Validating interface program enhancements end to end

Recently I was working on an SAP Payroll & Benefits enhancement project. The project phases were planned as back to back deliverable with tight deadlines. Due to shortage of time, the project team had to work very closely. Testing, being an integral part of all successful delivery, I am always more particular about validating and testing all my development work very thoroughly at every stage. In order to save time, I decided to work with the testing team closer than usual. In the due course I realized that I did not have access to some of the authorisation intensive interface programs to validate my developments end to end. But I knew there’s a quick work around. I could execute any program as a Batch user. The process is simple but a bit lengthy and I thought I should share it with the community.

Here are the steps for executing a program as a Batch User:

1. Execute the program via SA38 and schedule a background job

  Fig. 1

2. Go to transaction code SM37 to view your scheduled job

Fig. 2

3. The program that we are executing here is as highlighted in Fig. 3. The schedule status shows ‘cancelled’ because user does not have authorization to execute this program.

Fig. 3

4. Click on the job item and select Job from the menu bar -> select copy from the job drop down

Fig. 4

5. Rename the job by adding a post fix to identify the job later on, and then click on copy.

Fig. 5

6. This creates another scheduled job under the same user, so go back and repeat step 2 to view the scheduled background jobs and see the new copied scheduled job item (highlighted in Fig. 6)

Fig. 6

7. Now, select the copied new job item and on the menu bar click jobs->change

Fig. 7

8. Select ‘step’ from the task bar

Fig. 8

9. On the next screen, select the job, and click the edit option from the tool bar

Fig. 9

10. The next screen allows you to edit the user name for executing the program, change the user name from your user ID to BHSBTCH (Batch ID). And save the changes and save again on the following screen.

Fig. 10

11. After saving the scheduled job under user BHSTCH, go back to check the job items (repeat step 2 again) but feed user name as * to see all scheduled jobs

Fig. 11

12. Select the new job saved and click on ‘Release’ from the task Bar. The program will be executed.

Fig. 12