On February 5th, 2013, a very interesting customer facing event took place at the Executive Briefing Center in Palo Alto. This event, SAP NetWeaver User Interaction Customer Summit: 'Intuitive User Experience MadeReal', was well attended by SAP customers and partners.  Here is a link to the FB page with some of the post-event networking reception pictures.

One of the challenges that SAP is facing is that the power of SAP applications means the complex functionality which gets in a way of wide adoption throughout the enterprise.  The complexity is a challenge especially for so called occasional or infrequent users of SAP systems. The summit focused on solutions that address this problem, and by presenting them side-by-side did a great job of co-positioning them to eliminate confusion and help customers navigate a great variety of offerings. 

Together with customers we enjoyed presentations on HTML 5, SAP NetWeaver cloud portal and consumption of portal on mobile devices, partner solutions around Adobe Forms and Open Text Integration with Portal, listened to a few customer success stories, learned about security offerings.  And we had a great opportunity to share our stories - how Duet Enterprise and Gateway help customers and partners build solutions that make casual users' experience with SAP so transparent, that they often do not realize that they are indeed interacting with SAP!   Examples of web and mobile applications providing real-time interactive access to the SAP data presented in the most creative and modern looking user interface, caused lots of interest for SAP NetWeaver Gateway in the audience.  I covered the Gateway story while Agnes Dimayuga presented the story of Duet Enterprise where  workflow approvals,  team collaboration in SAP workspace, creating activities and logging hours in SAP backend systems, all done directly from Microsoft Outlook or SharePoint, highlighted the capabilities of Duet Enterprise to enable intuitive end user solutions.  On the picture below you see Agnes presenting at the summit. 

Existing solutions cover a number of scenarios.  For example, just published article at SAP SCN http://scn.sap.com/community/duet-enterprise/blog/2013/02/11/create-a-simplified-user-experience-for-purchasing-using-duet-enterprise
showcases Duet Enterprise based SRM integration and we will continue talking about the most popular scenarios around solutions focused on other lines of
business.   

We are looking forward to more opportunities to share our stories and help new customers expand the power of SAP to their entire employee base!

Our team was as busy on the last day as on the first day - more meetings with customers, more interest for Duet Enterprise and Gateway, and the picture tell the rest of the story - Himanshu fortunately never tires of talking to customers about Duet Enterprise!

An ecosystem created around Duet Enterprise as a platform is essential to customer adoption and success in a market place.  We rely on partners for creating compelling, user friendly solutions, and of our partners, Cordis,  created a few of them.  myExpense is a great way for customers to interact with SAP expense related functionaliy directly from SharePoint and mobile devices, and the demo available in our booth attracted lots of attention.

Everybody likes prizes, and large crowd gathered for the Surface drawing. 

Here Victoria, our marketing queen, hands over the prize to the lucky winner.

People did not want to leave the show, large crowds were on the floor till the last moment.  There was a great interest for both Duet Enterprise and SAP NetWeaver Gateway at the Sharepoint conference.  But the show ends, and our team says good bye to Las Vegas. 

We'll be back next year!

The last webinar from the series "Integrate SAP® and Microsoft SharePoint and Office" focused on best practices for implementing end-to-end scenarios with Duet® Enterprise.  You can now watch the recording of this well attended event (almost 500 people registered to participate) that took place on October 30th.

Presentation was followed by a lively discussion. 

We want to share with you the questions that came up in this live discussion along with the answers provided by the solution management team. 

Let us know if you have additional questions, provide your comments and join this discussion online!

Q: Can you describe the bdc model in more detail. What is this model?

A: Some links from MSFT regarding BDC:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556378.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee231530.aspx

Q: When I am building Mobile sales App using SAP NetWeaver Gateway what are the pros and cons of Duet Integration from Mobility only perspective with      NetWeaver Gateway not Sybase Unwired Platform

A: Mobile apps will be built using NetWeaver Gateway. The same infrastructure that is also leveraged by Duet Enterprise. So you would only develop the      scenario once and then either expose it via SUP to you mobile device, or via Duet Enterprise to SharePoint

Q: Are the workflows capabilities only for simple single step workflows or multi step serial and parallel workflows as well?

A: Out of the box simple Workflows are supported without any development. If you want to have more complex workflows, this is also supported by Duet      Enterprise, but might require some development / customizing

Q: Is there any capability related to the document management in SAP with the repository of original files being managed in SharePoint?

A: Duet Enterprise does support DMS integration (e.g. you can view, upload and retrieve documents from SAPs DMS system in SharePoint)

Q: Does this development process work if you are running NetWeaver Gateway as a standalone server?

A: Yes, the development process does also work if you are using NetWeaver Gateway standalone. Depending on what and how you want to develop you      might have to install an add-on in the backend system.

Q: Can you have Office Integration without Sharepoint? if so please describe how it works.

A: With Duet Enterprise SharePoint is central part that is leveraged to provide SSO, Security, Supportability, … and more infrastructure components. Via      SharePoint you can easily expose the data also to Office clients and at the same time also allow access via SharePoint.

Q: Can you say something or share a link to more information about the licensing of Duet Enterprise?

A: Duet Enterprise is a user based license which is required on top of a backend user license and a SharePoint license. For prices please reach out to you      SAP account representative

Q: Do we need to change the models when upgrading SAP R/3?

A: Duet Enterprise and NetWeaver Gateway provide a kind of abstraction layer to the backend system. Because of this abstraction the backend system can      be updated ideally without a need to adjust the models created on Duet Enterprise.

Q: What if I want to use Duet Enterprise in collaboration with Sharepoint to interface with SAP SRM ? Does it provides any specific interfaces for SAP SRM      shopping cart creation and following operations? or is Duet Enterprise just an enabler?

A: SRM is not supported via an out of the box building block. However, using the new NetWeaver Gateway Service Builder together with the BDC Browser a      lot of business objects can easily be accessed. Not only BOR and RFC can be leverated for model creation, but also SPI, BOL, GEnil, BW, HANA      (see http://help.sap.com/saphelp_gateway20sp05/helpdata/en/43/65b91141e8467ca4d8d109b270e499/frameset.htm)

Q: Does Duet also work with SAP PS? Or SAP PPM?

A: One of our reference customers, TMVW,  is using Duet Enterprise for these scenarios (https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=468396&sessionid=1&key=3970A8795014BEFA64AE6EB363CF773B&sourcepage=register)"

Q: Is a DuetE or NetWeaver Gateway image available so that we don't have to go through all the installations?

A: The installation of Duet Enterprise is supported via an Installation Wizard. On top of that we have a ready to use Hyper-V image available on      SDN: http://scn.sap.com/community/duet-enterprise/blog/2012/05/05/sap-netweaver-gateway-trial-version-of-duet-enterprise

Q: Can SharePoint workflow send an email into SAP mail box for user to complete the workflow action?

A: A SharePoint Workflow can also send a notification to the SAP system -- this would probably require some custom development. If this SharePoint      Workflow is triggered via a SAP Workflow (using Duet Enterprise), then this information would be automatically sent to SAP to complete the workflow.

Q: Can SharePoint workflow be triggered based on data change in SAP?

A: When there is a data change in the SAP system, then a SAP workflow could be triggered which in turn triggers a SharePoint workflow.

Q:Is this compatible with SP2013

A: Next version of  Duet Enterprise (2.0), which is currently in ramp-up  is compatible with SharePoint 2013. Please, see a roadmap slide presented      during the webinar

Q: Does SAP sell Duet Enterprise licenses?

A: Yes, SAP sells Duet Enterprise licenses

Q: Can you please mention a cloud service where we could setup a SAP and Sharepoint test environment beside Amazon AWS?

A: The demo was done using Cloudshare. However, other cloud providers like Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS should also work.

This list of questions and answers is attached to this posting in the txt document for your convenience.

Best,

Duet Enterprise Solution Management team

To learn about the Duet Enterprise presence at the TechEd in Las Vegas next week, read the blog on SCN TechEd page: http://scn.sap.com/community/events/teched/blog/2012/10/11/attend-duet-enterprise-sessions-at-teched-in-las-vegas

Duet Enterprise 2.0 is built and supported by both Microsoft and SAP, reflecting a continued investment and commitment by both companies. As with Duet Enterprise 1.0, the updated version continues to empower employees to consume and extend SAP processes and information within SharePoint2013, SharePoint Online, Office2013 and Office365.

Solution Enhancements:

• Duet Enterprise 2.0 leverages the latest version of SAP NetWeaver Gateway 2.0 technology which provides an improved service building and service generation capabilities in a fully integrated development environment 

• Duet Enterprise 2.0 supports flexible deployment options for Microsoft on-premise and on-demand environments

• Duet Enterprise 2.0 integrates in Office 365 providing access to SAP data from anywhere via SharePoint Online

• Duet Enterprise 2.0 features enhanced Software Development Tools to speed up the creation and customization of new business scenarios

• Duet Enterprise 2.0 is backward-compatible for on-premise version

Key Data:

• Target Release to Customers: September, 2012

• Target Ramp-Up Completion date: November 15, 2012

More information available on SAP PartnerEdge

To apply for a ramp-up program in North America, contact Himanshu.Pande@sap.com

Kostenfreies Online-Seminar am 06.11.2012 – 16:00 - 17:00 Uhr

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren

Das gemeinsame Produkt Duet Enterprise von Microsoft und SAP hilft der IT dabei Geschäftsprozesse effizienter umzusetzen und die Produktivität der Endanwender zu erhöhen. Duet Enterprise liefert dabei die Interoperabilität zwischen SAP Applikationen und Microsoft SharePoint und Office und ermöglicht es so strukturierte und unstrukturierte Prozesse zu konsolidieren.
In diesem Online-Seminar teilt Campana & Schott seine Erfahrungen in Duet Enterprise Projekten. SAP liefert Ihnen Einblicke über Architektur und Nutzen und von Duet Enterprise. Als Beispiel für eine Unternehmensanwendung, die auf Duet Enterprise basiert, stellen wir Ihnen mit dem CS Procurement Portal die von Microsoft und SAP als „Winner of the Duet Enterprise Solution Factory“ ausgezeichnete Lösung vor.
Ihre Referenten:
- Herr Holger Bruchelt, SAP AG - Solution Management Duet Enterprise
- Herr Marco Heid, Campana & Schott – Managing Consultant

Diese Themen erwarten Sie

• Einleitung und Vorstellung von Campana & Schott
• Übersicht zu Duet Enterprise
• C&S Procurement Portal incl. Live Demo
• Q&A

Melden Sie sich jetzt an! Schicken Sie einfach eine E-Mail an lena.beier@campana-schott.com.

Gerne können Sie die Einladung auch an Ihre Kollegen weiterleiten.

You are invited to join a webinar on myApproval! This webinar will demonstrate how you can enhance any SAP approval workflow with decision-making tasks in Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint.

By utilizing Duet Enterprise,  SAP and Microsoft applications can seamlessly work together and all decisions made in Outlook and SharePoint are validated and entered into the SAP system.
We will demonstrate how myApproval makes it possible for your organization to empower employees to make decisions just by a click of a button for approval or rejection of any specific task. Hence, minimizing training and support expenditure and at the same time delivering guaranteed increase user adoption and acceptance of the SAP application.
This will be an interactive session with the opportunity to address experts from Cordis Solutions and SAP with your questions.

See how your business can be transformed and benefit from accessing SAP data through the rich and familiar Microsoft experience, providing the flexibility and collaboration delivered by SharePoint 2010.

We'll cover how myApproval can:
Create a central access point where you can automate and optimize the SAP approval workflow using Microsoft SharePoint
Handle mass processing of tasks with multi-accept or reject decisions options from either SAP and non-SAP applications 

Enhance the end user experience to handle business tasks with minimal training, development and support effort.

Title: Delivering an Easy and Intuitive Approval Workflow in SAP
Time: 10 - 11am (AEST)
Date: Wednesday 12th of September 2012

Link to register: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/308700351