Making Org and PD changes via ESS / MSS

[Former Member]

We have a need to add functionality to MSS to allow changes to the org structure such as create an org, delimit an org, delimit a position etc. Typically in the past we have looked to Adobe interactive forms (and have a handful of forms implemented) to help achieve this but they have been rather challenging to implement and hard to live with requiring a lot of support time to keep running.

We are to move onto EHP5 and I was wondering if there was anything in this or previous releases that we could capitalise on to help perform org and position updates without having to implement further forms. One option was to look at building custom ABAP Web dynpro screens linked to a workflow but we are unsure as the effort here.

Any advice or experience of others would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Dannyboy

[Former Member]

Hi Dannyboy - I know this is a late response and I'm sure you've already got something in place by now. My company - Exaserv - has a tool that allows your users to make PA and OM changes via the portal. We've basically taken PA20/30/40 and PPOME (among others) and moved them to the portal. With our tool, called Ci, you can create/delimit org units, positions, etc and hire, transfer, and terminate employees from said positions. Let me know if you have any interest. Best wishes!

[Former Member]

aah well if you are going the ehp5 way I dont see why you cannot use the standard delivered adobe forms,.. from ehp3 onwards they have been simplified (not so sure about the adobe licensing costs though, last I remember, they were sky high way back in 2007).

now what sap calls as 'simple' need not necessarily be so, however, in my personal experience, you should be able to get away by copying std forms and customising them.

comparing that effort to actually building the same from scratch using abap-wd with workflows, the effort will be more or less the same.

If I may go one step further, the first form you adapt in sap-std will be the most difficult, while the rest will all fall into place very quickly once get a hang of the adobe life cycle designer,..

but the effort for programming will be more or less the same across all abap-wd forms you do from scratch.

I did not include the workflows in the above efforts coz either way you usually end up doing a customisation on them workflows anyway.

Now let us take a simple example of creation of an org unit:

Process: manager initiates std form for creating a position, a 'budget holder' approves it and finally sap is automatically updated. the std form will work like a charm here however you may want to enhance the std form by including it1005(planned compo) as it is not present in the sap delivered example...

Now I am a functional guy and am reasonably sure I can get the whole process up and running in5 days flat... including the workflow (not including the func spec writing time or the technical spec writing time) the main considerations for me would be:

1. agent determination a002 or a012 for manager,

2. who is the budget holder how do I get him automatically in my workflow

3. enhance the std adobe form to have it1005 as well.

and am not talking about any fancy match code helps or attachments or saving as a draft et al in the above.

cheers