New and Advanced Business Partner Search in Test Suite in SP09 release of SAP Focused Build

Introduction

Recently in Jan 2022, SP09 of SAP Focused Build has been released to customers. With this release customers would get some exciting features in the Focused Build Fiori apps. You can find more information about all the improvements in different areas of the SAP Focused Build in the blog detailed out here.

In this blog post I want to discuss more on the New and Advanced Business Partner Search which we have implemented for Test suite applications like My Test Executions with SP09 of Focused Build. This new advanced business partner search succeeds the old business partner search. In the upcoming SPs of Focused Build this new business partner search would completely replace the old business partner search across all the business partner fields of all Focused Build applications. The new Business Partner search would be harmonized as well across all the Focused Build applications.

Advanced Business Partner Search Help

When the user clicks on any business partner field in My Test Executions app, new advanced business partner search dialog opens up. The dialog has has below sets of fields (also called as filter fields) available for business partners of type Person:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Business Partner ID
• Search Terms
• User Name
• Max Results

Advanced Business Partners Search Help for Type Person

For business partner of type Organization and Group, the below fields are available in the dialog:

• Name 2
• Name 1
• Business Partner ID
• Search Terms
• Max Results

Advanced Business Partners Search Help for Type Organization and Group

The same list of fields are also available as columns in the business partners list table in the dialog. The users can use any of these filter fields to perform search on the available business partners in the system. Apart from these fields there is also a generic search field available at the top of the dialog. The text entered in the generic search field would be searched in all the filter fields in the backend and the result would be displayed in the business partners list table.

The Max Results field is having a default value of 100. Because of which the business partners search list would be limited to maximum of 100. This has been done to avoid any performance issue in the business partner search. However, user can change this value and perform the search with the desired Max Results.

Advanced Business Partner Autosuggest

With SP09, the business partner fields of Test suite applications are integrated with advanced business partner autosuggest. In the past, we had some customer incidents on the autosuggest feature of the business partner fields. In SP09 we have technically re-designed it which would eliminate the past autosuggest issues.

The advanced business partner autosuggest follows the same principle of minimum three characters for triggering auto suggest as the old implementation had.

Further improvements in Advanced Business Partner Search Help with Focused Build SP11 release:

With the Jan 2023 release of Focused Build SP11 below new features have been added to the advanced business partner search functionality.

1. Email field has been added in the filter bar and the business partners list table of the business partner search dialog. Users can also use any email address in the search field present at the top of the dialog to search business partners.
2. Business partner number is added as an additional value in the business partner autosuggest list box. This helps in selecting the right business partner from the auto suggest box if multiple business partners have the same full name. They will be distinguished by business partner number.

Email search functionality in business partners search dialog

Key Takeaways

1. With the advanced and harmonized business partner search users can search business partners effectively using the available filter fields.
2. Autosuggest feature on the advanced business partner fields is improved to overcome the issues with the old autosuggest.
3. With SP09, only My Test Executions app has been integrated with new business partner search but in upcoming releases all the Focused Build apps would use the new business partner search.
4. With SP11 release of Focused Build, we continue innovating and providing the features which would make business partners search much easier for the end users.

Please feel free to provide feedback either directly here in the comment section or, in case of questions, you can submit them here. You are also encouraged to follow SAP Solution Manager tag here and Focused Build for SAP Solution Manager tag here.

Important Links and Resources

• Usage Rights
• SP09 delta presentation to get an overview of the changes and read the highlights blog
• Read how SAP Activate and Focused Build with SAP Solution Manager is working together
• ALM Community page