Unicode Character Problem in IFS File Interface

ABAP developers can create unicode (UTF-8) supporting IFS file for their IFS interfaces using the IFS administration transaction. Especially for countries using UTF-8 unicode characters like Turkish alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, etc. text mode in IFS interface settings should be configured as U, UTF-8 (unicode).

Call IFS file interface administration to open IFS administration console.
Drill through interfaces > outbound control. Highlight the target interface entry where you experience character encoding problem. You can use the Display Interface or Change Interface buttons to display the IFS interface global settings including text encoding.

Recently I had developed a material IFS document for a customer in Serbia. During the tests I got a feedback indicating that the material descriptions with special local letters are displayed wrong in the IFS document. Although "ž” character is displayed okay, but some other characters like č, š, ć, đ, Č, Š, Ć, Đ, etc are wrong in the IFS output document.

For examples the IFS document has following lines with false material descriptions and corrected values are indicated.
• KI38LA50 | Ugradni frižider OK
• MUZ4GM3 | Mlin za žito, #elik -> čelik
• SGS43E42EU | Samostalna perilica posu#a, -> posuđa
• MUZ8PS1 | Plo#a za pomfrit -> Ploča

As I expected the character problem turned out to be a text encoding issue. Although I did not configure any unicode encoding or UTF-8 encoding within ABAP codes developed for the material IFS interface document, the only configuration was the IFS interface itself.

Choose UTF-8 unicode encoding for SAP IFS file text mode to prevent character problems in IFS file