Logan Buesching

Please note, these are all my own personal views and are not in any way representative of the company I work for.

At Whirlpool, I have been working with two form building utilities for SAP. I was looking at these solutions for creating an offline expense reporting tool for SAP’s Travel Management module. One of them is Adobe Interactive Forms and the other is Microsoft Infopath. Both of these are extremely powerful tools that allow you to quickly create forms. What’s even better, is that given a web service, both of them can create a form that molds to it in a matter of a few clicks.

The Scenario

A tool is needed to be developed to allow for an employee to create an expense report while traveling on the plane. Like e-mail, this tool should be able to synchronize all data when it is first launched. When offline, the traveler should be able to fill out the expense report as if at the office, connected to the network. When the traveler comes back online, the report would synchronize again and submit the data that has been changed. We believed that the best solution for our scenario was to create web services that would allow us to accomplish all of the synchronizing calls to the back end system.

Adobe Interactive Forms

Adobe Interactive Forms seemed to be the most widely used method by companies that use SAP. When looking online and through documentation, creating them to use web services didn’t seem to be used at all. I investigated and poked and prodded until I was able to find that you can access Adobe LIveCycle Designer directly from: “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Designer 7.1\FormDesigner.exe” without having to go through SAP NetWeaver. From here I was able to bind it to a WSDL file, but for some reason it would never submit the data, or receive anything back. Clicking a button did nothing. It was like an HTML input button w/o a form surrounding it. After a few attempts to get it to work, I noticed that if I click on the button, go over to the “Execute” tab, then tell it to post to server, and not the client, then it appears to do something.

Then I went and tried to submit the form and this is the result that I got

I was never able to find a solution to this error, as descriptive as it is.

Microsoft Infopath

Using Microsoft Infopath, File->Design a form

You want to send and receive data from this web service

Then manually type in the address to your WSDL file.

Click next a few times until you get to this screen, and choose to send the entire XML file.

Now, expand all your fields and drag the queryFilter folder into the top box, and choose the relevant selection. I was using BAPI_GET_USER_DETAILS

Do the same with the lower field.

Preview the form and you should have a fancy web service running with Microsoft Infopath.

Near the time we were going to get into the thick of the tools, we had the web services take a dump on us. I was investigating how we were going to create web services for our travel expense solution when our project stopped. It was a shame as it was interesting to see how such powerful functionality can be built in a relatively short amount of time.

So I have started my internship at Whirlpool, and it has been extremely busy. I am working in the GIS (Global Information Systems) Finance group, taking a role in creating a new expense reporting system. SAP provides a Travel Management module that we are going to use, and I am going to take a role in configuring it and creating a web interface to it.

Monday

Today was orientation day, and I spent most of the day learning about Whirlpool and what type of company they are. I got my ID badge and laptop, and also managed to lock myself out of my own system 5 minutes after getting it. It was interesting to see that Whirlpool does about 18 billion in gross revenue, but only about 700 million or so in profits.

Near the end of the day, I was talking with Steve, my supervisor, about the project that I will be working on, which is basically a new expense reporting system.

Tuesday

Today was a day filled with meetings. Whirlpool is asking for various banks to give proposals for implementing a One Card solution, and I sat in on U.S. Bank’s proposal. This gave me a lot of good information about how different departments have different needs from the banks.

Later, I got to talk with Paulo, another person in GIS (Global Information Systems) Finance group about a new system that they are looking at to document requirements.

Near the end of the day, I was able to talk with Steve and Angela (the project manager for the new expense reporting system) about goals and project deliverables.

Wednesday

Today I was with Angela as she got me up to speed on the different activities that an administrator for the old expense reporting system needs to go through. I received an overview of expense reporting in general and also reviewed documentation about what the new system is suppose to be doing.

After Lunch, I went over to the Box Factory, which is one of Whirlpool’s locations, and talked with John Kauffman about what is role in the project is going to be and what he can do for the project. He was elected to be the lead technical architect for the project, which means he makes high level decisions on technical implementations for the project.

I then got to speak with Randy Fife, a web developer and fellow Purdue Alumni about the portal and how to get set up with it. They said that I would be able to access the development side of the portal and play around with it once I am given access.

Thursday

Today was my meet and greet for the GIS Finance group. We all sat together and talked about what each person’s role is in the group and they got to know me a little bit better.

At around lunch time we had a conference call with Murat which we discussed various items with the Travel Management tool.

After lunch, I went to Whirlpool’s Hilltop facility and discussed how the we are going to get data from the credit card companies (probably Visa) and how the SAP tool is going to work with it.

At the end of the day I sat down with two of the expense report administrators and was walked through how they currently do their job. Extensity is one of the tools that Maytag had used and it was pretty slick. The tool that Whirlpool uses, REEP (or as I refer to it, The Reeper), needed a lot of paper work and a LOT of manual processes. I am right now looking into how to make these people’s lives easier.

Friday

On my last day of my first week, I read up on ALE’s, IDoc’s and EDI’s. These terms have been used a lot by the technical team and I wanted to know what they meant.

Later in the day I had a lunch meeting with the whole team to discuss where we are at, where we are going and who is doing what. It was the first meeting with everybody on the team and I felt it was a very good one.

Summary

At the end of it all, I believe that I am finally getting a good grasp on what the project is, what I am going to be doing for the summer, and how all the pieces fit together. I will be working on creating the part that everybody uses, so my role is very, very important to the success of the project. I look forward to the rest of my weeks here at Whirlpool.