Guidance for a new user - SAP automation using VB to manipulate the GUI (v7400.3.9)

[former_member651324]

I'm an automation developer primarily using RPA (Robotic Process Automation) tools, specifically Automation Anywhere along with some ancillary tools like Excel, VBA, python and G Suite scripting. I've recently changed companies and now for the first time am using SAP, in the sense that I'm being asked to automate end user processes within it. My understanding from my team is that due to security concerns we don't have access to built in SAP tools like ABAP & BAPI, as far as I know we can only write VB to manipulate the SAP gui. I've noticed JavaScript mentioned in various posts as I was perusing the Community site - is this a viable option to directly manipulate the GUI? If so, is either considered a better or worse option?

If anyone has suggestions for other methods to automate within SAP, or good places to start learning SAP scripting via VB or Javascript (hopefully a broader and more linear process than just searching for a solution each time I run into an issue, which I will also do), please share.

My question is somewhat open-ended, but I promise to mark one or more as answers based on value of info shared.

Thanks in advance!

[stefan_schnell]

Hello David,

welcome in the SAP Community.

The SAP GUI Scripting is an API (Application Programming Interface). You can use this API via any COM-enabled scripting respectively programming language. You can use PowerShell (Desktop or Core), VBScript, AutoIt, Python (with PyWin32) or Java (e.g. via Java-COM-Bridge - JaCoB), C# or VB.NET and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). My favorite is PowerShell, because it is available on all current Windows Systems without any additional installations. Also you can use Microsoft JScript Engine or (but I never tried it) NodeJS with win32ole as representative for JavaScript.

You can find good information about SAP GUI Scripting at the SAP Community Wiki here.

For recording and analyzing activities you can use Scripting Tracker, which supports a lot of different languages.

Let us know your decision which way you go.

Best regards
Stefan

[former_member651324]

Thanks stefan.schnell - that's a world of useful info! I've benefited from many of your posts already during my searches, so I certainly appreciate you taking time to reply here. I'll fwd this to my work email and will do some research into the options you mentioned, and will post back one day in the not too near future (because like most corp citizens, I have more work than time) about which direction(s) I decided to go.

Hopefully this post will be helpful info to other newbies as well. If it is, please "vote up" Stefan's answer to give him some more cred 🙂