Johan van Zijl

This marks the 15th year of Democracy and Commercial Mobile Phone Networks in South Africa. It seems that SAP has been oblivious to the development of the mobile phone and the proliferation of the humble SMS as a means of communication with customers.

SAP CRM has been around for about 10 years now, and is marketed as a best of breed CRM solution. Why then is there no support for sending or receiving of SMS’s in the Interaction Centre?

Atleast they still support Letters…

–Update– The code shown here is not 100% correct and reliable. I will probably fix at some point…

I haven’t posted in a long time, mostly because I have been doing everything except working on a SAP system. So, the first bit of code I have written in a while goes here.

Scenario: Its difficult for BW to create reports according the Category Hierarchy on CRM Service Tickets as maintained in the Category Modeller.

Quick Fix Solution: Append fields for Level 1,2 and 3 to CRMD_CUSTOMER_H using EEWB. Create initial load report and BADI implementation to fill these.

I am not going to explain in much more detail. Hopefully someone finds the code useful.

The code can be found here:  Category Update Code.

In a previous post I commented on what it would take to make SAP CRM work with Internet Explorer 8. Well, it seems that Microsoft solved this problem for SAP by providing Compatibility View with IE8.

The SAP CRM 2007 Web Client doesn’t work in IE8 with the default settings, but as soon as you click that little icon, the application works perfectly.

This is excellent news. If you want a copy of IE8 Beta you can get it here.

–Update: Please note there are issues with this Enhancement after applying CRM 7.0 SP 5 & 6. I will try to get hold of the fix, but it may better to investigate other options–

Overview

This post describes the enhancement of the IC WebClient using the Business Transaction Search in CRM 5.0. The Business Transaction Search (BT Search) allows you to define an index table that can be used as an alternative to the standard reporting framework.

As this is really too much to information to put into a post, I just placed an extract here, and created a PDF(containing code, screen shots, etc) that can be download here:

Inbox BT Search Documentation

Benefits

The BT Search allows you to overcome a number of common problems encountered in the Inbox, namely:

• Poor performance
• Custom Search Fields
• Inconsistent Search Results

The typical IC WebClient Project deals with all 3 of the above problems. Poor performance is almost inherent to the standard Inbox as the database structure of the One Order Framework is extremely flexible, but complex.
If you add custom search fields to the Inbox, you must either implement filters in the AFTER_SEARCH method of BADI CRM_IC_INBOX_BADI or you must implement BT Search. Using filters is always a bad idea, as performance suffers and they lead to unexpected results.
Finally, the Inbox is used to select Interactions, Service Tickets, Follow Ups, Sales Orders, etc. All of these transactions have different customizing settings and it is sometimes impossible to align all of them in the standard Search Results. BT Search allows you to do this.

Steps

The BT Search allows you to define an Index Table in the IMG. The IMG transaction will generate the following components for you:

• A Database Table that will be your “Index”
• An initial load report for populating the Database Table
• A Badi Implementation (ORDER_SAVE) used to populate the delta entries to the Index when a document is saved.

However, you will have to modify the generated Report and Badi in order to achieve the desired results.
You must also create an Implementation of Badi CRM_IC_SOS_INDEX in order to determine the Index to be used.
An implementation of Badi CRM_IC_INBOX_BADI will also be required for doing some fancy footwork.
The rest of the document will describe the required steps in more detail.

Enhancement Scenario

The enhancement described in this document caters for the following requirements:

• An Index only for Service Tickets and Follow ups
• Multiple Customer Specific Search Fields
• Customer Specific Result Fields

Caveats

BT Search completely replaces the standard search. It’s a lot of work as you really end up rebuilding the entire search logic of the Inbox. The BT Search is not a simple enhancement. It needs a lot of tweaking. This document assumes that the reader has an understanding of One Order documents, their customizing and ABAP knowledge.

This document is only applicable to CRM 5.0. The BT Search functionality has changed significantly in CRM 2007 and many of the problems and solutions described here will hopefully not be encountered. I have not verified this beyond the point of looking at the customizing tables in CRM 2007.
This document does not deal with adding additional search parameters to the UI or the BOL. That is a separate topic on its own. Here we assume it has already been done.

I have not tested this Index with an Inbox containing Workflow Items or E-mails as well. Some code in this document may be incompatible with Workflow/E-mail Items, but I just don’t know.

I liked the idea of Nigel James to post handy tips for his own future reference. I decided to shamelessly copy him and post some of my own tips here. I will try to post them as I come across them.

So, you can use the code below in a controller class to display messages to the user.

data: lr_msg_service type ref to cl_bsp_wd_message_service,
      lv_msg type symsgv.

lr_msg_service = view_manager->get_message_service( ).
lv_msg = '<YOUR_MESSAGE_VARIABLE>'.
 CALL METHOD lr_msg_service->add_message
   EXPORTING
    iv_msg_type         = if_genil_message_container=>mt_error
    iv_msg_id             = '<YOUR_MESSAGE_CLASS>'
    iv_msg_v1            = lv_msg
    iv_msg_number      = '<YOUR_MESSAGE_NO>'
    iv_important_info    = abap_true.