Designing Forms with MS Outlook (SAP Library - SAP Business Workflow (BC-BMT-WFM))

Designing Forms with MS Outlook

Use

To use the form integration technology, you need both SAPforms and a development environment for electronic forms.

MS Outlook is one such development environment.

It is also possible to create forms in Visual Basic, MS Word and MS Excel .

In this documentation, it is assumed that you are using Visual Basic. This applies to the application examples in particular.

Prerequisites

You need MS Outlook 97 or higher.

You need the VBScript Engine 2.0 or higher.

You must install SAPforms.

You should be familiar with the basic functions in MS Outlook, particularly with regard to designing forms.

Features

General

SAPforms largely consist of ActiveX components. If you are using the SAPforms Designer, these components are addressed directly when the form is generated.

Unlike Visual Basic, the SAPforms Designer cannot be called as an add-in from MS Outlook. The Submit control must be used instead.

Form template

To display work items, the form template WORKITEM.OFT is available as a standard template and is found in directory ...\SAPforms\Forms . This template is then always started when you want to display a work item in your Outlook inbox (via SAPMAPI).

Double-click on the file and publish the form under the name SAP.WORKITEM in any folder.

To execute each work item the form maintained in the workflow definition is started. This can be an Outlook form or also a Visual Basic form.

You can find examples of such forms in the directory ...\SAPforms\Forms.

The template WFAPPROV2.OFT allows the user to display and execute work items without the standard template being started ( WORKITEM.OFT ). You can use this form template as a template for your own forms.

When you publish the form, you must enter the following message class:

SAP.WORKITEM.DIALOG.< task ID >

Starting workflows with attachments

An Outlook form, which should have a workflow started with it, can have an attachment inserted in the usual way. The attachment is then automatically included in the attachment list when the workflow is started.

Activities

Design a form by choosing Tools ® Design Outlook Form on the Untitled Message screen.

If you want to want to display or fill multiple-line elements from the R/3 System, use the SAP Table View Control or the MS FlexGrid Control.

To insert the Submit control in your form, activate the Control Toolbox. If the Submit control is not in the toolbox, you can add it by choosing Custom Controls... (SAPforms Submit Control) from the context menu.

Choose Save.

Choose the Properties entry in the context menu of the control (right mouse click). Choose the property (user-defined) in the following dialog box. The Properties dialog box appears. Choose the SAPforms-Designer pushbutton on the General tab page.

Edit and generate the form.

Exit the SAPforms Designer.

Exit the SAPforms Designer and publish the completed form in the desired folder.

If you want to modify the form later using the stand-alone version of the designer, remember to store the form in *.OFT format first. You can then load the form in the SAPforms Designer with Open Form.