Business

I recently ran into another test.  I’ve seen this error before, but never paid much attention to it.  The scenario is that you have a service order, you enter in planned time and you get the following error:

Number of capacities in activity exceeds capacities in work center

or

No operating time entered for the work center.

Even though you can see that planned time was entered in the order for the operation.  Well, what I found is that if the capacity within the operation is not maintained, the service order see that as Zero capacity, so nothing can be entered against it.  Lucky for us, the solution is simple.  Maintain the capacity in the work center and everything is fine.

TXN: CR02 and go to teh capacities tab:

press the capacity header

Populate this screen.  The info doesn’t need to perfect, but it does need to be there.

Thanks for reading,

Today, I encountered a new issue, that previously, I have never seen before.  In testing, the transaction VRRE just did nothing.  If you’re familiar with service, you will recognize VRRE as a method of creating an inbound delivery.  Personally, I’ve got used to just using VL01N, but hey, nothing wrong with using VRRE, except when it doesn’t work.

Well, after some debugging, and searching in OSS, I finally discovered that there is a field in table TVLK (the delivery type table) called UEVOR.  To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to manually populate this field, and if you create a delivery type that isn’t copied, this field comes in as blank.  Well, it turns out that this has been an issue within SAP, unless you have some heavy support packs installed.

2061514 – VL01: No delivery in case of manually specified delivery type

if you happen to encounter this, be sure to implement the above OSS note.  it takes care of things very easily.

Thanks for reading,

Well, I was reminded again of the dangers of going down the rabbit hole. If you’re not familiar with this phrase, it means going off on a tangent.  He’s a perfect example, because it happened to me today.  I was building a test plan for my Renovation application.  It took me a while, but I’m realizing I can never escape the day to day if I don’t document everything.  But I digress.  As I was testing, I came across something in one of my dropdown boxes that I didn’t like.  It’s not critical, and certainly not a show stopper. but nevertheless, I found myself googling, experimenting, and suddenly I had lost 2 hours on this minor detail.  Something that no one but me might ever see.

Now, luckily, I caught myself before I went ever further down the hole.  I finally realized that this isn’t the most important things I could be working on.  So I documented the issue, added it to my future to-do list, and moved on.

The point of this post is to remind you that it is very easy to get caught up in small details, just because they are interesting or entertaining.  Keep your eye on the prize and always stay focused on the most important things.

Thanks for reading,

 

Today, kept getting calls with no messages from some number in NY.  I finally decided to answer it, and it was my friends at iCompNY.com.  I talked to the guy for around 10 minutes before I finally told him I had to go…   Here’s roughly how the call went.

We had the initial hello and explanation of who he was.  I guess this was the customer service manager, that “practically owns the business”.  Ok, good for you.  Then he says that they weren’t able to process my refund sooner because they couldn’t crack the password on the machine.  Just to be clear, the only password on the machine was my Windows password.  I’m not sure who he has working there in his tech department, but so far in my opinion, they don’t know how to test and they don’t even know how to format a HDD.  And on top of it, this guy, that I don’t know, expects me to just hand over a password.  Keep in mind, this machine crashed on me, and I couldn’t even get it running again, so luckily, I didn’t keep anything important on the HDD (I learned from the first time).  He keeps going on that it’s going to cost him more money to “crack this”.

Then the guy goes into a sales pitch, of how I should’ve got an HP, because they are better for what I need (granted, he didn’t ask what I needed).  I politely explain I’ve already got a new machine running and working great.  And how he wishes you would’ve talked to me sooner.  He apologizes, but then continues to make excuses how this isn’t a good machine, must have been damaged in shipping, blah blah blah.  Always a half assed attempt at an apology.

Then, and I believe this was the real reason for the call, the rest might have been BS, but he starts badgering me to change my Amazon feedback, because it could cost him thousands of dollars in sales from one bad review.  After listening to him go on and on for a couple minutes, I finally end the call saying I need to go to another meeting.  He again asks me for a password to a machine…  even though it’s a windows password.

Anyway, I left that call feeling completely accurate in my bad review of iCompNY, and would highly encourage anyone reading this to never do business with them.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned a little something about customer service as I just did 🙂

Well, typically (in my opinion), Microsoft releases good versions of Windows every other release, so naturally, I was excited that Windows 10 was coming out, because I wasn’t a fan of Windows 8.  Then, to make things better, they are giving it away to people.  Jackpot… right???

Well, the interface is certainly better than Windows 8.  MS finally remembered that not everyone using Windows is using a tablet or touch screen.  There are still people using laptops and desktops.  Crazy?!?  Do they brought it back to more of the traditional interface, you get a Windows button/start again to launch apps and look for things.  That I like.  They added Cortana to Windows 10 as well.  Being a geek, I like the fact that they incorporated the AI from one of the most popular games for the X-Box (HALO), who was named Cortana…  I doubt that is a coincidence.

Now, there is always a downside.  I feel like I’m in a Beta test version of it right now.  I have a bunch of machines, servers, laptops, etc all used to keep my little JaveLLin empire up and running.  So that means, I need machines that are reliable, and operating systems that work with the software I care about.  Unfortunately, there have been a couple of key applications that Windows doesn’t play well with.

1. Webex – being a consultant, means lots of conference calls.  I usually have to jerry-rig jumping between browsers to get connected to a Webex call.  Not cool.
2. Virtualbox – had to download a new “pre-release” version just to keep things running.  And of course, I’ve been having glitchy things happen.  I’m working hard to keep all my systems up and running.  A lot harder than I was before.
3. Outlook 2013 – this one confuses the hell out of me.  Shortly after I upgraded to Win 10, I had to delete all of my email profiles and create them again.  I think it was because I also connected to an internet calender, but come on, this is a MS OS that can’t work with an MS application.

And of course, everything is different.  it’s hard to find the control panel (at least the one I’m familiar with).  At least Cortana is reasonably good at finding what I’m looking for.  But in general, it’s still very buggy.  I’m hoping that over the course of the next month, I’ll be able to spend more time learning my Internet of Things stuff, and less time administering Windows 10.

thanks for reading,

I did some consulting a while back for a company implementing service.   Like many service shops, it was lean…  VERY lean.  I’m talking 4 people that could run the computers, and a dozen or so people fixing everything back in the shop.  Well, I got to know the service supervisor really well.  As we went through the process of what he does in a day, it became so painfully obvious that in order for him to keep up with his workload, it meant that every day he spent less time managing the shop.

I’m sure you realize what a downward spiral this becomes, but since I’m good at pointing out the obvious, I’ll explain anyway :).  The supervisor, we’ll call him Chris, would get in by 6AM every morning, work thought his backlog of questions, vendors, suppliers, and his own employee’s questions.  Exactly what he is supposed to be doing. Then he’d have to scramble to figure out what the current status of everything was in the shop.  What was there, what was in process, and what shipped yesterday.  All of this was a manual, walk around the shop process, and talk to all of his techs.  Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but still time consuming to pull all the data together for the status meeting.

Chris would then attend his daily status meeting to figure out what the newest top priority was in the shop, then go back out and make sure all the techs were on the same page.  When that finally done, he’s pretty much spend the rest of his day transacting everything into the system that his techs had done the previous day.  He’d be putting in purchase reqs for parts they needed (and probably already received), checking on missing components, entering in time, closing jobs, entering new jobs, switching jobs between warranty and billable, and then making sure that shipping was actually getting things out the door.

And that didn’t include the constant piling on every time a new part was needed, someone was ready ship and needed paperwork, the machine shop lost an order and they wouldn’t have the parts they expected for 2 more weeks, and on and on and on…

Now imagine this is your life, every day.  Nothing gets any better, you don’t have time to make things more efficient or even figure out where the problems are.  Just constant reaction…  maybe you don’t have to imagine.  Maybe that is your life every day.  I deal in SAP, so it’s what I know, but I have to imagine that any ERP system out there is the same thing…  maybe even worse.

It’s no wonder that service tends to work outside the standard processes.  It’s the only way to get anything done, at least that’s how they see it in the shop.  Seems like there has to be a better way…

Thanks for reading,

Well, I don’t even have a system, and I’m already learning about all the extra things that are required to support it.  Normally, I wouldn’t mind learning new things, but some of this just isn’t what I want to be spending my time on.  Let me tell you a couple of the things I’m struggling with.

1.  Using Linux.  I’m sure this isn’t as bad as I’m guessing, but let’s face it.  I’ve used windows for nearly 20 years, and before that, I spent some time on Unix, but that part of my memory is hazy at best.  So, now I move from my comfortable, albeit sometimes annoying, windows environment, to Suse Linux.  Not the end of the world, but all the tasks I took for granted, will no require Google searches to solve.
2. Make sure you use the correct version.  Ok, so I went to Suse, downloaded the latest version, and found that it isn’t supported by Hana.  At least not yet.  This is a minor inconvenience, but mostly annoying because the version I downloaded is for SAP Enterprises.  You would think, with a title like that, it’s gotta work.  Well, think again.  I’m sure if I wait another month, it’ll be supported, but for now…  I need to download 8 GB of a different version.
3. VMWare.  I can see the benefits of using VMWare over Virtual Box, but there a few big things that are causing me grief.  VMWare is essentially, it’s own operating system.  So this means it formats off your original OS, in order to better utilize the hardware.  Ok, I get it.  The thing that sucks now is that if I want to manage it remotely, I can no longer use Chrome Remote Desktop (which now works great for all my other systems).  I don’t know if there is an iOS app or not to manage it, but in short, if I need to reboot or update a setting, I need to be at the machine, or install the rather large client on a bunch of different machines.  And of course, I have no idea how VMWare works, so I’m having to spend way more time than I’d like learning that too.
4. VMWare ain’t free. This is probably the biggest issue I have.  You get a 60 day trial, then you gotta pay close to $600 to use it.  That’s the cheapest plan I could find.  This is a far cry from Virtualbox.

So, all of this new learning curve, and I haven’t even got to the HANA system yet.  OH well, guess it’s the price you pay to keep up with the times.

Thanks for reading,

Well, today I’ve been testing some of my apps in EHP5.  From an ERP perspective, everything is pretty much the same, with no real changes.  Then I got to the Web Dynpro application, and suddenly, nothing would work.  I went into SE80, and looked at the Web Dynpro application, and for some reason the url was jacked up.  I did a little research, and found a pretty easy fix.  Please note, of the following, I only had to the first 2 parameters in the DEFAULT.PFL, but I’m including the rest, just in case this isn’t enough for you application.

Add the following lines to the file C:\usr\sap\NSP\SYS\profile\DEFAULT.PFL

icm/host_name_full = <machine_name>.com

icm/server_port_0 = PROT=HTTP,PORT=8000,TIMEOUT=3600,PROCTIMEOUT=3600

where <machine_name> is the value that’s assigned to existing parameters such as ‘rdisp/mshost’ and ‘SAPDBHOST’.

 

Add the following line to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

<my_ip_address> <machine_name>.com

where <my_ip_address> can be got from running ipconfig.exe at the command line (or using 10.10.0.10 if you’ve had to install the MS loopback adaptor thingy)

 

Also, run the report RSICF_SERVICE_ACTIVATION to set up Web Dynpro services (so you don’t need to do it all in SICF), with the following values in ‘Technical Name’:

WEB DYNPRO ABAP

WEB DYNPRO ABAP TEST APPS

WEB DYNPRO ABAP DESIGN TIME

and activate the following services in SICF:

/default_host/sap/public/icf_info

/default_host/sap/bc/wdvd

/default_host/sap/bc/echo

/default_host/sap/bc/error

I am really excited today.  I finally got the official word from Apple, and my newest app has been released.  The new Field Service Engineer is the first version of the application I always wanted to build.  This is the perfect application for your technicians in the field.  At a glance, it gives them all the details for every work order they are responsible for.  They can quickly see everything about the customer, including the address and contact people.  They can confirm time and materials, add notes and more.

If you get the change, please check it out.  There is a lot of functionality I plan to add in the near future…  so your feedback would be extremely helpful.

Field Service Engineer

I can’t wait to hear what you think…

Thanks for reading,

My friend Paul turned me onto a cool new collaborative tool, called Slack.  I haven’t fully embraced it yet, but I think I might start using it with all my contractors.  The idea behind Slack is that it’s an instant message that keeps the history of everything you’ve done in one place.  While at a glance, it’s not that much different than Skype, I like it because it’s easy to invite multiple people into a conversation, and very easy to see the full history of everything that happened.

I’m still learning about it…  but I have found one glitch, it doesn’t play well with Firefox.  It seems to work just fine with Explore and even Edge, haven’t tried it Chrome or Safari.  So be sure to avoid using it Firefox, as it crashed my browser several times.  The iOS app is great.  Unlike Skype, I get every message as soon as it comes.  I’ll probably continue to play with it, and i just invited another of my programmers to join.

Give it a shot.  it’s a pretty nice to collaborate.

Thanks for reading,