Well, much of my consulting life has revolved around the Variant Configuration interface design functionality. While, I’ll be the first to admit, that I am extremely happy it now exists (life was a lot uglier back in 3.0F when it wasn’t there). I am very annoyed with the lack of functionality. Take my current mission. I’m working with a very large model (400+ characteristics) and i”m trying to arrange it into a more useful structure. This can only be done with the interface design, especially since I’m using the class hierarchy to inherit cstics (I have at least 2-3 levels in every class).
So, what I’ve done is using a combination of tabs and sequence, I’ve arranged the cstics the way I want them. This is great. What sucks is that it took me a couple of days to do it. Mainly because of some missing functionality. Part of this post is a call for help if you know a better way to handle it :).
1. There is no way to search for a specific characteristic when building the interface design. You have to page through until you find it.
2. When you get the cstics onto the design, you can only select and move one characteristic at a time. this causes me headaches when I want to move 4 cstics a few pages up, I have to do them 1 at a time.
3. if I’ve used a cstic in another interface design (like a tab for example), I still see the characteristic in my list for the sequence. So I have to remember that it’s been used elsewhere. Not the end of the world, but still a hassle.
One little thing I have found is that if you use the class hierarchy, the interface will at least list them by class (now the order you’ll have to figure out), but everything for one class will be listed, then the next class, and so on.
So, this has been my little venting on the interface design. I hope someone can comment on something I missed 🙂
Thanks for reading.
Mike
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike