SAP Basis · Troubleshooting guide

Error in Control Framework When Report Schedule in Background

Symptoms, cause, diagnosis and procedure for a report that runs in the foreground but fails as a background job.

A report that is working fine when executed in foreground mode.

However, if I try to run the same program in background mode, the job gets cancelled immediately with error — “Error in Control Framework” (Message Class FES - Message No - 022).

Reported error

FES022 — Error in Control Framework

Symptom

When transferring any data from background jobs, the following error occurs:

  • Error in Control Framework Message no. FES022 pop-up message (Performance Assistant screen) appears.
  • “Control Framework: Fatal error - GUI cannot be reached” message can appear in the Job log overview (SM37 transaction) for the affected job.

Cause

It is technically not possible to schedule the report in background when exporting/transferring any data using GUI_DOWNLOAD/GUI_UPLOAD function modules that require frontend sessions. The reason for the error is that the background process is not attached to a frontend session, hence it cannot access any file on your drive or on the local machine.

In short, transferring a background job when calling frontend controls is not supported.

Diagnosis

When the Control Framework is started, the system checks whether the installed GUI supports frontend components such as controls. This check failed; the causes may be as follows:

  1. The program is running in the background.
  2. A transaction was called using CALL TRANSACTION ... STARTING IN BACKGROUND TASK.

Procedure

Programs that run in the background cannot address controls on the frontend. In this case, the application must either include a fallback that does not depend on the user interface, or the program or transaction must terminate itself.