Warning: If you are familiar with creating, modifying or deleting the Search Help User Exits in SAP HCM, reading this post is a waste of your time.
I am a fan of Keyboard Shortcuts/Hotkeys if I have a choice between those and using Mouse. And I am fan of mouse if I have a choice between using a Mouse and using a Touchpad. The explanation is simple. I get to reduce all the following with my choice – strain in my fingers, tension in my hand, pain in my shoulder/elbow and time in executing a command.
These tips are for all those SAP HCM folks who, like me -
- are tired of clicking and moving mouse a million times trying to find the right employee in PA30/PA20/PA40
- love Keyboard Shortcuts or Hotkeys over the use of a mouse
- get excited by knowing that simple things can save a lot of time.
A Hotkey in SAP Search helps you execute a command by using a sequential pattern of keys which would otherwise be executed by a series of mouse clicks and movements. Please note that all the illustrations in this postare based on the SAP HCM Personnel Administration (PA) Search Help.
To search for an employee on PA20/PA30/PA40 screen, the most common method used is to place the cursor on Personnel Number field and click on the browse icon. In the subsequent Collective Search screen, we hit appropriate tab whose information we have to narrow the search and find the right record. While most of us follow the above steps which require a few mouse movements and clicks, we can use the Hotkeys to pull up a search screen directly.
- Type = sign in PERNR field on PA30 or PA20 or PA40 and hit Enter key to open all the possible search helps that the field allows you to narrow down your search until you find the correct record. In general, when F4 help is used, only limited number of search helps are displayed. Please see the difference between the two below.
Search Helps can be limited when F4 is used
Hotkey displays all Search Helps
- Each of the search help is assigned a Hotkey that can be used to open it directly from the PERNR field. For example, the Last name – First name search help is assigned to hotkey N. So instead of using F4 help, you can directly type =N in the PERNR field. And for Organization Assignment search help, you can type =K as K is the hotkey.
Hotkey for Last name - First name Search Help
Hotkey for Organizational Assignment Search Help
- To further refine the search instantly, an extension to hotkeys can be used. The format of the hotkey extension is =<Hotkey>.<Field1>.<Field2>.<Field3> etc. So this would be =N.<Last Name>.<First Name> for Last name – First name Search Help. And it would be =K.<Personnel Area>.<Personnel Subarea>.<Employee Group> etc. for Organizational Assignment Search Help. For example, I want to find the employee whose last name ends with Jolie. So I can type =N.Jolie in the PERNR field and SAP automatically narrows the search to find only those names matching the search word.
Hotkey Extension helps narrow search results directly from the parameter field
- If you are not sure of one of the search keywords, you can leave it blank. For example, I only know the Personnel Area and Employee Subgroup of the employee I am looking for. I would then type =K.US01…U0 and this will return me all the employees who belong to the PA US01 and ESG U0.
Leave Blanks when you are not sure of the search filter
The hotkeys for each Search Help can be modified using the transacton code OG00. This transaction allows a complete customization of Search Helps. One need not be an ABAP developer to modify the Search Help Configuration.