SAP Materials Management Tip: Create customized transaction layouts

Tip on how to create customized transaction layouts by Matt Johnson, author of The SAP Material Master – a Practical Guide.

You will find that many SAP Materials Management transactional outputs and reports contain far more information than you need. This overload of information can cause you to waste time searching for the relevant data. Fortunately, you can tailor these outputs to show only the information that you are interested in.
The output of a reporting transaction is arranged in a table format, called a layout. You can manipulate this layout to present necessary columns of data in a particular order, as well as hide columns of data that have no value. Furthermore, you can retain this customized layout for future use and even set the layout up to called up each time you use the transaction by saving the layout as a your default layout.

You can create two types of layouts. The first is a personal view, where you can create a customized layout that is only available under your own user profile. It is called a user-specific layout. The second type is a global view, where you can create a layout that will be available to all users simultaneously.

As an example, we will use SAP transaction code COOIS, which is the standard production order information system. This report provides data on your system’s production orders in a vast array of reporting fields. With the large amount of standard information available in this report, it is almost a necessity that the output is refined to a layout that is specific to your needs.

Before any custom layouts are created, the report will be displayed in a standard layout as defined by SAP. When the report of SAP transaction code COOIS is displayed in the standard layout the first fields that are displayed are ORDER, MATERIAL NUMBER, CATEGORY ICON, ORDER TYPE, etc.

In this example scenario we are only concerned with reporting the ORDER, MATERIAL NUMBER and TARGET QUANTITY fields. In addition to those preexisting fields, we are also concerned with reporting the BATCH FIELD, which does not exist in the current layout selection. To make your required changes, select the layout button in the toolbar (see Figure 1.5) and select the CHANGE LAYOUT option from the drop down menu.

Figure 1.5: COOIS—layout button

You will now be taken to the CHANGE LAYOUT screen where you can decide on the fields you would like for your layout (see Figure 1.6). In this screen you will see two sets of data. The data in the DISPLAYED COLUMNS set is a list of fields that are currently being displayed in the layout. The data in the COLUMN SET is a list of all possible fields that are not currently being displayed. To move a field from the DISPLAYED COLUMNS to the COLUMN SET or vice versa, simply highlight the desired field and use the arrow buttons between the data sets to migrate the field from one to the other. Similarly, the up and down arrow buttons at the top of the DISPLAYED COLUMNS set can be used to move fields in order of appearance in your layout.

Figure 1.6: Change layout

As described above, I have removed the unnecessary fields and added the BATCH field to our desired layout. Now that we are satisfied with our selections it is now time to save the layout for future use. In order to save your layout, simply click on the save icon in the CHANGE LAYOUT screen. You will be presented with the SAVE LAYOUT screen. In this screen you can choose between creating a user-specific layout, or a layout for global use.

Creating a user-specific layout allows you to display the output of a given transaction in the format of your choice, but does not affect the display of any other user on the system. Furthermore, your user-specific layout will not be made available for selection by any other user. To create a user-specific layout you must begin the title of the layout with an alphabet letter and select the user-specific activation box (see Figure 1.7).

Figure 1.7: User-specific layout

Creating a global layout will make the layout available to all users. To make a global layout, you must begin the title of the layout with a forward slash (/) (see Figure 1.8).

Figure 1.8: Global layout

In the case of both user-specific and global layouts, you can choose to make the particular layout your default setting by setting the Default Setting indicator to active in the save layout screen. If you do not activate the default setting indicator, you will need to manually choose the layout each time you run the given report. Existing layouts can be selected manually by selecting the layout button in the toolbar (see Figure 1.5 ).