Attributes in Mail Forms 

Use

Texts in mail forms are not floating objects but are usually connected in some way to a business object. For example you may want to include data from the business partner master record in the text of a letter. You need not enter the current values; instead, you use placeholders for this data. This allows you to make texts flexible, since you can enter any variables by using these placeholders.

In mail forms, these placeholders are called attributes and represent data that is included in the text at the moment it is formatted for output. When generating the output, the system replaces all attributes in the text with the values that apply at that point.

You include attributes in a mail form so that variable data (i.e. data that is not fixed) can be displayed. The attribute itself serves only as a placeholder: when the system displays the form, it replaces the attribute with the relevant value.

This function describes how to include attributes in texts so that values that are valid at runtime can be output. You create these texts using a text node.

The attributes permitted for use are displayed in the overview on the left-hand side of the screen and are as follows:

·        Business partners

·        Campaigns

·        System data

·        Marketing profiles

·        User-specific attributes, which are assigned to scenarios. For more information, access the Implementation Guide and choose Customer Relationship Management ® Marketing ® Marketing Planning and Campaign Management  ® Personalized Mail  ® Maintain Scenario for Mail Forms.

Double-click on the object to display the individual attributes.

You can include attributes in text nodes, in which case they are used to display values at runtime.

Prerequisites

You have created the text node in which the attribute is to be included.

Features

System attributes

Within a mail form, you are able to use the attribute string SFSY with its various system fields. During form processing, the system replaces these attributes with the corresponding values. These values come from the SAP System or result from the processing.

Description of system attributes

Field Name	Description
&SFSY-PAGE&	Inserts the number of the current print page into the text. You determine the format of the page number (for example, Arabic, numeric) in the page node.
&SFSY-FORMPAGES&	Displays the total number of pages for the currently processed form. This allows you to include texts such as ‘Page x of y’ into your output.

When using the attributes &SFSY-FORMPAGES& you must keep all output pages in the main memory until the end of the form or the print job, to allow these fields to be replaced with their respective values. For large forms or print jobs, this may require a great deal of memory.

Attribute syntax

Attributes are called up using a name which:

·        Must be enclosed in ampersand characters (' &').

·        Must not contain any blanks. It must not contain the characters '+()

·        Must not be more than 130 characters long. However, to distinguish the existing fields, the system uses only the first 32 characters.

There is no difference between uppercase and lowercase letters in field names. The field names &myfield&, &MYfield& and &MYFIELD& all identify the same field.

Activities

Including attributes in the editor

To enable attributes to be distinguished from normal text, you must include them in the mail form.

You can include fields in the attribute list using Drag&Drop. The system inserts the attribute at the position of the text cursor. In the inplace version of the PC Editor, the Delete field function can be used to remove an attribute from the text.

 

·         In the PC editor, the attributes appear with a gray background and are enclosed with ampersands ('&') to set them apart from normal text.

·         In the HTML editor, the attributes appear as input fields.