58891462-winshuttle-me21n-stepbystepguide.pdf

©2011 Winshuttle, LLC. All rights reserved. 3/11 www.winshuttle.com

Creating a Purchase Order

This document describes how Winshuttle Transaction™ can be used to create a purchase order in the SAP® Business Suite from data in Microsoft Excel or Access using the SAP transaction ME21N.

2ME21N Step-by-Step Guide

Using Excel with Transaction Code ME21N

Create a Purchase Order

Launch the Winshuttle Transaction™ Application from the desktop shortcut or through the Windows Start Menu.

Click New.

Enter transaction code ME21N in the Transaction Code field.

Click Go.


Record

Choose a Recording Mode.

NOTE: For most transactions, Batch Input Mode will suffice, but for downloading information from SAP transactions, or for Finance or HR transactions in which there are Dynamic Actions executing or user parameter values being used, Non-Batch Input Mode will be necessary. The distinction of Without SAP Controls and With SAP Controls is just a matter of what tools are on the transaction screens.

So, in this procedure, choose Batch Input Mode.

Enter any further properties such as Title, Purpose of creation and Comments into the appropriate fields.

If you would like to lock down the editing of the Transaction script, select the Lock Transaction script checkbox. This will password-protect the Transaction script, preventing anyone from changing it.

Click the Next button.

You will now be launched into the ME21N transaction.

Note: The following screens may vary according to the way your SAP system has been configured.

At this point, you are maneuvering through the transaction itself and the process should feel very natural.

That said, to make this process repeatable by Transaction, there will be a few modifications to the process compared to how you would manually create a purchase order. These differences will be identified throughout the rest of this document.


Press the [ENTER] key.

Enter data into the header portion of the screen:

Vendor Purch. Org. Purch. Group Company Code

Keep in mind: The next step may be different than the manual entry process.

Press Enter to continue.

Item Section: Material Number PO Quantity OPU [Order Price per Unit of Measure] Net Price Plnt

Keep in mind: These steps will most likely be different than manual entry

At the completion of the item data, press the [ENTER] key.

Pressing [ENTER] will activate the Filter icon on the toolbar below the Item section.

In the screenshot below, the [ENTER] key has not yet been pressed, therefore the Filter icon is not available.


If necessary, you can enter data into the Item Details section for the selected item as you normally would. All of that would be recorded by Transaction.

For the purpose of this document, however, we will just enter data into the Items grid.

Now, as you can see in the screenshot below, the Filter icon is now active and available for use.

We click the Filter icon in order to clear the item grid, for entering data into the first row in the grid, thus building a repeatable process for executing the Transaction script recording.

Clicking the Filter icon will open the Define filter criteria dialog box, as seen in the screenshot below.

Select the Item Column from the Column Set. Then click the left-pointing triangle. This moves the Item column to the Filter criteria selection.

Note: The next step may differ between SAP versions. The screenshot below was taken from an ECC6 system.

In order to provide Filter criteria, click the Filter Icon on this dialog box.

If your dialog box does not contain this filter icon, just click the green checkmark to provide filter criteria.


In the Determine values for filter criteria dialog box, enter a value in the Item field which will always result in no matches.

For example, it is highly unlikely [and technically impossible] to have more than 999 items in a Purchase Order, at least in all of the current SAP systems.

Entering a value of 99,999 into this field will ensure that the Items grid section is emptied between records & items can be entered into the first row in the grid.

This consistency is key to the success of the recording and running of an ME21N Transaction script.

Click the green checkmark to proceed.

Notice that the Items grid section is empty now. We can continue entering another item into this grid section, so that a pattern is created in Transaction’s Mapper screen.


Into the first row in the Items section, enter the next Purchase Order item information:

Material PO Quantity Order Unit Net Price Plant

Then, press the [ENTER] key. Again, this data will disappear off the grid, due to the filter being active.

At this point, click the Save icon to save the Purchase Order.

You will be brought back to the Transaction application window.

Map

It is now time to create the mapping for this transaction.

Mapping a Transaction script is just a matter of connecting SAP fields to a data file. Transaction provides a Mapper to facilitate this process.

Auto Mapping will map the entire Transaction script to an Excel spreadsheet. Because of the complexity of this transaction, we will choose the Create Mapping option instead.


Click the Create Mapping link on the Map panel.

The screenshot below shows the Expert Tab of the Mapper.

In each of the rows of the Mapper, you will see:

Mapper Row number – this is just a reference number Enable flag – only enabled Mapper rows will be executed by Transaction Screen / Screen Number – Technical screen information from the recorded transaction Field Description – The label associated with the SAP technical field name. Mapping Type – Fix Value, Excel to SAP, SAP to Excel [or, if mapping to Access: Access to SAP, SAP to Access] Value – Values assigned to the SAP field; either fixed values, or values to or from the assigned data source Notes – Free-format notes to provide useful information to users of the Transaction script


In the Data Source Preview section, you will see a preview screen of the selected data source.

To change the Data Source, click the Change Source Type link at the top of the Expert Tab. This displays a drop-down box to switch to Microsoft Access. The Preview section will also change to reflect the choice.

In this case, we will use Excel.

It is now time to begin the mapping process.

The easiest way to remember how to map is this: drag from the source of the data to the destination.

Keeping that in mind, we will be uploading data from Excel to SAP.


Map the Header data first:

Drag Column B up and drop it onto row 5.

Continue across the Excel preview by dragging Column C up and drop it onto row 9, Column D up to row 10, and Column E up to row 11.

To recap, through the above process, we have completed mapping a Transaction script to upload data from Excel columns B through E into SAP fields Vendor#, Purchasing Org, Purchasing Group, and Company Code.

Because the filter icon does not become active until the first line item is entered, that first line item will be part of the Header data.

Now it’s time to map the first line item into the Purchase Order transaction.


Again, using the drag & drop method, map: Column F to row 18 Column G to row 19 Column H to row 20 Column I to row 21 Column J to row 22

Continue the mapping process for the next line item.

These will be considered the Detail line items, rather than Header line items.

To keep all of the Purchase Order line items lined up, we will map the same columns to different mapper rows. You will receive a pop-up warning message. Click ‘No’ to keep the existing mapping.


Map:

Column F to Mapper Row 39 Column G to Mapper Row 40 Column H to Mapper Row 41 Column I to Mapper Row 42 Column J to Mapper Row 43

To allow the Excel spreadsheet to contain data for multiple Purchase Orders with a variable number of line items per Purchase Order, we will insert a Loop around some Mapper rows.

In this case, we will select Mapper rows 36 through 43. Then click the Loop button.

The Do While Properties dialog box will then open.

The dialog box contains default values, which can be overridden by the creator of the Transaction script.

The Start row & End row fields refer to the Mapper rows contained within the Loop.

The MS Excel ID Column field refers to which column in the spreadsheet will contain the values distinguishing between Header and Detail rows.

The Header ID & Line Item ID fields refer to the values within the ID Column field identifying the Header and Line Item rows.

The Header ID and Line Item ID values will need to be contained in the column specified in the MS Excel ID Column.


Click the OK button on the dialog box to insert the Loop around the selected Mapper rows.

The Mapper reflects the following changes as a result of inserting the Loop:

The graphical depiction of the Loop around the selected lines indicates which Mapper rows will be contained within the loop.

The ID Column has been identified in the Preview screen and row 2 contains the first Header ID value.

Click the arrow button to navigate back to the next step of the process.

Click Yes to Save the Excel Preview.


The next step will be to populate our Excel spreadsheet with data to upload into SAP.

If necessary, you can navigate back to the Mapper by clicking the Update Mapping link on the Map panel.

Click the Excel icon to the right of the Select Data File field to open the mapped Excel spreadsheet.

Notice the Log Result Column was automatically assigned the next available column after the last mapped column.

Our data has been entered into the Excel spreadsheet in the proper format and can now be run by Transaction.


Run

Back in the Transaction window, click the Run link.

The Purchase Order will now be created based upon the data in the spreadsheet.

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Winshuttle is the ERP Usability Company, providing software products that enable business users to work with SAP directly from Excel, Web forms and other interfaces without any programming. Winshuttle focuses on a simple fact – when using SAP applications, time is money. Winshuttle’s usability solutions radically accelerate SAP user transactions, saving and redirecting millions of dollars for SAP’s customers every day. These financial benefits are achieved by significantly reducing employee and contractor costs and increasing resources to address more strategic priorities. Thousands of customers use Winshuttle to make their SAP lives easier.

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58891462-winshuttle-me21n-stepbystepguide.pdf

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