SAP is heavily developing in the area of User Interaction and User Interfaces: SAPUI5. It’s SAP’s new way of presenting applications to the end-user.
In this context SAP developed for SRM the SRM User Interface Add-On 1.0. Its main advantages are:
- Improved usability and efficiency
- High level of user acceptance
- Less interaction or correction necessary by professional purchasers
- High level of automation and end-user self-service
These advantages are amongst others achieved by the possibility to search across the several used catalogs in SRM: the cross-catalog search (across internal and external catalogs). An end-user doesn’t need to know anymore in which catalog a product can be bought.
Search
During shopping with the SRM UI5 Add-on, a user only needs to enter a search key word that is searched across the catalogs connected to SRM. The result is shown in one overview to the end-user, from which one or more items can be selected. The cross catalog search uses the index from the TREX application.
Create shopping cart with cross catalog search: after entering search criteria, a search action is performed on TREX.
Next to Cross Catalog Search it is possible to use punch-out catalogues in the SRM UI5 add-on. These catalogues can be OCI 4.0 or OCI 5.0 compliant.
Create shopping cart after selection from a catalogue. Search action is performed in the individual catalogues (OCI 4.0 or OCI 5.0).
Import catalogue data in SAP SRM
Cross catalog search in the SRM UI5 Add-on is possible through gathering data of catalog items and product data into a single source for searching and indexing. Collecting all catalog data into a single source happens by importing the content of several catalogues (internal or external) and saving the data after validation into the SRM UI5 Add-on data tables (for more info, have a look at the tables in package /SRMN`XP/CATALOG_ES)
The picture to the right shows the possible steps to collect data for cross catalog search.