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Reinventing Myself

An interesting exercise that I try to do, and probably should do more often, is figuring out how to reinvent myself.  What does it mean to reinvent yourself?  at least to me, it means figuring out how to evolve myself.  So for me, I typically try to look at all the aspects of my life, personal, relationships, business, work, and anything else that I may have noticed causes me stress.

Well, the biggest thing that is driving my current evolution is determining where I should be spending my energy.  I have spent so many years in SAP, that it has lost its excitement to me.  I guess when you get really good at something, eventually you run out of directions you can take it.  Sure, I could commit to learning new bolt on’s, latest and greatest features, etc.  But in general, that has lost it’s appeal.  Instead, I have become very interested in some of the new emerging technologies, and trying to figure out how an old dog like me, can get involved.  I’ve spent some time on Udactiy learning about Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and virtual reality.  All of these have potential to be HUGE in the coming decade.  The problem is that I don’t feel connected to any these things.  Perhaps I just haven’t figured it out yet, but none of them are really calling my name as the next big thing I HAVE to do.  But my good friend Garett talked to me about the blockchain this past weekend.  Sure, I’ve heard about it.  Bitcoin made it famous, but I guess I didn’t really understand the power of it.  So he sent me this link:

Don Tapscott: How the blockchain is changing money and business

The idea that the blockchain has the potential to become a secure way of maintaining my privacy, and maybe even leading to E-Democracy instantly got me excited.  I mean, who wouldn’t love a world where you you could determine what parts of your digital identity you would release.  Instead of companies controlling mass amounts of information about me, I could decide what they really needed to know and what I was willing to share.  Take that the next level of E-Democracy, a world where politicians are barely needed =)  for those of you that know me well, I’m sure you understand my excitement at that.

Regardless, this simple 20 minute TED talk has redirected me yet again.  It’s finally a new technology that has benefits that I want, and for a change so would a lot of other people.  So one part of my evolution is to learn as much about the blockchain as I can, and figure out how I can get involved, even if it’s writing simple code for free, or whatever I can do.  So if any of you out there have anything that might help me, or point me in the right direction, please let me know.

Thanks for reading,

Warranty Claims – Activating a validation or substitution (VSR)

I had to spend some time to figure out this portion actually worked.  I figured out how to make a validation, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to execute.  Well, turns out, you need to go to an additional transaction to turn this stuff on.

WTY_VSR_ACTIVE – Activate validation and substitutions

Once you know it, it’s pretty straightforward.

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Company Code: enter in the company code this should be activated in.  Note, you will need an entry for each company code.

Area: WY

Timepoint:  this will be particular area within the validation and substitutions areas.  1 – 21.

Bool Class:  this will be determined by entering in the Area and Timepoint.

Validation: enter in the validation name.

Valid From: valid from date

Valid to: valid to date

Sequence: sequence of the rules

Active: active or inactive.

it’s really that simple.

thanks for reading,

Warranty Claims – Creating a Validation

This is something within claims that I’ve always wanted to figure out, but until recently, I just didn’t spend the time to do it.  turns out, it’s a very cool feature.  The idea behind a validation is that you can create your own custom rules without any development.  The rules will then check fields based on your requirements.  If they are blank, or incorrect, you can flag a message to correct the field.

Here are the basics of creating a validation.

using transaction OWTY, go to the following portion of configuration:

Warranty Claim Processing -> Control Data -> VSR Checks -> Specify Validations

Once you enter the transaction, you will need to drill down to the warranty section.  You will notice there are 21 different branches under warranty.  Although they are not labeled, these correspond to the boolean classes.

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Highlight the folder you wish to add a rule to and press the Validation Button

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Enter in the following information:

Validation Name: the key for the validation.

Description:  description of the validation

Message ID: the message class that will be used.  By default, WTY_VS.  However, you can assign your own message class to get the errors you want.

Authorization: The authorization group allows extended authorization protection for particular objects. The authorization groups are freely definable. The authorization groups usually occur in authorization objects together with an activity.

After populating this information,  press the create step  button .

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Now we get to the real work.  Within the step, there are 3 pieces.

Prerequisite: here you enter in the conditions that must be met.

Check: this is the actual validation that is occurring.

Message:  this is the message that is displayed if the VSR check is false.

The best way to understand this is with a demonstration.  So I will show you a simple validation that checks if the reference date has been populated, but only when the claim type is Z005.

Select the prerequisite from the menu.

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First, from the list of structures, select the second table:  WTY_RULE_H and double click to bring up the field list.  Scroll down to WTY_RULE_H-CLMTY and double click.  The table and field name will now be shown in the top window.

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Next, from the Status section, double click =.

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Next, press the Constant button.

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Select or type Z005 and press enter.  Now you will see the completed the formula.

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Next, select the check.

Repeat the steps above to build the formula:  WTY_RULE_H-REFDT > ’01/01/1900′

Note:  I had trouble making WTY_RULE_H-REFDT <> ” work properly, so I adapted the formula.

Finally, press the message.

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Description:  Enter in a description.

Message type: E or W or I

Message number: Do the pull down here to see the messages available.

Message variables: If the message has variables, enter them bottom section.

Save the validation.

Use Transaction: WTY_VSR_ACTIVE to activate the VSR checks. I’ll talk more about this in a future post.

Thanks for reading,

Personas vs. Custom Development

After experimenting with Personas for a while, I realized that I had a huge misconception about Personas.  As I listened to companies talk about Personas and upcoming projects, I assumed they picked Personas because it  didn’t require any development.  Being an application developer, it scared me a bit.  I was afraid that with a bit of work, Personas could replace all the effort I’ve put into my applications.  After playing with it for a bit, I now understand that it absolutely is not the case.

So that led me to the question of why you would pick Personas over just doing your own custom development.  I wanted to share some of the things that will require custom development, even if you pick Personas.

  1. If you can’t do something in the standard transaction,you won’t be able to do it with Personas.  For example, I wanted to add a button on the notification screen that would allow me to create an equipment record and then return back to the notification screen.  It’s not possible to this.  The only way you could do it is if you create an RFC to create an equipment record.
  2. If you want additional data within a table or a grid, Personas can’t do it.  Personas can only hide columns, never add a new one.  You will need to create your own table/grid to accomplish this.
  3. If you want to pull data from multiple sources, your run time could be ugly.  In this event, you don’t NEED to do custom code, but most likely you will want to in order to keep your end users happy.

I’m sure there are other things, but I just wanted to put this out there.  Don’t expect that just using Personas will be a magic bullet.  So if your goal is avoid programming, custom code, custom transactions, etc, don’t expect Personas to do it all for you.  On the flip side, I personally recommend doing a combination.  I think you can make any transaction look better with Personas.  For the first time, you can make SAP screens look like a web screen, without doing a full UI5 or Web Dynpro application (translated to LOTS of TIME and MONEY).  But remember, Personas can only fix what already exists.  So expect to do both to really get to the ultimate user experience.

thanks for reading,

Finding your Joy

I came to the realization the other day that I have an incredible life, but I don’t take the time to enjoy it.  It all sounds so easy, but if you are anything like me, you spend so much time, so much energy and so much emotion always chasing the next thing.  I use up so much of my life trying to get to the next goal, the next accomplishment, that I often forget to savor what I have accomplished.  As I look back at the past years, I’ve been so focused on building the software business, learning new skills, improving my products, that somewhere along the way I forgot how to have fun.  I would have brief excursions that might help me remember how to enjoy the moment for a day or two, but it would be quickly eclipsed by the months of uninterrupted work.

What’s the point of chasing a dream or accomplishing goals if you don’t celebrate what you have already done.  Now, I’m not saying to spend your life living off of the past.  You still need to be striving forward to something.  But you can enjoy your life every day.  For me personally, I’ve finally got better at the work life balance over the past month, but just working less doesn’t make you a more fun person.  I did an exercise a few weeks ago to come up with what makes me happy.  I struggled to come up with much.  I’ve used the business and my kids as an excuse, but it really all comes  down to me.  I personally tend to focus too much on big things like concerts, snowboarding trips, vacations, football games, etc.  What I lost somewhere along the way was enjoying everyday life.

My newest mission is to focus on enjoying life every day…  playing with the kids by playing like a kid.  Embrace the chaos of a little sugar in a 6 year old and a 3 year old.  Stop worrying about how loud they are, and instead join in the fun.  I know that I used to have fun side to my personality around here somewhere, but working too much and too much time focusing on everyone else’s happiness has made me lose that side of myself.  My goal is to stop spending my life being so serious, and just lighten up.  Easier said than done…  but you gotta start somewhere.

Do you enjoy your life?  If not, work on finding a way to enjoy it every day.

thanks for reading,

Service Management – Checking the Responsible Cost Center

I recently had a question about why cost was going to a particular area from the service order.  I initially thought, no problem.  I’ll just check the work center, the equipment, etc…  but everything was pointing to a value that didn’t match where the cost was going to.  A friend of mine finally figured out what I was missing.

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I totally forgot about the validities within the work center to see the changes in the cost center.  So, thank you Craig.  I wanted to share this with anyone else out there and to make sure I will remember this next time.

thanks for reading,

Personas – Performance Considerations

When dealing with Personas, performance is sure to be a huge topic of concern.  Here is are some of the big lessons to keep in mind when trying to get the most out of personas.

  1. If you deal with tables or grids, minimize the number of columns using screen variants BEFORE creating your flavor.  The idea is that if you hide all the columns you know you won’t need even before adding a flavor, then less data needs to be sent.  This will improve your tables and grid performance.
  2. Minimize fields with drop downs imbedded in the field of a table or grid.  A perfect example in my world is the billing or delivery block on a sales order.  As soon as touch the field, it drops down a list.  With Personas, it appears to replicate the list every time the field shows up.  So if you have a table/grid with that field in 100 rows, it will send 100 lists.  I’m a little fuzzy on this so maybe I misunderstood.  But SAP encourages you to avoid those type of fields in a table/grid, and whenever possible minimize the number of values.
  3. When combining tabs, be aware of how much data is moving from one tab to another.  In the screen painting process, Personas will go from tab to tab and manually grab the element, then move it, then move to the next tab and move that.  If you system is fast enough, you might not notice this, but if you look closely enough, you might see some elements showing up ahead of others.  In addition, moving tables/grids is expensive in personas due to the increased amount of data.  It all works, but be cognizant of how much stuff you are moving around and if it’s making your end users wait a lot longer than normal.
  4. An obvious on… smaller images are better.  If you can avoid it, don’t use high resolution graphics as these will need to be sent to the browser.  Instead, go smaller, or if you have a complex layering image, find a way to make it a single graphic.  This will cut down on the amount of data the browser has to wait for.
  5. Use RFC’s to pull in data whenever possible.  Again, this is more of a common sense suggestion.  Why visit a screen to pull data, when you can run a simple function and pull back the data.  I think of it in terms of a BDC vs. a function in terms of performance.

I’m sure there will be more, but it’s what I’ve found so far.

thanks for reading,

Dealing with Packaging Materials

I recently ran into an issue when I attempted to configure packaging materials to come in a line item on the delivery (so it can be PGI’d).  I haven’t spent a lot of time with packaging, so it is always a learning experience for me 🙂  My issue came in because I was getting error:  VL 449, telling me Different billing type for intercompany billing.  Well, this confused the hell out of me.  Since when does the delivery line item have any billing configuration associated with it.

I made my rounds through configuration (delivery item categories, delivery header, copy control, material master).  I finally found an old post that talked about this (thanks SAP Fans).  It turns out, you get this error when you add a line item to a delivery that wasn’t on the sales order.  If this happens, it looks at transaction OVLK, for a delivery you will see something like this:

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Notice the default ord.ty field.  This field only has an impact if you add items to a delivery that weren’t on the sales order.  In that event, it looks at the sales order type listed here and checks the billing types assigned.  Personally, I’ve never seen order type DL, but it is the out of the box default.  As soon as I changed to my “default” order type, everything started working normally.

Thanks for reading,

Happy Halloween

If you are anything like me, it’s going to be a crazy day and a even crazier night.  Having a 3 year old and 6 year old hopped up sugar is always fun, at least until it’s time for bed.  ha ha ha.

Enjoy your time with family or a fun Monday night giving candy to all the goblins and super heroes.

thanks for reading,

Service Management – Service Orders – Refurbishment Processing

Next, we’ll talk about configuring the service order to be allowed for refurbishment processing.  This is ultimately what allows the service order to work in our in-house scenario.  The refurbishment processing is simply the act that takes in a material and allows you to perform a repair, a fix, an upgrade or whatever, and then deliver the product back out again.

This piece will copy setting if you perform a copy from service order.

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IMG->Plant Maintenance and Customer Service->Maintenance and Service Processing->Maintenance and Service Orders->Functions and Settings for Order Types->Indicate Order Types for Refurbishment Processing

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From here, if you want to use refurbishment, just check the box.  If you copied an existing order type like SM03, this field will already be checked.

Thanks for reading,