ERP vendors are competing in the area of unique business processes where customization is required. The systems architected in previous generation leveraged custom software development in proprietary scripting languages. Good example was Great Plains Dynamics where special programming shell was created and its name is GP Dexterity.
New architecture is more flexible and this is where SAP B1 is with its modification concept. It is probably not realistic to design the way to program custom logic via end user friendly interface including such technologies as workflow. However it is possible to enable core table extension and new table creation with automatic simple user interface. Let’s move on to instructions:
1. Creating Custom Table. Let’s login SAP BO user workstation and in menu select Tools -> Customization Tools -> Managing User Defined Tables. There are multiple versions of SAP B1 in production and if you do not see this path from menu please apply your intuition. New table automatically gets simple user interface which could be opened via Tools -> User Defined Windows. Custom table is good candidate to store staging data in integration scenarios
2. Adding User Defined Fields to existing table. Let’s now assume that you would like to add field ‘Number of Minutes’ to Sales Order Line and show it on the scrolling window on Sales Order form. Here are the steps: Tools -> Customization Tools -> User Defined Fields management. Expand Marketing Documents and highlight Rows and click Add. Follow intuition and create the field. They will be appended to real table. Now open Sales Order form and click on Form Settings icon on the top menu. In Table Format tab mark your field as Visible and Active. The field should immediately show up on the scrolling windows
3. User defined objects could be filled with values and ready for Queries and Crystal Reports. They are added and stored in metadata directly in SQL company database. This fact makes version upgrade natural and not requiring dealing with code assuming that you involved settings only for creating these objects. If all you need to do was to create user defined objects and make them available in reporting then you know that programming was not required. For the rest of us let’s review SDK in the next paragraph
4. Software Development Kit is friendly to Microsoft Visual Studio VB and C# programmer as it has code snippets in these languages. Here you can animate user defined objects as well as create, update and delete documents and master records as you would do it directly via user interface. SDK methods validate business logic and they are safe if you have concerns about data integrity possible compromising. It is recommended to contract SDK coding projects to technology consulting firm having SDK programmers in staff and certified by SAP. When you are preparing contract we recommend you to include source code ownership in it as future version update procedure will need SDK code to be recompiled to be in compliance to new version and integrate new DLL set. If you do not own the code and good relations are no longer available then your future upgrade might be in trouble
5. Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904, help@efaru.com. We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, South West Michigan, Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA and Canada nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed)
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