Contents

7 Workflow as a User Exit ............................................................ 227

7.1

7.2

7.3

Workflow Events: Linking System Actions with External

Applications ................................................................................
7.1.1
Event Handling ...............................................................
7.1.2 Event Creation Options ...................................................
7.1.3 Application Development Implications . ..........................
Practical Example . .......................................................................
7.2.1 Prerequisites ...................................................................
7.2.2 Workflow-Enabled Class . ................................................
7.2.3 Standard Task ..................................................................
7.2.4 Event Creation ................................................................
7.2.5 Now Test! .......................................................................
Summary .....................................................................................

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231
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232
233
236
240
241
243

The Author ................................................................................................ 245

Index .......................................................................................................... 247

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As todays corporate ERP system landscape becomes more and more

distributed, you have to be prepared for different kinds of data that can flow
to and from external systems. With this in mind, the focus of this chapter is
inbound scenarios in Financial Accounting.

Inbound Scenarios in Financial Accounting

In this chapter, we consider data processing scenarios when the SAP system receives
accounting data from external systems. This can be master data from legacy systems
or posting data from, for example, an external payroll system. This chapter describes
how you can intervene in this process using various user exits.

5.1

Master Data Migration and Distribution

There could be no SAP ERP implementation project without an initial data migration procedure. Imagine how painful it would be if a company started its trading
activity by implementing SAP ERP and then entered its existing customers and
vendors one by one. As a rule, the moment a company implements SAP ERP, the
customer/vendor list (which is in some other legacy system) has to be prepared.
There are also scenarios in which accounting master data are loaded from external
systems on a regular basis.
In the following subsections, well discuss several ways to load master data into
an SAP system and how to seamlessly penetrate the standard data flow to address
specific requirements.

5.1.1

Batch Input

If you are familiar with the SAP Legacy System Migration Workbench (LSMW) and
have completed data migration projects, you probably recognize these standard SAP
programs for the mass uploading of customer and vendor master records: reports
RFBIDE00 and RFBIKR00.

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Inbound Scenarios in Financial Accounting

Both reports have the same selection screen as shown in Figure 5.1. Input data for
the report must be presented as a flat file located on the application server.
Note
You can also pass a logical file name into the report by passing it through invisible
parameter LDS_NAME, which can be used in a SUBMIT statement. In this case, the value of
the visible file path name parameter is ignored.

Figure 5.1 Selection Screen of Report RFBIDE00

By default, the maximum length of an input file line is 2,000 charactersthis is the
length of dictionary structure BDIFIBIWA. If your input file has longer lines, you can
extend structure BDIFIBIWA by using customer include structure CI_BDIFIBIWA.
Keep in mind, however, that structure BDIFIBIWA only defines the length of an input
file line, whereas the actual structure of the data being processed is defined according
to the first 31 characters of the line (see the structure shown in Figure 5.2).
The first character of each file line is a record type, which can take one of three values:
0, 1, or 2. Record type 0 marks the beginning of a session, record type 1 is the
beginning of one customer (or vendor) data for one transaction code, and record
type 2 is a data record. The next 30 characters of a file line contain a dictionary
structure name. For record type 0, the structure name is always BGR00; for record
type 1, the structure name is always BKN00 for customers and BLF00 for vendors.
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