HELP: Customizing ESS Leave Request for multiple entries in one submission

Question

Hi experts,
I appreciate help on this urgent problem. We're on ECC6 with EP7. My customization requirements are below:
1) Allow multiple leave entries to be submitted at one go. Standard ESS only allows one date range entry per submission. We've customized the Webdynpro Leave request form to allow multiple entries in table form.
Assuming there's 3 requests:
R1 ~ 01-Oct-2007
R2 ~ 03-Oct-2007
R3 ~ 05-Oct-2007
Whenever user clicks 'New Entry' button, Webdynpro will call bapi PT_ARQ_REQUEST_PREPARE to generate a new request ID.
When user clicks on 'Review' button, I will loop at the requests internal table and check each of the entries, which is an individual request, via BAPI PT_ARQ_REQUEST_CHECK. Am I doing correctly so far?
The checks return no error. Next comes the problem. When I click the 'Send' button, I will loop at the request IDs (in ascending order) into BAPI PT_ARQ_REQUEST_EXECUTE. I will get a dump, saying that the object cannot be found. Debugging shows that it cannot find the first request ID (R1) in the memory. I found that if I sort the request IDs in descending order, it will be able to find the last request (R3) and could process it. However, when it comes to the 2nd last request (R2), it will give me the same dump saying that object can't not found. Both R1 and R2 cannot be found whereas only R3 can be found.
In overview, the logic we adopted is like this:
1) PT_ARQ_REQUEST_PREPARE-CREATE (R1)
2) PT_ARQ_REQUEST_CHECK (R1) upon clicking 'New Entry' Button
3) PT_ARQ_REQUEST_PREPARE-CREATE (R2)
4) PT_ARQ_REQUEST_CHECK (R2) upon clicking 'New Entry' Button
5) PT_ARQ_REQUEST_PREPARE-CREATE (R3)
6) PT_ARQ_REQUEST_CHECK (R1, R2, R3) upon clicking 'Review' Button
7) Loop PT_ARQ_REQUEST_EXECUTE ( R3 - Returns OK, R2 - Returns object not found and terminates, R1 - not processed because execution terminated by R2).
Can anyone please advise me how I should go about changing the BAPIs? Or are the CLASSes/BADIs to be changed?
<b>Points will be rewarded for helping with this urgent requirement.</b> Thank you.
Regards,
Damien

Answer 1

Hi Kiran,
Thanks for replying. My guess initially was also that the requests are overwritten.
I heard of another company's implementation who did the same concept and was able to do it. Unfortunately, I'm unable to get any information from them.
Initially, my frontend programmer and I thought of adopting the 'dummy checks' methodology. i.e. Do dummy checks when clicking 'New entry' or 'Review' button. This is to ensure that the entries were entered correctly at front end. Only when the user clicks on the 'Send' button, my BAPIs take in a table of request entries and perform the Request_Prepare&Request_Check&Request_Execute one at a time.
This may be expensive as there will be double the processing needed. One set for dummy checks and one set for the actual backend processing.
Is there any way that I can create multiple requests in 'transcient' state so that it won't be overwritten and I can still find it when I call the BAPI PT_ARQ_PREPARE_EXECUTE? PT_ARQ_PREPARE_EXECUTE only takes in request IDs instead of request structures.
Thanks again, Kiran, for replying. Have a good weekend.
Regards,
Damien