EDI IDOC generation for interface with Vendor software help needed.

Question

EDI IDOC help needed.
We are NOT an EDI shop, but have a project to output data to Sales Force.com
Sales Force requests IDOC output - eg. 810 Outbound Invoice.
We will need to do a historical load of Orders/Quotes/Invoices from the past 2 years.
Is there a function module or series of FM's that are used to generate the E2EDKxxxxx type segments?
I have been testing using the IDOC_OUTPUT_INVOIC and IDOC_OUTPUT_ORDRSP FM's, but they generate segments begining with E1EDKxxxxx.
Basicall we have a report program that the user enteres in the date range of Order/Quotes/Invoices they wish to extract, the the program needs to output a flat file (.txt) on the server which is then picked up by Sales Force.com.
Also, is there a way to have in the Partner Profile a generic Partner under the "Type KU" that can be used for all orders/invoices so I don't have to create a KU Partner Type for each and every Sold-To customer we have?
I am very new to EDI so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Scott.

Answer 1

Hi Scott,
We will need to do a historical load of Orders/Quotes/Invoices from the past 2 years.
I know it's very tempting to use an interface for such loads if you anyhow have to create one. However, often the volume alone speaks against interface usage for such scenarios.
Is there a function module or series of FM's that are used to generate the E2EDKxxxxx type segments? I have been testing using the IDOC_OUTPUT_INVOIC and IDOC_OUTPUT_ORDRSP FM's, but they generate segments begining with E1EDKxxxxx.
Well, the E2* segments basically reflect the external name of the IDoc segment, whereas the function modules you're referring to basically just create an internal version of the IDoc. Once the IDoc framework then passes the IDocs to the partner, the segment names usually (depends on how the IDocs are passed on) get converted to their external name. If there are multiple versions of a segment, then the version number will be appended to the segment name.
Note that IDoc segment definitions are only partially stored in the data dictionary. If you want to see all versions you should always use transaction WE31 to look at segments. There you can also see for example for E1EDK01 the several versions and when you then use in SE37 function module SEGMENT_EXTERNAL_NAME_GET you will see what SAP produces as the external name for segment E1EDK01. This function module is basically the one that handles the segment name translations.
Ignore the comments for subsystem, this is basically an option in SAP to possibly trigger further external tools (e.g. mapping etc.) for handling the outbound IDocs.
Again, the funny thing is that via the WE30 transaction, if i put in INVOIC02 as the Obj. name and see the segments, i can see that E2EDK01 there is a version 005, but if i go to SE11 and put in E2EDK01005 structure line and i get a "not found". We just have up to E2EDK01002.
In the old days SAP used to generate E1, E2 and E3* structures in the data dictionary (SE11). The E1* structure reflected the character type representation of an IDoc segment, whereas the other two (definition and documentation) contained actual references to data elements (e.g. if you used a quantity field). However, in newer releases those dictionary structures (E2* & E3*) are no longer generated, because they're superfluous (meta data defined via WE31 is sufficient).
Cheers, harald