How to: hide / show a previously hidden POWL query?
This can be done either through a straight forward set of screen shots without understanding anything or by going through a little bit of everything related to POWLs and add personal value to your experience while satisfying the customer requirement. I am choosing the latter option and hence this blog. This is my experience of dealing with POWLs as a functional consultant.
Prerequisites:
Basic portal knowledge (navigating + accessing technical details of the screen elements)
Understanding of the Shopping Cart standard roles
SRM backend customizing
How did i go about this?
POWL for Dummies:
1) A little bit of POWL
2) Understanding the POWL user interface
3) POWL customizing
Back to business:
4) Co-relating the business requirement to 1, 2 & 3
5) Analyzing the present system settings to determine what change is required
6) Make the change, confirm its desired outcome
Afterwards:
7) Sit back satisfied that you did learn something new in parallel to resolving a customer ask ![]()
8) Time to get curious technically if vanilla is not for you ![]()
Comments:
The screen shots are hazy, please click on them to display/download a full sized picture since SCN scales them down by default.
Stick to the sequence (of 1 through 6) in the blog to avoid confusion.
1) A little bit of POWL
The acronym POWL seems to have few meanings and is used interchangeably.
Personalized Object Worklist Library
POWer List
Quoting Frank Tycner from Introduction into POWER Lists. The below gives a very good view of POWL in normal end user English
Working with the "normal "SAP GUI view of SAP ECC a user usually starts with the question "Where is my individual workload?". The user has to search for his personal information day by day, starts different transactions / reports with his personal selection variants and when an update is required the user has to navigate to the relevant reports and restarts them manually each time.
In addition, when a situation presents itself in which a SAP user is required to do something which is "outside" their normal business activities, they are stumped and become annoyed about their lack of knowledge.
The idea and concept behind POWL´s is to make the day to day work of a SAP user easier. With a POWL, a user needs to log in, get "his personalized" overview screen and then proceed with his daily workload. In this way you can say "a POWL brings the work load to the user - instead that user is searching for it".
Quoting SAP from Business Package for Internal Sales Representative (mySAP ERP) - SAP Library
The personal worklist provides users of the Enterprise Portal (assignment to a portal role or portal user ) with a list of tasks with specific business objects and the functions required for further processing.Users can define and save their worklists as queries .
An iView calls the requested worklist on a portal page or in a workset.For examples, see Worklist for Sales Documents .
A worklist type (POWL type) is required for each personal worklist. A feeder class must be specified as the base information for the worklist type. The standard system contains a group of worklist types. You can add other worklist types. The content of worklists is structured thematically and created for a specific business object. In the back-end system of an Enterprise Portal, the worklist type maps information about which business object can be processed using fixed methods.
The personal worklists are visible as queries in the Enterprise Portal.These queries can be registered for an individual user or a role.
2) Understanding the POWL user interface
The user interface has three sections: Cagetories, Queries & a Worklist.
![POWL_UI.jpg]()
Categories help in grouping queries properly. But invisible to you there are two more parameters which are important for what you see on the screen - the "iView" & "Application" (APPLID). While the iVeiw is responsible for the portal screen you look at, the Application (APPLID) is a parameter which does many things and in our context helps in grouping Categories.
Hence you can conclude that:
a) Application groups the categories together
b) Categories group the queries together
You can visualize the link as iView → Application → Category → Query
Note 1: The APPLID is an iView attribute which comes built in for standard SRM iViews and can be set by the portal team for custom iViews
Note 2: Query, Query Parameters, Look and feel of the search criteria, Field Status of the filtering fields - they are not addressed in this blog. Assuming the standard query as the requirement keeps it simple to absorb the basics before proceeding to detailed stuff. Refer helpful information regarding this in section (8).
3) POWL customizing
Everything relevant to POWLs can be accessed from the tcode POWL_COCKPIT. Alternatively the customizing path is IMG → Cross Application-Components → General Application Functions → Generic SAP Business Suite Functions → Cockpit for POWL Administration.
Once in, choose the Standard POWL radio button and proceed. Which brings you to the below cockpit.
If we consider the below screen to be the root node then note that this is the place you will declare (or access the standard) Application (ie., APPLID). Eg. in the below screen shot you see the APPLID: /BOFU/DEMO.
![POWL_CockPit.jpg]()
For the uninitiated this screen looks very confusing. If prioritized it gets easier to learn in portions which brings us to two very important buttons.
![POWL_CockPit_Attention.jpg]()
Table 1: Important combinations to achieve the proper linkage for a successful publishing of a POWL query.
Step | | Resultant Link |
|---|
| 1 | Maintain Type | = | Feeder Class | + | POWL Type ID | |
| 2 | Register Type | = | POWL Type ID | + | Application | Feeder Class → POWL → Application |
|---|
| 3 | Maintain Query | = | POWL Type ID | + | Query ID | |
| 4 | Register Query | = | Query ID | + | Application | POWL → Query → Application |
|---|
The links highlighted in green should be accomplished to proceed to the final step.
Step 5 = Step 4 + Category
Thus Step 5 ensures the query is visible in the portal under the said Category.
Step 1 through Step 5 diagramatically
![POWL_Cockpit_Sequence.jpg]()
4) Co-relating the business requirement to your understanding of 1, 2 & 3
When it comes to the business asking for something in a POWL it is very important to understand their ask in actual "POWL speak", a language that can be comprehended only if you know the interface with names that you can co-relate back to the SPRO nodes or say advice given by various SRM gurus. Hence the importance of 1, 2 & 3.
Business requirement / problem:
They do not see the "Team Purchasing" query in their portal screen.
![POWL_missing_team_purch_query.jpg]()
There are no enhancements and we can assume all is standard. Hence we can directly rely on our understanding of POWL customizing and check the completeness of the various connections between relevant objects in POWL_COCKPIT.
The first step in this exercise is to know what is the Application ID with which we can start analyzing.
This document How to identify SRM POWL details and control the actions by Aromal Raveendran is a good reference. The first four screen shots in the document are important for our present analysis.
The above document helped me identify the APPLID to be SAPSRM_OP_PURCHASING
Lets analyze the settings available under the button Register Query in the root screen:
For the said APPLID in tcode POWL_COCKPIT gives me the below status.
![POWL_Query_AsIs_Status.jpg]()
Analyzing from left to right:
a) Our application is not role based (column 2 - Role)
b) The query in question should be SAPSRM_OP_PURCHASING_01_04 (column 3 - Query ID) going by its description (column 5 - Description)
c) The Category SC (column 4 - Category) seems to be in line with what we see on the portal except for the missing Team Carts query
d) Also, the descriptions in column 5 match the descriptions of the queries in the portal screen
e) The Team Carts query should appear after "Awaiting Approval" and before "Public Templates" going by column 8 - Query sequence no
Click on Maintain Query button on the same screen and navigate to the Query SAPSRM_OP_PURCHASING_01_04
![POWL_Query_to_Type_AsIs_Status.jpg]()
The POWL TYPE ID assigned to our Query is SAPSRM_FEEDER_SC_TEAM.
Lets temporarily conclude that everything under Register Query button is OK.
The link is:
POWL → Query → Application (co-relating with the second link highlighted in green in Table 1)
SAPSRM_FEEDER_SC_TEAM →SAPSRM_OP_PURCHASING_01_04 →SAPSRM_OP_PURCHASING
Proceeding to the other button Register Type in the root screen:
Our understanding from POWL customizing says the APPLID is the hook from where we can start our analysis.
Filtering for the APPLID below is what we see when we click on Register Type.
![POWL_Type_AsIs_Status.jpg]()
We observe that the POWL Type ID SAPSRM_FEEDER_SC_TEAM is nowhere to be seen assigned to our application. The only similar POWL Type ID is the one highlighted, ending with an extra "_P". The link is thus broken as far as our Application is concerned.
5) Analyzing the present system settings to determine what change is required
The link Feeder Class → POWL → Application (co-relating with the first link highlighted in green in Table 1) is broken. This needs to be corrected.
There are two POWLS:
SAPSRM_FEEDER_SC_TEAM → This is of our concern
SAPSRM_FEEDER_SC_TEAM_P → This can be ignored in our case
Feeder Class → POWL exists and is ok.
POWL → Application is missing and might be the cause of our problem.
6) Make the change, confirm its desired outcome
Click on Register Type button and create a new entry to maintain the below (thus establishing POWL → Application link).
![POWL_Type_ToBe.jpg]()
Save and go back. Refresh the portal screen to see the result.
Result = Success.
![POWL_Type_ToBe_Success.jpg]()
8) For the technically inclined
Do not ignore the BB Guide linked in the Getting Started section in the wiki. The BB guide along with the wiki is enough to keep you occupied for weeks.
POWL - Personal Object Worklist - ABAP Development - SCN Wiki
Different reports to help with POWL settings and analysis
https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/WDABAP/POWL+Reports
POWL Cockpit, Feeder Class details, Reports, Roles & Authorizations etc.
Business Package for Internal Sales Representative (mySAP ERP) - SAP Library
For the look and feel of POWL and the search filters etc.
Structure of POWL´s
Difference between Standard POWL, Reporting POWL and Easy POWL
Cockpit for POWL Administration - Business Package for Internal Sales Representative (mySAP ERP) - SAP Library
Happy learning!!
Sai.
Save
