SmartForm - No driver pgm exists - how to proceed?

[reedtzj]

Colleagues

I need your advice for a SmartForm design challenge that I have. I have already searched through SDN and all other places but not found any good solution for my problem.

Background:

Customer is using Customer Service (CS) in R/3 4.7. We have installed all available SmartForm templates delivered by SAP also including the “Preconfigured SmartForms” that are not part of the standard R/3 installation.

Now, there are no standard delivered driver programs for Notifications (trans IW51/2/3) and Service orders (trans IW31/2/3). This should have been, in my view, delivered by SAP but I guess it never was time for that. For SAPScript there are delivered standard driver programs for this (example: RIPRSN00 for Service notification and RIPRCT00 for Service orders).

One might ask – why do you need a “standard driver program”? Answer: I need to attach the driver program in customizing along with the form definition so that the users can use the SmartForm printouts from within the standard transactions. And then, why not convert existing SAPScript standard driver programs? No, no way. That is a LOT of work IMHO. To stay with a SAPScript solution is not an option (of course!). To convert another SmartForm driver program, for instance from billing – RLB_INVOICE, is IMHO also a LOT of work but maybe a “last” solution.

Question:

· Has anyone faced this situation and how did you solve the problem?

I know, of course, how to write an ABAP program that can produce the input to a form – there are also numerous examples of that in SDN but I feel that these examples does not solve my problem completely.

Your comments are much appreciated and points will be given for helpful answers.

Regards, Johan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Johan,

Recently we copied the standard program RIPRSN00 to custom print program.

Modified the code as said by David.

But we are using the SAPSCRIPT for printing SHOPPAPERS.

It wouldn't be that much time taking,if you use SMARTFORM instead of SAPSCRIPT.

Regards,

Chandu

[Former Member]

I did this for quality notifications, and i used the SAPSCRIPT driver program. It is not as hard as you might think. The program gets all of the external data from memory, or wherever, then calls the SAPSCRIPT code. It also has all of the code for handling any NAST or other output determination. I simply replaced the sapscript interrface with my smartform interface. Because the SAPSCRIPT version was fairly modularized, it was pretty straightforward.

The steps were:

1. Copy the standard SAPSCRIPT version of the code

2. Remove the SAPSCRIPT related code (open form, etc)

3. Insert the code to call the smartform

[reedtzj]

Hi David

Thanks for that "real" life solution suggestion. I will have a more detailed look at these SAPScript driver program. BTW, which one did you use?

You didn't happen to have done the same for a PM-/CS-order as well? Or anyone else?

Regards, Johan