Many call center scenarios require additional data to better track interactions with customers and to increase the quality of customer service. In this example, I added a new field that I called Tracking No. on the header level of the business transaction and then included it on the Status view of the interaction record. This allows the agent to assign a unique number to each interaction that the company can use to track the reported issue. To add the new field to the view, two steps are required. First, enhance the data model using Easy Enhancement Workbench (EEW). Then add the Tracking No. field to the Interaction Center (IC) WebClient user interface (UI). You use only standard tools for this process with very little custom coding, which reduces the impact of applying Support Packages. Also it is not necessary to have extensive ABAP or HTML knowledge.

Step 1. Enhance the Data Model in EEW

EEW guides you through the process by providing a wizard to add the new field, which then is available to the data model. The first step is to create a new project in the EEW, which you use to handle the extension to the data model. For my example, I created the project Z_DEMO_CRM2007. (Note that the “CRM2007” portion refers to the year I created the demo and not the SAP CRM 2007 release.) To create an extension for your project, right-click on it and select Create Extension. In the screen that appears, enter the name, description, business object, and extension type (Figure 1). Click on the enter icon to continue, which starts the wizard to enhance the data model for the business transaction.   In the next wizard screen, provide a title for your extension and click on the Continue button to select the business transaction types. These types control to which screens the wizard adds the new fields. For this example I chose to enhance the business transaction types Business Activity and Service Process (Figure 2). Click on the Continue button to get to the next screen.   In the Define Fields screen that appears, enter the new field for the tracking number (Figure 3). Provide a label for the field, such as Tracking Number. For the Data Type, you can either select a generic data type, such as CHAR Character with a specific length (in this example 20), or you can select a specific existing data element. Click on the plus icon in the wizard to show the fields for the Field Name on the Data Dictionary structures and the Data element. Enter a name for your field, such as ZZ_TRACKING_NO, and click on the Continue button.   Next you need to determine if the new field is relevant for the header, item, or both. I want the new field to appear in the header, so I selected the Head check box (Figure 4). Click on the Continue button to select the integration for the different scenarios, such as mobile clients, R/3, SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (SAP NetWeaver BI), and the extended search in the People-Centric UI (PCUI) (Figure 5).     After you complete these settings, the system generates the required objects: • Tables, structures, data elements • Function modules and Business Add-In (BAdI) for SAPGUI integration • Customizing settings for SAPGUI transactions In this example the system adds the field to the structure CUSTOMER_H of the data model for the CRM business transaction. When the generation is finished, you can use the new field. The data model for business transactions can now handle the new field, regardless of the UI.

Tips for Enhancing the Data Model

You can alter an extension you created in EEW by using the wizard at the same extension more than once. However, if you changed the code generated by EEW manually, running the wizard again overwrites these manual changes. Furthermore, I strongly recommend that you ensure that no users log on to the system while you are creating the EEW enhancements. This prevents users from locking objects — in particular Data Dictionary objects — that EEW must alter. If users lock these objects, the process results in an incomplete generation and leaves many objects corrupted. Finally, although it is possible to alter existing extensions, you should make sure that the fields you add using EEW are absolutely required and defined correctly. Changing or deleting extensions sometimes results in problems with the generation, which can only be resolved by a very experienced technical person or with guidance from SAP.

Step 2. Add the Tracking Field to the IC WebClient UI

Before starting the enhancement, you need to create a Business Server Page (BSP) application — in this example Y_2007_IC — in ABAP Workbench (transaction SE80). Also in the Customizing (SPRO) you must create a new IC WebClient runtime profile — Y_CRM2007_C in this example — as a copy of the runtime profile DEFAULT. To do this, use transaction CRMC_IC_RTFRAMEWORK or follow IMG menu path Customer Relationship Management>Interaction Center WebClient>Customer-Specific System Modifications>Define IC WebClient Runtime Framework Profile. With the enhanced data model, you can add the new field, Tracking No., to a view of the IC WebClient, such as IRecReason (Figure 6). To do this, you use the BSP application Y_2007_IC you just created with a corresponding runtime profile Y_CRM2007_C in the IC WebClient Workbench (BSP_WD_WORKBENCH).   First, copy the view IRecReason from the standard BSP application CRM_IC to your own BSP application, which also copies the controller. Select the BSP application CRM_IC when you start the IC WebClient Workbench, and from the Views sub-tree select the view IRecReason. After right-clicking on the view, select Copy to copy the view into your own BSP application (Figure 7).   After this, start the IC WebClient Workbench for your newly created BSP application Y_2007_IC and runtime profile Y_CRM2007_C. Double-click on the view IRecReason to display the structure of the view and controller. Open the Context of the controller, right-click on the Context Node, and select Create to create a new context node for the additional field. Again, a wizard helps you create the new context node — in this example, CUSTOMERH — and adjusts the context to handle the data transfer automatically (Figure 8). When you add a context node that has not been part of a view, make sure you select AlwaysCreateInstance, which generates the code required to establish the link to the new context node.   To tell the IC WebClient Runtime Framework to call your new view instead of the standard SAP view, you have to maintain the controller substitutes in your runtime profile Y_CRM2007_C in the IMG (Figure 9).   As a last step, you need to adjust the HTML code to display the field on the view (Figure 10). To access the HTML code, simply double-click on the view layout for IRecReason.htm in your BSP application. Note that in the previous step, the wizard created a page attribute CUSTOMERH automatically, as a reference to the data model structure CUSTOMER_H.   For this example I added the code in Figure 10 after the drop-down menu for the result (//SubjectG/Result) to make the Tracking No. field appear. After activating all the objects, the new field is ready for the agent to use in the IC WebClient interaction record (Figure 11).