Consider this business scenario: A customer orders a graduation gift for his son and wants to send the message "HAPPY GRADUATION DAY, MARK" with the package. The customer enters this message in a text field while ordering the gift online. I will show you how this customer message travels in SAP across the supply chain documents to the gift recipient (Figure 1). You can use the settings and methodology described in this article for all types of instructions.

Figure 1

Data flow of gift message

Transfer the Gift Message

I'm going to demonstrate how to copy the gift message to the sales document header, then copy the gift message from the sales document header to the delivery header, and finally, pass the gift message to the logistics partner, a shipping company.

You can also copy text from a sales order to a purchase order. See the sidebar, "Copy Sales Order Item Text to Purchase Order Item Text," for more information.

Step 1. Copy text from the inbound IDoc 850 to the sales document header. An SAP system configures instructions as text IDs. You can create user-defined text IDs, which start with a Z and contain three additional alphanumeric characters, say, Z999. This text ID captures the customer instructions, in this case a gift message.

To create this text ID, use the standard SAP R/3 transaction VOTXN. You can also follow IMG menu path Sales and Distribution>Basic Functions>Text Control>Define and Assign Determination Procedures. In this transaction, among the list of Text Object options, choose the Header button under Sales Document and click on the Text types button (Figure 2). (Text object is a fixed term that connects the transaction and related texts.) This launches the Maintain Text ID overview screen (Figure 3). Click on the New Entries button.

Figure 2

Use VOTXN to define the text ID for the gift message

Figure 3

Maintain text ID overview

This launches the Maintain Text ID New Entries screen. Enter the text ID Z999 and the ID Description Customer Instructions (Figure 4). Save the entry. The system creates the sales document header text ID Z999.

Figure 4

Sales document header text ID Z999

Add the text ID Z999 to the sales document header text determination procedure to copy the customer instructions text from the IDoc to the sales document header. This text determination procedure identifies a group of text IDs and the sequence in which they appear in the sales document header. The standard R/3 text determination procedure for sales document header is 01.

Add the text ID to the text determination procedure through the VOTXN transaction. In this transaction, choose the Header radio button under Sales Document Text Object and click on the Change button shown in Figure 2. This launches the Text Determination Procedure Overview screen in Change mode.

Now, choose the text determination procedure 01 and click on the Text ID's in Textprocedure node in the dialog structure shown in Figure 5. This displays a list of text IDs assigned to the text determination procedure. To add the new text ID Z999, click on the New Entries button.

Figure 5

Determine the Sales Document Header text

In the Text Determination Procedure New Entries screen, enter an appropriate sequence number in the Seq. field. Select the Referenced check box and add the text ID in Z999 the ID column (Figure 6). The sequence number controls where the text ID appears in the sales document. The Referenced check box indicates that the system references the text ID. You can also make the text mandatory or not via the Text is obligatory option.

Figure 6

Add the text ID Z999 to text determination procedure 01

Now you can transfer the text message from the online ordering system to the SAP sales order through the inbound IDoc 850. To do this automatically (without user exits), the trick is to pass Z999 as the text ID in the inbound IDoc 850using the header text fields E1EDKT1 and E1EDKT2. The specific fields are E1EDKT1-TDID = Z999 and E1EDKT2- TEXT = HAPPY GRADUATION DAY, MARK (Figure 7).

Figure 7

Header text segments in inbound IDoc 850

The standard inbound function module IDOC_INPUT_ORDERS automatically copies the text into the sales document header.

Step 2. Copy text from Sales Document Header to Delivery header. The next step is to set up an access sequence to copy the text from the sales document header to the delivery header and add the text ID to the delivery header text procedure. Access sequence defines the order in which the system searches for condition records.

To create the access sequence use transaction VOTXN. In this transaction, choose the Header button under Delivery in the Text Object area in Figure 2 and click on the Change button. The system displays the dialog structure. Choose the Access sequences node (Figure 8). Click on the New Entries button and create a new access sequence, say 9999 and save.

Figure 8

Delivery header access sequence

Now, choose the access sequence 9999 and click on the Access sequence for Text ID's node in the Dialog Structure in Figure 8. This launches the Access Sequence Header Overview screen. Enter an appropriate sequence number, the text object VBBK, and the text ID Z999. Select the All Languages check box (Figure 9) and save. Checking the All Languages check box ensures that the system copies multilanguage texts for the text ID. This creates the access sequence 9999 to copy the sales document header text to the delivery header.

Figure 9

Link Access sequence 9999 and text ID Z999

Once you define the access sequence, you can add the text ID Z999 to the delivery header text procedure. This process is similar to using the sales document header settings. In the VOTXN transaction in Figure 2, choose the Header button under Delivery in the Text Object area and click on the Change button. The standard R/3 delivery header text determination procedure is 02. Choose this text determination procedure and add the text ID Z999 by assigning the access sequence 9999 (Figure 10). When you complete these settings, the system automatically copies the text from the sales document header to the delivery header.

Figure 10

Delivery Header text determination procedure

Note that for third-party orders, you need to use a workaround to send the text. The sidebar, "Third-Party Orders," shows how to implement this workaround.

Step 3. Pass the texts to the logistics provider. As soon as the system passes the text to the delivery header, send the texts through the outbound IDoc 940 to the logistics provider. The external agent delivery note of the outbound IDoc 940 Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) message is IDoc DESADV01 (shipping notification). Use transaction WE60 (documentation for IDoc types) to display the structure and documentation of DESADV01.

The system transfers the header text to the IDoc through the output processing function module in the header text segments E1EDKT1 and E1EDKT2. The segments are similar to the inbound IDoc 850. Alternatively, you can use email or other means of communication to send the texts to the logistics provider.

In situations in which the customer is a reseller or a retailer, the system could also send the texts to the customer's logistics system through IDoc 856. This sends the Advance Shipping Notification EDI message to the customer once the materials ship from your warehouse. The logistics provider receives the text "HAPPY GRADUATION DAY, MARK," prints it on the gift box, and ships the package to Mark.

Copy Sales Order Item Text to Purchase Order Item Text

It is possible to copy texts from the sales order item to the purchase order item. For example, consider a scenario for which you have to copy the sales order line item text Delivery Text (standard SAP R/3 sales order item text id 0004) to the purchase order line item text Delivery Text (standard SAP R/3 purchase order item text id 04). To do this, set the Purchase order item text linkages to copy from the sales order.

The configuration path for setting this is SPRO>Material Management>Purchasing>Purchase Order>Texts for Purchase Order>Define Copying Rules for Item Texts. In this screen choose Delivery text and click on Text linkages in the dialog. This launches the maintain text linkages. Click on the New Entries button. In the multi-line structure as shown in Figure 1, enter an appropriate sequence number to indicate the priority of searching for the source text, and choose Sales order for the Source object. Set the Source text as Delivery text and save.

figure 1

Use the Purchase Order text overview screen to link to Sales order item text

Third-Party Orders

If the customer orders third-party products (line item category TAS in the sales order), the system does not generate deliveries. In this scenario, the system can pass the text to the third-party vendor through the outbound purchase order (outbound PO) IDoc 850.

Using the outbound PO IDoc (user exit MM06E001 [EXIT_ SAPLEINM_002]) is an easy way to process the texts. You can use the function module READ_TEXT to read the text from the sales order header. Pass the text object as VBBK for header texts, the language of the text, and the text ID as input parameters to the function module to read the text. Figure 1 shows a sample function call.

Figure 2

Sample function call

Ganesh Sundaramoorthy

Ganesh Sundaramoorthy is a logistics consultant with more than seven years of consulting experience. He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a master’s degree in business administration. He has worked in high-tech manufacturing, the watch industry, and retail.

You may contact the author at ganesh_s01@infosys.com.

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