Part 1- Introduction
During a typical conversion, a functional consultant will work with you (technical ABAP programmer) to define the fields that need to be populated. The functional consultant will step through the transaction with you and identify the appropriate fields for the conversion. In this scenario, I will serve as the Functional Consultant and inform you of the fields needed for the conversion.
(For the following example, you will be using the Vendor Master screen à MK01 or Logistics à Materials Management à Purchasing, Master Data à Vendor à Purchasingà Create)
- Proceed to create a fictitious vendor in the system (no special characters). Specify ‘LIEF’ as the account group.
- Once the functional consultant identifies the various fields for the conversion, you will need to capture the program name, screen number, transaction, and field/table information. To do this, place your mouse pointer in the ‘name’ field and press the F1 (Help) key.
- From the Help Screen, locate and click on the button ‘Technical Info’. The following window will appear:
- From this window, record the Program Name, Screen Number, Table, and Field Name. To get the transaction number, exit out of the window and go to the System à Status command in the menu bar.
- Note: This data is typically recorded in a documentation template. For this exercise, use the SAP Q&A Database application (if it’s loaded on your machine) otherwise, record the info in your own custom template in Word or Excel.
- Proceed to obtain the technical information for the following fields:
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Vendor Name |
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Search Term |
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City |
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Zip/Postal Code |
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Country |
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Language |
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Currency |
The table above list the minimum required fields for Vendor Master Data. From a logical perspective, you should ask yourself what fields are specific to SAP. Specific SAP fields will generally not be populated from your external data source (because some fields in SAP already have data and you wouldn’t expect it from the legacy system). Once all your fields are defined, you would typically give these field requirements to a ‘legacy’ person to extract the appropriate data set for the data conversion.
- Note: any SAP defined field will contain logic behind it (e.g. drop down arrows indicate multiple values…this info will not be found in legacy system).
- A good question to ask the functional consultant would be if there is any ‘default’ values for a field.
- In reference to internal & external numbering (this topic will be discussed in class) the account group drives the vendor number. This is imperative to know in advance. If you have experience from the functional side or have used the IMG tool, you can find out the different account groups and numbering schemes based upon the following menu path in the IMG: Financial Accounting à AR/AP à Vendor Accounts à Master Records à Preparation for Creating Vendor Master à Create Number Allocate # Ranges (specify internal/external numbers).
If the client doesn’t have a preference, use Internal.
- Important Account Groups:
KRED – internal SAP numbering
LIEF – external vendor numbering
Here is a scenario for you to consider when performing a data conversion:
The company you are consulting for has a legacy system containing 1000 vendors. The company has recently performed an analysis of open PO’s (Purchase Orders). The analysis results indicate there are open PO’s for 200 vendors. For the data conversion, these 200 vendors will use external vendor numbering (so there’s no conflict with invoice matching). The remaining vendors without open PO’s will be assigned internal vendor numbering. The legacy programmer has provided you with 2 separate files. One file contains a list of vendors with open PO’s, while the other file contains a list of vendors without outstanding PO’s.
Your task is to write an ABAP BDC program that imports the data in the text files to the appropriate ABAP tables. Don’t forget, your program needs to contain logic to determine if the text file is for internal/external vendor numbering.
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