SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe

2010 Wipro Ltd - Confidential

Target Audience

SAP Interactive forms for Beginners

Pre-requisites
ABAP Programming Familiarity in designing Smart forms

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Agenda
1 2 3 4 5

Need for SAP Interactive forms Setting up the environment for Interactive forms Designing and calling PDF based Print Forms Migrating Smart forms Introduction to Interactive forms

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Need for SAP Interactive forms

Why

2010 Wipro Ltd - Confidential

Illustration
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

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Will it really work?

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

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Will it really work with the new Solution?

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

2010 2009 Wipro Wipro Ltd Ltd - Confidential Confidential

Overview Where does Adobe technology fit in SAP?

Capturing Data Viewing Data ALV Simple Reports Adobe Form

Module Pool/ Dialog Programs

Adobe Form

Printing Data

SAP Script Smartforms

Adobe Form

2010 2009 Wipro Wipro Ltd Ltd - Confidential Confidential

Purpose
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.
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2010 2009 Wipro Wipro Ltd Ltd - Confidential Confidential

Usage
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 email.

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Advantage
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.

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2010 2009 Wipro Wipro Ltd Ltd - Confidential Confidential

Adobe Integration with SAP

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).

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Setting up the environment for Interactive forms

How

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Setting up the Environment

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

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Setting up the Environment

Adobe Livecycle Designer and Adobe Reader

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Designing and calling PDF based Print Forms How

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PDF-Based Print Form

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.

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2010 2009 Wipro Wipro Ltd Ltd - Confidential Confidential

Designing Forms with Form Builder

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

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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.

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2010 2009 Wipro Wipro Ltd Ltd - Confidential Confidential

Designing Forms with Form Builder

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.

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Master Page and Body Page

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
2010 2009 Wipro Wipro Ltd Ltd - Confidential Confidential

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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.

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2010 2009 Wipro Wipro Ltd Ltd - Confidential Confidential

Calling forms in Application Programs

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.

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Design Time

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Run Time

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Tcode SFP

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Form Interface

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Form Interface

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Form Interface

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Form Context

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Form Layout Types

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Form Layout

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Migrating Smart forms

Why

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Smartforms Architecture

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PDF based print forms Architecture

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Comparison Pros and Cons

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.

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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

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Comparison Pros and Cons

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.

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2010 2009 Wipro Wipro Ltd Ltd - Confidential Confidential

Comparison Pros and Cons

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).

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Migrating Smartforms to Adobe forms

Go to the Smart Forms initial screen (transaction SMARTFORMS). Utilities ->Migration->Interactive Form ->Export

Cosntraints http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/EN/3b/bb186ddb4441a7875a1 1d46ea6580d/content.htm

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Introduction to Interactive forms

Why>How

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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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Thank You

2010 Wipro Ltd - Confidential