TAW12 CHANGING THE SAP STANDARD SYSTEM

OVERVIEW DIAGRAM: CHANGING THE SAP STANDARD

This slide gives an overview of the various functionalities provided by SAP to its users for modifying the standard business applications based on their individual requirements. The functionalities can be broadly classified as Personalization, Enhancement, and Modification.

CHANGE LEVELS.

You can modify the standard ERP system to meet specific requirements through any of these methods:

  Customizing: You can use it to implement specific business processes with the help of an implementation guide.

  Personalization: You can adopt it to set menu specifications or fields as per user requirements. This simplifies and accelerates the whole business process.

  Modification: You can follow it to bring changes to the standard SAP Repository objects in the customer namespace without creating a new object.

  Enhancement: You can use it to create new objects that refer to already existing repository objects.

  Customer Development: You can follow this method to create new SAP Repository objects that are unique for an individual customer.


PROCEDURE FOR CHANGING THE FUNCTIONALITY

The customer can use ABAP Workbench tools for meeting their specific customizing and personalization objectives. If these requirements are not met, you can make use of customer development or Complementary Software Product (or CSP) solution. If this is also insufficient, the customer can consider using similar standard functionalities in the form of enhancement. Finally, modification can be used if all other procedures seem inadequate.


CUSTOMIZING

You can configure an SAP system according to your individual requirements with the help of these implementing tools:
  R/3 reference model

  Implementation Guide

  List of customizing activities


PERSONALIZATION

You can use personalization to simplify and accelerate the whole business process, as screen transaction or menu sequences can be specified accordingly. Global attributes can be used to specify default values for the specific screen fields using the variant transactions and SET or GET parameters. You can specify user-dependent table or client-dependent table control settings for a particular transaction. The menu sequences can be adjusted. Role-based menus, favorites, and shortcuts on the desktop can be created.


CHANGE LEVEL USING ABAP WORKBENCH

Various customer programs are available for making changes to the standard SAP system. These can be classified as Modification, Extension, or Customer Development.


TABLE ENHANCEMENT

You can enhance a table defined in ABAP dictionary using the Append structure or Customizing includes (CI_Includes). The name of the fields in an append structure or Customizing include should follow proper naming conventions. After saving, these changes are registered in the underlying database.


TABLE ENHANCEMENT: SAP AND THE CUSTOMER

Standard tables can be enhanced using the table enhancements, such as the Append structure and Customizing includes (CI_Includes). An append structure can be used only once for a table; whereas a Customizing include can be used for many tables. Table enhancements using append structures need not be planned by SAP developers; however, these have to be planned while using Customizing includes.


PROGRAM ENHANCEMENT: HOW THEY WORK

A program enhancement is always used to call an object in the customer namespace. A program enhancement can be done through

  user exits, which are called using subroutines;

  customer exits, which are called through function modules;

  business transaction events, which are called through function modules; and

  business add-ins, which are called by the method of a class.


PROGRAM ENHANCEMENT: SAP AND CUSTOMER

By using program enhancements, you can add additional program logic to a standard SAP application program. SAP currently provides the techniques as shown here.

You can execute User Exit with the help of subroutine. Similarly, Customer exit and Business Transaction Event are executed using the function modules. You can also implement Business Add-In using method.

MENU ENHANCEMENT: SAP AND CUSTOMER

The user-defined menu options can be added to a standard SAP menu using menu enhancements. This can be achieved using Customer Exits or Business Add-Ins. As shown here, a menu item, Customer Function (Customer Fcn), is added. The added menu items appear as part of the GUI interface.

SCREEN ENHANCEMENTS

Screen exits can be used to display additional objects in an SAP application program screen. The screen exits can be realized using the Customer Exits or Business Add-Ins. In order to create a screen exit, you need to

  define the subscreen area;

  write the corresponding flow logic;

  provide the framework for data transport;

  call the screen exit in an implementation; and

  maintain documentation.

MODIFICATIONS

When you make changes to an object delivered by SAP, it is known as modification. As shown in this example, any changes or addition done to the code of a program is referred to as modification.