Calling a PC Document 

Purpose

Any PC documents created in the Business Workplace can be sent or published in shared folders. Whenever you create or change PC documents, you should note special features. We will use the process of calling a PC document in the Business Workplace to illustrate these.

Prerequisite

You can create and display any PC document provided that the corresponding software is installed on your computer.

The PC document classes are managed in an administration table. This table defines, for example, which documents can be created via the Business Workplace interface.

In private office settings users can define which document classes are displayed to them directly under a user-defined name (for example, MS Word document for DOC) for creation in the Business Workplace. The administration can define a default for this setting in shared office settings so that the document classes used most often are displayed directly to all users.

Process Flow

  1. If the user calls the function for creating a PC document or calls an existing PC document in the Business Workplace, a temporary file is automatically created in the current directory of the R/3 System.

When existing PC documents are called, the file contains the contents of the PC document.

The content of the file for a PC document that is to be created depends on the number of default documents that the administration has created for the PC document class:

Number of existing default documents

Description of file

zero

The file is empty.

one

The file contains the default document.

several

The file contains the default document selected by the user.

In this case, the user has to firstly select the required default document from the list of existing default documents.

The system creates a name for the file in the format:

~<Name of the PC document>_<current date><current time>.<EXT>

<EXT> is a three-character file extension of the PC application, for example, DOC for Word documents.

An MS Word document with the title Company Excursion is called in the Business Workplace on 6 May 2000 at 14:22 hrs (and 33 seconds). The system then creates a temporary file with the title ~Company Excursion_20000605142233.DOC in your current directory.
  1. Depending on the private office settings of the user, the PC application is then opened either in the R/3 window or in a separate window.
  2. The user edits the document and chooses the function Save in the PC application. The document is then temporarily saved in the current directory under the name ~<Name of the PC document>_<current date><current time> .

Always save the file under the name that is automatically generated and in the proposed directory. Otherwise the PC document is stored on your PC and not in the R/3 System.

Note that you can make changes in the PC application to documents that are not changeable. However, you cannot save these changes in the document that is open. You have to specify a different name. As a result, a new document is created which is not stored in the R/3 System but on your PC.
  1. If the Save function of the R/3 System is called or the PC document is closed, the PC document is saved in the R/3 database. If you still have not specified a title, the title that is automatically generated is used.
  2. The files, temporarily stored in the current directory, of all the PC documents that you have called from the R/3 System during one session are automatically deleted the next time you log on to the R/3 System.