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If there is one thing I can say that seems to be requested the most often from the call center, it’s the ability to add multiple serial numbers to the same notification.  All too often, a customer calls in and has 5 (or maybe 500) units they want to send in for calibration, inspection, or damage.  Well, in SAP, you don’t really get that option.  At least not if you want to have any sort of traceability on those serial numbers.  I’ve talked to some of my fellow SM friends, and typically, the best that can be done is creating a lot of notifications.  You can tie them back to a single notification that you can give to the customer…  but it’s a lot of data entry.

So, for this reason, we’ve built this functionality into our Renovation product.  What we do is give you a single screen interface to create a notification (we even let you customize exactly what fields and where they go on the screen), and we give you the option to enter in as many serial numbers as you want.  Then, in the background we create the master notification, then we create one “child” notification for each serial number.  Using the reference functionality, we keep everything connected in document flow.  This gives you complete tracking and history, without manually creating a notification for each serial number

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If this sounds like something useful to you, checkout Renovation.  We are working to build a simple application that can be used both by your customers to enter in their own notifications, as well as make life quicker and eaiser for your customer service group.  I’d love to hear your feedback.

Thanks for reading,

I just learned a new trick.  I updated one of my columns to be longer, and for some reason SE16N just wouldn’t recognize the change no matter what I tried.  So I pulled up my friend Google, and did a search.  I quickly learned that you can clear the buffers by entering in:

/$SYNC

into the transaction code window.  Magically, everything worked 🙂

Thanks for reading,

Something I noticed a lot, is that when it comes to warranty, it can be very hard to keep this date updated in SAP.  You have the equipment record, which houses your start and end dates, and the rest of the system is great at using this data, but if you want to add information or update something, you have no choice but to go the equipment record and manually update it.  If you have a solid workflow process, and the people to do it, this isn’t a big deal.  But how many times do you repair a product, add an additional warranty( say 90 days for your repairs), but no one ever goes back to update the equipment record.  Now if the customer calls back, it appears it isn’t under warranty, and now someone needs to jump through some hoops to keep the customer happy.  All the while, it’s just a matter of master data.

Because of this, we’ve enhanced our Proximity Service Execution product.  We added the TECO flag, but gave it additional functionality (that of course, you can turn on or off), that will allow you to enter the start and end dates of the new warranty and get the equipment automatically updated.  Now it’s that easy to keep your data in sync.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this new enhancement,

thanks for reading,

Well, I just stumbled upon something interesting.  I’ve been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why my Sold-To party would not copy to my service order.  I don’t remember ever encountering this before, but after some digging, I found there is a table called TPAER_PM.  This table defines by PM/SM partner determination procedure which partners should be copied.

Strangely, only some of my partners were selected by default for copy.  No idea why.  In addition, there is a report you can use RIPACOPY.  This report will copy all of your procedures and partners into the table.  You will still need to add an X into any column that you want to copy.  So make sure you visit SE16N and set these values if you want them copied from the sales orders.

Thanks for reading,

Well, in my quest to get my E-book published, I keep learning new tricks.  Today I want to talk about the EPUB validator, http://validator.idpf.org/  This little tool is absolutely necessary if you want to get your book into iBooks or any of the other major vendors.  The idea is that it goes through and finds in-depth issues embedded in your book. I thought I had all of the pieces cleaned up, but this tool found a few more.

1.  If you use lists, going too deep (like 1, a, i), it seemed to run into issues.

2.  Very long screenshots are no longer interpreted like a PNG file.  I had several images that were a scolling web page, and it was very long.  So I had to break the image into several pieces.

The other trick that I learned is that an EPUB file type is really just like a zip file.  I’m sure many of you already knew that, but it was news to me.  The EPUB validator is rather cryptic.  The errors that it give make no sense until you open up the zipped up EPUB file, then you can see the actual issues.  Initially, I was trying to figure out how it gave you line items and weird file names.  So be sure to unzip the file if you want to solve the issues.

That’s all for today.  Thanks for reading,

Earlier in the year, I published my first article.  I went through all the iterations for editing and rework, and finally got approved.  I even got paid for it, so that made it really feel good.  I started putting out some press on my article, tried to get people to go out and read it, but the response was underwhelming…  so I just let it go, and started focusing on the book.  Don’t ask me why, but today I went to go look for that article.  If you’re interested, check out the link.  What finally hit me is that where you publish makes all the difference.

I published at a place called SAP Insider.  They specialize in SAP, so it seemed logical.  What I didn’t fully grasp is that this isn’t People magazine that you walk in, pay $3 for and leave.  Today I went and was going to sign up, and realized that it’s a $1000/person/area (they have multiple different tracks depending on your interests).  YIKES!!!  unless you company is paying the invoice, no one is going to pay $1000 to read my article, no matter how good it is 🙂

The experience was absolutely worth it, but if you’re doing articles to get your name out there, pay close attention to who can read it…  I don’t really know how many people have subscriptions to SAP Insider, but it certainly didn’t seem to be my general audience.

thanks for reading,

The other night, I went to concert with my wife and we both got dressed up, and she looked amazing.  I couldn’t stop looking at her, until I realized that she seemed to be getting uncomfortable from the additional attention from me.  This seemed to counter intuitive to me.  She looked great, she obviously tried to look good, so I kept complimenting her and probably staring a little more than usual, but isn’t that a good thing???  I am a guy after all, so bare with me…  I eventually figure these things out :).  It finally hit me, that she probably doesn’t see herself that way.  I mean, she always rolls her eyes when I tell her how good she looks anyway, and now it’s been amplified.  It just doesn’t fit with her self image.  Then I got it…  All of us can only accept the attention we think we deserve.  Deep, right?

Let me explain what I mean.  Take myself for example.  I’ve been consulting in SAP for over 16 years.  I know my stuff in variant configuration and service management, so when someone asks, I have no trouble telling them, I am VERY good at what I do.  Now, the software side of things is another story.  I tend to get shy, modest, coy…  because I’m a little embarrassed.  In my mind, because I don’t have 500 customers or earn $1,000,000 a year doing software, I haven’t hit that comfort level in my own subconscious.  When I look at it, logically, it’s ridiculous.  I’ve developed some great things, got them certified by SAP, and sold them to actual customers :).  Yet, I still struggle to tell people that I build software…  I tend to fall back to that default of software “consultant”.

Now, I wish I had some magic answer to change my own self image or tell you how to change yours…  But I guess this is just one of those issues that takes time…  and a little bit of positive reinforcement.  So if any of you would just buy some of my applications or my new book, that will help me a LOT 🙂

Thanks for reading,

One of my many struggles, has always been to explain to people exactly what I do.  Sure, I can say I work with computers, or I’m a consultant, or I design software, but it just never seems to cut it, or it instantly bores people.  So for that reason, I had a team help me come up with a little video to explain what I do…  think of it like my elevator pitch.  I’d love to hear your thoughts…  And a special thank you to SBS, who did a great job creating this for me.

Thanks for reading,