You can provide the new developments for a business function in your ABAP-based system by activating the required business function with transaction SFW5.

You call transaction SFW5 in your ABAP-based system from the first node in your Implementation Guide. It provides a series of functions that simplify the use of the new developments for you:

• When you have activated a business function, the following changes and new developments are visible:

  • Menu entries

  • New fields on the application interfaces

  • IMG activities required for the implementation

  • New table entries in Customizing tables and system tables

     Note

    Switch BC Sets are also delivered with the business functions; these are unpacked automatically when you activate a business function. For more information, see SAP Notes 337623 and 877008.

    End of the note.

• Transaction SFW5 gives you the following options for getting information about business functions and for scheduling the implementation:

  • Navigation to the documentation of the business functions

  • Navigation to the release notes relevant for the business function

  • Navigation to the sample test catalogs for the business function

    For more information, see Working with Test Case Templates

  • Notes about the dependencies between business functions

    For some business functions you must also activate additional business functions. For notes about this see the related documentation and the Dependencies column in transaction SFW5. It is not technically possible to activate business functions that exclude each other.

  • Analysis of the effects on your users of activating a business function. For more information, see Analysis of the Effects on the Users.

• From a technical view, the business functions consist of individual switches that can be used to activate coding strings, menu entries, and Customizing activities in the Implementation Guide (IMG). For more technical information about the business functions and transaction SFW5, see Switch Framework.

   Caution

  If you implement own enhancements to enhancement points or enhancement sections for the business functions, a subsequent release or enhancement package can make these ineffective or can lead to errors. We therefore strongly recommend that you do not use enhancement points or enhancement sections for customer-specific enhancements. For the business functions, SAP does not guarantee that in the source code, the interfaces and the existence of enhancement points and enhancement sections will remain stable. Here, customer-specific implementations have the status of modifications.

  Instead, use the standard interfaces that SAP provides for customer-specific enhancements (for example, Business Add-Ins (BAdIs) or Enterprise Services).

  End of the caution.