Custom logic applied at a Data Element/Screen Element level (Field Exit?)

[Former Member]

Hello all,

I have a unique request I am trying to fulfill.

The client wishes to make use of Lab Office as a filter criteria when using any Standard SAP selection screens that contain MATNR (ie. ME2N,). Without getting into too much detail, this is because they use Lab Office to categorize materials in the Material Master. So for simplicity sake when they run say MRP, they would like to be able to run it only for those materials (MATNR) in a certain Category (LABOR).

Natural instinct was to create a search help that contains Lab Office an assign that at the Domain level to MATNR (so that its available on all selection screens) however there is an issue here. Matchcodes max out at 5000 hits, and their use of LABOR can be used to categorize up to 10,000+ materials.

So.... any ideas?

Conversion exits can be assigned at a Domain level however only offer a straight value for value replacement (ie. not return multiple values).

Field exits can be assigned at a Data element level, but can they return a structure containing multiple values to a selection screen?????

[Former Member]

Hi Dennis,

Field exists might not help in your case. It cannot provide you with the functionality.

You can try using Search Help Exists on std search help for material number. Again this is another option for F4 drop down. In the search help you can restrict data further based on the user selection.

Check up if you can provide some sort of pattern restriction. As search help has a limitation of 5000 hits you can try to reduce the drop down based on some pattern which will bring down the no of hits.

I dont think there is any "Good" option of getting this done. We had a similar issue and we tried using pattern search to further restrict the drop down.

I am sure its going to be equally difficult for the user to select a specific value from a drop down of 10000 records. So check up if you can provide some restriction based on the pattern.

Cheers

VJ

[Former Member]

Hi VJ,

Thanks very much for your reply.

You've hit the nail on the head, that there probably is no "good" option.

Search help is the natural choice, but the 5000 max is an issue and this is why. The user is not trying to find one out of 10,000 records, the user wants to select ALL 10,000 records with a single entry of Lab Office instead of manually typing in each Material.

Now before any BASIS or "performance-minded" readers have a heart attack, this will only be used in background processing. We're just trying to simplify the variants that need to be setup (and maintained) by those setting up the batch jobs.

[Former Member]

No easy answer, but your input was appreciated.