Objective
The Customizing activities for field selection, during material master record maintenance, allow you to specify whether a field is to be hidden, displayed only, or ready for input. If the field is ready for input, you can specify whether a user input is required or optional.
You can consider different aspects with various influencing factors. For example, you can change the field selection for materials of a certain material type or belonging to a certain industry sector or plant.
Hide means that the fields are suppressed (invisible) during maintenance of the relevant material master record. This attribute is appropriate for fields that your enterprise does not need.
Display means that the fields appear on the screen but are not ready to accept input.
This attribute is appropriate for fields that you fill in your company, for example, at the time of data transfer, and whose values are not to be changed.
Required entry means that user input in these fields is mandatory.
It is appropriate for fields that need to fill with user-provided data in your enterprise.
Caution
Optional entry means that user input is possible but not mandatory.
It is appropriate for fields in which input is not mandatory but you want to use for certain information, if necessary.
You can change the assignment of the fields to field selection groups in cases where some fields of a field selection group are to be controlled uniformly. In SAP S/4HANA, there are 240 field selection groups, 40 of which are reserved for customers. You will find the reserved group numbers in the documentation of the customizing activity Assign Fields to Field Selection Groups. The documentation also contains a hint how to control long text fields.
Several field references are used to control field selection. The system links together the entries of all field references applicable to the relevant transaction.
Determine the field selection group that contains the field you wish to change.
Determine whether other fields also belong to this field selection group.
Check whether the change in field selection should also apply to the other fields in this field selection group. If not, change the assignment of the field.
Determine the influencing factor for changing the field selection (for example, material type).
Determine the current field reference for this influencing factor.
Change the field reference or create a new field reference with your changes.
Test your settings. If you have created a new field reference, you need to assign it to the influencing factor (for example, material type) beforehand.
Note