Some while ago there was already a blog on the rising use of factories and factory injection in the area of TM planning and as time passed, I want to continue the path of extensibility enablement in the transportation cockpit.

Decoupling of Behavior and Action Handling

With 2021 we introduced a concept which decouples common code from certain specific handling which need to be done for certain object or action.

The concept work as following:

• There is a factory class which creates classes which should deliver certain action handling code structured via an interface.
• There is one method in the interface which is used to define what action this class is handling.
• When the factory is instantiated, it checks all classes implementing the action handling interface and builds up a catalog of action to the handling class.
• When a consumer needs the action handler the catalog is checked, and the correct class is instantiated.

With that in place new actions only need to implement the interface and plug into the existing code w/o the need to touch that one.

How to use this concept

With the refactoring of major technical parts of the transportation cockpit we introduced above concept for the transportation cockpit actions via the interface /SCMTMS/IF_UI_TCACT. To have further a structured handling as well as convenience functions the abstract class /SCMTMS/CL_UI_TCACT_BASE implements this one.

New button in the transportation cockpit

Now if you want to create a new button in the cockpit, you need to do the following:

1) Create a new class implementing the interface (best also inherit from our base super class) and redefine the methods needed.

In a small example I implemented the action handler for a new button in the application toolbar:

• • the necessary get_action_id method populating that my new action handler should be called for the “ZTB_NEW_TC_ACTION” action
  • the execute method for raising a message telling my code is executed
  • the check_selection method as the superclass was expecting at least any selection and I didn’t want one to be necessary

CLASS ztb_cl_ui_tcact_enhancement DEFINITION
  PUBLIC
  INHERITING FROM /scmtms/cl_ui_tcact_base
  CREATE PUBLIC .
  PUBLIC SECTION.
    METHODS:
      /scmtms/if_ui_tcact~get_action_ids  REDEFINITION .
  PROTECTED SECTION.
    METHODS:
       execute         REDEFINITION ,
       check_selection REDEFINITION.
    CONSTANTS sc_my_action_id TYPE fpm_event_id VALUE 'ZTB_NEW_TC_ACTION'.
    CONSTANTS:
      BEGIN OF sc_messages,
        class         TYPE string VALUE 'ZTB_ACTION_MESSAGE',
        num_my_action TYPE i      VALUE 0,
      END OF sc_messages.
  PRIVATE SECTION.
ENDCLASS.

CLASS ZTB_CL_UI_TCACT_ENHANCEMENT IMPLEMENTATION.
  METHOD /scmtms/if_ui_tcact~get_action_ids.
    rt_action_ids = VALUE #( (  sc_my_action_id ) ).
  ENDMETHOD.
 
  METHOD check_selection.
    "do nothing in check selection as the new global button does not need a selection
  ENDMETHOD.

  METHOD execute.
    " just raise some message showing that this code was called
    et_messages = VALUE #( ( severity = 'W' msgid = sc_messages-class msgno = sc_messages-num_my_action ) ).
  ENDMETHOD.
ENDCLASS.

2) Adding the new button to the page layouts. Therefore, you need to add the button in the IMG activity “Define Settings for Page Layouts”. For the button you will need to define the same event name as you used as the action ID in your handler class. After defining the button, you need to add the button to the corresponding list toolbar.

In my example I added the new button to the application toolbar for the transportation cockpit.

New Button in TC customizing

3) After adding the button in the customizing it will appear in new created page layouts. Be aware that existing page layouts will only display the button after you updated them using the application “Synchronize Page Layouts with Customizing”.

New Button Appears In Page Layout

After adding it to your page layout you can go into the transportation cockpit click on the button and consume the code you have written.

The new Button can Directly be Used

Overwrite or enhance a button in the transportation cockpit

After having explained how the concept enables you to add own buttons, I also want to tell you that for cockpit actions we went one level further.

As we know lot of customers want to enhance or change the behavior of standard buttons. Therefore, we introduced an additional priority concept in which you can give your classes a higher priority to the priority used from SAP standard.

The basic idea works on the same premise. You also create a class for action handling but this time you populate action IDs which are already covered from standard classes.

Additionally you now need to redefine the method /scmtms/if_factory_priority~get_priority to make your class more important than the standard one (keep in mind that lower priority value is more important and will get respected first).

In the following example I exchanged the “Assign selected items” button with just raising a method. For sure I could also called the super code if I would just want to add my message to the standard execution.

CLASS ztb_cl_ui_tcact_enh_overwrite DEFINITION
  PUBLIC
  INHERITING FROM /scmtms/cl_ui_tcact_base
  CREATE PUBLIC .
  PUBLIC SECTION.
    METHODS:
      /scmtms/if_factory_priority~get_priority REDEFINITION,
      /scmtms/if_ui_tcact~get_action_ids       REDEFINITION .
  PROTECTED SECTION.
    METHODS:
      execute         REDEFINITION ,
      check_selection REDEFINITION.
    CONSTANTS sc_my_action_id TYPE fpm_event_id VALUE 'ZTB_NEW_TC_ACTION'.
    CONSTANTS:
      BEGIN OF sc_messages,
        class         TYPE string VALUE 'ZTB_ACTION_MESSAGE',
        num_my_action TYPE i      VALUE 0,
      END OF sc_messages.
  PRIVATE SECTION.
ENDCLASS.

CLASS ZTB_CL_UI_TCACT_ENH_OVERWRITE IMPLEMENTATION.

  METHOD /scmtms/if_factory_priority~get_priority.
    rv_priority = 1.
  ENDMETHOD.

  METHOD /scmtms/if_ui_tcact~get_action_ids.
    rt_action_ids = VALUE #( (  /scmtms/if_ui_pln_c=>sc_action-ovp-plan_selected ) ).
  ENDMETHOD.

  METHOD check_selection.
    "do nothing in check selection as the new global button does not need a selection
  ENDMETHOD.

  METHOD execute.
    " just raise some message showing that this code was called
    et_messages = VALUE #( ( severity = 'W' msgid = sc_messages-class msgno = sc_messages-num_my_action ) ).
  ENDMETHOD.
ENDCLASS.

Conclusion and Outlook

I hope I could show you how easy enhancing the transportation cockpit got already. You can now add a new button with own logic or exchange a standard functionality w/o the need of any explicit enhancements. I hope you can use our improvements in your projects

I guess the decoupling of the TM code in similar ways just begun and we will further process it in future. The priority concept will be more rarely used at places we expect customers also to consume it.

Feel free to comment if you have ideas where this concept should enable you to plug in own developments easily.

Addendum

In the meantime we created the following SAP Note with some further explanation: 3230668