Problem with adding participation date as updateable field during HRBEN0001

Question

We have a need to update the participation date on our health plans (infotype 0167) during the enrollment process after modifying an adjustment reason (infotype 0378). We used SE84 to add the participation date (RPBEN_SA-PARDT) to screen 0100 of program SAPLHRBEN00ENROLLMENT.  We can now type in the new date in the field but when you hit enter, it immediately reverts to the old date (that was already displayed by SAP). We even tried saving without hitting enter but, of course, this didn't work either. We've tried everything and can't seem to make it work. Because of the nature of screen 0100 we are having trouble turning on debugger to see if we can see what happens. It looks like the screen has the field defined as not updateable but we can't find where that is set. Our insurance providers often require us to set the participation date to dates other than the default that SAP is setting. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with the field on infotype 0167 since we can modify the participation date field there through PA30. This gives us a work around but makes the process very tedious for out Benefits user since she often has large numbers of changes.  Does anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

Tim :
Interesting as we also try to get field participation date maintained through benefit enrollment screen. The problem is the way SAP
is written in function 'HR_BEN_MAINTAIN_PLAN'. When selecting a life change event in benefit enrollment, SAP populates a list of internal tables (e.g. plan_offer internal table in which participation date is already defaulted to a date like current date).
When you click on a plan to enroll (e.g. health plan), a corresponding function is called ('HR_BEN_MAINTAIN_HEALTH_PLAN' for health plan). This function controls the window and logic for you to select the plan option / coverage. Within this function, it first populates fields in the window (display or not) with pre-populated records in the internal table, then overrides only fields currently
editable in this window (i.e. health plan option, dependent coverage). Therefore, even you add participation date and make it editable field into this window, this field will still be overrided with what's stored in the pre-populated internal table once you hit return or 'Accept'.
We even created a note with SAP to see if they can provide any suggestion; the answer is to submit a request for development for SAP to review.
What we ended up doing is to do this in two steps. First, enroll in a plan through benefit enrollment (knowing participation date value is not what we want). Once done, click on 'Overview' to go to 'Benefit Overview' so user can pick a record to edit (we have to do enhancement here to enable 'Change' tab here). This is to reduce the pain of having to get out benefit enrollment tcode, then  go to benefit overview tcode to change participation date.
Rgds.