Preface – This post is part of the ABAP Beginner series.

In the previous tutorial, we have learned about the basics of SAP Smart Forms. Let’s learn about the screen and windows in SAP Smart Forms Builder.

Introduction

SAP Smart Forms provides a graphical user interface that allows us to create and maintain the layout and the form logic of the form. The graphical user interface is known as the SAP Form Builder.

The SAP Form Builder is divided into three sections:

SAP Smart Forms Builder

1. Navigation Window: It consists of nodes and sub-nodes, which contain all the elements like windows, texts, etc. It shows the hierarchical structure of the Smart Forms and maintains the form logic. It has 2 root nodes by default for every Smart Forms:

• General setting’s node to maintain Form Attributes, Form Interface, and Global Definitions. The Global Definitions contain the data that are available throughout the Smart Forms and the Form Interface contains the data which will be passed to the Smart Forms from the calling ABAP program.
• Pages and Windows to create pages of the form, position elements on the pages, and determine the flow of the process of the elements.

2. Maintenance Window: It is used to maintain the attributes of all the elements in the navigation tree nodes. In this window, depending on the node type, additional graphical tools are integrated.

• PC Editor for the text nodes.
• Table Painter for tables and template nodes.

3. Form Painter: It is used to design the layout of the page of the Smart Forms. It allows us to add Windows and graphics, determine their position and size. It can be displayed or suppressed by selecting Form Painter on/off.

Features

1.      Navigation

If a node is selected in the Navigation Window, the system displays the corresponding maintenance screen and highlights the corresponding window in the Form Painter.

Also, on selecting a window in Form Painter, the system highlights the corresponding node in the tree and displays the corresponding maintenance screen for the selected window.

2.      Updating the form

Some settings such as height, width, etc. that are done graphically in the Form Painter are automatically copied to the maintenance screen. However, if the attributes are changed in the maintenance screen, it reflects the Navigation screen and Form Painter only after RETURN is pressed.

3.      Service function

The Form Builder provides the following service functions:

• It has a field list that contains all fields of the Smart Forms.
• It has an error list.
• It allows us to undo/redo the changes to the form description.
• It allows uploading and downloading the form locally.
• It allows returning to the last active version of the form.