What Are Functional Specification in SAP?

To speak at macro level that is at projet manager or at senior levels. The Functional Spec (Specification) which is a comprehensive document is created after the (SRS) Software Requirements Document. It provides more details on selected items originally described in the Software Requirements Template. Elsewhre organizations combine these two documents into a single document. The Functional Specification describes the features of the desired functinality.. It describes the product's features as seen by the stake holders,and contains the technical information and the data needed for the design and developement. The Functional Specification defines what the functionality will be of a particulat area that is to be precise a transaction in SAP terminology. The Functional Specification document to create a detailed design document that explains in detail how the software will be designed and developed. The functional specification translates the Software Requirements template into a technical description which a) Ensures that the product feature requirements are correctly understood before moving into the next step, that is detchnical developement process. b) Clearly and unambiguously provides all the information necessary for the technical consultants to develop the objects. At the consultant level the functional spects are preapred by functinal consultants on any functionality for the purpose of getting the same functinality designed by the technical pepole as most of the times the functionalities according to the requirements of the clients are not available on ready made basis. Let me throw some light on documentation which is prepared before and in a project: 1) Templates 2) Heat Analysis 3) Fit Gap or Gap Analysis 4) Business Process Design 5) Business Process Model 6) Business Change & Impact 7) Configuration Design, which is just 5 % of Total SAP- have different names 8) Future Impact & Change Assessement 9) Functional Design (Module Wise) 10) Risk Assessement

11) Process Metrics and Many More-- Which has impact on Business and its work flow Note * This documents are preapared in Vanilla SAP Standards -- Things differ from one implementation to another, and it always depends on the type of business which is opting for SAP. Tips by: Madhuuri, Fahad

What Are SAP End User Manual

It is the same for every other modules although here I reference it mainly for SAP HR. 1) You should understand which targeted group for the end-user training is for. Do they have any computer background or not. 2) In what way they are going to make use of the manuals supplied to them during the course of training. Let us focus on how to prepare manuals: In the client side , End Users are not permanent. If they get any better job outside they will resign and go out. Even if you train them well, again the end-user team disappears after some time. That is why implementing company( Client ) expects SAP Consultants to prepare documents which are self explanatory (even to a layman in SAP) and study themselves and use the sap easy access very comfortably. Hence we should prepare a document which explains the following things comfortably: A) All the buttons and Screens we have in sap and its importance for an end-user. B) All the transaction codes used by end user. C) The STEP by STEP usage methodology with screen shots and explanatory foot notes for each Transaction code. D) Prepare a book a table and columns which should have the following information: - Sl.NO. - Transaction Code - Navigation path - Use of the Code

- Expected Result - Achieved Result - Remarks/Any Comment E) Highlight the common troubles during the usage of SAP by an end- user and give the solutions (ready to use) These problems you can come across while giving the in house training for the end-users. You just place them at one place and publish it for their usage in future for any of their new joinees as an end-user. F) Every consultant is aware that the entire Organsiational Management is with end user only. Means consultant should train the end user in entire OM. G) We should inform the importance of info types and usage for our purposes at expert mode, PA30, PA40 etc., H) Each field in the international infotypes should be explained very clearly and ensure that they are comfortable with the fields of infotypes which have been configured for their company. For example : info type 0001 Org Assignment insists about the three structures of the HR. We should explain each sub field like Emp Group, Emp Sub Group, Personnel Area and Sub Area and its importance and relevance to their company so as to understand while processing them from the end- user point of view . When an employee is hired into the company , now the end-user in a position to understand which employee group and subgroup, Personnel Area And Sub Area etc., should allotted.. Like this whatever comes across in SAP Easy Access should be insisted through the training of end users. I) Demo, exercises and solutions should be provided in the manuals. J) Glossary of terms and expansion of Acronyms, Abbreviations should be given. Like this each consultant should focus on end user training and prepare the documents. *-- Somasekhar

SAP Tickets - What Is That?

Handling tickets is called Issue Tracking system. The errors or bugs forwarded by the end user to the support team are prioritized under three seviority High, Medium and Low. Each and every seviority as got its time limits before that we have to fix the error. The main job of the supporting consultant is to provide assistance on line to the customer or the organisation where SAP is already implemented for which the person should be very strong in the subject and the process which are implemented in SAP at the client side to understand,to analyse,to actuate and to give the right solution in right time.This is the job of the support consultant. The issues or the tickets(problems) which are arised is taken care of on priority basis by the support team consultants. The work process in support projects are given below for your reference. 1. The customer or the end user logs a call through any tool or by mail (RADIX). 2. Each one of the support team is a part of support group. 3. Whenever a customer logs a call he /she has to mention to which work group (by name). 4. Once the calls came to the work group the support consultant or the team need to send an IR (Initial Response) to the user depending upon the priority of the calls. (Top,High,Med,Low,None) 5. Then the error is fixed, debugged by the support consultant or the team. Then after testing properly by generating TR(Transport Request through the basis admin) 6. Then it is informed to the end user/customer/super user about the changes which have moved to the production server by CTS process. These are the process. In summary, what I understand is that if any configuration or customization is required to solve the issue, then the consultant have to work on DEV Client, then the end user will test it in the QA client and after approval the BASIS consultant has to transport it to the PRODUCTION client. An example: Tickets in SD can be considered as the problems which the end user or the employee in the company face while working on R/3. Tickets usually occur during the implementation or after theimplementation of the project. There can be numerous problem which can occur in the production support and a person who is working in the support has to resolve those tickets in the limited duration, every ticket has the particular deadline alert so your responsibility is to finish it before that deadline.

To begin with , we should give "TICKET" to you for not knowing it. Here is an eg of a ticket raise: End user is not able to 1. Create Sales order for a customer from a New plant , since shipping point determination is not happened . ( Without Shipping point the document becomes INCOMPLETE and he will not be able to proceed further like DELIVERY, BILLING). He raises a ticket and the priority is set in one of the below: 1. Low 2. Medium 3. High. Now you need to solve this ticket. You would analyze the problem and identify that the SP configuration has to be done for the new plant. You would request a transport for DEV CLIENT to BASIS. You do the change and Request one more Transport to BASIS for QA client. The End user will test the same by creating a sales order for the new plant and approve it. Finally, you request a transport to move the changes to PRODUCTION. Once the change is deployed in production the TICKET is closed. What I have given is a small example. You would get some real issues with severity HIGH in your day-day support. Tips by: Sourav, Om Prakash, Prabbath, Biswajit Sarangi

Tickets and Authorization in SAP Business Warehouse

What is tickets? and example? The typical tickets in a production Support work could be: 1. Loading any of the missing master data attributes/texts. 2. Create ADHOC hierarchies. 3. Validating the data in Cubes/ODS. 4. If any of the loads runs into errors then resolve it. 5. Add/remove fields in any of the master data/ODS/Cube. 6. Data source Enhancement. 7. Create ADHOC reports.

1. Loading any of the missing master data attributes/texts - This would be done by scheduling the infopackages for the attributes/texts mentioned by the client. 2. Create ADHOC hierarchies. - Create hierarchies in RSA1 for the info-object. 3. Validating the data in Cubes/ODS. - By using the Validation reports or by comparing BW data with R/3. 4. If any of the loads runs into errors then resolve it. - Analyze the error and take suitable action. 5. Add/remove fields in any of the master data/ODS/Cube. - Depends upon the requirement 6. Data source Enhancement. 7. Create ADHOC reports. - Create some new reports based on the requirement of client. Tickets are the tracking tool by which the user will track the work which we do. It can be a change requests or data loads or what ever. They will of types critical or moderate. Critical can be (Need to solve in 1 day or half a day) depends on the client. After solving the ticket will be closed by informing the client that the issue is solved. Tickets are raised at the time of support project these may be any issues, problems.....etc. If the support person faces any issues then he will ask/request to operator to raise a ticket. Operator will raise a ticket and assign it to the respective person. Critical means it is most complicated issues ....depends how you measure this...hope it helps. The concept of Ticket varies from contract to contract in between companies. Generally Ticket raised by the client can be considered based on the priority. Like High Priority, Low priority and so on. If a ticket is of high priority it has to be resolved ASAP. If the ticket is of low priority it must be considered only after attending to high priority tickets. Checklists for a support project of BPS - To start the checklist: 1) InfoCubes / ODS / datatargets 2) planning areas 3) planning levels 4) planning packages 5) planning functions 6) planning layouts 7) global planning sequences 8) profiles 9) list of reports 10) process chains 11) enhancements in update routines 12) any ABAP programs to be run and their logic

13) major bps dev issues 14) major bps production support issues and resolution
What are the tools to download tickets from client? Are there any standard tools or it depends upon company or client...? Yes there are some tools for that. We use Hpopenview. Depends on client what they use. You are right. There are so many tools available and as you said some clients will develop their own tools using JAVA, ASP and other software. Some clients use just Lotus Notes. Generally 'Vantive' is used for tracking user requests and tickets. It has a vantive ticket ID, field for description of problem, severity for the business, priority for the user, group assigned etc. Different technical groups will have different group ID's. User talks to Level 1 helpdesk and they raise ticket. If they can solve issue for the issue, fine...else helpdesk assigns ticket to the Level 2 technical group. Ticket status keeps changing from open, working, resolved, on hold, back from hold, closed etc. The way we handle the tickets vary depending on the client. Some companies use SAP CS to handle the tickets; we have been using Vantive to handle the tickets. The ticket is handled with a change request, when you get the ticket you will have the priority level with which it is to be handled. It comes with a ticket id and all. It's totally a client specific tool. The common features here can be - A ticket Id, - Priority, - Consultant ID/Name, - User ID/Name, - Date of Post, - Resolving Time etc. There ideally is also a knowledge repository to search for a similar problem and solutions given if it had occurred earlier. You can also have training manuals (with screen shots) for simple transactions like viewing a query, saving a workbook etc so that such queried can be addressed by using them. When the problem is logged on to you as a consultant, you need to analyze the problem, check if you have a similar problem occurred earlier and use ready solutions, find out the exact server on which this has occurred etc.

You have to solve the problem (assuming you will have access to the dev system) and post the solution and ask the user to test after the preliminary testing from your side. Get it transported to production once tested and posts it as closed i.e. the ticket has to be closed. What is User Authorizations in SAP BW? Authorizations are very important, for example you don't want the important financial report to all the users. so, you can have authorization in Object level if you want to keep the authorization for specific in object for this you have to check the Object as an authorization relevent in RSD1 and RSSM tcodes. Similarly you set up the authorization for certain users by giving that users certain auth. in PFCG tcode. Similarly you create a role and include the tcodes, BEx reports etc into the role and assign this role to the userid. Tips by : Ramkumar K

Will ABAP be Obsolete? Will JAVA Replace ABAP?

You should have heard this rumours more than once. The story goes like this: Well the sad news is that SAP is integrating ABAP with JAVA. So in near future ABAP will be obsolete and JAVA will be in. Then the field will be so much populated by java programmers that it will be going to be the end to ABAPers as JAVApers programmers will be having more value because of their Java experience. So I think now we should start making move to Jave, at least to fight in the market even if we can't dominate it.

or Heard some rumours here and there that the eventual plan for SAP is to phrase out ABAP programming? In another word, in a few years time, ABAPers will be redundant. How true is that?? Care to comment ?? or I have just started my journey into ABAP programming, but I am being discouraged by some people who say, that ABAP is gonna be transitioned out and will be replaced by something else. Just wanted to know how true this is and if I should continue on the track I have taken, cause I dont wanna regret my decision later. Some response to the above worries :This rumours have been around for a couple of years. In the past many programming languages have also become obsolute. Why waste time worrying about this? I think abapers should spend more times to learn other sap modules to enhance their value. ABAP can't die because its the easiest development tool . It can be easily seen that if you see development cost ABAP development can be completed in less time as compared to Java. And SAP is not stopping ABAP but just given an option to develop in java. However it will be good for ABAP Developers to learn java. ABAP is not a replacement for any thing and at the same time no other language is a replacement for ABAP. FYI, ABAP is no more an ABAP/4. It is widely extended with the introduction of Web Application Server starting from release WAS 620. In Object Oriented Paradigm ABAP is the only langauge that goes very near to all the properties of OOP concepts even comparted to JAVA and C++ starting from release WAS 630. You can developed and extend web applications using ABAP. It is much much more than what we see from R/2 and R/3 3.X releases... There is nothing to worry about it. Yes SAP is introducing J2EE platform as an alternate to make an implementation faster as in the market there are many JAVA developers compared to ABAP resources.

More than this, ABAP is the SAP proprietary language. Except R/3 kernel, every application/transaction including BASIS is written in ABAP. I don't think SAP is that foolish to replace ABAP with some thing else. Look at the development news in SAP AG official web site for more info. One might need to know Java and JSP for developing mySAP portals but starting from SAP NetWeaver (which is planned to be released officially by the next quarter this year) you can developed heterogeneous portals using ABAP itself... Hope the above clarifies how ABAP is moving a head in the programming era.

What Is User Specific Parameter

Explain what is user specific parameter. User parameter: You can fill fields on screens with default values from SAP memory using parameter IDs. For example, a user only has authorization for company code 0001. By entering the value '0001' in field COCD in the Parameter register in this users master record (SU01), the system automatically fills the field Company code with the value 001 on all screens he or she calls. If this company code is not predetermined using a parameter ID in the user master record, the system automatically adopts the first value entered by the user at the beginning of the transaction for the rest of the current terminal session. However, this value has to be re-entered the next time the user logs on to the system Fields on screens are only ever automatically filled with the value saved under the parameter ID of a data element if the Set Parameter/Get Parameter attributes for the corresponding fields have been explicitly set in the Screen Painter. Choose Tools -> Administration, then User maintenance -> Users. Enter the IDs you want in the Parameter register during user maintenance How to create a new user parameter id , so that i can assign the same in SU01? You can do in SE80, choose Other Objects, Enter name and Create.

If you want create paramenter id 'TEST' means: STEP 1: First add value 'TEST' in TPARA Table. STEP 2 : Assign value to paremeter id DATA : LV_TEST TYPE CHAR10. LV_TEST = 'TEST'. SET PARAMETER ID 'TEST' FIELD LV_TEST. To create a Parameter Id for a Data Element. In se11 --> Data element name --> Futher Charactersitics --> Parameter Id --> Type name example ZPARA --> Dbl click in it and create. What are thses User parameter EFB & EVO? What is the full form of this? When it is used? Parameter IDs are used to ease the daily activities of a user. For example: If the user is responsible with one Purchasing grp/Pur Org/Plant then they adds WERKS/EKGRP parameter here, to have this Plant/Pur Group id filled when they calls the related transaction. Parameter IDs are usually only used to memorize certain user-specific settings. They can be included in the T code SU3 in the parameter tab. EFB - This parameter id will define certain Purchasing authorizations For one or more users. Here you can display certain user can display the conditions. EVO - You assign default values that you have maintained in the Customizing to a particualt user by entering the key of the default value in the user master record under the parameter ID "EVO".