New troubleshooting section
Yesterday a new troubleshooting section is born on sap core!
It is still in its early days but expect it to grow quickly in terms of functionalities and, hopefully, content. I say ‘hopefully’ because its success regarding content proposed depends on the active participation of sap core visitors.
The idea behind this troubleshooting section is that all sap core visitors own a piece of SAP knowledge and they should be encouraged to share this information with others proactively without waiting for other SAP users to ask for that knowledge. The main advantage being that information searched would then be readily available in many situations and waiting times would be reduced to a minimum.
Of course, this works only if people share proactively the information they think might be useful to others (or even to themselves in the future… do you never forget anything?). The goal of this troubleshooting section is to provide an handy tool to easily store and retrieve to-the-point information applicable in specific contexts. For this purpose, the troubleshooting information is organized by SAP ERP application component and is linked to specific SAP objects. Currently only the object ‘SAP Message’ is supported which means that searching for an error message should lead the visitor to the corresponding troubleshooting information. Other SAP objects are likely to be added like SAP transactions or SAP programs.
As I said in the beginning of this post, many enhancements are possible and foreseen. So stay tuned and please share your knowledge!
SAP jobs – apply for the right job!
If you intend to start a career in SAP, make sure that you apply for the right job for you.
Not all SAP jobs are the same and it is usually admitted that following major categories of SAP jobs exist :
- SAP end user
- SAP Business Analyst
- SAP Technical Analyst
SAP Technical Analysts are responsible for challending and implementing the business requirements translated into technical terms by Business Analysts. While the added value of Business Analysts comes essentially from their business knowledge, the added value of Technical Analysts comes from their knowledge of the SAP system.
- SAP ABAP Developer
- SAP BC, basis or system administrator
SAP end users use the SAP system as a tool to achieve their business objectives. Jobs falling in this category are not properly speaking SAP jobs since they usually consider the SAP system only as a tool that applicants need to be able to use to achieve their objectives which don’t focus on the SAP system itself but rather on the execution of business processes that are implemented in the SAP system.
The SAP Business Analyst is responsible for the analysis of the business requirements and their translation into SAP requirements. This function is at the same time highly functional as the Business Analyst must understand the business of end users but also technical as these requirements need to be translated into a system oriented language that is understandable by SAP Technical Analysts.
SAP ABAP Developers functions include all technical development roles. This covers ABAP but also Workflow, Web developments, …
This category of SAP jobs designates the SAP system administrators. This function covers the installation and maintenance of the SAP system and the servers on which SAP is installed. It may also cover some very technical tasks like the management of the authorization profiles in the system.
Not all companies apply formally this categorization of the SAP functions but all the needs covered by these functions exist in all companies that run SAP systems and it is important to understand what profile a company is looking for when they publish a job offer.
Identifying the employer’s needs at an early stage of the recruitment process may help you avoid later disappointments as functional jobs may be very different from technical jobs in SAP and applying for the wrong job may have dramatic consequences.
Tags: SAP Jobs
Debugging the Enterprise Consolidation data monitor
A quick post to remember where to set a breakpoint when required to debug the Enterprise Consolidation data monitor (transaction CXCD).
A good place to create a breakpoint so that the debugger is launched when a button of the data monitor screen is pushed is in program FICMON00 / include FICMON00_CL_APPL and more specifically in METHOD USER_COMMAND.
From that point it is possible to start a debug of the different functions offered by the data monitor.
Tags: SAP tips & tricks
Locate your transactions with SEARCH_SAP_MENU
Transaction SEARCH_SAP_MENU (precede it with a /n code) allows you to find your transactions in the hierarchical tree of transactions that represents the SAP application menu.
Searched strings may contain the transaction code itself or (a part of) the description text of the transaction.
Although powerful, SEARCH_SAP_MENU does not search the customizing tree but only the application menu. It is thus a tool intended primarily for end users.
SAP FI/CO – Finance & Controlling
SAP Finance covers essentially the external and internal accounting needs of the companies.
External accounting is treated within SAP Financial Accounting and aims at fulfilling all the regulatory requirements to which the companies are submitted (including the periodic production of financial statements). This accounting is said to be external because it interests mainly external parties (fiscal authorities, shareholders, auditors, …). It records financial operations by nature.
Internal accounting (also called management accounting) is treated within SAP Controlling and aims at providing decision makers with the necessary information in order to assess the performance of the company at a detailed level and to support their strategic decisions.
This accounting is said to be internal as it interests primarily the managers of the company. It records financial operations also by destination.
Tags: SAP Controlling, SAP Finance
What is SAP ERP?
This website is dedicated to SAP ERP. But what is SAP ERP?
SAP ERP is the Enterprise Resource Planning software developed by SAP. It has been delivered by SAP in different versions with different names (R/2, R/3, ECC6) but pursues always the same objective: to provide enterprises with a software package that covers almost all their core IT needs in order to support their operational cycle. SAP ERP supports all the core activities of the multi-national companies including such domains as Finance, Controlling, Logistics, Human Resources, … as well as the technical integration aspects of these functional domains. This focus on the core IT components of the latest version of SAP ERP (ECC6) is reflected in the version name of the product as ECC stands for Enterprise Central Components.
It is easily understandable from the broad functional domains covered by such software package that the quantity of programs and settings delivered and later on to be maintained is huge. Implementation projects with SAP ERP are often long term projects with many specialized consultants which makes them very important IT investments financially speaking. On the other hand, the benefits brought by such software are extremely appealing: standardization of the IT processes, online integration of the different IT modules with reduced interfaces, reduced overall maintenance costs (if the initial implementation has been done right!), …