SAP Notes: first things first

If something strange is happening in SAP System, do not hesitate to look for a SAP Note firstly. This post is based on my own experience.

Certain company had an Invoice Management Application implemented in SAP. It was a customized solution that, among other things, sent the invoices to the assigned approvers using the workflow definition. This application had an Adminitration Module that allowed to add and delete approvers and then, reassigned to the new approver the invoices that was pending for the preceding approver. This action resent the workitem to the new approver. Although, something strange happened at midnight: the workitems just disappeared from the inbox of the new reassigned approvers. 

As a workaround, by the mornings we executed SWI5 transaction in order to get the workitems pending to the approvers, and then executed SWIA transaction with the workitems retrieved in the previous step, chosen the username and resent the selected workitems to the new approvers.

I started analyzing the issue and as it was not a standard solution by SAP, the first thing I thought was checking the jobs that were executed at night. There were some jobs defined but none of them impacted on this issue. In addition, I debugged the program that reassigned the invoice to the new approver, review the workflow definitions, and also reviewed the application customized tables in order to find out what was occurring, but with no success.

As this issue was very urgent, time was short and we needed to find a solution as soon as we could, a colleague, and also a friend of mine, David Eduardo Cortelezzi, was implicated and he would continue analyzing it in order to gain time, since his journey was after mine. Furthermore, he was hand-picked because he is very good technically and he uses to solve complex issues. So, I explained to him the problem, all the items that I had checked before and also gave him an example on integration environment. 

On the second day that he was working on this issue, he sent me a message telling me the good news: he could find the solution on a SAP Note, specifically the “SAP Note 1308276 - WF: Forwarded work items are not displayed in the inbox”. This note indicates that the field SWWUSERWI-NO_EXECUTE is set incorrectly to 'X' for the forwarded workitems. 

SWWUSERWI Table

After applying it and then executing SWU_OBUF transaction in order to refresh the organizational environment, the workitems were displayed again on the corresponding SAP Inbox. I was truly very grateful to David and according to him, all my previous analysis was indispensable to help him to find the solution (I do want to believe on that).

So, after this episode, I always search a SAP Note firstly. As we use to say in Spanish “lo primero es lo primero”.

Sorry “Saint David”, but it was impossible not mention you on this post. I really admire you professionally and the passion you have for technology.

Just a parenthesis, when implementing a SAP Note, sometimes it displays a popup asking to choose a main program and here comes the doubt... wich program should I choose? In this case, all we have to do is dobleclicking in one of the programs, it does not matter which one. SNote will pick the right one.

Auf Wiedersehen! I have learned this expression today in my Deutsche class and it means Goodbye or, the famous phrase in Spanish, ¡Hasta la vista!

Adding translations in a transport request using SE63 Translation Transport

First of all, ¡Happy New Year! Well, this is the first post of 2014.

When translating objects, like domains, data types, text messages and so on, a transport request is not asked in order to save all the object translations. So, when I noticed that, this really worried me.  But there is a report named RS_LXE_RECORD_TORDER that solves this problem and it is very easy to use. Only you have to do is enter the parameters on the selection screen and execute it. You can enter a date, a user, the object types and other useful parameters. Just a parenthesis about the Target Language field: it seems not to be editable but it is, just select the match code in order to set the target language.

SE Translation Transport Report

Automatically a workbench request is created with the title you have entered on the Request Description and with all the object translations included.

Program Execution Results

 Well, that's all folks. I wish you all the best for this year.

Document type code: Where is it on standard transactions screens?

Yeah, this happened to me... Sometimes, when executing some standard transactions like Sales Order (VA03), Billing Invoice (VF03) or Purchase Order (ME23N),  for example, I noticed that the document type code was not displayed on the matchcode, only its description. 

Invoice

Customize Local Layout button

I have to confess that I did not remember where this configuration was immediately on the first times. To display both document type code and description, we only need to change a parameter through the “Customize Local Layout” button (Alt + F12). 

  
 

Menu Interaction Design - Visualization 1

On Menu Interaction Design-Visualization 1, select the options “Show keys within dropdown lists” and “Sort by keys…” and then press the buttons “Apply” and “OK”. 

Reopen the corresponding transaction in order to refresh the screen. Now we can see both document type and description on the matchcode. 

F2 - Invoice

Well, I am not sure if I could be able to write another post before Christmas, so have a very Merry Christmas everyone!

Oh no… My computer is sick!

Sometimes the computer does not answer as we would like and when this occurs, there are some tools that could help us to improve its performance. They are CCleaner and Defraggler.  

CCleaner is a freeware cleaning tool that removes unused files like recycle bin, recent documents, temporary files, log files, clipboard, history, cookies, autocomplete form history and so on, allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.

Defragger is a freeware tool that defragments free space on computer, allowing reducing the time it takes to load programs and open files, as well as writing new files and also helping to prevent new files from being fragmented.

Opening a parenthesis, learning German is already a reality and I am really enjoying it. This language has some peculiarities that make it more interesting and fascinating.


Just to finish, I would like to thank my “Little Picasso” who designed the computer's sick face specially for this post .

See you.

A very simple tip about customization: Good to know

Sometimes I had been asked to “debug the standard” for different reasons (and who was not?) and it was one of these times that I discover it is possible to navigate to the Customizing Menu (SPRO) through SM30 transaction by entering the corresponding SAP table and clicking on Customizing button (you can specify a project or not):
 

SM30

That’s all, it displays the point where you can customize it:
 

SPRO

In my case, I needed to find why a specific standard transaction was not behaving as expected. So, debugging a Formula Condition Value (t-code VOFM) I found out a standard table that, in the first case had records but in the second case, there were no records. So, entering this table on SM30, we identified that some customization points were still missing.

Tschüss!