Master Data Template in IS-U – Data Creation With Ease

Data creation is a lengthy task that requires a lot of effort. Whether you’re a functional or developer, you will come across times where you need data, a lot of time sometimes, to test your functionality. And all you hope then is someone that can help and save you from this tedious task.

Master Data Template (MDT) and Master Data Generator (MDG) are the common tools in IS-U to accelerate the data creation process. MDT allows you to allocate fixed values to fields in any given object. This enables you to create data with minimum data entry.

Transaction Code: EPRODCUST

There are a lot of good MDT templates out there; one that I always use is NEWCUSTPOD. This template contains other MDT templates which enables me to create both Technical and Business Data in a single execution.

All objects are deactivated during the initial creation. For the purpose of this blog, I will be demonstrating the creation of Technical Master Data and explaining features like Dynamic Node, Duplicate Nodes and Virtual Attributes.

Step 1: Activate Object Node

The red dot indicates services that need to be defined (with the exception of dynamic node, which will be explained later)

Step 2: Maintain mandatory fields

You have few options to define the node, mostly commonly used are Parameter & Constant are shown below. For key field (e.g. HAUS), always declare it as a Parameter in order to retrieve the object key after the execution. 

Parameter here is referred to Input/Output parameter – so you can also use this option to supply value to your template.

Additional features:

Virtual Attribute:

You can use this option if value is to be determined during run time. You can use Virtual evaluation category in which you can maintain user-defined Function Module. Function modules for virtual attributes must have a pre-defined interface. Use FM ISU_VIRT_ATTR_REGIO_DEMO as a reference.

Duplicate Node:

In the example below, I have duplicated the “Install Register in Installation (Billing-Rel.)” node and renamed them to “Install Register 001” and “Install Register 002”.

This is very common as we always have to deal with device of multiple registers. So next question that might arise:  “Do I need to create separate MDT template to handle single register vs. multiple registers installation”

Answer is No. It would be silly to do that. SAP comes with a cool feature called Dynamic Node just for you to handle that scenario.

Dynamic Node:

To use this feature, you need to define Dynamic Node on the object level and field level (as boxed below). Treat these dynamic fields as optional fields – if there is no input supply to these fields, the entire node will not be executed.

Also observed that the nodes are now shown as red even though all mandatory fields have been defined.

This applies to release SAP IS-UT 606 or higher. The red status does not indicate that the node is in error. It’s a sign that dynamic node and attributes are used which often needs special handling. Please refer to Notes 1867104.

Now all is done, and we’re ready for execution. Observe that this is a single register device installation. We can leave all parameters for 2^nd register as blank w/o causing any issue to the execution.

Hope you find this document useful.

Appreciate your comments. Cheers.