Excel with Colour - Background Emailing - History

jj · ‎02-13-2013

Hi I am Joffy, working as a SAP Technical Consultant.

It was always a challenge when Clients come up with Excel related requirement while they need some report from SAP.

Most of the information is already know but I thought of writing my first blog for sharing my experience.

Earlier in my career in 2005 we did an interfacing project for one of prestigious Indian client which made me learn lot

about Background and Foreground mode execution. The particular client was using a Treasury application so they

needed Purchase Order, Sales Order, Letter of Credit and Invoice Information from SAP to their dot-net based

Treasury application where their whole financial accounting activities are handled. We started with function modules

‘WS_Download’ / ‘WS_Upload’ option for pushing the file to that Third-party application and finally realized that it will

not work in background mode as it’s for download/ upload to/from Presentation server i.e., our own Client PC.

Then finally we used the Open dataset option and successfully completed the project by putting the files to application

server location. From where the third-party solution did FTP and take the required file and pull back the return log file.

Then for a US client we had requirement of pushing the data to Bank’s FTP location periodically.

That helped me understand that FTP option is possible in background mode as explained in my own wiki post.

Recently our client needed a report to be broad-casted as email in 'multi-coloured excel format periodically.

There can be many easy solution if we are using some other SAP approach...but with core ABAP...

So I was again in search of various options, discussed with friends, searched in net and finally thought it’s not possible

to produce coloured excel in background other than foreground execution OLE technique.

Then I came across then wiki link based on XML which changed my whole understanding.

I applied it for my requirement which was Hierarchical ALV output and finally I could run that in background too.

My client happy so am I.

Sharing my Excel output too.

So what I have learned is that most of the information is available.

We have to find the right solution and use that. And learning curve never ends for Technical Consulant.