file from EXCEL provided...

more

is sky the limit... SAP R/3

SAP R/3 : CJI3 (SAPLKAEP + PS05)...

2006-03-08T15:00:00.000+08:00

This modification of SAP standard is none other than the good ALV reporting program. Readers who are non SAP user would want to know that ALV stands for ABAP List Viewer. However, non SAP user would also want to know that ABAP stands for Advance Business Application Program...

more

is sky the limit... SAP R/3

SAP R/3 : Combining Two Transparent Table... SE11

2006-03-08T14:57:00.000+08:00

This problem had been left unsolved for almost two months. Now i am able to solve it.

Thanks Mr. Jackie Lee Seng Yong who had also help to solve this problem and Mr Yip Wai Yen who suggested this creative idea.

The problem or client requested was to able maintain two transparent table when they do transaction. After solving this problem, we have now two type of solutions to it. The first is to use coding to update both tables...

more

is sky the limit... SAP R/3

VS NET : Game Development(GD) Experience...

2006-03-08T14:55:00.000+08:00

I have been meddling with developing games (GD) for the past two years. From a simple two player English chess, a few tic tac toes and a maze game to an online game. But recently, i had not been able to continue with an online game. I can't say i am the expert... but just a beginner...

more

is sky the limit... Game Development

VS NET : In 5 hours... i make a simple chat messenger...

2006-03-08T14:53:00.000+08:00

SAP Problem.

A month of rumble in ME51N, still not going anywhere, Purchase Requisition... there must be something that i must have not done. Which part, where and how am i going to get myself out of this terrible problem. Nevertheless, lets not focus on this part yet. When i found the solution...

more

is sky the limit... SAP R/3

SAP R/3 : SAPLXXX or ZXXX

2006-03-08T14:50:00.000+08:00

In SAP ERP, programs are categorize in SAP standard program and user customized program. Both of these is always denoted by a SAPLXXX or an RXXX for SAP standard program and ZXXX for customized programs. Difference between these two types of program is that programmers are not usually advised...

more

is sky the limit... SAP R/3

VS NET : Bulk or Batch Transfer in MS SQL Server 2000

2006-03-08T14:45:00.000+08:00

Bulk or batch transfer can be done in SQL Server 2000. This is an advantage that user can applied in that application to fast bulk transfer. Millions of data can be process and transfer in seconds (or minutes)...

more

is sky the limit... SAP R/3

SAP R/3 : Toolbar Not Coming Out in ALV

2006-03-08T14:42:00.000+08:00

ALV (ABAP List Viewer) provides all the default toolbar, menu bar, grids, sorters and etc to programmers. However in a recent case, Yip was unable to program the toolbar out. Function to call the toolbar was called however it would not come out...

is sky the limit... SAP R/3

SAP R/3 : User Exit Enhancement ZME51N

2006-03-08T14:10:00.000+08:00

User exit is a common application or method that is apply in SAP application regardless of its modules or solution. Any ABAPer who does dialog programming will touch on user exit. User exit meaning a certain function is executed...

more

is sky the limit... SAP R/3

Instructional Guide to Start ASP

2006-03-08T14:05:00.000+08:00

The most BASIC tools u will need in order to start developing an ASP page.

You will need to install the following:

1. An IIS.

2. A database RDBMS

3. An Editor.

For newbies.1. where do you get an IIS?You will need to install a windows 2000 professional. After installing your win2k pro, reinsert the cd to install the ISS.Once u have install the IIS, ur adminstrative tools folder will have ISM (Internet Service Manager).Not only that will be provided, a main web folder to publish your ASP will in the C drive. This is where u store your ASP pages...

more

is sky the limit.... ASP

Re-introducing Technical

2006-03-01T16:15:00.000+08:00

This technical blog is part of the initial idea of ISTL during re-vamp plan. Now it is the time to cast it out again to the public. Entry will involve :

1. SAP R/3 ABAP

2. VB .NET and SQL Server

3. ASP and ASP .NET

I know many you who are close to me will ask about this blog existence. Well, this technical blog is one way i am using it to store my knowledge on the things i learn and problems I solved. Though it will be very personal than the other three main blogs but i also encourage readers to submit their opinions and give comments. If you found any entry that you think i am wrong then you are welcome to give your remarks. But, please do it with the right way. You don't have to flame and curse. I will glad to correct it and rectify it and credit you for any findings.

Thank you.

is sky the limit... we will try it here