Exporting Documents, Materials, Bills of
Material, and MPNs
Use
You can use transaction CFE02 to copy documents, materials, bills of material, and manufacturer part numbers (MPN) from the back-end system to the cFolders system.
Prerequisites
● SAP R/3, Release 4.6C with SP33 or higher (back-end system) and SAP Note 546617
● SAP R/3 Plug-In 2002.2
Procedure
1. Call transaction CFE02 in the back-end system.
2. Select your start object (for example, material 4711) to access the product structure browser.
3. In the product structure browser, choose the objects that you want to export and drag and drop them to the right-hand side of the screen.
You can select materials, bills of material, and documents. If you select bills of material, these are automatically exploded in a single-level explosion, that is, the header material and all materials that are components of the BOM items are also selected.
4. Choose Copy Objects in the product structure browser.
The Copy Objects to cFolders screen appears and the materials, bills of material, or documents are now on the relevant tab page in the bottom half of the screen.
5. If necessary, choose a default setting for the plant, the BOM usage, and the valid-from date. If you want to use a multilevel explosion, you first have to select a BOM usage.
6. Choose whether the explosion of the bill of material is to be multilevel and whether linked documents are to be exported too.
7. Select the cFolders system to which the objects are to be exported.
8. To determine the standard folder, select Choose Standard Folder. If a logon screen appears, log on with your cFolders user and password. If you do not know what the client is, ask your system administrator.
The selected path is displayed. All objects for which a folder was not explicitly specified are copied to this location. This also defines the collaboration or work area in the competitive scenario to which the objects are to be exported.
Note that you cannot export objects to different collaborations or work areas. If you change the standard folder and thereby select a different collaboration or work area, the target folders that you selected are reset in all objects.
You can also create a new collaboration. To do this, enter a name in the Name of Collaboration field and use the field help to select a scenario.
9. Now you can process the individual objects:
○ The selected objects are displayed in the lower part of the screen. Each object type has its own tab page - bill of material, material, and document. If you want to export an object to a folder that is not the standard folder, select the object or objects in the object list and choose Select Folder. Choose the target folder. The selected path is displayed in the object line.
○ To delete an object from the list, select it and choose Delete Selected Items.
Caution: Objects that are required for the transport (for example, the header material of a bill of material) cannot be deleted from the list.
○ Documents could be linked to bills of material and materials. You can import the linked documents of all objects. To import the linked documents of an individual object, select the object and choose Include Linked Documents. For bills of material, both the documents that are directly linked to the bill of material header as well as the documents that are linked to BOM items are taken into account.
○ You can explode individual bills of material by selecting the one you require and choosing Explode BOM.
○ Each line has the Read Only radio button. You can use this to define whether or not an object can be changed in cFolders. By default, all objects can be changed in cFolders.
○ Special features of the object types:
Document
■ A cFolders document corresponds to an original application file of the back-end system document. In the list of documents, all original application files of a back-end document are displayed individually. Therefore, it is possible that no document is exported even though a back-end document was selected, or that by selecting a back-end document, several documents are exported.
■ For each document the system proposes a name that is used in cFolders for the document. You can change this name, but the name field cannot be left empty.
■ If a document is exported to cFolders for changing (Read Only indicator is not selected), the status of this document (document info record) can be changed automatically by the back-end system. For this to be possible, you must have entered the new status in the Customizing table (edit with transaction CFC01) in accordance with the document type. In addition, there must be a status transition between the current and the new status, that is, the status change must be allowed.
Material
■ The description of the material in the back-end system is exported in the current logon language as the cFolders version description. The cFolders material description does not have anything that corresponds to this in the back-end system.
Bill of Material
■ For each bill of material the system proposes a name that is used in cFolders for the BOM. You can change this name, but the name field cannot be left empty.
■ Two identical BOM versions are created. One of these versions is used for the comparison later on and cannot be changed.
10. Choose Check. The system checks whether:
○ A standard folder was selected (see step 8). Without the standard folder, no export can take place.
○ The link to cFolders can be created.
○ The object in question can be exported. If an error occurs, the reason for the error is recorded in the log for the object. For example, the object already exists in this cFolders folder but has a write lock or you only have read authorization for the object in cFolders.
○ The object already exists in cFolders. It checks whether a document of this document type and with the same name already exist in cFolders. If this is the case, the Action icon is set to “Change”. A new version of the cFolders object is created during the current export.
During the check, all objects that are to be exported later are entered in a list of objects on the relevant tab pages. If multilevel explosion and/or linked documents are active, all additional objects are entered in the lists. For each individual object, the line displays whether it is newly created in cFolders or exported as a new version of an existing object. In addition, the transport status is displayed in color. If errors occur for objects, a log is created for each object - each log displays a single error. Certain errors are not checked at this point (for example, whether a material attribute contains a permitted value).
11. To transport the objects without errors (status = checked), choose Copy Objects. The checks described above are carried out now at the latest, and the export is started. If some of the objects were not correctly transported, solve the problems recorded in the object log and carry out the export again. If you make any changes in cFolders when you do this, choose Update cFolders Data to include these changes when you redo the export.
Even if you have not selected the Include Linked Documents indicator, the system tries to transfer as many links as possible to cFolders. If documents are exported that are linked to an object, the object and document are also linked in cFolders. If a document is not exported with the objects, the system checks whether the document already exists in cFolders and if this is the case, the object is then linked to the existing documents in cFolders.
The key fields of the objects are saved in cFolders as the back-end alias. This means that when a re-import takes place, the corresponding object in the back-end system can be identified.
The versions of the cFolders objects created in this way cannot be changed. If changes are made in cFolders, a new version is created. This allows you to determine which changes were made in cFolders if an import is carried out at a later stage.