Technical Articles

February 9, 2018 2 minute read

How to turn displayed empty space to good use when starting SE80

One of my tasks is to get internal and external developers to read and adhere to our development guidelines which we keep and maintain on an internal and easy to access website. To make them readily available, we implemented logic via an enhancement for Class CL_WB_INITIAL in Method SHOW_CONTROLS which makes the website get directly displayed within SE80 (and SE84).

However, when we recently upgraded to NW 7.50 with EHP8, SE80 no longer displayed the guidelines but just a lot of empty “real estate” under the heading “Welcome to the ABAP Workbench”. We found out that a user setting on RSEUMOD (NOBITMAP) had been switched back to the default value during the upgrade and as long as the box for “Display Workbench News” is checked in the user settings all you got is a fairly empty screen:

I then started to look and ask for options of how to put some relevant information on this screen which eventually led to me finding SAP’s own help page about tweaking what shows up there.

Here is what I did to display a customized message when SE80 gets called:

Started out with some trial and error via debugging CL_WB_INITIAL~LOAD_WB_INITIAL_PAGE where the content of internal table HTML_TAB can be updated to simulate different content for the page
Created an HTML-file based on SAP’s content in HTML_TAB to build the actual information I wanted to display on the page.
Opened that HTML-file in the browser to see how the formatting actually looked like
Used transaction SMW0 to add an entry for Z_WB_INITIAL_PAGE filled via upload from the HTML-file (this entry needs to be assigned to a package and a transport-request)
Used transaction SE16 for table SEWB_SETTINGS to add an entry for ATTRIBUTE = WB_NEWS and UNAME = space with VALUE = Z_WB_INITIAL_PAGE (this entry was saved without a prompt for a transport)

As soon as these settings were complete, SE80 came up with the prepared content.

Note: the German “Umlauts” I had in the text needed to be spelled out with their HTML code (e.g. “& ouml ;” for “ö” – just w/o the spaces!) to show up properly from within SE80.

This is how the screen looks like now with some formatting and a link included:

From now on I can use that page to also push important news to developers whenever the need arises – like when there are some changes to the guidelines they need to be aware of. All it takes is uploading another HTML-file via SMW0.

This is obviously just one way to make use of this “real estate” and I’m sure that there are many others. Do you have any other suggestions? If yes, please share them in the comments. Thanks!

16 Comments

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Michelle Crapo

February 9, 2018 at 1:47 pm

Very nice. I think this is a problem for all of us. <sigh> code reviews will still be important. But the document is right there so no excuses.

Michelle

André Schaarschmidt

February 21, 2018 at 9:01 am

Hi Bärbel.

Great Blog. Thanks a lot for sharing.

Probably out of scope, but do you have a pointer on how something similar can be archived with ABAP Development Tools (ADT) on Eclipse?

Cheers,
André

Bärbel Winkler

Blog Post Author

February 21, 2018 at 9:23 am

Thanks, André!

As I don't use ADT/Eclipse I can't answer your question, sorry.

Cheers

Bärbel

Thomas Fiedler

March 16, 2018 at 7:56 am

Hi Andre,

that is a very good question and I would appreciate to have same solution in ADT. What I can imagine is a "ABAP News" View in ADT as well which comes up whenever there is somethiung new in ADT, e.g. after installing a new ADT version of when connectin to a new ABAP release.

What do you (or others in Community) think about it?

Regards,

Thomas.

Dominik Ritter

March 16, 2018 at 9:12 pm

Hello,

that proposal for ADT sounds good.

Christian Lechner

March 23, 2018 at 2:09 pm

Hi Thomas,

I definitely like that proposal for ADT. Maybe you can get some "inspiration" (if not already done) from STS (Spring Tool Suite):

Cheers

Christian

Wolfgang Woehrle

March 26, 2018 at 12:03 pm

Hi Bärbel,

as of NW7.40 SP10, we provide a new feature for adding your own customer-specific SE80 Welcome Page. It also describes the approach using SMW0.

See here for further information.

Kind regards,

Wolfgang

Bärbel Winkler

Blog Post Author

March 26, 2018 at 1:24 pm

Hi Wolfgang,

we are on NW7.50 SP7 with EHP8. At first glance, what is described on the page you link to is what I did and described above. I was just working from perhaps an older description here.

Cheers

Bärbel

P.S.: Did you delete and recreate your comment while I was trying to post an answer? I found my response hanging a bit in limbo which I now in turn re-created it so that the threading stays intact.

Wolfgang Woehrle

March 27, 2018 at 2:51 pm

Hi Bärbel,

yes, the approach is similiar, but the new process is without modifying the CL_WB_INITIAL ABAP class.

I am sorry, I had to delete my comment, because, I couldn't edit it to make some adoptions.

Kind regards,

Wolfgang

Sérgio Fraga

April 19, 2018 at 7:24 am

Thank you for your blog, it gave me inspiration for doing a similar thing in my system.

The difference is that I only want to show a the custom HTML for specific users.

Do you know if it is possible to add this option only for a list of users?

Thanks in advance

Sérgio Fraga

Bärbel Winkler

Blog Post Author

April 19, 2018 at 7:38 am

Thanks for your comment, Sergio!

I haven't investigated if this can be restricted to specific users because - as far as I'm concerned - this is relevant for everbody accessing SE80/SE84 which usually should just be developers anyway. From the debugging I did, I don't remember seeing any hooks for something like customer exits and the solution I implemented didn't involve any coding.

Cheers

Baerbel

Ian Stubbings

May 3, 2019 at 9:48 am

Hi Baerbel

Just wanted to ask you/others whether prior to 7.40 SP10 we still need to use the code enhancement to CL_WB_INITIAL->SHOW_CONTROL class/table entry in SSM_CUST, or is there a way to use the new solution i.e. the SMW0 HTML page/SEWB_SETTINGS – even if we have to code it ourselves.

Also, was a way forward for ADT found?

And lastly regarding RSEUMOD. Is there way to mass change the user settings to ensure the custom HTML page is displayed?

Thanks

Ian

Ian Stubbings

July 24, 2019 at 4:26 pm

Hi Baerbel/all

Just to add to my above comment, I’ve just implemented the SHOW_WB_NEWS code as an implicit enhancement at the beginning of the SHOW_WB_PICTURE method. I have then changed the load_html_document so the custom HTML is loaded. Lastly I then RETURN to ensure the picture is not loaded. This then works without having to change the settings to remove the flag for the Display Background Picture and therefore provides a consistent experience for < 740 SP10 as well >= 740 SP10

Just one issue – the vertical splitter. Any idea how to set this? It is currently too far left.

Regards

Ian

data:
    l_event_tab      type cntl_simple_events,
    l_event          type cntl_simple_event,
    l_url(255)       type c,
    lv_left          type i.

  if me->html_control is initial.

    create object me->html_control
           exporting
              parent   = p_container.
              "uiflag   = cl_gui_html_viewer=>uiflag_noiemenu.
    l_event-eventid    = me->html_control->m_id_sapevent.
    l_event-appl_event = ' '.
    append l_event to l_event_tab.

    call method me->html_control->set_registered_events
      exporting
        events = l_event_tab.

    set handler handle_evt_sapevent for me->html_control.

     call method me->html_control->load_html_document
        exporting
          document_id  = 'Z_WB_INITIAL_PAGE'
        importing
          assigned_url = l_url.

    call method me->html_control->show_data
      exporting
        url = l_url.

  endif.

* Dont process the picture
  return.

Bärbel Winkler

Blog Post Author

July 25, 2019 at 6:17 am

Ian Stubbings

Hi Ian,

thanks for your comment (and sorry that I didn’t respond to your earlier one which I somehow missed – but wouldn’t have had a good response for anyway).

Not sure what you mean with the vertical splitter being too far left?

Cheers

Bärbel

Ian Stubbings

February 9, 2020 at 4:02 pm

Hi Bärbel

Apologies for the late reply – only just noticed it!

The vertical splitter is where the split of the ‘web page’ on the right hand side starts. Is there any way to control this, so that to the object navigator on the left is always a consistent width?

Cheers

Ian

Bärbel Winkler

Blog Post Author

February 10, 2020 at 10:15 am

Ian Stubbings

Hi Ian,

no worries! The width is controlled via table RSEUMOD and field WIDTH, but can be adjusted by the user as needed in SE80, depending on what actually gets shown in the navigator. There's no obvious option with which the setting can be set to a given width across users as far as I know and frankly, I don't think that it makes much sense anyway as it depends on the context of what is shown.

As an aside: we sometimes get issues with the navigator no longer really visible when the width is accidentally changed to a very small value and dragging it to the right is then no longer possible on the screen. When this happened we found OSS-Note 2527919 where the "trick" with having somebody update the table value for RSEUMOD-WIDTH was mentioned as the solution.

Hope this helps!

Cheers

Bärbel

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How to turn displayed empty space to good use when starting SE80

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