Tips on SAP Purchasing transactions (e.g. ME21N, ME51N, etc.)

Background

In SAP, some specific controls have dynamic behaviors that might have an effect during automated playback. In order to avoid those errors during execution, we have put together some recommendations around recording the following controls and still keep the same functional behavior as expected by the person creating the recording.

The recommendations below explain how to record certain events on these controls:

• Collapsible/expandable panes

• Document Overview button

Applies to

• SAP GUI

• SAP GUI for HTML (ITS transactions)

Recording collapsible/expandable pane

The typical approach for expanding and/or collapsing a pane would be to click on the toggle button. However, this could be a problem during playback since sometimes the panes are not found in the same state as they were recorded, thus the automation engine might not recognize the button all the time.

To avoid this, we have the following recommendation to be taken into consideration while recording a flow in Qualibrate:

1. Turn on the Qualibrate recorder

2. Navigate to a transaction where you can find a collapsible pane (e.g. ME21N)

3. Find a section that is "collapsed"; in this example, the "Header" section is collapsed

4. Hover the mouse (without clicking) on top of the "Expand Header" button

5. A tooltip will be displayed while the mouse is on top of the button; this tooltip will contain the keyboard shortcut to expand the header (for expanding the header, the key shortcut will always be Ctrl+F2)

6. Now that you know the key shortcut, physically press the key combination on your keyboard. The Qualibrate recorder will record the event

7. Save your recording

8. The recorded step in your flow should look like this: 

Recording "Document Overview" toggle button

To record this button so it doesn't cause playback failures, we recommend the user to record the key combination instead of clicking on the button.

The procedure is the following:

1. Turn on the Qualibrate recorder

2. Navigate to a transaction where you can find a "Document Overview On/Off" button (e.g. ME21N)

3. Hover the mouse (without clicking) on top of the "Document Overview" button

4. A tooltip will be displayed while the mouse is on top of the button; this tooltip will contain the keyboard shortcut to open/close the document overview pane:

   1. F8: Will always open the "Document Overview" pane

   2. F9: Will always close the "Document Overview" pane

5. Now that you know the key shortcut, physically press the key combination on your keyboard. The Qualibrate recorder will record the event

6. Save your recording

7. The recorded step in your flow should look like this: