Tuesday, October 18

Navigation in SAP Business One

This Post describes navigation through the SAP business one. At the end of this topic you will be able to log in to an SAP business one company. You will be able to choose how data is displayed throughout the system. You will be able to navigate successfully around the system and you will be able to create user defined short cuts.


In SAP business one there is a possibility of having more than one company running on a server. These companies can have multiple users and each user if given information can have access to each company. To gain access into business one a user must have a user name and password for that company. When in business one, it is possible to view all the companies that are available on the local server. Once you have selected the company it is possible to navigate around the system using such features such as the command centre, the message bar and the menu bar. We would discuss and view them in more detail in the following passages.

To log in to the SAP business one, click the icon on the desktop. After a short while you will be prompted to enter a user name and password.

The SAP business one menu bar is displayed at the top of the screen. The menu bar contains the windows standard menu- file , edit, window and help as well as some generic SAP business one functions. The tool bar is displayed onto the menu bar. The tool bar is a collection of icon buttons that grant to easier access to the commonly used functions such as- add or find. There are 6 main explore functions in business one and these are shown in the tool bar. You can print, send email, send sms, send a fax, export to MS word and excel. The functions represented by the buttons are also available in the menu bar. Active functions are shown in colour and inactive functions are greyed out. You would know that this would change depending on where you are in business one and what documents you have opened. We would now look at how to export some data using the menu bar.

Lets assume we are going to export the data using a tool bar. for example we may open a sales order. We want to export this data to a spreadsheet. To do this we click the export to excel icon in the tool bar. we then follow the screen prompts to save and to enable macros until excel automatically loads.

In SAP business one there are various data input tools available in documents. The four main input tools that you are likely to come across are the selection list, the dropdown list, the navigation arrow and the tabulator key. While choosing the selection list a window appears with a list of possible entries for that field. While selecting the dropdown list a field of possible entries appears. While selecting the navigation arrow you will be taken to another window, of connected information. And by selecting the tabulator key a list of possible entries will be shown. These keys importance is to speed up the process of creating documents in SAP business one. If the user has authorization they can change the field label by simply pressing control+ double- click. This is extremely useful for the system customization and familiarity. These some terms seem unclear and not descriptive enough the user can simply change them.

Let us take an example where the document open is a sales order. To bring in a customer we press the tab button in the customer field. This selects the customer. We can also select the customer by right clicking the selection list box on the right of the customer field. Once we select the customer a navigation arrow appears next to the code. If we click here it takes us to the business partner screen showing us more details about the customer. There is a pool downlist next to the contact on the order screen. If there were more than one contact assigned to this customer, we would say that by clicking on the arrow. We now want to rename a field. To do so we control and double click on the field phone and replace the text. We can also make it bold by selecting the tick box.

To increase the efficiency and navigation around SAP business one, it is possible to create user specific menus and shortcut keys. With user menus you can create your own list of documents that are frequently opened and group them together. With the shortcut keys you can assign the special function keys such as F1 or F2 to certain documents. They are access with considerably decent efficiency. Now let us look at the creation of the user menu and the shortcut keys.

To create the user menu, you must first open up the document that you want in the user menu. Let us take an example where are going to place an A/R invoice into the user menu. Once opened, we go to the user menu bar and select user menu. This opens a new window giving us the option of where to place the document. We want to place A/R invoice in the forms. So we click on the forms and press add. Close the sales order tab, then go to the user menu tab on the command centre. If we click on the forms, we could see the A/R invoice appear underneath. Next we are going to create the shortcut key for the A/R quotation. To do this we go to the menu bar and select tools, and then user shortcuts and then customize. This will open a new window. Lets assume we want the shortcut key to be F3. So we select the pool –down list in F3. We then select the module the document is in- sales A/R, highlighted on the side is sales quotation and press allocate. To test this we now press F3 and the sales quotation shall appear.

In SAP user is given an option as to which language the user would like to view the system in. the user can be using the same company as somebody else and still read the system in a different language. A system has a diverse array of languages to choose from. Another feature in the display settings is the ability to alter the desktop by adding a picture. This could be for example your company logo. There are other values in the display parameters that we would look at later on.

To change any of the display settings of the system, we must first select administration on the command centre , then system initialization and general settings. This opens a window with many tabs and options. Select the display tab. In this tab we have the general display settings of business one ranging from the decimal numbers to the date format. On the left hand side of the screen we have some obvious functionality. The most important one is the language which is located at the top. If you click on the pulldown list you can see the availability of the various languages. If I select german and click on update then yes to confirm, you would notice the system has changed its display parameters and the system language has become german. To change the language back we go through the same procedure. To alter the background display on the desktop, we select the background tab. we can then select browse to search to select a picture. Click on update and now you can see the picture on the desktop.

The function known as drag and relate is used in linking two business objects to create an adhoc report. The possibility exists to compare almost any two objects in SAP business one. For example we could compare the customer code with the invoice objects and get a list of all invoices for a particular customer. By simply dragging a data object onto the field under the drag and relate tab, you can gain an excellent overview of the companies performance in certain areas. We shall now look at how to perform the drag and relate function.

To perform a drag and relate function we must first have some data to drag. Lets assume that We have opened up the stock item master data and selected the product s1001, which is a mountain bike. We now select the drag and relate tab on the command centre. Select sales and then drag the item code across and place it on top of A/R invoice. A report is produced showing every invoice ever created against that product. Now lets say we only want to view open invoices. To achieve this we drag the open field down to the icon at the bottom of the window and then click okay. A report of open invoices is then shown.

You have now completed the topic on SAP business one navigation process. You are able to log in to an SAP business one company and choose how data is displayed throughout the system. You can also navigate around the system using the appropriate tools, icons and create shortcuts for efficiency

No comments:

Post a Comment

You are welcome to express your views here...