SAP Service Management – The Tables of SM

04Jun

Well, it’s still good to go back to your roots from time to time, and this is one of those areas that still serves me well on a daily basis. Using SE16N and these tables (plus some Excel vlookups) is used at least weekly, if not more often. So I thought I’d share my list of tables with you. I’ll do my best to break it up into sections that make sense.

This diagram is also around PM, rather than CS/SM, so it’s not complete with everything you would care about, but it is a great place to start. Perhaps someday, I’ll get around to building a full Visio of this stuff, but for not, I’ll give you the places to start, and you can see the relationships 🙂

Equipment:

EQUI – equipment head
EQKT – text
EQUZ – time related stuff
ILOA – additional data
EQBS – stock information
IHPA – partner details

Functional Location:

IFLOT – header
IFLOTX – text
ILOA – additional data
IHPA – partners

Notification:

QMEL – header
QMIH – service data
IHPA – partners
QMMA – Activities
QMSM – Tasks
QMUR – Causes
QMFE – Items

Service Orders:

AUFK – header
AFKO – additional header details
AFPO- order items (not used much for service)
AFIH – service data
PMSDO – sales data in the order
AFRU – order confirmations
AFVC – operations
RESB – components
AFVV – Operation data
AFFH – PRT assignments

This not an exhaustive list, and I often find new tables with obscure data that I need for a random project, but if you start with the tables listed above, you will be in good shape.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

The New Domain – .ETH

02JunJune 7, 2021

Like so many things in my life, I often need to see something more than once before I realize it’s important. In a short span I saw this same article show up twice.

Registering on the ENS

The idea is very simple, and very cool. Wallets for any of the cryptocurrencies are a long string of random digits that no one will memorize, and certainly won’t want to type if they can avoid it. Namely, because if you get one character wrong, the token goes “into the ether” pun intended or the wrong person. So the concept with this is that you can go and register your own domain on the blockchain (Ethereum) that does a translation to your wallet (or wallets as the case may be). So just like a DNS server will translate a human readable name into an IP Address, this domain will translate your human readable name into your Ethereum (or multiple other wallets). Hence the name, Ethereum Name Service (ENS).

It takes some startup work. First you need an Ethereum wallet. Then you need to fund it with between $50 and $100 of Ether =(. All of this takes time, because the Ethereum blockchain takes some time to commit the block (and since I started by transferring money from BlockFi, it took 4 days to commit the transfer of funds into my personal wallet). You also need to setup a cool browser extension called Meta Mask (this is the first step to getting your browser to Web 3.0). Meta Mask lets you link your wallet(s) to your browser, so that a web application can talk to the blockchain behind it. If you haven’t played with any of this tech, I might be speaking gibberish, but for a nerd like me, it’s cool because it’s all finally starting to click in my brain.

piehlm.eth

This my ENS. And if someone is using cryptocurrency, they can send currency to me at that address. It also has the ability to hold many other tokens (I ran out of ETH in my account to pay for the update, so I need to transfer more before I can accept the other tokens I have wallets for). It’s not cheap. To get the domain for 5 years it cost me about $50 in ether, and it would cost me another $20 in ether to add more wallets and more data into my ENS.

I recognize, this is all speculation and may not ever pan out… but it’s pretty cool to know that I now own a domain that can work as my wallet. This is the sort of thing that has the ability to become like the new Venmo in the crypto world. It’s one step closer to getting people to adopt the technology by making it more accessible to the masses.

Thanks for reading,

Self-Sovereign ID’s

01JunJune 7, 2021

With all my recent interest in privacy, one of the hopes and dreams I wanted blockchain to provide was the ultimate identifcation. The magic, all in one application that can log me into anything, but only give it the bare bones amount of data that I am willing to share. I’ve been doing a lot more reading on blockchain, privacy, machine learning and all these other fun converging technologies. All of them have the potential to make life much better or much worse for us. The truth, like most things, lies somewhere in between. I read this article a few days ago and it gives a pretty good perspective on just how much data is being collected.

All Your Data R Belong to Us by Ionut Ciobotaru

Now keep in mind, all every article you read will always have it’s bias and it’s own spin, but if you start to read enough different pieces, you can start to piece together the facts from the opinions. for example, this article discusses the same thing (mostly) from a perspective of healthcare:

Why do we need data sovereignty in healthcare? by PCL Health

Now, this is an area of particular interest for me. I am very much an advocate of keeping my data private… but when it comes to health and wellness, this is an area where I’m inclined to be more generous with my data. To the point of even giving it away. After listening to podcasts and reading article of the miraculous things that machine learning could do for our medical system, if only it had labeled data to work with, really leads me to believe my goal of living to 150 is quite possible. But like everything, we need all of the systems speaking the same language (preferably cataloging data into the same format etc.). If that started to happen, we could really help our MD’s focus on the big problems, rather than the tedious looking at something and performing routine tests. The whole skin cancer app that was created by Sebastion Thrun is a great example of that. If an IPhone app can do that with better accuracy than a doctor with the current datasets, what happens if we give it more and better data?

Of course, we have the flip side of this… if you give too much data, does that give insurance companies reason not to cover you? how can be altuistic, without hanging yourself out to dry??? My hope is the SSI (or self sovereign ID). Take a look at this article if you’d like to understand more of what it currently is…

https://tykn.tech/self-sovereign-identity/

Now, keep in mind… this is just one iteration. What if we could really have an app that exchanged the data needed (for example, buying alcohol and it could show proof that I’m over 21… it doesn’t need to know I’m much older… just that I meet the threshold). Now, start moving that into the voting arena. What if you could prove you are a valid voter just with a social security card (at least at the federal level) and what if I could prove that I’m alive, and that I live in a certain county. That suddenly opens me up to everything. it doesn’t care if my residence is at a homeless shelter, a house boat, or an apartment downtown. It doesn’t need to know. it just needs to prove that this ID is voting exactly one time… and only for one area. Pretty cool, I think.

This is really an area I would like to contribute to. So if anyone knows of ways that I could either get involved with a company working on this, or looking for beta testers, let me know. I know, this also has the power to be abused… but if you can hide your details and only show what you need to show, it feels like this is a great way to start taking back our own data, and keeping the government and corporations out of all our details. (at least eventually… every little bit helps, given they already have the keys to the kingdom, we need to start taking it back in any way we can).

Thanks for reading,
Piehl

Adding Additional Document Flow to a Warranty Claims

28May

Well, since my bread and butter is SAP, I have found some new tricks since I was last blogging, so might as well sprinkle those in along with all my new endeavors. ha ha ha.
I guess this blog post could also have been called implementing a Badi… but that doesn’t so as much fun 🙂 My goal was to add some additional links into the Warranty Claims document flow. Namely, I wanted to see purchase orders that might be generated during the flow of the claim. Out of the box, these are not part of document flow, so I began searching on how to do it.

Everything started with using this blog post to get me started on how to do the Badi. But of course, the real work came from figuring out how to get it all connected. So first let me tell you some of the basic data you will need to make this work:

BAdi Definition: WTY_DOCU_FLOW
Interface: IF_EX_WTY_DOCU_FLOW

I needed to update 2 methods in order to make it all work.

ADD_DOCUMENT – this adds the link into document flow
-   DATA:
  
      lt_gbinrel   TYPE TABLE OF gbinrel,
  
      gs_wdocs        TYPE pwty_wdocs,
  
      lt_trl_borid TYPE          trl_borid,
  
      ls_trl_borid TYPE          borident.
  
  **** via document relation
  
    CALL FUNCTION ‘WTY03_RELATION_FIND’
  
      EXPORTING
  
        iv_claim   = IV_CLMNO
  
      TABLES
  
        et_gbinrel = lt_gbinrel
  
        et_object  = lt_trl_borid.
  
    LOOP AT lt_trl_borid INTO ls_trl_borid.
  
        CASE ls_trl_borid–objtype.
  
          WHEN ‘BUS2012’.
  
            gs_wdocs–doctype  = ‘EBELN’.
  
            gs_wdocs–docttext = ‘Purchase Order’.
  
            gs_wdocs–clmno    = IV_CLMNO.
  
            gs_wdocs–docno    = ls_trl_borid–objkey.
  
            APPEND gs_wdocs TO ct_wdocs.
  
        ENDCASE.
  
    ENDLOOP.
DOCUMENT_DISPLAY – I enhanced this so that you could double click on the node in document and drill to the PO
- Data: ld_ebeln type eblen.
- case is_wdocs-doctype.
  - when ‘EBELN’.
    - ld_ebeln = IS_WDOCS-docno.
    - set parameter ID ‘BES’ FIELD ld_ebeln.
    - call transaction ‘ME23N’ and skip first screen
- endcase.

Now, of course there isn’t Purchase order action out of the box either… so I had to build that as well. to do that, I had to define an action (see TXN: OWTY –> Control Data –> Process Control –> Define Actions)

I created a new one, and then assigned a function module to it that called a BAPI to create the PO (and of course it pulled data from the claim to have it all happen in the background). If you would like more details on creating this function, let me know and I can walk you through that in a future post. The key piece of this is to create the document flow links using the function ‘BINARY_RELATION_CREATE’. this links the PO and claim.

Once you have the new action, you need to build it into the Action controls and of course, play with a bit to make sure 1) you are creating the PO, 2) you are linked to it and 3) that your BAdi above is firing to add the document flow.

All and all, it was a lot more moving pieces than I expected, but it was a fun exercise (once it was done. LOL).

Ping me if you have issues, and as always, thanks for reading,

Privacy… is there any such thing anymore?

27MayJune 7, 2021

One of the things I’ve noticed is that with each passing year, privacy becomes less and less of a right for US citizens (maybe it’s the same everywhere else, but I can only speak of what I know). Think about how things have changed since 9/11. In order to provide “security”, we gave the government countless new powers with the Patriot Act. The advent of the TSA at airports (and now showing up at more and more places). The interesting thing is that in 2020, the USA Freedom Act was renewed, and that basically renews the survielance portions of the Patriot Act. If you curious about some of the things that are still in effect, take a look at this blog post. The basics are that it is entirely legal for the FBI, NSA, CIA to spy on anyone in the US with little to no oversight.

Meanwhile, nearly every major tech company is in bed with the government. At any point in time, the FBI can call up Google, Apple, Amazon and get any piece of information about anyone. And to make things crazier, we all invite this into our homes with Amazon Alexa devices in every room of the house, Google, Facebook, etc, capture every bit of data we give them and use that data to sell us things, direct our searches, in fact even guide our searches. With machine learning and AI technology, every streaming service can instantly recommend what we should watch next… but is it because it is something I would like? or is it because it is in the best interest of the company selling me stuff? maybe both… but if you take a step back and really look at things, how do you know that even what you think you believe is what you really believe… or has it been scewed by articles that Google guides you to, people and organizations that Facebook says you should follow, etc… Let’s face it, Google already has more than enough data on every one of us to build a profile that can probably predict what we will do on any given day (Google Maps, Google Photo’s, Google Search, etc.). If asked, this data is purely anonymous, and only used to help make the search engine smarter… true??? who knows? but I personally doubt it.

Then there is all the technology that we don’t know about. Let’s face it, what can the CIA, NSA, FBI do today that they don’t admit? Access to every public camera at any time, facial recognition that gets better by the day, and using ever improving AI, it’s possible to track utility usage, all phone conversations, web traffic, purchases, where you go every day based on your car or smartphone, and on and on. Are all these in effect for every citizen? Of course, no one will admit it, but I’m sure that some or all of this is in effect on US citizens despite what the law says.

Now, with all of this, is there anything you can do to try to regain control of your data? There are a couple things you can do to at least begin taking charge of your privacy. Here are couple recommendations. it won’t help everything we’ve already given away for free… but it might help for all your future data.

Select a browser that respects security. I personally am enjoying the Brave Browser. It it built with privacy in mind, and has flagged a lot of things as “questionable”, whereas my other browsers installed it without question. It also has the fun bonus of using blockchain tokens (BAT or Basic Attention Tokens) that can be earned as tips or by watching adds.
Use a VPN. Again, it’s not perfect, but using a VPN at least obscures your IP address and makes it a little harder for people to track you. Let’s face it, if anyone really wants to know, there is plenty of technology that could backtrack you… so don’t expect to get away with illegal activities just because you used a VPN 😉
Choose your search engine wisely. I confess, I still often use Google, but I focus that for work queries (usually SAP related tidbits). But I’m experimenting with Duck Duck Go, another company focused on your privacy.
Location services on your phone can be turned off for most apps. It’s not perfect, and the phone itself can still track you, but do you really need every one of your apps knowing where you are at all times? Believe me, if you let them, they will capture that data and use it to push you new things you should be or places you should spend your money.
Pay Attention to Cryptocurrency and Blockchain. These technologies have the promise of providing truly anonymous spending and transfer for data, allowing you decide what data should be provided to any website, or transaction. With the explosion of new tokens and currencies finding new ways to make the blockchain more useable, we might have a hope to regaining some privacy. Its not there yet (and remember, if you have your crypto in places like Coinbase, or BlockFi, it isn’t anonymous, they know all about you. If you really want to be private, you need to move your tokens to a private wallet… but more on that in the future 🙂

My parting thought to you is from Ben Frankin:

“Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.”

it is more true today, than ever before.

Thanks for reading,

Finding out you are a libertarian

26May

When I was in college, I always thought I was a republican. I thought they stood for smaller government, I thought they wanted to take less of my tax money, and promote business. Then a couple of my friends at the time suddenly told me they were libertarians. I sat there with what I can only assume was a stupid look on my face, because I had no idea what they were talking about. They gave me the simplest possible explanation you can give to anyone… A libertarian is simply someone that wants to be left alone. Let me do whatever I want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. Well, I thought about it for a while, and I really liked the idea. This was a concept that I could get behind… but who do I vote for to make this happen??? Well, that’s when the education really started.

I learned there a big difference between the “L” libertarians, and the “l” libertarians. Such a subtle difference in spelling, but what a monumental difference in practice. I came to find that even the “L” version was just another political party. In my mind, still better than the R’s or D’s, because the “L’s” aren’t confined to specific doctrines or rules they “had” to follow. But in the end, it was much like the Green party, or any of the other “2nd class” parties out there. No one takes them seriously. The evolution of politics has tried to put everything into A or B, Coke or Pepsi, Republican or Democrat. The marketing genius behind this has managed to keep everyone arguing with each other, while the powers that be go about their business of spending our tax dollars, and lining their pockets. For this reason, it’s nearly impossible for any other political party to be considered legitimate. That’s when I realized that voting for a party isn’t going to change anything. Government will not change until we force it to change.

In my opinion, the only real chance we have is people at the lowest levels voting with their dollars. people like my kids that see the benefit of technology and don’t understand why things change so slowly (or not at all in our government). They see massive advances in medicine, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency daily, yet our government still worries about things like building walls between countries or enforcing a legal drinking age. Changes are already starting to happen in the world. Look at countries like Estonia that are becoming completely digital, complete with citizenship, voting, etc. With the right technology in place, things like this can eliminate voter fraud, allow everyone to EASILY vote on every issue, not just for an elected official, but literally on each issue. It could drive the elimination of “pork barreling” and other shady political practices. If technologies like blockchain can become the mainstream for things like identification, voting, and control of our data, we could truly begin to move to a more libertarian form of existence.

However, the missing piece to this is getting the politicians to give up their power, and we all know that isn’t going to happen. But what if small groups suddenly opted out of the system and began doing some of these things in very small pockets??? Think of a technological commune like in Atlas Shrugged. It’s wishful thinking, but with the virtual world, the internet, blockchain and a host of other technologies rapidly advancing every day, it just might have a chance =) Of course, I’d be thrilled with the baby step of a single term limit to get rid of career politicians. LOL

Thanks for reading,

Living to 150 Years Old

25May

About a year ago, I decided I wanted to live to the ripe old age of 150. Sounds crazy right??? Well, I’ve been listening to lots of different sources that have lead me to believe that isn’t so far fetched. I was listening to the podcast: Exponential Wisdom with Peter Diamandis. If you have never listened to Peter talk, you really need to check out this podcast (and then check out his books Abundance, Bold and the Future is Faster than you Think). Peter is so insanely optimistic about the future that he has aspirations of living to 700. (that makes my 150 seems a lot more plausible ha ha ha). But why should I be able to live that long? well, if you make smart choices, it could be any of us. The concept all comes down to convergence. This is a common theme that Peter keeps talking about, and it makes sense. What does convergence mean? and why does it have anything to do with living past 100? and even if I live that long, I don’t want to be some bed-ridden lump of flesh… I only want to live that long if I can maintain my current health, mental faculties, etc… I know… the idea of 150 does sound ridiculous…

Well, here is why I believe it is possible. The idea of convergence simply means that so many different technologies are advancing at a crazy rate, and they are building on one another. Take this simple example (that is already several years old). Sebastian Thrun was able to make a smart phone app that is more accurate at detecting skin cancer than some of the best doctors that have been doing it as a high paid career. If you aren’t familiar with Mr. Thrun, he is part of the team that made the self driving car (now in the Smithsonian) that was able to complete the DARPA Grand Challenge. So what does someone that made a car drive by itself have to do with skin cancer??? Well, the simple answer is big data + machine learning. With the advances in machine learning, combined with the ever increasing amount of labeled data, he was able to build a model that the average person could take a picture with their phone and have instant results to tell you “You are fine”, or “Please see a doctor for further analysis”. Now, if a simple app could do that, imagine what happens when you start combining this sort of technology into pharmaceuticals, reading CT scans, MRI’s, etc.. And that is just the beginning. 3D imaging keeps getting better, nanotechnology, and coming soon personalized medicine.

For example, 6 months ago I took a test from a company called Viome. they take a small blood sample and stool sample and are able to quickly return a list of dietary recommendations to improve your health. I really do feel better since simply skipping some foods and adding others based on my tests (and I instantly notice when I eat the wrong foods). Now just eating a little better by itself isn’t going to add decades to my life… but if I went the next step and starting taking supplements specifically for me, that could take me to the next level…

And these are just some of the little things available today… Technology is truly moving forward at an exponential pace. Even if we are at a level where technology moves fast enough to add 1 day of life every day… theoretically, you could live forever 🙂 Now, I don’t want to live forever, but I do want to see the year 2100. And with the way things are progressing, I don’t see why I won’t be able to and still be good physical and mental health (as long as I don’t do too many stupid things. LOL).

So… there is some food for thought.

Thanks for reading.

Blogging Again…

24MayMay 25, 2021

Well, it’s funny the things that encourage you to start writing again. I’m sitting waiting for my 8 year old to fall asleep and reading a new website, 1729.com. Maybe I need to back up a step. For any of you that used to read my stuff, you were usually looking for SAP tips and tricks. And while I haven’t escaped the SAP world, my heart really yearns for something else. I’ve long felt that I should be doing something more interesting. Let’s face it, I’ve been doing SAP for long enough that I’ve seen most things and don’t really feel challenged anymore.
For those of you that know me, you recognize that I’m always pushing myself to learn something new, design something, stretch myself. For the past couple of years, I’ve been doing nanodegrees at Udactity (more on that in later posts), following blockchain very closely (even took a nanodegree on that), and listening to a lot of podcasts. And that’s what got me here. I listed to a guy on Tim Ferris called Balaji and it got me excited. He covered so many topics in a few hours, and all of them rang true to me. So I went to check out his site, 1729.com. It actually pays in bitcoin for doing tasks (granted at the time I’m writing this, bitcoin is seeing a serious price crash). Now, I’m late to the game, so I missed the submission date, but the first task was to start a blog about techno-progressive topics (blockchain, crypto, decentralized cities, defi, anti-aging, etc). I’ll get to more of that later in additional posts. But the short story is that it got me excited to write again. I used to do a daily blog post, sometimes about work, sometimes about business, sometimes about personal stuff. I guess it’s time to start again :).
I’ve rambled enough, and for anyone still following me, I’m going to try to start writing again on a more consistent basis
Thanks for reading. And look for more in the coming days
Piehl

Setting up your SAP System with Google Wi-Fi

07AugAugust 7, 2019

So, in my never ending quest to improve my network, and still keep my good old ECC system running, I installed Google Wi-Fi in my house. The idea seemed simple, 1 set of points, this really cool “mesh”, and my whole house would have a single wi-fi system no matter where I was.

My original system included the ATT Uverse wi-fi, plus some range extenders (some wi-fi, some even running through the power lines), and all of them kinda worked and kinda helped. But it was not cohesive. There were multiple hoops to jump through, multiple different network names, and you never quite knew how well it was working. Since I put in Google Wi-Fi I’ve had great luck, and good signal. and if anything goes wrong, one thing to reboot 🙂 However, I couldn’t get my SAP systems to come through the firewall. Before the Google Wi-Fi, no problem, I setup port forwarding exceptions in my Uverse box that went directly from the specific IP address of my SAP system. Google Wi-Fi forced me to change this slightly. so if you have your own system, and want to use google Wi-Fi. here’s what you need to do.

I’m going to use Uverse, since it is what I know, but you should be able to find similar settings in your service.
First, need to go into google wi-fi, select wifi points, select settings, select primary wifi point, and find the WAN IP.
Now go into the network application and add a network port forwarding. Click Firewall, NAT/Gaming.
Under Manage Custom Services, click Custom Services
Create 3 entries for each SAP system. 80XX, 32XX, 33XX where XX is the instance number. 80 is for web, 32 & 33 are for the GUI.
Click return to NAT/Gaming
Now, select each of the services you created in step 5, and assign them to the WAN IP you found in step 2.
Now head to your Google WI-FI app.
Head to the “Map” and click the bottom circle that shows devices
Scroll through the list until you find the device for your SAP system. Click on it.
Select Details
Click on Settings (…)
Select Setup port forwarding
Enter in the port 80XX, select TCP and press Done
Repeat steps 12-14 for the 32XX and 33XX

Now, test you SAP system on your local desktop. It should pop right up. Hope this is helpful for you.

thanks for reading,

Willpower – Your Most Valuable Resource

31JulJuly 31, 2019

Have you ever noticed that from time to time, you start hearing the same thing over and over again. Usually, the first time you hear it you don’t think anything of it. But suddenly you hear the same things again, this time from a completely unrelated source. I’ve found in my experience that you until you finally listen, and I mean really listen, that message will probably keep popping up in your life.

I have a tendency to believe that things happen when you are ready for them. The idea of will power is something that is no stranger to me. I’ve always prided myself on being able to power through anything. If it was work, I could put in as many hours as it took to finish, if it was project at home, I’d cut back my sleep to 3-4 hours… whatever it took. But I’ve come to realize that focusing my will power has been the key to the success. Why??? well because I believe that we only have a limited amount of will power at any one time.

So, follow my logic here… many people get all excited at new years. They are going to exercise every day, they are going to be more productive at work, they are going to stop drinking… whatever. The problem is that often they pick something too big, or they pick a few things. Inevitably, they fail… because there is only so much willpower available at any point in time. I’m guilty of this too. Lately, I’ve been working too much, and neglecting many of the good habits I’ve been building over the past few years. All of the items on the list seem small, we are talking 15 minutes a day, or something silly. So I made a list of the good habits I “forgot”… meditating, exercising, eating well, flossing, etc… but what I discovered is that no matter how small the task is, you need to put your focus into it for a couple weeks… or however long it takes to become part of the routine again…

The idea is that only when something becomes part of the routine or daily pattern, can you stop using your will power. However, if you spread your willpower too thin, any one (or all) of the pieces can be easily skipped. And as soon as you skip it for a one day, it starts to break down the mental routine you were building.

Take it from me. If you want to build your routine… do it one piece at a time. Maybe you have more willpower than I have, so you might be able to focus on a group of activities. But in my personal experience, good habits are hard to make. So isn’t it worth expending your energy to build them??? Take your time. Pick your most important piece, and only focus on that. For me right now, it’s eating better and drinking less. But on my list is more blog writing… 🙂

Thanks for reading,