The Document Viewer (SAP Library - Desktop Office Integration (BC-CI))

The Document Viewer

Purpose

The Document Viewer is a new feature of Office Integration in Release 4.6C. It allows you to display documents either in a browser within the R/3 window or in a separate browser window.

Implementation Considerations

You can use the Document Viewer whenever you want the user to be able to display documents but not change them. Unlike conventional Office Integration techniques, it is supported by the SAPGUI for HTML environment.

Integration

You must be using a version of the SAPgui with Release 4.6C or higher. The Document Viewer is compatible with both SAPGUI for Windows (Windows 95/98/NT) and SAPGUI for HTML.

The following must also be installed on your PC:

Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4 or higher
The desktop application relevant to each document type you want to display (for example, Word if you want to display DOC files)

You can use the SAP Business Document Service to store documents. The URLs or internal tables returned by the BDS can be used directly in the methods of the Document Viewer interface.

Features

The Document Viewer allows you to display documents either in a browser within the SAPGUI (either for Windows or HTML) or in a separate browser window.

Unlike conventional Office Integration, it is compatible with the SAPGUI for HTML.

The ABAP programming interface for the Document Viewer is provided by the global interface i_oi_document_viewer .

The Document Viewer supports HTML plus the following additional document types:

Document Type	Document Extension	ProgID in Registry
Microsoft Word document	.DOC	Word.Document
Microsoft Excel workbook	.XLS	Excel.Sheet
Microsoft Powerpoint presentation	.PPT	PowerPoint.Show
Rich Text Format	.RTF	The application you have associated with files of this type using the Open With dialog box in Windows
Portable Document Format	.PDF	The application you have associated with files of this type using the Open With dialog box in Windows
Quicktime Movie	.MOV	Quicktime.Mov
Lotus 123 Workbook	123	Lotus123.Workbook
Lotus Word Pro Document	LWP	Wordpro.Document
Visio Drawing	VSD	Visio.Drawing

Note

These are the document types that are definitely supported. It may be possible to display others, depending on the capabilities of the underlying Web browser.

The Document Viewer relies on the plug-in mechanism of the underlying Web browser, which can work out the format of the document and the application it needs to launch in order to display it. To do this, it uses the following information from the Windows Registry:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.***	Content type & ProgID
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\<ProgID>\shell\open\command	Location of the application
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\database\content Type	Extension

These entries can be generated in one of the following ways:

When you install an application. For example, when you install Word, the file type .DOC is registered to it
When you first open a file with an unregistered extension. In this case, the Open With dialog box appears, in which you have to associate an application with the extension.

Constraints

It is not currently possible to edit and save documents in the Document Viewer.

Example

The SAP System contains an example program called SAPRDEMOVIEWING .