You can use output management to print, fax, and e-mail documents such as order, delivery, and billing information. You can also execute application-to-application or business-to-business actions. The Post Processing Framework (PPF) is a tool in SAP TM used to execute program logic that is considered a follow-up action to a certain business process step. The PPF is used for the following tasks or actions (to name a few):
- Document printing
- Ending messages, such as e-mail, fax, or electronic data interchange (EDI)
- Workflow triggers
All actions are defined in the PPF with a schedule condition that defines whether the action must be executed and a processing time that defines when to execute the action.
An action profile bundles all actions concerning a specific business process area (for example, the action profile /SCMTMS/TOR bundles all actions important for the freight order). You can see in the Action Settings area where we can define the processing time of the action and whether the action can be scheduled automatically or by a batch job.
The processing type of the action can be one of the following:
- Trigger alert
- Method call
- Workflow
- Smart Forms actions
- External communication
To trigger PPF actions, start and schedule conditions must be configured according to business needs or rules, as follows:
- Schedule condition:
The schedule condition decides whether an action can be scheduled for processing. An action is therefore only generated if the schedule condition is met.
The filter value is specified in the Schedule condition field. The standard value /BOFU/EVAL_SCHEDULE_CONDITION ensures that the method in the agent class is invoked.
- Start condition:
The start condition is checked before the action is executed. The action is only executed when the start condition has been fulfilled.
The filter value is specified in the Start condition field. The standard value /BOFU/EVAL_START_CONDITION ensures that the method in the agent class is invoked.
Adapter Settings
Output management automates the output of business documents such as printouts, in response to certain business events. This output management adapter helps you to integrate output management functionality with application business objects (BOs) that are implemented in a business object processing framework (BOPF).
