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PeterSpielvogel
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert

Last week, I presented in an educational webcast sponsored by NIMBL, an SAP partner that provides a variety of services to help their clients be more successful with SAP. There were several questions from participants that we did not have time to answer, so I have provided the full Q&A log here, as I believe these are topics of general interest to the SAP Screen Personas community.

Here is how the event was advertised:

“Simplified, Personalized, and Streamlined.” These three categories define the perfect User Experience and SAP Screen Personas delivers on all fronts. By allowing companies to personalize their SAP ERP screens, the results are: fewer clicks to get work done, less overall training, and an ultimately happier user.

Exploring how SAP Screen Personas fits into SAP’s UX strategy, this webinar will show you how to build Fiori designs, reveal how SAP Screen Personas works with S/4HANA, and demo the all-new, HTML-based SAP Screen Personas 3.0.

By joining this session, you will:

    • Learn how customers can improve productivity by personalizing SAP GUI screens to meet their unique needs
    • Understand how SAP Screen Personas fits into the SAP landscape (Fiori, S/4HANA, Dynpro, Web Dynpro)
    • See how to simplify screens using a drag and drop interface
    • Gain an overall understanding of how SAP Screen Personas will benefit your company

Here are the questions and answers from the event:

Is it possible to include columns in line items of a transaction? For eg: In Sales order VA03, at line items, include a new column from other transactions.

It is not possible to add columns to a table with standard SAP Screen Personas functionality. There are customers that have hacked their own solution using scripting, but this is not part of the product.

Can Screen Personas handle dynamic screens in the sense that some fields would only show up depending on data (example MIGO where the Batch Number field would only show up if the material is batch managed and you want to merge all fields including that Batch number field in 1 tab in MIGO)?

Yes. This assumes that the field ID is the same every time the field appears on the screen. And, when you edit the screen, you need to have the field present if you want to change any of its properties (position, color, font, etc.).

How can we handle scenarios where certain fields become mandatory only under specific conditions? Will we have to do the conditional scripting for this scenario in JavaScript?

Yes, you will need to use scripting to assess which controls or fields are visible on the screen. But, there is no property that would tell this to the script. A field that becomes mandatory depending on other values or a dynamic condition means that the script would have to use the exact same logic as the backend to figure out whether the field must be populated.

Will you show turning it on and off? Want to swap between original and SAP Persona look and feel.

This was part of the demo. You change flavors using the flavor bar, which you open by clicking on the “P” on the blue line at the top of the screen.

Is there a required minimum release level to install the software. Is this part of any release, by default?

SAP Screen Personas 3.0 SP2 requires kernel 7.42 patch level 300. Kernel 7.42 runs only on NetWeaver 7.40.

What is the impact of SAP patches or upgrades?

Most SAP ERP patches or upgrades do not affect SAP Screen Personas. Here is a blog by a customer about his experience with an ERP upgrade.

http://scn.sap.com/community/gui/blog/2014/01/13/personas-and-erp-upgrades

If your users are tied up to their desktops using standard SAP GUI ( i.e. does not require mobility), would it make more sense to deploy SAP Screen Personas and simplify the screens rather than deploying an existing Fiori app that is quite stripped down and will require extending that Fiori app? The way I see it is that the 2 products are the on opposite ends of the spectrum since deploying Fiori apps will more likely require extending the app to add fields on the screen to fit the process of a business, given that the Fiori screens are so stripped down to fit mobile devices, while SAP Screen Personas is more on stripping down a very extensive screen to simplify and it continues to use any custom codes (like use of user exits, BAdI or enhancements) already implemented which I am not sure is the case for Fiori.

SAP offers Screen Personas and Fiori application templates so you can choose which one best meets your needs in the most cost effective manner. With SAP Screen Personas, you build your flavors on top of existing SAP transactions. It will generally be easier to simplify a screen with SAP Screen Personas as it does not require any development resources.

Is Personas free like Fiori?

Both are included with the NetWeaver license.

You mentioned 3 days to develop screens. How long did it take to prep the system, like upgrading Service Packs, applying notes, notes on notes, etc.?

If your system is current, the install and configure process takes only about an hour. The time requirement will depend on when in the release cycle you start your project. If there have been several notes released since the last service pack, then you will need to apply these in the proper sequence to have the current version.

We read through some of the OSS notes related to SAP Screen Personas for WDA. Select options, popup, List ATS, etc. are not supported. If we go ahead and decide to still design our screen using SAP Screen Personas for WDA - would the screen look like a hybrid screen - or will select options, list etc. not work at all?

The screens will work, but you are currently limited to the changes you can make to these control types. We are working on extending the personalization functionality for WDA applications.

How do you migrate Personas changes through production ladscape: DEV to QA to Prod?

SAP Screen Personas uses the standard transport process.

What effect will an upgrade to the SAP Screen Personas release level have on the already existing SAP Screen Personas objects.

Upgrading SAP Screen Personas should not change anything on your screen.

You can watch the full 50-minute webcast (registration required).

Thank you to all the people who attended the webcast.

Thanks to Jake, Yosh and the NIMBL team for the opportunity to present.

If you would like more information about SAP Screen Personas, please:

For the SAP Screen Personas product team, peter.spielvogel.