Time spent on Order creation in VA01

[former_member200967]

Hallo experts,

I have a requirement where in I need to track the time being spent by users in Sales Order creation. Now I do have the sales order creation time in VBAK but that is when the user actually saved the Sales order after putting in details.

Is there any way I can track the time spent between starting TCODE VA01 and creation of Sales Order? If there is no standard way to track this, any ideas how this can be customized are also appreciated.

Regards

Manpreet

[Jelena · Accepted solution]

Why do you need to do that and what purpose would this information serve? And why not just ask the users? Sitting behind one with a timer will give you just as informative answer as anything else.

Before you start putting code into VA01, consider that a person could open VA01 and then either navigate to another screen or maybe start a completely new order without leaving the transaction. Unless you force the users to leave the transaction every time, there is no guarantee that the "start time" captured actually applies to the data that end up getting saved. And again - why? This just makes no sense...

[Ryan-Crosby · Accepted solution]

Why not add a button for stepped out for a smoke too, just to be sure that that span of time is not counted... 😉

[VeselinaPeykova · Accepted solution]

Just in case you are seriously considering to force transaction restart for each new sales order - please don't.

An order entry clerk creates many orders per day, restarting a transaction takes time, if you have big call centers these small numbers add up quickly.

I have seen how business users in call centers enter orders - they keep one session for order creation for the whole day and a few other sessions to check some additional information. People work in such way, because this is fast and efficient. Don't make their job harder!

One more thing: starting VA01 and entering some data does not mean that the clerk will create an order at all - sometimes a customer calls to ask if there is x quantity of product x available and who much it will cost to get it delivered today. The fastest way to tell that is by entering the information in VA01. Sometimes the customer is not happy with the price, or there is no possibility for express delivery and decides not to order.

I know, there are companies, where IT installs spying software to monitor and record users activities - this often does not go well.

Is somebody wants to know how much of the working time of an order entry clerk is dedicated to order creation - he can go to a call center and observe others, or get a job as such. 🙂

[former_member200967 · Accepted solution]

Hi Jelena,

THe reason we want to track this is for some process steramlining processes and for using the stats for future enhancements being considered to be done for sales order creation. We certainly dont want to do any changes where user has to manually mark start of a transaction .

We are just looking for something standard in SAP that can be somehow used to get an idea of how long does it normally take to create an Order.

Regards

Manpreet

[Jelena · Accepted solution]

For streamlining you might as well just stand behind a user with a stopwatch, as I and Veselina mentioned. You won't get any better results IMHO as there is no way to measure such things accurately. Also keep in mind there would be different order types (e.g. VC ones would take much longer) and you'll gain much more information by simply talking to the people who enter the orders.

[raymond_giuseppi]

Did you look at transactions like ST03N, SAT or ST12.

Regards,

Raymond

[n_soni]

Manpreet,

one of my old client had similar requirement, but they wanted to do this for 1-3 months of period. So instead of extending VBAK table, we provided solution to write timestamp in header text field once user enters sold-to/Ship-to or material/qty in sales order. We also kept switch in userexit code to turn this functionality ON/OFF.

Weekly report runs in background & calculate difference between order creation time & header text time (order entry started time). This solution worked because this report was running in background (Reading header text is expensive for high volume of sales order orders). Similar solution can be provided by extending VBAK table if you need permanent solution as suggest by Long. (but by capturing order entry started time)

Hope this helps.

NRS

[former_member200967]

Hi ,

Can you please share with me how did you capture the event of user making an entry in one of the fields , in order to make an entry in the header text field and which BADI did you use for this code?

Regards

Manpreet

[former_member195908]

Hello Manpreet, My suggest as follows:

1. Create additional field in table VBAK, For example: Z_END_TIME ( First create a Append structure for VBAK, the additional field define in the append structure)

2. Add code to User Exits, Tcode: SE38 --> Program: MV45AFZZ --> FORM: USEREXIT_SAVE_DOCUMENT_PREPARE --> add code: vbak-z_end_time = sy-uzeit.

3. 'Z_END_TIME' - 'sales order creation time in VBAK' = 'spent time Sales Order creation.'

Regards
--------------------
Long

[Lakshmipathi]

Generally, such type of statistics would be taken to identify how many hours users are spending for creation of sale orders in a big industry. Depending upon this, the Business would take a decision whether to automate the process or simplify the process to users. Both automation or simplifying are possible in SAP for which, search SCN or Google with the related text like Mass updation of sale orders so that you can get lot of inputs from there.

[VeselinaPeykova]

OK, in this case, I can say - there is nothing in standard, which can help you.

During some implementation projects we had custom programs to measure the application performance, but for the part how long does it take a user to create a certain document (this includes also the time to navigate between the transaction menus), we did it the old-fashioned way: you stand behind the user and record the times with a chronometer (of course you do this multiple times with different users, at different times per day and with different sets of data).

[VenuAnumayam]

As Raymond suggested, check those transaction. They have timestamps. Also, there's a BAdI "BADI_SD_SALES" that gets triggered as soon as you start transaction VA01 and you can record the SY-UZEIT from that as start time . And get the SY-UZEIT from the Sales Order SAVE user exit as the end time. Hope it helps.

[siva_vasireddy2]

Hi,

if you really want to track the Time span you can go with workflow concept where it records the Time taken by the user to perform the Task