What are the sources and what to do before you start

[Florian]

Hi all,

Today’s blog is the third in the row.

In my previous blogs How to develop a form - A process perspective I talked about the process itself and about this topic here: What do you expect from your output?

This topic is a really tricky part and I thought a long time how to describe the process. I hope you can get something valuable for you out of it.

How to begin – What are the different sources and what is a good basis to start with?

As I promised in my previous blog I’m back at the counting thing here. Before doing that, I talk a bit about my personal experience in this area.

The major problem all of us are facing remains nearly everywhere the same when starting with new things. There is no place, where it is all nicely described and prepared in a way, you could find it quick. That’s why everybody of us has a personal wiki. This is a good thing, but everybody needs to go through the lessons learned section and that is for sure not so good.

SCN and a lot of community member made it happen that there are a lot of good sources out there.  These sources are not included in this blog. In my opinion there is an easy way to go: Official sources first - SCN second and last but not least the Internet :lol: . This statement I always use, because unfortunately there is also a lot of not good content out there (it is the polite form I would have said here).

So now, back to the basic question of this blog:

Where to look for proper/preconfigured programs/forms and how I decide if I take it or leave it in the end.

1^st Have a look into your system itself

Yeah, it is really that easy. Have a look into your system and look for the customizing. Often there are some dummy-entries made with the correct driver-program/form and you just need to grab it from here

2^nd Market Place – OSS-Notes

Now you should have a look here. Best keywords are your transaction-code (also the description is a good choice)  and the technique you prefer (SapScript / Smartforms / Adobe). PS: You should not got for SAPScript today :wink:

3^rd Best Practice Packages offered by SAP

This offers you a great source of preconfigured forms. Major problem is most that it isn't that hard to start without anything, but I cannot recommend you that. There are a lot of pitfalls during the form development and this is a very good source to avoid a lot of it, not all, but a lot. Here is the link: http://help.sap.com/bestpractices

4^th Search the community

Here on SCN in the wiki are a lot of knowledge conserved. Most of the times you won't find a ready to run program, but the basic pieces are most of the time available. For example what kind of class should you use or even you find the correct program delivered by SAP.
PS: I started a site, which focus on forms and there I’m building a table with the common Adobe-Forms + Programs.

Have a look here: IfBA - Standard Driver Programs, Interface and Preconfigured Form - ABAP Development - SCN Wiki

If you can add some driver-programs and Adobe-Forms to it I really would appreciate it.

So, by now you have done everything you could do before getting the hands on the keyboard?

No, there is something missing before starting developing itself.

Back to the header again:

Where to look for proper/preconfigured programs/forms and how I decide if I take it or leave it in the end.

1^st Make yourself familiar with the form

What is developed in the form, how does it work, what kind of data is used by now

2^nd Examples examples examples

I know, but it is that important, perhaps more important than everywhere else. To archive the first point you need a lot of examples and all the different cases which need to be covered by the form

3^rd Show the business

Show the form and all its functionality to the business. Don't do it by your own, let someone (who is comfortable with the process) do it, if it is too technical the business will not intentional to the message you want to tell them.

4^th Ask about the layout twice

What? Yeah, you read right, Ask a second time about the layout. I recommend to publish the layout in a bigger meeting (ask before you do that) and show it to other people so that the whole team can say something about it. You won't be the first, which need to rework the complete set again, because someone missed to know about the corporate design in his/her company.

After doing the above there is just one thing left to do before starting. This is my personal card, I have learned over the years that form developing is producing a lot of wasted time, because change request nearly never includes the output.

I have made me a “Do remember”-card for this. This could be part of the technical documentation, but make sure you publish it in your team and everybody knows how to search for it (Project-Wiki / Quick-Search) without wasting time.

I know, this is a very common statement, but in my next blogs I will try to describe how I think this could work good :wink:

To remember	Answer (just Examples)
What processes use the form?	Sales-Process (Offers / Sale-Contracts)
What T-codes using it?	VA** ( BA00 / AN00 / AF00 )
Who created the form?	Florian Henninger / John Doe
Any special logic which will be hard coded?	BUKRS = 1000 à Add additional text (Clue of Owner) MATGR  = 253 included à Print additional ADR-Paper
Main-tables (if not that well known)	VBAPB / YSD_VKGRP / YSD_BRANDING
Passed out things (excluded by the business)	Subcontracting
Others	…

That’s it, this is the third part of my blog series and I hope you enjoyed reading it. Now we can talk about the other 30% of the developing process. Some of this part are right now included, because it can't be separated that hard, but that's why it is called process :razz:

The next blog will focus on Interfaces in forms – What to do and what not to do?

As always,  feel free to leave a comment.

Cheers Florian

PS: The pictures are collected by somewhere from the internet. So if anybody knows that there is a copyright protection please let me know and I will remove it immediately.