SAP ABAP — Screen Navigation
You are here because you are new to ABAP, right? And SAP could be more familiar to you yeah? Not to worry! You are at the right stop. You are welcome to read my previous articles in the SAP ABAP series.
In this chapter, I will be taking you on a tour to make you familiar with the screen navigations and toolbar functionalities that you will be using in the future. These are very basic knowledge that you need to have to be comfortable and confident when you work with SAP ABAP.
There are several themes in SAP Logon which can be slightly different from each other. I have used the SAP Signature theme which is the most user-friendly theme for a beginner according to my point of view. But you are welcome to use any theme that you are comfortable with.
Let us start our tour!
Login Screen
Our first destination is the Login Screen. This is a very simple screen that you can hardly be lost. So, once you log on to the SAP server, the SAP login screen will prompt, and it will look like the below screenshot.
Here, there are 3 inputs that you need to be careful. Client, User ID and the password. All this information will be given to you by the system administrator. But, once you get those, and when you are logging in for the first time, you can change the password using the “New Password” option. And that is recommended to do to prevent any harm that can be caused by some third party using your initial password. So, once you provide a valid user ID and Password, press ENTER and you now, you are logged in.
Simple as that!
Toolbar
Once you are logged in, you will be directed to the ‘SAP Easy Access’ screen. There are five main categories that you need to be familiar with.
Menu Bar — The menu bar is the top line of any window. There you can see several tabs that will be useful in the future. Click on each one of them and see whether there are any familiar words you can find.
Command Field — The command field is where you enter the transaction codes to navigate from one page to another. Now, I understand that maybe you have no idea what transaction codes are. But, in the future, you will know what they are and how to use them.
In the SAP vocabulary, we call transaction codes “T-Codes”. “What’s the tcode?”, “Is this the tcode?” or “Do you have the tcode?”. Be prepared to hear these in the future once you become an SAP ABAP developer! GOOD LUCK!
Standard Toolbar — Most standard functions are available in the standard toolbar. If you put your cursor on those icons, you will be able to see their help texts and even though some of the icons are very new to the eye, they are just the normal standard functions.
Title Bar — The title bar displays the name of the application or the business process you are currently in.
Application Toolbar — The application toolbar contains some specific menu options. There you can see icons such as, ‘Add to favourites’, ‘Delete favourites’ and ‘Change favourites’.
I understand that you can be still not very familiar with or comfortable in this environment, but trust me, once you go ahead and sharpen yourself in SAP ABAP, these are just peanuts.
ABAP Editor
To navigate to the ABAP editor, you need to enter the ‘SE38’ transaction code in the command field.
Once you create or enter an existing program name, you will be directed to the ABAP editor.
Standard Keys and Icons
Now, you are directed to the ABAP editor. You can see that there is a huge variety of keys and icons. For starters, I will be explaining some of them which are mostly used when it comes to using the ABAP editor.
Exit keys — The exit keys are used to go back to the last accessed screen (BACK KEY), to exit the program (EXIT KEY) or to log off (CANCEL KEY).
As the main icons of the ABAP editor, I introduce you to the Check, Activate and Processing icons.
Once you write a program in the ABAP editor, you can use the CHECK icon to check whether there are any syntax errors in the code. To activate a saved program, you use the ACTIVATE icon. After activation, to execute your program, you can use the PROCESSING icon.
Just keep in mind that there are keyboard shortcuts for many of these icons and standard keys. F3 to ‘Go Back’, F12 to ‘Cancel’ and ‘F8’ to ‘Execute’, etc. Those will be way easier to use once you are comfortable with the SAP ABAP environment.
Log Off
As a good and well-behaved ABAP developer, it is always the best practice to Exit from the ABAP editor and then log off from the SAP system once finishing your work.
To log off from the SAP system, click on the ‘System’ tab on the menu bar and at the bottom of the selection box, select ‘Log off’.
Alright! Isn’t it simple?
Well, CONGRATULATIONS! You are now comfortable with screen navigation in SAP. Don’t worry, take your time and practice. And make sure, one step at a time. See you with another exciting ABAP topic. Till then, keep trying to be the best version of yourself. Good luck!
