Choosing a screen type

The four types are not tiers — none is more advanced than another. They are four shapes, and picking the right one takes about a minute if you ask the questions in this order.

1. 1

   Is the answer a question with parameters?

   If somebody would say “show me X for Y between these dates”, that is a standard report. It gives you a filter bar at the top and one or more tables underneath, and those tables can come from FSA objects, your user-defined objects, a join across several, or live S/4 — in the same screen.

2. 2

   Are you maintaining records that live in FSA?

   If the screen exists so somebody can create, edit and delete rows of a user-defined object, that is a UDO screen. It is the only type with bulk CSV import and two-way S/4 sync, because it is the only one with a single record store behind it.

3. 3

   Does it have a header and lines?

   Anything quotation-shaped — one header, several items, sometimes sub-items — is an SAP document screen. Pick this over a UDO screen whenever the lines belong to the header rather than standing on their own.

4. 4

   None of the above?

   A custom screen is a blank canvas: you define the form completely and the storage is provisioned for you. Reach for it last, not first — the other three carry behaviour you would otherwise rebuild.

Back to the designer.