WebGui Frontendprint Button-dependant Printer

[Lukas_Weigelt]

Hi folks,

We are having a situation in one of our developments which seems insoluble within one particular requirement (which is not a catastrophe here).

However, since SAP GUI is not my area of expertise, I would like somebody to verify or correct me:

System Information:

ECC 6.0 EHP 4 SP Level 46, SAP GUI Version 7.20

Problem / Conflict:

We have created a transaction variant / variant transactions (not sure about the confusing terms here) for a standard report which outputs an ALV-Tree. For this, there has been created a custom Print-Button which, accesses the standard print dialogue. This hasn't been done via coding, it's not a modification.

When the button is pressed in backend, it's desired, that the local standard printer, which usually is preconfigured via Windows (Physical Printer in the Employee's office), is accessed. That means, he presses "print", the usual Standard print prompt pops up and the employees just as to push "OK" or Enter a few times, so no intelligent user action needed here; the output will be printed via the physical printer. So far so good.

Alternatively to the above mentioned, this Transaction is being published in our enterprise portal via an IAC-iView; i.e. I have created a custom WebGui service which calls the transaction and used parameters which strip the Gui of the menu bar, disallows for leaving the transaction etc. When within the WebGui, however, the print function (frontend_print) tries to render the output as PDF regardless of the printer, which inevitably fails since the local standard printer is just a physical printer. We do have a logical printer for Adobe Document Services, which can be accessed in the print-prompt, so technically, there is no problem: The printer could be changed to 'PDF1' and it would work out.

From a functional point of view, there is a problem: The user might be confused which printer he has to access, or by the fact that he has to choose a printer at all. This can be dealt with editorially, without fail. But a better solution would be to technically distinguish the button's print parameters depending whether the transaction is called via normal SAP GUI or WEB GUI, so the EndUser "does not need to think" and can just press OK several times regardless whether in Backend or Portal. I believe this is not possible without coding, i.e. this would lead to a modification which is a no-go for us.

Is my theory correct? 🙂

Cheers, Lukas

[former_member316351 · Accepted solution]

Hello Lukas,

The default printer, either PDF1 or local printer of user, is usually defined in the user's profile.  Will these users be using both the Portal/webgui and SAPgui for Windows access?  If not, then the easy solution would be to change their user profiles to always use PDF1.  If you wanted the printer to default to a certain one based on the frontend then you would have to write custom code to check for the frontend type. 

Edgar

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

If you wanted the printer to default to a certain one based on the frontend then you would have to write custom code to check for the frontend type. 

This is exactly the issue and this is exactly what I wanted to know. We'll deal with it editorially then. Thanks a lot!

Cheers, Lukas

[jude_bradley]

Hello Lukas,

You might get better results in the forum dedicated to WebGui (ITS)

http://scn.sap.com/community/its

Kind regards,

Jude

[Lukas_Weigelt]

Nobody so far?

Is my question too "daft" or somehow unclear? Every kind of input is welcomed!

Cheers, Lukas