automating DMS operations

[Former Member]

Disclaimers:

1. I develop software for electronic control systems, not business application nor any other Windows applications.

2. I asked our internal IT people about this and they suggested I look here.

When we make a new release of one of our products, we need to create a set of folders and documents in SAP Document Management. Currently, we do this manually with the SAP Easy DMS GUI. Even with our process checklists, this is an error prone task. the closest we have to automating this is a "template" set of folders and empty documents, but this still requires manually transcribing SAP Document Numbers in to the actual documents, then "loading" those documents into the empty SAP documents.

I have searched in several forums on this site and not found anything that even tells me if this is possible to automate, let alone a direction for further searching. I do know enough perl and bash scripting to automate creating the various release documents from templates and a list of SAP Document Numbers, so the missing peices are creatation of the folders and documents in SAP DMS, fetching the Document Numbers and loading the actual documents into the SAP DMS documents.

Can someone point me where to find this information?

[Former Member]

Hi Ron,

in SAP EasyDMS, every Folder you create is actually a Document Info Record of a specific document type in SAP.

The documents(files) inside the EasyDMS Folder is again a document info record.

The content of the Folder is stored as document structure on this Folder DIR, where each Position is one DIR(file) of the Folder.

So for example your Folder Structure:

Project/Release

   Release

      Software

      Calibrations

it basically means that EasyDMS has created one Document for each Folder.

Todo the same in SAP automated, you could write a Report which calls the function module

BAPI_DOCUMENT_CREATE2

for each Folder (to create the document). The Folder structure again is the document structure on each Folder document.

The same applies for the files inside the Folders.

Create one document for each file and put them inside the document.

So your Report will do:

1. Create all Folder documents using BAPI_DOCUMENT_CREATE2

2. Create all File documents using BAPI_DOCUMENT_CREATE2

3. Upload all files into the appropriate document using BAPI_DOCUMENT_CHECKIN2

4. Modify all Folder documents and add the document structure using BAPI_DOCUMENT_CHANGE2

I would suggest you take a look in CV04N on the documents created via EasyDMS.

I hope this helps

Alex

[Makal]

Hello Ron,

In standard SAP DMS, it is not possible, without manual intervention.

You may need to develop this and It looks complex to me.

You can discuss with your ABAP consultant to check, if it can be developed.

Thanks,

Amaresh Makal

[Former Member]

Thank you for your reply. Sorry for the delay. My visits here are mostly during release activities.

At least for the SAP operations, I really don't think it is as complex as you think. Below is some psuedo code showing the operations we want to automate.

This seems to me a very straight forward sequence of operations with no conditional logic. I find it hard to imagine there would not be a tool for running a simple script of operations.

navigate to $project/Releases

create folder $release

rfnumber = get document number $release

navigate to $release

create folder Software

sfnumber = get document number Software

create folder Calibrations

cfnumber = get document number Software

create folder ReleaseDocuments

dfnumber = get document number ReleaseDocuments

execute PrepareRelDocs $rfnumber $sfnumber $cfnumber $dfnumber

navigate to Software

import files from $projectImages

navigate back

navigate to Calibrations

import files from $projectCals

navigate back

navigate to ReleaseDocuments

import files from $generatedReports

done