An essential activity in many business processes within Logistics is the checking of available resources before making critical decisions or commitments. For customer-oriented companies, it is vital that reliable information on the availability of resources can be access at all times. This is especially important in the sales department as before the salesperson can provide the customer with reliable dates, s/he requires immediate access to information on the availability of a product.

The availability check in the R/3 System provides decision support for a large number of logistics operations at all organizational levels, that is, at plant level, storage location level and at batch level. The check can be adjusted to suit the specific requirements of each company. This guarantees the necessary flexibility for dealing with the customer and within the company itself. For more information on the availability check refer to the R/3 Knowledge Product Availability Check.

The Internet Application Component Available to Promise has been created as an example scenario in the SD environment. The Available to Promise screen shows the results of the material availability check in a clear and simple overview.

For customer-oriented companies, easily accessible information on material availability that can be read at a glance provides an important basis for making decisions in an increasingly competitive market environment. Therefore, many companies (especially in the high tech and consumer goods branches of industry) are keen to take advantage of the new opportunities provided by the Internet. They want the necessary support for their business processes, for example:

• Tools for the salesperson must be transparent and easy to use.
• System information must be provided quickly and should be easy to understand.

If you work in Production Planning, in Sales and Distribution or if you are a customer and you use the Internet Application Component Available to Promise, you have the following advantages:

• You can access Available to Promise from anywhere in the world around the clock.
• The layout of Available to Promise is simple and easy to use. For example, to select the product in which you are interested, you only have to select the line.
• Using the Internet, the customer can access information on the available quantities for certain products without having to get in touch with the sales department of the company (if a customer master record has been created in the R/3 System).
• Vendors can see which products are still available and how much is still available. This means that they know when to anticipate necessary deliveries.

No special authorizations are required for this Internet Application Component.

To trigger the Internet Application Component in the Internet, you must log on using your SAP user name and your password. If you are a customer, you also require a customer master record and a password of your choice in the R/3 System.

Using transaction SU05, you can create, change and delete passwords for Internet users. To specifically identify users, enter the object type KNA1 as well as the number of the SAP user master record or the customer number.

The browser used must be Java-enabled (for example, Netscape Navigator >3.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer > 3.0). The browser must also be set so that Java programs can run.

You select a product for which you want to see Available to Promise using a Java applet. A Java applet is a small program that is loaded and executed on your PC along with the HTML page.

When started, the Java applet loads the contents of the product catalog from two files saved in the Web server. Using the product hierarchy tree and a text search, you can select a product in the applet and copy it to the input field for the availability check.

Using the text search functions in the applet, you can search for material numbers and descriptions. You can also carry out a generic search using ‘*’. If you enter "test", for example, a search will be made for precisely this string. Entering "test*" triggers a search for everything that starts with with "test". Entering "*test" triggers a search for everything that contains the string "test". The search does not differentiate between lower and upper case characters.

In problem cases, for example, if a file cannot be read or contains inconsistent data, the applet terminates and an error message is displayed in the status line of the browser. In the Netscape Navigator, this message also appears in the Java Console that can be displayed via the menu.

Using the Java applet, you can preset certain parameters for accessing information from the R/3 System. The contents of the applet are provided by the report PCATALOG which accesses the data in the product catalog which it saves as two files. Copy these files to the Web server.

This procedure requires the maintenance of a product catalog in the R/3 System. Here, make sure that materials are not assigned more than once. Furthermore, use the base unit of measure. (See also the SAP documentation on the product catalog.)

Activities involved in including your own product catalog

Information on material availability in the R/3 System is given according to the scope of the check which is determined by the material’s checking group and the checking rule A of the sales department. See also the documentation on the function module, BAPI_MATERIAL_AVAILABILITY for tips on transferring special checking rules.

You can change the layout of this Internet Application Component.

The service name of this Internet Application Component is CKAV. You can find all the relevant data under this service name in the SAP@Web Studio.

The Java applet can be controlled using the following parameters:

The parameters are specified in the applet tag in the HTML page. With the above example data, the applet tag is as follows:

In the R/3 System, the data exchange via the Internet is carried out using transactions and function modules. The following developments are required for creating and passing on service messages:

Data output is performed using the Internet Transaction Server (ITS). The data is merged with the output forms and made available on the Internet/intranet in HTML format.

The output forms are in the subdirectory CKAV of the directory TEMPLATES. The following forms are used:

SAPMAVCK_500.HTML

SAPMAVCK_600.HTML

SAPMAVCK_1100.HTML

SAPMAVCK_1200.HTML

SAPMAVCK_1300.HTML

CKAV_D.HTRC

CKAV_E.HTRC

CKAV_J.HTRC

The numbers in the names of the forms correspond to the R/3 screen numbers.