Customizing and Updating SAP Content 

Use

Guided Procedures (GP) allows you to customize GP content provided by SAP or SAP partners. Once you deploy such content on your system, you can use it as it is or create your own customized object versions out of it. The new objects are stored in a separate folder in the gallery so that the changes you make do not affect the original objects.

Whenever an update of the SAP content is available on your system, you are notified about the existence of newer versions and can update any of the customized objects right from design time.

When you handle SAP and customer-modified content, you need to be aware of the different statuses that can be assigned to GP objects:

·        Active – an object with this status may be used in running processes.

·        Inactive – an object with this status cannot be used in a process, unless it has been activated.

·        Customer Modified – the status assigned to the original version, once you create a customer-modified version out of it.

·        Deprecated – the status assigned to a customer-modified version whenever it is updated or replaced by an SAP version.

As an alternative to making customizable versions, you can make a simple copy of an existing SAP development object and modify the copy as required. However, you are not able to update the copy with any new content deployed on the system. Use this option whenever you need more than one custom version of specific SAP-provided content.

Prerequisites

●      You have the appropriate rights to work with GP design time.

More information: Setting Up Portal Roles

●      You have set up the versioning protection of content for your system.

In the Config Tool, set the devobj.producer property to a custom value, for example Customer. This ensures that for each SAP development object that you want to modify, a completely new version is created that does not affect the original.

More information: Configuring General System Parameters

●      SAP content (an SDA file) has been deployed on your system and released by the GP administrator.

More information: Postprocessing Imported Objects

Procedure

Customizing SAP Content

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       1.      In the gallery, navigate to the folder containing the deployed SAP content and select the development object you want to modify, for example, a callable object.

Original SAP content has the initial status Active.

       2.      Choose Open.

The system notifies you that you are customizing the object with the following message:

Objects of a different owner are about to be modified; customer modified objects will be stored in the customer modifications folder.

       3.      Switch to edit mode by choosing  (Toggle Single Edit Mode) and make the relevant changes.

       4.      Save the object using  (Save All).

The new object is created and its Inactive version is automatically saved in folder Customer Modifications. The status of the original version changes to Customer Modified.

Once you have modified an SAP object and a customer version is created, the system creates a reference between the two objects. Thus, when you open the design time of the original object, you can see the message A customer modification of the object exists at the top of the screen and you can navigate to the modified object using the click here link provided. You cannot delete the original version if a reference to a customer-modified version exists.

       5.      In the gallery, navigate to folder Customer Modifications, select the customized object and open its design time.

       6.      Activate the object by choosing  (Activate).

Updating SAP Content

Before you can update your custom object, you must make sure that new SAP content is deployed and available for use.

The update preserves parameter mapping unless major changes to parameter structure have been made.

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       1.      In the gallery, navigate to folder Customer Modifications, select an object for update and open its design time.

The system notifies you if an update is available for the object with a message at the top of the screen: An updated version of the object is available. To compare with the current version click here.

       2.      To get a preview of the new SAP object version, use the click here link.

You can compare the details of the updated version and the current version and decide on which one to use.

¡        Select customer-modified version by choosing Keep Customer Version.

If you decide to keep your custom version, you will not be notified again of this update. Only after another import of new content is available on the system, you will be suggested to update it.

○       Select updated SAP version by choosing Accept Updated Version.

If you decide to discard your version in favor of the SAP-provided updated version, the custom version’s status changes to Deprecated. Accordingly, the original version status is changed from Customer Modified to Active.

If you delete the customer-modified version, the status of the original version is similarly set to Active.

       3.      To be able to use your custom object, save the changes and make sure it is activated.

Replacing Existing SAP Content with Customer-Modified Versions

This option allows you to easily replace SAP-provided original versions already included in processes with the relevant customer-modified versions. You are able to do this only if you have created and activated a custom version.

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       1.      Select an original version of a GP object inside an action, block or process.

       2.      Choose Update.

The system replaces the original with the modified version.