Month: April 2015

In my recent project, my friend Dave found something new.  If you assign an equipment record to a sales order as a technical object, then go back and change the serial number within the equipment record, the sale order doesn’t update.  I know… what a mouthful, and an obscure situation.  Now, this is probably not a real common thing, but if you need your serial number updated in existing documents, you need to do a little work for it.

First off, SAP covers a lot of this in note 94769.  But Dave found an extra little piece that wasn’t orignally expected.  If you want the documents to get updated, you need to add some code.  When you make the changes the processing is executed by a case statement. Unfortunately, the case that is true for the new value of the variable contains no code.

WHEN mode_upd_user. “user defined update

WHEN mode_upd_none. “no update

WHEN OTHERS.       “undefined

ENDCASE.

mode_upd_user is our new value. It does the same thing as mode_upd_none (nothing at all).

This change also disables the standard update (service contracts) that was happening in the portion of the case statement now deactivated.

In order to do what we need, we would have to copy the code in the case “WHEN mode_upd_serv. “update of service contracts”, insert it into the case mode_upd_user and modify it to select sales orders in addition to contracts. That is accomplished by changing this IF statement:

IF ( ser02-vorgang = ‘SDW1’ OR ser02-vbtyp = ‘G’ )

AND ( NOT ser02-sdaufnr IS INITIAL ).

To

IF ( ser02-vorgang = ‘SDW1’ OR ser02-vbtyp = ‘G’

OR   ser02-vorgang = ‘SDAU’ OR ser02-vbtyp = ‘C’ ) “update of service orders NEW!

AND ( NOT ser02-sdaufnr IS INITIAL ).

 

So, use this if you ever need to make sure that your serial number is always in sync within your sales orders.  Thanks Dave, and thanks for reading,

If you really want to be successful, you need to have a high level of self-esteem.  I know what you’re thinking… duh!!!  but there really is more to than that.  The first and most important thing is that you can literally manufacture your own self-esteem at will.  I’ve heard this before, but sometimes I get so caught up, that I need a reminder.  Listening to Brian Tracy kicked me in the pants again.  So if anyone can make self-esteem at will, why don’t they?  and why isn’t everyone a success?  Well, first let me explain, in my layman’s terms, how anyone can increase their self esteem.

First, and easiest…  like yourself.  I know…  duh again!!!  isn’t that part of the definition of self-esteem?  well, as obvious as it sounds, many people, for one reason or another, don’t like themselves.  They beat themselves up, they focus on their mistakes, they tell themselves they aren’t good enough.  All of these things sucker punch your self-esteem.  But there is an incredibly easy thing you can do to build it up.  Simple repeat (out loud preferably), “I Like Myself”.  Anytime you feel a little down a little deflated, just take a minute and repeat that simple phrase 5 or 10 times (or more).  Just by telling yourself this, you pump yourself back up.

Next up, is the more sophisticated method…  but even more powerful.  Visualization.  you may have heard how athletes play an entire game in their mind before they take the field, they see themselves doing everything perfectly, and they do it over and over again.  Well, this works because your brain can’t tell the difference between this visualization and real life.  So if you replay a past victory over and over again in your head, your brain sees it as 50 victories (now remember, the same thing is true for your defeats).  So simply by replaying your past successes over and over again in your mind, you literally build up your confidence because your brain sees that you have done this 50 times, so doing it again is no problem.  Self esteem is often related to accomplishing goals.  so if you see yourself succeeding over and over again, your self esteem grows…  even though you only visualized 49 of those successes…

So…  remember, you can build your self-esteem anytime you want.  you can also crush it.  Take control of your thinking and you can succeed 🙂

Thanks for reading,

Well, in my recent project, I quickly came to the conclusion that GUI script is an amazing tool, but it’s not the only tool.  Like so many of us, when we get a new “hammer” in the toolbox, everything looks like a nail 🙂  GUI Script has been my hammer.  I built lots of fun scripts to load data, only to find that scripting in a production environment is not always allowed (that was a setup back).

The next thing I quickly came to realize is that GUI Script is not nearly as efficient as a BDC program or better yet LSMW.  To give you a ballpark, I was attempting to create a bunch of equipment records.  It was very simple, just adding a description and a serial number and saving.  In GUI script, I could load about 3000 equipment in an hour.  Then, I put together an LSMW to do the same thing.  It processes through about 1000 records per minute 🙂  Now, don’t get me wrong, writing the GUI script is so much faster, it’s meant for small data loads.  If your doing anything of significant volume, you really do need an LSMW.

Short story, this was good to remind me that I have a hammer and a drill in my toolbox 🙂

thanks for reading,

well, I realized recently that I’m about due for a dose of self help :). Between the stress and trouble sleeping, I really should have figured it out sooner, but you know me. I have a few staples when it comes to focusing myself, and today was Brian Tracy. It’s funny, because his advice is so spot on for me, yet I still forget it and get caught up in bs of everyday life. Today, I thought I’d lock it in my own head by telling you.

Take responisibility. Those simple words can really make a difference. Brian talks about the psychology of it, but I’ll give you the short version.  By the simple act of taking responsibility for everything in your life, you can’t blame anyone else for you problems. This takes anger, blame, etc out of the equation.  And let’s face it, when you’re honest about it, you are responisible.

Lets use yours truly as an example. I’ve been involved in projects where I’ve become very frustrated because I was being micromanaged. While I don’t deal well with style of management, I had to stop and take stock of myself. It’s hard to know where to start. First off, I accepted the contract. While I may have unaware of the exact players and how thing would unfold, it was still my choice. Next, and probably much more useful, I realized that if I was more open about exactly what I was doing, what my plan was, and how I was going to accomplish it, I wouldn’t have given any reason to be scrutinized. It didn’t hit me until the other day when my wife asked me about it, and I responded with “well, they never asked till now”. That’s a mistake on my part, as well as a huge learning opportunity for me.

All of. This and more didn’t sink in until I heard the phrase “take responsibility”.   Sothe next time you’re angry, frustrated, or start to blame someone else for your problems, step back and really look at it objector. It’s not always easy, but trust me when I say it’s a far more productive way to live your life.

Thanks for reading,

 

Well, like so many things, time has a way of getting away from.  I swear, I was just thinking that I have like 5 months before the conference, and now it’s like 3 weeks away.  While my day job still consumes a good chunk of my time, I’m working to find time to finish all my last minute preps for the conference.  To complicate things further, I’ll need to travel the 2 weeks before the conference.  So, this past week was a mad scramble to take care of all the last minute details.

Some of the things I never gave thought to include shipping anything I don’t want to ship on the plane, taking care of last minute reservations for my team, getting shirts for the team, and packing up all the little things like business cards and odds and ends, and all the other little details I never gave any thoughts to.

Let me tell you, there are so many things I didn’t factor in when it comes to conferences.  It’s interesting, and a bit scary.  If you have never exhibited at a conference, try to talk to someone who’s been there…  if you are thinking about it, feel free to ping me.  I’ll give you any pointers I can.

Thanks for reading,

Well, thanks to Deven who pointed out this next tip.  Since I didn’t want to forget it myself, figured I’d post it out here for everyone’s benefit.  If you are in the business of doing a lot of third party operations on a service order, you might quickly realize that purchasing dates often change.   While you vendor may quote you one date, often things slide.  This can become very troublesome if you do proper scheduling of your service orders.

Well, if you update your control key (SM03 is the common one), you need to make sure you select the scheduling checkbox.  This will help keep your service order dates in sync with the purchase order.  Keep in mind, I’m sure you still need to run rescheduling to keep things up to date (and for that, might I recommend looking at our Proximity application, which allows you to do mass rescheduling 🙂 ).

Thanks for reading…  and thanks to Deven for teaching me another new trick,

Wow, has this turned into a royal pain, with no good solutions I might add.  Here’s the situation, I have a RFC designed to extract some data to a new IOS app I’m building.  So far so good.  In my structure, I have one field that is NUMC (it’s the IBase number).  Silly me, I thought SAP would be able to cover any of the standard data type with the EDM data type.  Well, it turns out that NUMC isn’t really covered properly by any of their scenarios and will either throw an error in the Gateway designer (SEGW), or when the actual service is called.

I spent about 4 hours digging, experimenting, and swearing, to come to this conclusion.  At the end of the day, this post is the closest answer out there.:

http://scn.sap.com/thread/3712829

In a nutshell, it tells you that you have to remove the link to your structure (if you started with one) and redefine the NUMC data type to something else.  It’s not the end of the world, but it is still a hassle that SEGW or the OData can’t figure out a way to make this standard data type work.

Thanks for reading,

Well, for those of you that have followed me for a while, you know that marketing and sales are all new to me.  I’m an engineer/programmer at heart.  So I’m really good at building things… I busy learning how market and sell these items 🙂  Well, as I was on vacation, it hit me…  maybe I need to lower the risk for a new customer to try out my stuff.  So for that reason, I decided I’d do a monthly charge for my stuff, rather than forcing a big up front fee for the software itself, and then a yearly maintenance for each year afterward.  Maybe when I get big enough, I won’t have the same offer, but I’m just starting.  So for example

Product	Description		Yearly Maintenance	Monthly Maintenance
Broadsword	SAP Service management Reporting Dashboard		$6,000.00	$750.00
Renovation	Call Center/Customer Service Application		$11,250.00	$1,250.00
Proximity	Service Shop/Production Floor Application		$22,500.00	$2,250.00

Now of course, it’s a slight up charge from paying for the whole year up front, but you aren’t locked into any commitments.  If you decide after playing with with the software for a month that it won’t fit your needs, we part as friends.  As long as you pay for the monthly support, you will continue to receive all the updates and new functionality I add to everything.  Overall, I think it’s a pretty good deal.  And if you were interested in all 3 applications, I’m sure we could work out an even better deal. 🙂

so, my marketing experiment continues.  Thanks for reading,

 

Hello everyone out there.  I’m actually calling for help.  I have an EHP4 system, that I’d like to upgrade to EHP5.  Like everything, I could probably fumble my way through it, but it’ll take way more of my time that I’m willing to invest.  I’m not looking for a speedy turn around, this could be done over the course of a couple of weeks.  I totally expect this to be the sort of thing that you’ll spend an hour a night, then wait for the system to do a bunch of stuff, then come back the next day to kick off the next steps 🙂  I can provide the files, access to my system, and we talk about your hourly rate.

Let me know if you can help me out.

Thanks for reading,

I just stumbled upon a handy transaction.  I was having issue with one of my gateway services.  I had to do some cleanup (well, quite a bit of cleanup) because all of my date and time fields in my entity were giving me a hard error.  So I cleaned up my entity, went back to the rest client for testing, and I got the same error.  That’s when I found that the gateway contains a cache…  and I’m not quite sure how often it clears itself.  So then I found: /IWFND/CACHE_CLEANUP

you can execute this to clear everything, or just a single project.  As soon as I ran this transaction and re-executed the command in the rest statement, and everything was happy.  It’s simple, but damn handy for me 🙂

thanks for reading,