Creating, Editing, and Testing Form Templates

You must be a member of the Form Template Creator group to have access to the form template creation controls.

1. Select Manage → Templates from the dashboard or home tab. If this menu choice is not available, you are not a member of the Template Creator group.
2. Select Form Templates. The contents of the form templates folder displays.
3. Select Actions and choose Create Form Template. The Create Form Template page displays.
4. Enter the name of your new form template.
   • Names must contain only the following characters:
     • a-z
     • A-Z
     • 0-9
     • Space
     • underscore (_)
   • The system removes characters that it does not allow.
   • The maximum number of characters is 255; however, to avoid problems viewing the Data Dictionary in Microsoft Excel, limit names to 30 characters or less.
   • The template name must be unique among all the items in the current folder and among all template versions in all folders.
   • It is used as the name of the reporting fact table for the form.
5. Indicate whether the template will have line items. The Has Line Items control adds a line-items table to the template when set to Yes.
6. If applicable, name the line-items table.
   • Names must be unique across all versions of your designs.
   • This name appears as a header above the line items table when users open the form.
   • It is used as the name of the reporting fact table for the line-item details.
7. Select Create Form Template. A blank template displays.

Once a form template is created, you can proceed with adding fields. The same concepts covered in the previous units apply to form templates too. However, one difference is, that form template fields cannot be added or modified through Customization Manager → Field Configuration. You must open the form template through Manage → Templates → Form Templates,and proceed with making your edits.

Move your cursor to the header level section and select Edit to add or edit header level fields.

Move your cursor to the line-item section and select Edit to add or edit line-level fields.

When your form template design is in draft or revising state, you can test it to ensure the SAP Ariba expressions for visibility, editability, and validity work as expected. Testing also allows you to see the errors your fields display when users do not populate the field, enter information in the wrong format, or any other errors.