The Full Text Search for Customers is another Sales Order Enhancement that makes life easier for anyone who works with the ERP Sales Order (va01/va02), Quotation (va21/va22) or Inquiry (va11/va12).

Users can search for customers quickly and intuitively from the header of the sales document. You can use any part of the customer name, address, city, zip code at once, like you are used when searching the web.

• In case you receive multiple search results, a popup is shown where you can easily select the desired customer.
• In case there is just one search result, the customer number is immediately added to the sold-to party and ship-to-party field.

In addition, you can easily create new customers, triggered from within the sales document. Therefore a new button is provided that brings you right to the Customer Creation application (vd01). After the customer creation is done, you are back in the sales document.

This is how it looks:




And the configuration is very simple:

1) Activate Business Function
First you need to make sure the required Business Function of the ERP Enhancement Package is activated. The Full Text Search for Customers is part of SAP ERP Core 6.0 EhP4, contained in component SAP_APPL 604 in Business Function LOG_SD_SIMP_02. The business function can be activated with transaction SFW5.


2) Install TREX Server
The Customer Search relies on an index that is hosted on a TREX server in your system landscape. If not already in place the TREX server must be installed and connected to your SAP ERP EhP4 system via RFC by your system administration.
More information about how to set up and configure a TREX server can be found here:

• 1254901 - SES for customer projects on TREX search
• 1345777 - FAQs Search Engine Service (SES)
  
  

3) Create search index for Customers (KNA1)
After that, you have to create a TREX search index for the business object KNA1 (customer). Therefore,

• Go to transaction SES_ADMIN. Go to Menu > Index > Create/Activate Indexes, and select the business object KNA1 from the list. KNA1 is then added to the Index Monitor list.
• Mark the line and press the button "Index immediately". Select "Full indexation", to export all customer data to the new index.

To keep track of future customer changes and new customers you should ask your system administration to schedule a system job for a "Delta indexation" of the KNA1 index every night, week or so.

 

4) Configure Full Text Customer Search in Sales Documents

• Go to IMG > Sales and Distribution > Sales > Sales Documents > Define Full Text Search for Customers
• Mark the sales document types you would like to include the Full Text Search for Customers.

That is all.

When you now start the sales application with an order type you have maintained the Full Text Search for Customers for, you can use the new fields on the screen:

You can find more information about the Full Text Search for Customers here:

• 1-Pager
• SAP Online Documentation
  see "Full text search for customers in document header"
  

Any questions and feedback are welcome! 

Enjoy and post your experiences with the Full Text Search for Customers!

Best regards,
Dr. Ingo Woesner

Solution Manager
IBU Wholesale Distribution
ISM Trading Industries
SAP AG

P.S. BPX articles about this and other Sales Order Enhancements are collected here:
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/7274