Retail, MM Enhanced Material Search with Creation

Technical Data
Technical Name of Business Function	ISR_RETAIL_ENH_MAT_SEARCH
Type of Business Function	Industry Business Function
Available As Of	SAP ERP 6.0 EHP5
Technical Usage	Retail
Application Component	LO
Directly Dependent Business Function Requiring Activation in Addition	Retail (EA-RET)

You can use this business function to enable the Enhanced Material Search with Creation function within major transactions in SAP Materials Management, SAP Sales and Distribution, and SAP for Retail.

From a business perspective, the features in this business function are designed to accelerate order creation for wholesale and retail customers. Enhanced Material Search with Creation is the only search solution that allows you to find articles along with their availability and prices in your own plant (as well as selected plants) in one step. You can also find supplier catalog products without an article master and create article master records out of them quickly and efficiently.

From a technical perspective, you may experience some performance improvements by using either the SAP Search Engine Service or SAP NetWeaver Search Engine Service rather than searching directly using SAP ERP tables.

Integration

This business function provides features available to various transactions in SAP Materials Management and in SAP Sales and Distribution. See the Prerequisites section for more information on business functions, Customizing settings, components and applications which may need to be installed and configured prior to using this business function.

Prerequisites

You have installed the following components as of the version mentioned:

Type of Component	Component	Is Needed Only for the Following Features
Software Component	EA-RETAIL 605, SAP_APPL 605

Business Functions

The following business functions must be activated to use the Enhanced Material Search with Creation feature in SAP Enhancement Package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0 (SAP_APPL 605):

Application Name	Transaction Names	Business Functions
Sales Order	VA01, VA02, VA11, VA12, VA21, VA22	SD_01 LOG_SD_CI_02
Purchasing	ME21N, ME22N, ME51N, ME52N	LOG_MM_CI_3

Application Name

Transaction Names

Business Functions

Sales Order

VA01, VA02, VA11, VA12, VA21, VA22

SD_01

LOG_SD_CI_02

Purchasing

ME21N, ME22N, ME51N, ME52N

LOG_MM_CI_3

The following business functions must be activated to use the Enhanced Material Search with Creation feature in SAP Enhancement Package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0 (EA-RETAIL 605):

Application Name	Transaction Names	Business Functions
Sales Order	VA01, VA02, VA11, VA12, VA21, VA22	SD_01 ISR_RETAIL_ENH_MAT_SEARCH
Purchasing	ME21N, ME22N, ME51N, ME52N	ISR_RETAIL_ENH_MAT_SEARCH
Allocation	WA01, WA02	ISR_RETAIL_ENH_MAT_SEARCH
Seasonal Procurement	WPOHF2C, WPOHF2X, WPOHF3C, WPOHF3X, WPOHF4C, WPOHF4X	ISR_RETAIL_ENH_MAT_SEARCH

Note Note

In order to use SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search as a search engine, you must also activate business function ERP_ENTERPRISESEARCH.

End of the note.

For more information, see SAP Note 1341923 and the documentation for the following business functions:

Customizing

You must make Customizing settings to configure and activate Enhanced Material Search with Creation for purchasing, seasonal procurement, and allocation table transactions. You must also make Customizing settings for the following Enhance Material Search features:

search and display parameters
article creation methods
number ranges for keywords
predefined price elements

For more information on default Customizing settings delivered by SAP for these transactions, see Configuration Settings.

Other

In order to use the SAP Search Engine Service as a search engine, you must install TREX 7.10 Revision 20 or higher. For more information, see SAP Note 1249465.

Features

The following features are now available:

Support for New Applications

In addition to Create Sales Order (transaction VA01) and Change Sales Order (transaction VA02), you can now use the Enhanced Material Search with Creation function with the following transactions:

Create Inquiry (VA11)
Change Inquiry (VA12)
Create Quotation (VA21)
Change Quotation VA22)
Create Purchase Order (ME21N)
Change Purchase Order (ME22N)
Create Purchase Requisition (ME51N)
Change Purchase Requisition (ME52N)
Create Allocation Table (WA01)
Change Allocation Table (WA02)
Create Order List Item (WPOHF2C)
Change Order List Item (WPOHF2X)
Create Grouped Purchase Order Document (WPOHF3C)
Change Grouped Purchase Order Document (WPOHF3X)
Create Purchase Order Seasonal Procurement (WPOHF4C)
Change Purchase Order Seasonal Procurement (WPOHF4X)

New Search Engine

You can now use SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search as an alternate search engine when using the Enhanced Material Search with Creation function, instead of the Search Engine Service. Both search engines use TREX indexes.

Material Change

You can now use the Enhanced Material Search with Creation function to modify existing materials and retail articles using a Change Material button in the user interface. You can do this in one of two ways:

Core master data maintenance
The standard Material Maintenance application (transaction MM02 in standard SAP systems, or MM42 in SAP Retail systems)

New Material Creation Settings

The Enhanced Material Search with Creation function has always supported three different ways to create a material: by using an existing material as a template, by using a product in a supplier catalog, or by creating one from scratch. These three options are now referred to as Simplified Material Creation.

In retail systems, you can also create articles using the Material Maintenance application (transaction MM42), or by using a price catalog (PRICAT).

In addition, article creation using a supplier catalog can now be executed in the background for both simplified material creation and material creation using a PRICAT.

Transfer of Material Master Data to Calling Application

New buttons have been added to allow you to transfer the master data to the supported application of your choosing. For sales order transactions, the Add to Order button is available. For all other transactions, the Add to Application button is available.

New Search Result Selection Method

You can now enter an order quantity for your desired search results and choose Add to Application to add all search results with an order quantity greater than 0 to the application, along with their order unit and selected plant.

Personal Settings

You can personalize various settings, such as fuzzy mode, number of total search results, number of search results per page, availability display, and so on for each application. You can also save these settings for future use.

Hide Plant Filter and Availability

You can disable the display of the Plant Filter and Availability frame in the Enhanced Material Search user interface in order to support applications where no plant related information is required (such as the Allocation Table).

Purchase Order Price Determination

The system determines purchase prices with respect to the plant, vendor and organizational data (if available). In purchasing and seasonal procurement applications the gross purchasing price, expected net purchasing price and net purchase value can be displayed.

Price Calculation

The system now provides predefined sales and purchase price calculation using Customizing settings.

New Search and Display Parameters

New search parameters (criteria) are available to support the Enhanced Material Search function in Materials Management:

Purchasing Organization
Purchasing Group
Season
Season Year
Rollout
Generic Article
Plant

The following new attributes are available:

Gross Purchase Price
Net Purchase Price
Net Purchase Value
Net Sales Value
Season Short Text
Season Year
Rollout
Brand
Manufacturer
Generic Article
Material Status
Search Result Relevance in %

Display parameters are now fully configurable per application.

Note Note

Sales Prices are not configurable in Purchasing, Seasonal Procurement and Allocation applications.

Purchase Prices are not configurable in Sales applications, with the exception of the purchasing price from the purchasing info record.

End of the note.

Customer-Specific Function Buttons

This function uses a Business Add-In which allows you to create buttons in the search result toolbar. These buttons trigger customizable events, such as displaying a product image, stock overview, or linking to the Material View application. An example implementation is provided.

Price Catalog Index (Retail Only)

In SAP Retail systems only, you can now export your price catalogs (which contain supplier product information) into the TREX index used for catalog searches by the Enhanced Material Search function. This enables you to find supplier product information that was imported and managed in PRICAT by using a search engine. You can allow PRICAT to create a retail article master record using a selected search result without a material master. This allows the simplified creation of Retail generic articles with all variants.

Keyword Synchronization (Retail Only)

In SAP Retail systems only, you can now synchronize keywords assigned to merchandise categories with the SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search engine. The synchronization feature is available as a button in the Keyword Maintenance function (transaction WSD_KEYWORD).

Display Filter for Variants and Generic Articles (Retail Only)

In SAP Retail systems only, you will be able to hide variants, hide generic articles, or display all articles in your search results. The functionality can be personalized and preconfigured for each supported application.