How To add custom field in T-Cod: FB60 & FB70

Introduction on Customer Field  

A customer field is a database table field that is created and defined by the customer. Such fields are therefore not delivered in the SAP standard system. The inclusion of customer fields has effects across the whole system (as well as across all clients in a same server) because customer fields entail repository changes.
Nevertheless, the fields contained in the standard delivery might not be sufficient to meet your needs. In such cases, you can consider using fields that you define yourself, referred to as "customer fields“.
From Release SAP ECC 5.0, you can include customer fields directly in new General Ledger Accounting, without having to implement an FI-SL solution in parallel, as was required in previous releases. Customer fields can be added to the standard set of tables in new General Ledger Accounting and can be valuated using the standard reporting tools. This may mean that customer developments (such as customer-specific reports) that were used previously then become superfluous if you have created special valuations on the basis of existing posting data.

• In Financial Accounting, you can include customer fields in the coding block. In this way, you can broaden the scope of new General Ledger Accounting by adding new customer fields and by combining such fields with the existing standard fields. This enables you to adapt the information in new General Ledger Accounting to the specific reporting requirements of your company.

              
                This document is focused to give a better understanding on adding the customer fields in New GL functionality and its impact to various tables and usage in terms of reporting. We will understand the process of adding customer fields in FI tables and how we can use in different business scenarios

Why Customer fields:
Business Scenario
Customer fields can be used for many purposes.

     1. In order to reduce the number of GL account count, customer field “ADD Free Info” was created to segregate single GL account for drill down reporting

Below customized table displays mapping between customer field (Add free Info) and GL account code

In expense GL line item the Customer / Vendor account(s) can be traced/ tracked against AR/AP line items.
Example: Expense line item Customer/Vendor displayed as shown below

Segment reporting in FI module

Restrictions on Using Customer Fields during Implementation:
                If you intend to use a customer field, you should definitely deploy it upon implementing (or migrating to) new General Ledger Accounting so that the documents and totals data contain this field from the beginning. It is not possible in the standard system to subsequently supplement totals data or open items with document splitting; this requires a project-specific migration solution. For more information, see SAP Note 891144.
                For the implementation of a customer field in new General Ledger Accounting, different initial situations need to be considered with regard to the migration from classic General Ledger Accounting to new General Ledger Accounting. For more information, see Migration with Customer Fields
How to configure
Customizing Customer Fields
Prerequisites:

1. a) Before you create a customer field, you must always run a data backup and proceed as per SAP guidelines mentioned above
2. b) No postings may occur at the time when the field is created and at the time of the transport to the production system.

Note that you can no longer delete a customer field from the coding block as easily (that is, not with standard means).
To avoid naming conflicts, the customer fields must have names falling within the customer namespace. For more information about customer namespaces, see SAP Note 16466 and the related notes.

The implementation flow is as follows:

1. Defining the Coding Block
2. Changing the Field Status of a Customer Field
3. Include Field in the Totals Table
4. Assigning Customer Fields to Ledgers
5. Setting up Check on Customer Fields (Optional)
6. Defining the Master Data Check

Let us understand in detail the steps being followed as shown in the respective slides
Defining the Coding Block

     I. Defining the Coding Block
When a customer field is added to the coding block, the structures CI_COBL and CI_COBL_BI (for batch input) are created or enhanced. Table BSEG, as a cluster table, is enhanced directly. Using the customer include ensures that the customer field is automatically included in other important tables.              

1. In the first step, you have to include the customer field in the coding block. You do this in the following IMG activity: Financial Accounting (New) ® Financial Accounting Global Settings (New) ® Ledgers Fields ® Customer Fields ® Edit Coding Block.

Note: This can be created with the help of ABAP technical team.
The data elements are created by ABAP technical team. Let us illustrate this with an example.
Data element ‘ZZ0001’ is created with Add Free Info as its description

Similarly the other data elements ZZ0002, ZZ0003, ZZ0004, ZZ0005 are created. Once the data element is created they need to be assigned to the Coding block setting.

The newly created data element fields are updated in the Customer Include structure. No posting transactions may be performed while including the customer field. It is recommended using the “light” (activation) mode. For this, you only need to make the following entries so that all necessary changes to the dictionary and to the tables are performed automatically in the background

Depending on system performance, this may take some time. The system outputs the result in a log. For detailed information, see the documentation on the IMG activity Edit Coding Block

     II.Changing the Field Status of a Customer Field
To be able to change and display a customer field in documents, you need to open it in the field status groups.

To change the field status groups for the G/L account, perform the IMG activity under the following path: Financial Accounting (New) ® Financial

Accounting Global Settings (New) ® Ledgers ® Fields ® Define Field Status Variants. Customer fields are located in the subgroup Additional Account Assignments. Depending on the G/L accounts that you want to use, you can open the customer field in all field status groups or just in the relevant ones.

Besides the field status groups for G/L accounts, you also have to open the field in the field status for the posting key. You do this in the following IMG activity:

Financial Accounting (New) ® Financial Accounting Global Settings (New) ® Document ® Define Posting Keys.

Since only G/L account items can have additional account assignments in the form of a customer field, only the posting keys for G/L accounts can be used here. We recommend including the customer field in the posting keys for G/L accounts as an optional field and using the field status groups for further control. It may be possible to define the customer field as a required entry field for some of the G/L accounts selected, and as an optional field for other G/L accounts. This option is particularly relevant if the customer field is substituted partially. As an alternative to specifying required entry fields in the field status, you can also use validation.

III.Include Field in the Totals Table
To include a customer field in the standard totals table or in a customer-specific totals table, perform the following IMG activity:

Financial Accounting (New) ® Financial Accounting Global Settings (New) ® Ledgers ® Fields ® Customer Fields ® Include Fields in Totals Table.

You can include more than one field in the totals table. Note, however, that each additional field increases the data volume. Other than customer fields, you can also include standard fields in the totals table. Ensure that you reach a decision on this in good time. For more information, see Customer Field.
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp60_sp/helpdata/en/52/185a40aba66f13e10000000a1550b0/content.htm

For reporting, however, it is both necessary and logical to add the customer field (or even just selected customer fields) to the totals table in new General Ledger Accounting. If you work with your own totals table, note that you should always use the standard totals table FAGLFLEXT for the leading ledger. You can add customer fields to the totals table using the customer include CI_FAGLFLEX04

IV. Assigning Customer Fields to Ledgers

To update a customer field in the desired ledgers, you have to assign the field to your ledgers in the following IMG activity: Financial Accounting (New) ® Financial Accounting Global Settings (New) ® Ledgers ® Ledger ® Assign Scenarios and Customer Fields to Ledgers.

You can assign customer fields to the leading ledger as well as to non-leading ledgers. If, for example, you portray group accounting in the leading ledger and only need the customer field for local purposes, you can assign it just to the relevant non-leading ledger.

V. Setting up Check on Customer Fields (Optional)
When you have included a customer field in the coding block, you can enter any information in this field - but this data is not checked. Since a customer field is generally applied for specific structured data or a limited number of characteristic values need to be entered, we recommend that you always run a check. You have the following options for this:

Check Using a Validation
What is a validation: Validation checks whether a pre-requisite is met. If the pre requisite is not met it throws an error message

A validation can consist of up to 999 steps. You can therefore validate data against any number of Boolean statements before the data is posted. Validations are created at 3 levels via, Header level, Item level and complete document level.

A validation step contains the following statements:
You can use a validation in Financial Accounting to check the entries or the substituted field contents. This is useful if the validation rules are kept relatively simple and in a manageable number. You set up the validation by performing the following IMG activity:

Financial Accounting (New) ® Financial Accounting Global Settings (New) ® Tools ® Validation/Substitution ® Validation in Accounting Documents.

Prerequisite statement
The prerequisite statement determines whether the entered value(s) should be checked. If the prerequisite statement is false, then the value is valid and the transaction continues.
Check statement
The check statement determines whether the entered value(s) are valid. If the check statement is true, then the value is valid and the transaction continues. If the check statement is false, the system displays a message.
Call Up Point: Call up point 2 indicates that the validation is at the line item level

Set: Sets are used in many components and sub components of the SAP R/3 System (such as reporting, planning, and currency translation). Before you can begin working with these components, you must first create the sets that you want to use.
Most of us creates a Z tables and provides a maintenance view to store values which we want use for validations or some other propose in programs. However when values are in ranges or amount of load is very low then Instead of a table we can create a FI set which holds the values and also provides simple maintenance in production.
Sets simply hold a number of values for a field. The set is created to check whether the pre requisite is met or not. You define the set in the following IMG activity:

Financial Accounting (New) ® General Ledger Accounting (New) ®Tools ® Sets® Define Sets.
OR T-code GS01. After the Set is created enter the GL account against which the validation check is created

VI. Defining the Master Data Check
To perform planning and allocation in new General Ledger Accounting, you need to define a master data check for customer fields. If you use a customer-specific check table, you can use it for this purpose. You can base your entry on the existing entries delivered by SAP and copy a suitable entry to your customer field. Specify your own table as the value table and text table. You define the master data check in the following IMG activity:

Financial Accounting (New) ® Financial Accounting Global Settings (New) ® Ledgers ® Fields ® Customer Fields ® Define Master Data Check.

 

For more information, see
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_46c/helpdata/en/5b/d221ac43c611d182b30000e829fbfe/content.htm
Once the configurations for customer fields are completed, the fields will be ready for input in FI transactions. The customer fields will also be available for special selection for any FI report execution (refer point 3 below).

So finally we have seen what is customer fields, what is the business scenario where this customer fields can be used and the various steps of customizing.
        Few key take away:

• Customer fields should be implemented in a fresh implementation or if system is already on SAP then for migration , SAP help is required since data base level changes  are required.
• Maximum of 18 customer fields is allowed from SAP
• Customer fields are used for internal reporting purpose.
• With the help of customer fields the number of GL master data can be reduced drastically.

SAP Notes:

• 841884 - Customer fields in the Enjoy entry transactions
• 1259117 - ENJOY/NewGL: F4 help triggers dump

ABAP Debugger

1. News in ABAP Debugger

Request-based Debugging of HTTP and RFC requests

If you use external debugging in ABAP - that is, debugging of HTTP and RFC requests which arrive in your ABAP system - then you have used the user breakpoint for external debugging. There are, however, situations in which the user breakpoint is not adequate - for example, if a request is load-balanced to another server than the one you are on or your requesting user is mapped to another user or is ignored because of a generic user for requests.  
For these situations, SAP NetWeaver 7.0 EhP2 introduces a second technique for external debugging to supplement user breakpoints: request-based debugging (debugging via Terminal ID). A user breakpoint is now server-independent and active on all application servers of an ABAP system.  With request-based debugging you can capture any external HTTP or RFC request for debugging, without regard to the user who submitted the request or the application server at which the request is processed. The execution of the requests of other users is not affected, which makes it possible to debug problems in production systems without disrupting normal operations.

To activate request-based debugging check TerminalID checkbox in the debugger settings (Utilities->Settings->Debugging), apply the settings and set a user breakpoint.

To transmit Terminal ID in case of HTTP requests download SAP HTTP Plug-in for Internet Explorer from the OSS Note 1041556, start the plug-in and it will start the browser. Start your application and press Start Transaction button on the plug-in. In case of RFC requests sent from SAP GUI use Ok code "/htid".

Software Layer Aware Debugging (SLAD)

In the old days of R/3, debugging ABAP business logic was easy. You enter "/h" to start the debugger or set a breakpoint, and you find yourself right-away in the middle of your application code. Nowadays, finding your code in the debugger is often not so easy.  Business logic now relies on application frameworks and technical frameworks and infrastructures such as ESI or Web Dynpro ABAP. It may be hard to find your way to your application logic in the debugger, since significant amounts of infrastructure code are in the way. Often infrastructure code is intermingled in your application code, so that even a direct breakpoint doesn't necessarily let you concentrate only on your code.
SAP NetWeaver 7.0 EhP2 resolves this problem and gives you full control over what you debug with a new debugging mode:  Software Layer Aware Debugging (SLAD). With layer aware debugging you can debug only relevant parts of ABAP code and hide the rest. Furthermore you can define layers - for example, the database layer, application layer, or the UI layer - and then jump from layer to layer instead of running through all of the code with conventional debugger steps. 
It works as following. By using the new transaction SLAD you define specific object sets (or layers) which should be accessed by debugger and hide the rest of the code. In the SLAD you select objects into selection sets (your packages, programs, classes, function modules ...) and use ABAP logical operators (AND, OR,...) to combine them to object sets (layers). Layers are normal ABAP transportable objects. Then you define your debugger profile (SLAD profile), which consists of such object sets (layers).

After you defined your SLAD profile you can start ABAP debugger and activate layer aware debugging (Configure Debugger Layer button). The pop-up appears where you can load your SLAD profile (or you can define it directly in the pop-up). And the debugger will stop only in visible layers of your SLAD profile.  Use normal debugger steps to debug the code within the layer. You can also use a new button Next Object Set to jump between the layers.

Automated Debugging - Debugger Scripting

Have you ever dreamt of a debugger which debugs your problem on its own - in a (semi-) automated way? A debugger which also allows you to write all kinds of information to a trace file?

In SAP NetWeaver 7.0 EhP2, the new ABAP Debugger introduces Debugger Scripting. With ABAP Debugger Scripting you can automate anything that you can do by hand in the debugger - and you win some new capabilities, such as flexible tracing. Debugger Scripting lets you control the debugger with a small ABAP program. The script program accesses the same information about your application in the debugging mode as the debugger itself. The script can do everything that the debugger can do: analyze content of variables, execute debugger steps, change object values etc. It can also write information to a trace file.
You can write debugger scripts by using normal ABAP and a rich set of pre-defined script functions (methods of the ABAP Debugger Interface) comfortably offered to you by Script Wizard. In your script you can stop, trace, or change the context of your program in the debugging mode. An integrated Script Tool allows you to write, save, load, and execute scripts and view traces, your own and those created by other users.

So which are the typical use cases for the ABAP Debugger Scripting? You can analyze the behaviour of your application by writing custom traces or implementing your own conditional breakpoints and watchpoints, you can write interactive debugger scripts to investigate typical error situations (dump analysis, consistency check,...), or analyze and display complex data structures (think of generic application frameworks!).

A new standalone transaction SAS allows you to maintain scripts and display script results.

Memory Consumption Analysis

In SAP NetWeaver 7.0 EhP2, ABAP brings you re-worked and greatly expanded memory analysis capabilities, in both the new ABAP Debugger and in the Memory Inspector (transaction S_MEMORY_INSPECTOR or SMI). Here are the main new features:

• Dominator Tree. The new dominator tree (tab Dominator Tree) helps to determine the cause when you analyze memory consumption for object groups. The dominator tree is the keep-alive tree. With the dominator tree you can easily analyze the hierarchy of references to memory. If you go down the tree, you can determine for which sub-objects your object is responsible for and which objects would disappear, if it will be freed. If you go up the tree, you can determine the responsible objects, which keep your object alive. You can also examine additive memory values. The dominator tree is available in both the new ABAP Debugger and in the Memory Inspector.

• Memory Object Explorer. You can press the right mouse button on a node of a dominator tree and switch to the Memory Object Explorer. With the new tool Memory Object Explorer (available only in the new ABAP Debugger under Tools->Memory Management->Memory Object Explorer) you can browse the object graph of a particular memory object and display its subordinate and superior objects.

Memory analysis for Web Dynpro application. Now you can analyze your Web Dynpro application for its memory consumption in debugger. With the new tool under Memory Management->Application-Specific Memory Views different Web Dynpro framework and application views of the memory are presented. Select in the Memory View dropdown "Application Web Dynpro" and filter out (Filter button) everything that is not Web Dynpro specific.

More features and improvements

• New Web Dynpro Tool helps you to debug Web Dynpro applications quickly and efficiently. With this new tool, you can display and analyze the content of components of a Web Dynpro application in the new ABAP Debugger. You can display Web Dynpro Tool by using the desktop button New Tool and choosing Special Tools->Web Dynpro in the popup window.

• Redesigned Table Tool - Enhanced display of internal tables. The Table Tool lets you view and manipulate the contents of internal tables in the debugger. By using a new columns configuration (Columns button on the Table desktop) you can optimize table display to see the columns you really want to see. Columns configuration lets you quickly add content of nested structures and objects attributes to the display of an internal table. You can store your table layout (columns) so that you can re-use it in your next debugger session. And last but not least the Table tool adds support for secondary keys (the key used can be toggled in the debugger).

• Statement and expression debugging. Now you can debug ABAP statements that contain multiple expressions and statements on the same line of code incrementally: one expression or statement at a time. The new debugger button Step Size allows you to toggle between statement debugging and normal line debugging. On the Auto tab of the variable fast display you can analyze return values of single statements.

Conditional breakpoints and watchpoints. Now it is possible to specify conditions for breakpoints and watchpoints that you set in debugger. The debugger will stop as soon as breakpoint or watchpoint is reached and the specified condition is fulfilled. To add a condition to a breakpoint, open the context menu of the breakpoint and choose Create Condition. A popup will be displayed in which you can enter the condition.

You can add a condition to a watchpoint when you create it (Create Watchpoint button) or when you change it on the Breakpoints/Watchpoints tab in the debugger.

• Special breakpoints ABAP has significantly extended the set of available breakpoints that you can set in the debugger.  Click on the Create Breakpoint button in the debugger, and you will find useful new breakpoints like the following:  
  • Special breakpoints for Web Dynpro ABAP (you can specify component, controller, or method)
  • Breakpoints for simple transformations (ST breakpoints)
  • Stack change breakpoints (stops only if ABAP and screen stack has changed)
  • A breakpoint at non-precise decfloat calculation (stops if a non-precise statement or calculation with decimal floating point numbers takes place)
  • Breakpoint at RFC and so on.

• Simple transformation debugging. Now you can debug simple transformations (step-by-step execution, variables display, breakpoints).

• Enhancement debugging. Now you can visualize enhancements in the stack, skip or execute enhancement implementations.

• Adoption of functions from the old debugger. In the new ABAP Debugger, you can display current generated classic list in debug mode, restart the entire application,  use debugger settings (block sending TRFC, ESI debugging, Shared Objects: debug automatic area structure, always generate exception object, Control Framework: Automation controller, Always processes requests synchronously, check sorting before READ BINARY SEARCH).

• Miscellaneous. Now there is F4 help for breakpoints on ABAP commands. You can also set watchpoints on objects. In the variable fast display a new tab page, Auto, displays the last return values of methods. Among other new features are these:
  • You can change long data objects in the detail view.
  • There is a new screen tool for analyzing screens (control, properties, layout). 
  • In the stack tool there is a new setting for displaying the call stack of an internal call mode.
  • There is a new exception tool for displaying and analyzing the last and previous class-based exceptions.
  • The new console tool displays the growing data of serializations from ABAP to XML for CALL TRANSFORMATION and for classic list outputs.
  • In the ABAP byte code or ABAP byte code (debug macro) context menus, you can select what a replacement for a proper macro debugging run can depict.

  2. New ABAP Runtime Analysis (SAT)

  
  
  SAT is the transaction name of the new ABAP Runtime Analysis Tool which replaces the earlier transactions SE30 and ATRA. As the successor of SE30 and ATRA, SAT can be used for typical scenarios of ABAP runtime analysis such as performance analysis, program flow analysis or memory consumption analysis.
  SAT has a modern and flexible multi-tool user interface (the same as in the new ABAP debugger) which can be customized individually. SAT stores measurement results centrally on the database, which allows analysis of the results from any ABAP server in a multi-server system .  SAT also enables cross-system comparison of measurement results.
  
  
  
  SAT offers a rich set of flexible new analysis tools which help to analyze different aspects of a trace. You can navigate between tools with comfortable user interface features: display specific trace details or focus on the trace sub-area to analyze it more deeply. 
  The Call Hierarchy and Hit List tools, which you may know from SE30, continue to be available. But you can also benefit from these new analysis tools:
  
  
  
• Profile Tool checks out the runtime consumption of components, packages, programs and even debugger layers (SLAD)
• Processing Blocks Tool displays a tree of processing blocks to get aggregated view on the call sequence
• SAT offers a hotspot analysis to find performance and memory hotspots
• Call Stack Tool displays the call stack for each item of the Call Hierarchy
• DB tables Tool identifies time-consuming database statements
• Times Tool provides more specific time measurement values for call hierarchy events
  
   
  
• 
  

3. News in ABAP Testing Tools

ABAP Unit

An ABAP Unit Browser that is integrated into the Object Navigator of the ABAP Workbench allows:

• A structured overview of existing unit tests to be displayed.
• Several test runs to be started at the same time.
• Unit tests to be organized in favorites.

When you test favorites, you can also have the code coverage of the tests in the favorite measured and displayed.

SAP NetWeaver 7.0 EhP2 also adds the tokens RISK LEVEL and DURATION to the CLASS ... FOR TESTING statement to replace the pseudo comments "#AU Risk_Level ... and "#AU Duration ..., which were introduced in SAP NetWeaver 7.0 for defining the properties of test classes.
The class CL_AUNIT_ASSERT is replaced by the new class CL_ABAP_UNIT_ASSERT, and class CL_CONSTRAINT has been replaced by CL_AUNIT_CONSTRAINT. New methods have also been added to the new classes. Existing module tests do not have to be converted to the new classes. However, we recommend that you use only the new classes in new tests.

Coverage Analyzer

The Coverage Analyzer has been extended with these new features:

• Code coverage is now measured at statement level (statement coverage).
• The coverage of individual conditions of logical expressions is measured (condition coverage).
• The coverage of empty branches is measured.
• The coverage of statement blocks executed and not executed is measured in control structures (branch coverage).

Code coverage is visualized in different colors in the new ABAP frontend editor. To measure the coverage of test runs, the Coverage Analyzer has been integrated into ABAP Unit testing.