E-mailing invoices

Question

Hi All,
Can anyone give me some pointers on e-mailing invoices (or other documents) from the SDK? I was thinking in the lines of creating a PDF document and then attaching that to the e-mail. Please can anyone who has had a similar problem please give me some advice! I cannot e-mail the standard jpg format as the quality is not good enough and gives a very bad impression!
Thanks in advance,
Adele

Answer 1

Hi Adele,
You wont need a code example, ALD already contains the functionality to email. What you'll need to do is load the ALD, create a report and then there are some email specific fields you'll need to map to data fields.
I recommend you download a demo invoice layout from SAP for ALD. There's an import file for an AR Invoice layout attached to SAP note 813796 (once downloaded you'll need to open the XML file and read the comments about localisation as you may need to edit a property in the XML file prior to importing the layout).
To test the email functionality (2004A and 2005A should be identical):
1) Install ALD
2) Go into AdministrationSystem InitialisationPrint Preferences and tick the option to use Advanced Layout Designer.
3) Start ALD
4) Go into AdministrationData Import/ExportData Import--Import Layouts for ALD
5) Use the import window to import the invoice you've downloaded.
6) Open the AR Invoice window. Click on the Print Layout Designer icon.
7) Choose to use ALD, then highlight the new invoice layout and click on the ALD button on the bottom right of the window. This should open the ALD designer and display your invoice layout.
8) Choose Project--Properties from the top menu. Scroll down the window and you'll see fields for emailing.
9) You can use the formula button to the right of each field to map each option to a field in the database (eg you can map the Email To field to the BP Contact email address). For a simple test, you could just hardcode values in the fields.
10) Exit the window (ignoring the warning about the fax fields being empty!), save the project and exit ALD.
11) Click on the Update button on the previous window to accept the changes you have made to the layout (Very important!)
12) Print Preview an invoice. This should display as an ALD layout.
13) In the Print Preview window, click on the Email button.
14) Choose your format (PDF seems to work the best) and then accept to send as an email.
15) Providing that all the above has worked correctly, you should see an email in your Sent Items folder in Outlook and the recipient will receive an email with the attached invoice.
Hope this helps,
Owen