Executing a Search

Use this function to execute a full-text, plant-specific search across all available data indexed in the search engine. Material search results are enriched with the following:

You can enable “fuzzy” searching, a failure tolerance feature used to find data strings that are similar – but not identical – to the full-text search term entered. You can also search within your search results by applying additional search criteria.

You can also use keywords to search for materials and catalog data lacking any descriptive text. In SAP for Retail systems, you can even synchronize your existing merchandise category keywords with this keyword data structure. For more information about creating and assigning keywords, see Keyword Maintenance.

You can define primary and secondary search criteria. Primary search criteria are always visible in the user interface, whereas you can hide secondary search criteria. The search criteria are maintained for each application, thereby allowing sales representatives to have different search criteria than buyers. For more information about setting up this feature, see Prerequisites.

You can search for a material using various filters:

Displaying Search Results

Materials returned as a result of a search are displayed in the search result list. For each material, you can switch from an overview to a more detailed display showing material availability data and prices for selected plants. Traffic light icons in both the search result list and the detailed view of a search result inform you whether the material is maintained and available in the selected plants. The system indicates either the available-to-promise quantities or unrestricted use stock for the material (you can indicate your preference in the Personal Settings screen).

For more information about how pricing is determined, see Predefined Pricing.

The system optimizes performance by determining material availability data and prices one search result page at a time (with the exception of reading the purchasing info records). You can decide how many materials are displayed per page in the Personal Settings screen or in Customizing for Sales and Distribution by choosing  Basic Functions Additional Functions for Material Configure and Activate Enhanced Material Search with Creation .

You can define the default way in which search criteria are displayed and search results are sorted in Customizing for Sales and Distribution by choosing  Basic Functions Additional Functions for Material Configure and Activate Enhanced Material Search with Creation . You can sort search results by the following criteria:

Once you have obtained some search results, you can select rows from the search results table and transfer them back to the application that originally triggered the Enhanced Material Search function. The material number, order quantity, order unit and plant are transferred for follow-on activities. For example, if the Enhanced Material Search function is triggered by a sales order application, the transferred material is used to create an order item.

In addition, you can enter a full-text search term from another application and return a single, unambiguous search result (with plant data maintained) to the calling application, without showing the Enhanced Material Search user interface. You do this by selecting the Return Single Result flag in Customizing for Sales and Distribution by choosing  Basic Functions Additional Functions for Material Configure and Activate Enhanced Material Search with Creation . You can only do this using transactions WPOHF2C and WPOHF2X in SAP for Retail systems.