Business Trends
SAP Customizing Documentation Generation Tool
In this Blog, I would like to share with you the easy way to generate a documentation file based on the customizing transport request.
Quite often customers request documentation of the entire customization effort made during the implementation and especially the PoC projects. Not talking about how useful it is but nevertheless, the document is a part of the contract and must be delivered.
Not sure how many times you faced it – this happened quite often to me and consumed a lot of my time.
How did we solve this normally? I did the stupid monkey routine of taking hundreds of screenshots based on what I remember I customized, sometimes also checking customizing transport requests to remind myself what I’ve done.
That’s how I came to the idea that this should have already been automated. If transport requests have all the changes we made, there should be a way to download such a report. But, really? I have not found anything, neither in Google nor in SCN/SolMan.
So we decided to create this solution ourselves and share it with the community.
Some answers to the questions you might already have:
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What is this solution?
It’s an SAP GUI report designed to be executed in SE38. It takes customizing transports (content of the tasks released) and Microsoft Word template as an input and produces another MS Word document containing all the customized entries with descriptions as an output.
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How can I install it?
- Download the code and the template from the GitHub.
- Create a report ZREP_CUST_DOC on your ABAP NetWeaver system in transaction SE38
- Copy the code into the report and activate it.
- MS Word template has its own instructions on how to change the logo and customer/project names.
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How does it work?
We reused the SAPLink source code (many thanks to them) to get the contents of the customizing transports, then the solution selects the complete entry from the customizing table/view, reads all the fields/table/view descriptions from DDIC in the given language and downloads all the information in a readable way to the MS Word document as per template provided by the user.
- Is it safe to install? Yes, as you can audit the code before installation. Also, please only create the report in the development/customizing system and never in a production environment.
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What NetWeaver versions are supported?
I hope everything from 7.0, maybe even below.
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Any functional prerequisites, would it work on ERP/SCM/PLM, etc. systems?
This will work everywhere. And there are no functional prerequisites.
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Are there any restrictions?
Unfortunately, due to MS Word limitations, we only show the first 10 columns of the customized entry in the final document. However, in most cases it is sufficient.
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Can I use this freely?
Yes, but we would highly appreciate the feedback and reviews.
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Do you plan to support the report?
Why not, if you have any ideas what needs to be extended, or see any bugs, please let me know.
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What does the template look like?
See the screenshot, but it is better to download the template.
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What does the result look like?
See the screenshots below or download the example file.
Many thanks to everyone and hope to hear your comments.
Dzmitry, thanks a lot for the tool! It's really useful.
Also, it would be nice to have a possibility to generate documentation based on table.
Very useful guide. Thanks a lot!
Could potentially save me a few days worth of creating documentation. Thanks for publishing. Much appreciated.
It's a great guide.Thanks!
Interesting guide. Thank you very much! This simplifies my work in such a great way!
I hope this tool would be very helpful in my work.
Thank you for providing the installation guide.
Thanks Dzmitry!
Thank you!
Really useful tool, that will save a lot of time and saves you from routine work.
Thanks!
Former Member
Thanks for sharing the details on the customizing documentation , really interesting and its very much useful.
I am thinking if we can also integrate in some other tools which will automatically create the customizing document and upload in the documents repository .
Thanks, will get back to you on the same.
Regards,
Umesh Jagadesh
Dear Friends!
Glad to inform that we updated the tool with the capability to include the IMG documentation relevant to the views and view clusters from the Transport Request(s).
Thank you!
it’s a great tool!
Hi! Thanks, it's a nice tool!
For SAP CRM declaration of table t685t cause an error. And as it seems be not used, declaration could be removed.
Thank you for this tool! I will definitely give it a workout over the next few months.
I am trying to use your tool on a BW 7.5 on HANA system and am getting a message that "
No R3TR objects in request".
I checked the object and it has the R3TR objects and so does the E071 table.
Any ideas???
Dear Dzmitry,
unfortunately the compiler doesn't like some parts of the cose (maybe due to recent ABAP language changes, we have SAPKB70220).
First, it doesn't like
" p_templ = it_tab[ 1 ]-filename." in line 3171 and after commenting it out, it doesn't like
"LOOP AT it_requestobject ASSIGNING FIELD-SYMBOL(<obj>)." saying 'FIELD-SYMBOL(<obj>) is unknown'
Maybe you have a chance to get this right? (Unfortunately my ABAP skills are not sufficient to do this).
Thank you and best regards
Klaus
Sorry guys. Obviously, as any development it needs a constant support which i am not able to provide here. For most of the SAP systems and SAP NW versions, this tool will be activated without any issues. But if there are any - you would need to ask some support from your development team. I believe that experienced developer will easily adjust the program within 15 mins.
Hi Dzmitry,
i have tried your same code i am not getting correct output based on input file it is download the same output file.(if programing leveli mensition PROG and TABL) then your code is execting) ig i am not maintain prog and tabl it is not execute your code could you please ellobrate if itt possible)
based on input file the same input file is downloading it is not reading my customization program.
Hi Dzmitry,
Thanks for sharing this with everyone. i've tested this and it generates a configuration document as mentioned which can be used as a basis for further editing. It helps to reduce the work needed to come up with a document from scratch.
There are possibly 2 areas of improvement for anyone who would like to attempt it:
Thanks again and best regards,
Chee Seng