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Determining workflow programmatically by analyzing transactions

Former Member
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I'm sorry if this is the wrong forum to ask this, and if it is, I'd appreciate knowing the correct forum to ask this question in.

I'd like to write a program that analyzes all the transactions in an SAP system and determines the sequence flows and whether or not the transactions are used, etc. Is this possible? Thanks for any information/pointers.

Michael

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former_member186746
Active Contributor
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It's an interesting question and the forum is sort of right.

With transactions used, I think you mean wich transactions executed by users in a limited span of time, right?

And with flow you mean the sequence of all of the transactions per user.

There are several threads about this issue,use the search help in this forum and look for EXECUTED TRANSACTIONS

Most of the advise is to use STAT, STAD, or ST03N

You can use these transactions to retrieve per user the activities and the time to see the sequence.

If you want to go down that road it will take a huge amount of time and a lot of effort.

What is the reason why you posted this question, maybe there are better solutions.

Kind regards, Rob Dielemans

Edited by: Rob Dielemans on Jul 16, 2009 10:11 AM

Welcome to SDN by the way

7 REPLIES 7

former_member186746
Active Contributor
0 Kudos

It's an interesting question and the forum is sort of right.

With transactions used, I think you mean wich transactions executed by users in a limited span of time, right?

And with flow you mean the sequence of all of the transactions per user.

There are several threads about this issue,use the search help in this forum and look for EXECUTED TRANSACTIONS

Most of the advise is to use STAT, STAD, or ST03N

You can use these transactions to retrieve per user the activities and the time to see the sequence.

If you want to go down that road it will take a huge amount of time and a lot of effort.

What is the reason why you posted this question, maybe there are better solutions.

Kind regards, Rob Dielemans

Edited by: Rob Dielemans on Jul 16, 2009 10:11 AM

Welcome to SDN by the way

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Hi Rob, thanks for the response and thanks for the welcome! I'm very new to this so I apologize if I don't write clearly.

I searched for EXECUTED TRANSACTIONS and read quite a few threads. I have a question after reading them:

Is information on transactions and users, etc. available without first enabling a bunch of auditing? If one must turn on auditing first, then it seems like whatever the audit period, one would miss transactions that didn't happen to run during the audit period.

Here's why I'm asking these questions: I'd like to write a program that will create a workflow mapping based on all the transaction data. It seems like if one could get access to all the transactions that have been run, they could be analyzed and sequence flow (among other things) could be determined and a flowchart/map could be made of our processes. Does this clear things up a little more about what I'm asking?

Thanks in advance!

-Michael

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Hey Michael,

No need to apologize. We all were once new to this all.

Info provided by STAT, STAD is available without auditing, however this data is only stored temporary for a couple of days.

Now to answer the real question.

Do not do this programmatically.

Information analysis is done by talking to the end users and business information managers and observing what they do in certain circumstances.

Then with that information you should build your business process flow and in the long run decide whether or not to execute the business processes with the help of SAP Business Workflow.

Tbh SAP is <insert expletive>ing huge and overwhelming and there are no quick and easy answers available to understanding the processes holistically. Unless they are extremely well documented, but then your question would probably never arise because the flow charts already should be present in the documentation.

Hope this clears things up a bit.

Kind regards, Rob Dielemans

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Rob,

Thanks again for the response. The good news is that I've apparently been tasked with something that's " <insert expletive>ing huge and overwhelming and there are no quick and easy answers available to understanding the processes holistically"

The issue is that what's in SAP and what's reality is often different and both sides can change independently. The idea of what I'm trying to do would be to make it much easier to keep things in sync. Hopefully this makes sense?

-Michael

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Hi Michael,

Look, if you don't feel comfortable with the job they've given you, express it and either ask for someone to take the lead or ask for something else to do.

From what you're describing it seems like the job asks for an Information Analyst / Business Process Expert, without the proper tools and experience the chances of succeeding are extremely slim.

Kind regards, Rob Dielemans

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Well, it doesn't work that way

I basically have a good starting point and you've answered a lot of my questions, so I'll mark my question and assign out points.

Thanks for your time!

-Michael

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You're welcome

And good luck with your Herculean task

Kind regards, Rob Dielemans