George W. Anderson - Sams Teach Yourself SAP in 24 Hours (4th Edition) (Sams Teach Yourself -- Hours)

George W. Anderson

800 East 96th Street, Indianapolis, Indiana, 46240 USA

Sams Teach Yourself SAP in 24 Hours

Copyright 2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

ISBN-13: 978-0-672-33542-6

ISBN-10: 0-672-33542-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing May 2011

Editor-in-Chief
Mark Taub
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To my beautiful and encouraging wife Michelle, my three amazing kids, my friend Fazil Osman who worked with and inspired me to write my first SAP book, my friend Raymond Smith who helped me with this most recent book, and finally to all my little helpers (you know who you are!), this book is dedicated to you.

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When I started my SAP career in 1997, I never would have dreamed Id be where I am today. Ive always been a hard worker, sure. But this book and everything else Ive achieved really have little to do with me at all. My favorite book says I can do nothing worthwhile apart from God. On the other hand, I can do everything through the One who gives me strength. When I put my faith in these words a decade ago, my life changed. My successes multiplied, but they are His. My family grew larger and closer; they are a blessing from Him. And my work and hobbies evolved and converged in a way I never could have foreseen; they are an awesome gift from Him. So as I sit here thinking about who to acknowledge for making this book possible, I cant help but point to Jesus and say, Thank You.

As the reader of this book, you are our most important critic and commentator. We value your opinion and want to know what were doing right, what we could do better, what areas youd like to see us publish in, and any other words of wisdom youre willing to pass our way.

You can email or write me directly to let me know what you did or didnt like about this bookas well as what we can do to make our books stronger.

Please note that I cannot help you with technical problems related to the topic of this book, and that due to the high volume of mail I receive, I might not be able to reply to every message.

When you write, please be sure to include this books title and author as well as your name and phone or email address. I will carefully review your comments and share them with the author and editors who worked on the book.

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Mail: Mark Taub
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When I was asked to update Sams Teach Yourself SAP in 24 Hours, I was completely thrilled. Seriously! The world of SAP and our world in general have gone through major upheavals in the last few years, and I was excited to share with SAPlings and veterans alike just how much had changed. In the same way, I was anxious to realign and simplify this book in the way that Danielle Larocca, the original Teach Yourself SAP author, had done. She did a magnificent job targeting business users and technical readers at the exclusion of everyone else you tend to find on an SAP project. Ive tried to reapply some of that same focus here, which should also (not coincidentally) tackle some of the concerns my readers expressed. And, I wanted to address additional concerns vocalized by my readers related to consistency, eliminating repetition, providing better figures, and more. So thank you for picking up the latest and yes, best ever, edition of Sams Teach Yourself SAP in 24 Hours. I am confident youll find it well worth your investment.

In the name of simplification, I have reorganized and revamped the material into five easy-to-consume sections. concludes with an extensive section devoted to helping you develop a career in SAP.

Along the way, I cover what matters most to SAP newcomers. For the business users, I go beyond simply setting up access to SAP and customizing your user interface, and I walk you through actual business transactions. Together, we explore what it means to create sales orders, update employee personnel records, and more. I ground you in how SAP users are assigned roles and provided authorization to execute transactions related to those roles. We explore mega business processes like Order to Cash and how that breaks down into specific SAP business transactions. And we go into detailed reporting and query processes executed not only from SAP itself but through other commonly used business productivity tools like Microsoft SharePoint, Adobe Forms, and more. In this way, prospective SAP business users can really get a taste of a day-in-the-life-of an SAP end user.

For my technical readers, Ive done something new and completely overdue. In the last five years, Ive received no less than a hundred emails from newbies interested in installing a demo version of SAP. So yes, in this latest Teach Yourself SAP we briefly walk through not only a real technical installation together, step-by-step, but also locate and install SAPs very own freeware. In the past, SAP called this MiniSAP. Today its simply called the Trial version of SAP. And it will significantly change how you apply what we learn together in these 400+ pages. For example, you should be able to walk away with the hands-on ability to fundamentally administer, tune, maintain, and monitor an SAP system just like SAP IT professionals do in the real world. Together we will also look at what it means to prepare for technical upgrades and manage an SAP project. And by covering SAP technology from several different perspectives including cutting edge insight related to SAP and cloud computing, more experienced technical readers will be even better positioned to make a difference at work.