Enabling sap output management post data archiving
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The document discusses the limitations of SAP Output Management post data archiving, highlighting that formatted documents cannot be printed or displayed due to technical restrictions. It presents approaches to overcome this limitation, including archiving documents in PDF format before transaction data is archived and customizing the SAP 'driver' programs to read archived data. These solutions allow users to generate document outputs even after transactions have been archived, making data archiving more feasible for organizations.
Enabling sap output management post data archiving
- 1. Enabling SAP Output Management post Data Archiving The SAP Output Management system, which is part of standard SAP functionality, formats SAP documents using standard or custom smart forms. The system passes the formatted document on to the host output system for printing or it displays the document on the SAP screen, which for example, is downloadable as a PDF. Such document output is very common across SAP application processes such as Billing, Delivery, Goods Receipt, Invoicing etc. Let us now consider the scenario where these transaction data are archived from the SAP system into archive files, stored either locally in the SAP server’s file system or in an external archive system such as OpenText. Would you still be able to display or print output documents for these transactions by using standard SAP screens? The answer unfortunately is that such document output is no longer possible post archiving due to a technical limitation. The limitation is that the standard SAP “driver” programs (that read the required data into a Smart Form for output), do not have the ability to also read archived data. On the other hand, the standard SAP transactions and screens that do support access to archived data, do not also support output management. For various reasons, both regulatory as well as business-driven, customers often need to output SAP business documents using smart forms long after the transaction is cleared/closed and archived from SAP. The aforementioned limitation poses a problem for such customers and is often a deterrent in seeking approval for implementing data archiving in the organization. Avaali Solutions Pvt. Ltd. has recommended and implemented some smart approaches to overcome this limitation for several SAP install base customers. One approach is to create and store/archive the output document (typically in PDF format) via ArchiveLink functionality, before the SAP transaction data itself is archived. This allows the output document to be viewed as an attachment in standard SAP reports and transactions. However this approach may not always be practical. For example, customers who do not have an ArchiveLink certified repository in place will not be able to archive the output documents as attachments. Some other customers may have a lot of such transaction data in the system which could require output post archiving. It is a very tedious task to generate and archive output documents for a large number of older transaction data in bulk. The other approach that has been implemented successfully for customers is to customize the “driver” programs behind Smart Forms so that it is also possible to read archived data to regenerate output. This has worked well for several customers, they are now able to do an “issue output” from within SAP transactions, even though the corresponding transaction data has been archived. Therefore there is no effort required to issue output for documents in bulk, before data archiving can be undertaken.