SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe - …docshare01.docshare.tips/files/15203/152036342.pdf · SAP...

© 2010 Wipro Ltd - Confidential

SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe

© 2009 Wipro Ltd - Confidential 2 © 2010 Wipro Ltd - Confidential 2

SAP Interactive forms for Beginners

– Pre-requisites

• ABAP Programming

• Familiarity in designing Smart forms

Target Audience


Agenda

3

4 Migrating Smart forms

1 Need for SAP Interactive forms

2 Setting up the environment for Interactive forms

Designing and calling PDF based Print Forms

5 Introduction to Interactive forms

© 2010 Wipro Ltd - Confidential 4

Need for SAP Interactive forms Why


Let us take a day to day example to understand the usage of Adobe

Forms

Wipro Guindy Office CDC 1 is hiring SAP professionals

If this data needs to be captured in SAP the flow would be as

follows:

– Design a Module pool Program to capture the hired information

– Design a simple report to view the captured information

– Design a smartform to print the captured information

Illustration


The Answer would be ‘NO’

WHY?

– A lot of designing effort involved

– SAP Logon and user credentials to be provided to every user

– We need to have SAP users and experts sitting in Guindy office to use

the delivered solution

– Practically the proposed solution would not work

– To make it work there must be a huge investment of cost and time

• For design

• For Training

• For the solution itself

Will it really work?


The answer would be ‘YES’

But How?

– The hiring officials need to only have Adobe reader installed at their

frontend

– All they need to do is fill in the PDF form and submit it

– The data can be directly captured in SAP

– The data can be printed

– The data can be viewed

Will it really work with the new Solution?


•ALV

•Simple Reports

•Module Pool/ Dialog

Programs

Overview – Where does Adobe technology fit in

SAP?

Printing Data

Viewing Data Capturing Data

•SAP Script

•Smartforms

Adobe Form Adobe Form

Adobe Form


You can use this new solution to create interactive forms and print

forms for the optimization of your form-based business processes.

This is available as of SAP NetWeaver ’04 (in SAP Web Application

Server).

This solution uses Portable Document Format (PDF) and software

from Adobe Systems Inc. that has been integrated into the SAP

environment.

SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe are particularly well suited to

business processes in which employees enter data in a form-based

solution and then want to transfer this data automatically to the SAP

system. In the simplest cases, you only require the free Adobe

Reader to display or fill out PDF forms on your front end.

Purpose


You can use these forms for pure printing purpose or

You can create interactive forms in PDF format that allow users to fill

out the form on the screen and save their entries in XML format in

the form. When the SAP system receives the PDF form, it extracts

the data saved in the form, and can process it further.

You can also merge a form template with current system data to

generate a PDF document that can then be printed or sent by e-

mail.

Usage


SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe offer you the following business

advantages:

– Interactive functions automate the creation of data for SAP systems

– Full integration into the SAP development environments for Java and

ABAP

– User-friendly tools reduce the time and costs associated with creating

form layouts.

– The usage of the PDF format means that forms retain their appearance

regardless of the environment they are used in.

Advantage


Adobe LiveCycle Designer

– A graphical tool for designing form layouts; it is integrated into SAP

NetWeaver Developer Studio and ABAP Workbench.

Adobe Document Services

– Web services used to generate the PDF forms at runtime; in interactive

scenarios, they extract the XML data from the form and send it to the

system.

– Adobe Document Services run on SAP J2EE Engine. This means that

you must install the Java Stack of SAP Web Application Server,

regardless of the development language of your application (ABAP or

Java).

Adobe Integration with SAP


Setting up the environment for Interactive forms

How


ADS must be up and running

– Note: Adobe Document Services is configured by the system

administrator and assumes familiarity with the SAP NetWeaver

installation and configuration tools.

– Go to transaction code SM59 and check if ADS is up and running by

testing the connection

Setting up the Environment


Adobe Livecycle Designer and Adobe Reader

Setting up the Environment


Designing and calling PDF based Print

Forms How


A PDF-based print form is a form designed for mass printing in SAP

systems. It has the standard Portable Document Format (PDF)

A PDF-base print form has the following attributes:

– A form interface that sends the application data to the form.

– A form context that contains the form logic. This logic controls the

dynamic formatting of the form. For example, it enables variable fields to

be displayed; it specifies that certain texts appear only under certain

conditions (one text for a first warning and a different text for a second

warning); and it can specify that invoice items can be processed

repeatedly in a table.

–

A layout. In the layout, you define how the output data is positioned, its

appearance in graphics, and the design of the pages.

PDF-Based Print Form


Define Form Interface

– You define a form interface to send data from your application to a form.

– The form interface is defined in the form builder transaction SFP

You can choose from the following three interface types:

– ABAP Dictionary-based interface

– Smart Forms-compatible interface

– XML-based interface

Designing Forms with Form Builder


Context in the form builder:

– In the context (also known as the form context), you specify which data

is copied from the interface to the form. You include this data as a node

in a hierarchy structure. In this hierarchy, you also decide the form logic

by specifying conditions for processing the nodes

Layout in form Builder

– When you create a layout in the Form Builder, you define the graphical

design of the PDF form. This includes the positioning of the data and

the design of tables. You can also specify background pictures for the

form, and define the order of the pages.



Layout Types

Unknown layout type: The form has not yet been classified. This is the

case if you are creating a new form or editing a form created with an

older version of SAP NetWeaver. You still have to classify the form.

Standard layout: Use this layout type for PDF-based print forms, or for

interactive forms used in an offline scenario and not integrated in a

Web Dynpro environment at runtime.

xACF layout: The Active Components Framework technology is used to

integrate the form at runtime in Web Dynpro applications; ActiveX must

be enabled in the browser.

ZCI layout: Zero Client Installation (ZCI) technology is used to integrate

the form at runtime in Web Dynpro applications.



The master and body pages represent the canvas on which you build your

form design.

Every form design contains at least one master page that LiveCycle

Designer creates automatically.

Master pages are responsible for formatting body pages. They help to

facilitate design consistency because they can provide a background and

layout format for more than one of the body pages in a form design.

Master pages define the

1.Page size and orientation

2.Headers and footers

3.Watermarks and company logos

You can place those UI's on the Master Page that u want to be displayed on

all of the Body Pages of your Form

Master Page and Body Page


Body pages represent the pages of a form.

Each body page derives its page size and orientation from a master page,

and by default, each body page is associated with the default master page

that LiveCycle Designer creates.

Each body page is created with a default subform that covers the whole

page.

If your form design contains more than one master page and body page,

you can choose which master page to assign to a body page.

Master Page and Body Page


FP_JOB_OPEN opens the spool job.

FP_FUNCTION_MODULE_NAME gets the form name.

Call the Generated function module of the form

FP_JOB_CLOSE closes the spool job.

Calling forms in Application

Programs


Design Time


Run Time


Tcode SFP


Form Interface


Form Context


Form Layout Types


Form Layout


Migrating Smart forms Why


Smartforms Architecture


PDF based print forms Architecture


Development:

Every form has layout problems at some point in time. Text is too

low the page; the first name is not aligned with the last name, tables

don’t display correctly etc

The first advantage of PDF in comparison with Smart Forms.

The Adobe LiveCycle Designer (ALD) is at first sight simple, yet

powerful and comprehensive. So to build a layout is easier with PDF

forms for people with limited experience.

Comparison – Pros and Cons


Front-end and clients

The PDF requires Adobe Reader to display PDF forms. Nowadays,

almost every workstation has Adobe Reader installed on it. Reader

is not required to print forms: hopefully, the normal PDF drivers are

supported in SAP systems as well as most of standard printer

drivers.

Interactive and Dynamic Features

Compatibility



Architecture

– PDF requires a J2EE stack with ADS properly configured and with

connections between both systems up and running.

– There are web services calls between the ABAP and J2EE stacks,

which makes for additional connections to handle.

– In terms of architecture, the PDF seems to require more attention.

Although, the J2EE stack with ADS is installed and configured in

standard as of the ERP2004 so there should be no particular worries

about this.



Performance

– The ADS component is also heavy and the rendering time of a very

complex PDF form, with lots of scripting logic and data to display, can

take some time. This may result in heavy documents. Another reason

for the sometimes slow performance is the web service connection.

– This performance issue must be taken into account when considering

high volume printing and complex forms.

– Of course, be aware there are possibilities to improve PDF rendering

time. Form bundling is one of them (the bundling principle is to send

multiple forms in one call to ADS).



Go to the Smart Forms initial screen (transaction SMARTFORMS).

Utilities ->Migration->Interactive Form ->Export

Migrating Smartforms to Adobe forms

Cosntraints

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/EN/3b/bb186ddb4441a7875a1

1d46ea6580d/content.htm

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/EN/3b/bb186ddb4441a7875a11d46ea6580d/content.htm







Introduction to Interactive forms Why>How


Interactive Forms

Offline Interactive Forms

•Fill in the form send via Email

•Fill in the form and submit the form via web service

•Upload the form in SAP

Online Interactive Forms

•Embed the form in WebDynpro Application

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