ESS Offline Travel no longer connects properly to Excel with ITS 6.20

[Former Member]

We are in the middle of upgrading to 6.20 ITS patch level 17 from our 4.6D C4 ITS installs. Our ITS instances are connecting to 4.6B R/3 instances on the backend. In testing, we have run into an issue with one of our HR ESS web app services (PRWW). This service is the Travel Manager offline functionality...and the issue is Excel is not being invoked properly. In searching OSS, I have found the following pertinent notes: 713582, 517687 & 627851. It appears that the most current of these (713582) is now indicating that that functionality no longer exists...and you must use the newer functionality from a newer R/3 system, like a 4.6C R/3 system or go back to 6.10 ITS. Neither of these are valid options...we are R/3 4.6B so we cannot use 4.6C functionality and I just learned at ASUG conference that 6.10 is no longer supported!

Does anyone know how we can correct this issue if we are running against a 4.6B R/3 system? If you have any ideas on this or have run into this issue, please let me know via this discussion forum posting. Thanks.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Any good assistance with this issue would be greatly appreciated. I have received zero responses to this posting. I cannot believe that someone has not already run into this and not found some solution or work around. Please help!!! I will certainly give points for good assistance.

Help!!!

[former_member185704 · Accepted solution]

Hi Butch,

Could you please be more specific on "Excel is not being invoked properly". What exactly happens / does not happen?

Best regards,

Henning.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi, Henning...here is what is happening:

I bring up service PRWW with the appropriate URL and select 'enter trip'. I receive the following error...'Excel can not be started on the server'. ITS 6.20 with an 4.6B R/3 system apparently cannot connect to Excel any longer.

Butch

[former_member185704 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

According to Note 713582 it only seems to be possible to solve your problem using one of the two advice mentioned in the note:

"The offline data entry of travel expenses via Transaction PRWW, however, is still possible if the upgrade to ITS 6.20 is omitted or a separate ITS server is set up for Transaction PRWW with ITS version 6.10 or smaller."

Maybe the second option is possible for you?

Best regards,

Henning.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your responses, Henning. I really appreciate your time and expertise on this important issue and your providing a couple of options/paths for us to take.

But unfortunately, our current ITS is an unsupported release (4.6D C4) and I learned at the recent ASUG conference from Matt Kangas that 6.10 ITS is now no longer supported either...so either option would leave us at an unsupported ITS release level. This would not be good as you probably would understand.

So you see, from our perspective neither option would be acceptable to us. We want to be at a supported release. The only supported release of ITS is now 6.20 so that is what we are trying to upgrade to.

How can we upgrade to 6.20 and still provide the needed previously available & workable offline travel mgmt functionality to our user base? Why was this functionality dropped for 4.6B R/3 installs? If it is there for 4.6C & above R/3 installs, how difficult could it be for SAP to provide the necessary modifications to our 4.6B R/3 &/or to a 6.20 ITS so that we still have this offline travel mgmt functionality with a supported level of ITS (6.20)?

Butch

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Butch

the reason why ITS 6.20 is not supported with the Offline Travel Mgmt. is due to the fact that this application is based on OLE technology.

The technology worked because ITS 6.10 (and lower) and SAPGUI used the same DLLs.

Since ITS 6.20 we support Linux and SAPGUI dlls cannot be re-used that easily anymore, so OLE between ITS and Excel cannot be used anymore.

I would continue to use one instance of the older ITS 4.6D even if it is unsupported. For all other applications and webgui I would use the newest ITS 6.20.

best regards

Gerd

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks, Gerd, for your response on this and explanation of what has happened. I know that on the surface that your suggestion would sound like the best option...just maintain another ITS at the 4.6D C4 or 6.10 level to provide that functionality going forward while upgrading the rest of our ITS instances to 6.20. However, we have a fairly extensive landscape of ITS instances which even include to separate extranet deployments and they are all load balanced and configured for optimum business continuance. Your suggestion would require us to have additional hardware to support this older release as well as code/link changes to point to different ITS instances depending upon functionality desired.

Is this our only option to allow us to continue having this functionality going forward? Are there any other application functionality that we will lose besides Offline Travel Management? What other things used the object linking and embedding activex technology? Some of user access excel & other things from the webgui...will this no longer work as well? Would having a specific version of SAPGUI (for the Desktop) loaded on an indivudal's desktop or laptop make any difference?

Butch

[Former Member]

HI,

I am also having same kind of problem. Recently we have upgraded our system to ECC6 and our ITS version is 7.00. Will PRWW service will work in my ITS7.00 version. If not what would be the alternate solution? Where can i find this service in teh ECC system? is it in SICF?

Regards,

Kris

[Former Member]

Install RFCCOM on the ITS server and use this to launch Excel. I have succesfully implemented this solution, in conjunction with ITS 6.20 (we had exactly the same problem).

[Former Member]

Hi WIllie,

I am also facing the same problem . Now we have upgraded our system to ECC6 and ITS version is 7.00.

Can I use the ESS Offline Travel using service PRWW via ITS 7.00 by installing RFCCOM???If not what would be the alternate solution .Can u please tell me how to install RFCCOM ? Looking for ur response.

Thanks in advance...!

Regards,

kris..!