Blog – Page 59 – Paper Street Enterprises

Service Management – Creating the RFC to download to Access

One of the recent discoveries I found was that you can download the table structures and populate them in Access on a local machine. This is kind of a cool concept, as I never realized this functionality was available. So I decide to dig in a little further. The baseline configuration is pretty easy (check out my post in SDN if you want more details – Service Management – Basic Settings – Print Control – Download – Download Structures to PC). Now, what isn’t really explained is that you need some stuff in place in order to be able to use this. The main piece being a couple of RFC’s. Now, I’ve been able to piece together a few things, so I thought I’d share them with you.

First and foremost, before you can do anything, you need to get or find several files:

wdpsastr.exe
wdpsatab.exe

Without these 2 files, you won’t be able to create the RFC. Now, after some digging I’ve found a few things. First, there are some OSS notes that explain a lot of this, so I”m going to include them here.

443027 – MS Access Interface – Access 97, 2000, 2002, 2003
583698 – FAQ note – MS Access Interface
118827 – Interface MS Access, setting the TCP/IP connection

These notes explain what I’ll be going over here, but consider my post a short cut for service 🙂

Also, if you have trouble finding these files, check out the SDN post.

http://scn.sap.com/thread/292398

I had trouble getting the files from Service.sap.com, but I was able to find them in an old version of my gui installation. However, it doesn’t appear to have the installation files to put the correct dll files in place.

Once you have this installed, you can go to SM59 to create the 2 new RFC destinations.

Press create to make a new connection. You will need to do this twice.

Now, you should be able to proceed with the actual configuration to download the service management tables into access.

Thanks for reading,

A New Realization to get time back in my life

I kind of had a small epiphany just the other day. I started looking at my stack of untouched development work. I started to feel overwhelmed and began wondering, how can I ever do all of this??? Then it started to hit, my value isn’t in the coding of all of these things, but in designing these things. I’ve been thinking small… I keep thinking that everything has to be designed, coded, tested and sold by me. My realization started to take me down a different path. What I need to be focusing on is designing what I want, writing a very solid and clear specification for it, then handing it off to a decent developer to write it.

I realized that my own micro manger has been getting in the way of my success. There is no possible way one person can develop all the ideas I’ve jotted down. But it doesn’t mean I can’t outsource those ideas for a small amount of cash. I started down the right path when I first considered outsourcing some of my coding. I quickly went to my inbox and found a friend of mine that I trust. Then I started writing my first spec for some things I think I’ll need in the near future. The next logical leap for me to take (and sometimes I’m a bit slow) is to focus my effort on design, and not code.

So, I think just had one of my 80/20 moments. I can get 80% of my value, by focusing on writing the specifications, and then finding capable programmers to carry it out. I feel like I just took a big step… what about you? what are you holding onto that someone else can do better? try to find just one thing… and start to regain some time back in your life.

Thanks for reading,

Variant Configuration – Class Type 200 vs. Phantom KMATs

Recently, I was reminded of one of the biggest downfalls of using class type 200 within a VC BOM. The is the inability to track the changes using ECM. This got me to thinking about the differences between the approaches of Class Type 200 vs. Phantom KMATs. While both methods cwill ultimately get you to the same place, there are very obvious differences between the 2 methods. In general, both approaches are very valuable, but each has pros and cons. So let’s talk a little about the differences…

Let me define what I mean by a phantom KMAT. This is simply another KMAT that sits on the top level BOM. So this turns into nested KMAT’s, but often there is no configuration that occurs on the phantom level. It is more of a BOM grouping, with pass through values (if could be configured, but for our purposes today, consider it just a group of parts). You simply create a KMAT, say Hard Drive, that contains all of the possible hard drives you wish to use. Then you add the selection condition to each component, set the Material master of the HARD DRIVE KMAT to be a phantom and you’re ready to go.

The first major difference is the change management aspects. Because of the way the class type 200 works, you can’t add or change materials using Engineering Change Management. For many organizations, this can be a show stopper. The convenience of not creating selection conditions for each material, but simply adding characteristic values can be tempting… but if your organization needs to do a lot of obsolete and supersceding of components, class type 200’s can be a major obstacle. Now the Phantom KMAT will not have this issue. But, the price is creating a selection condition for each material on the BOM, and also using a constraint to pass the values from the parent to the child KMAT. You may also need to create a class for each Phantom KMAT that only holds the characteristics needed for those components, or you could reuse the entire class. Either way, it can be more overhead.

Reuse of the items. This is the place that both methods work great at. Now, one of my favorite things to do is create generic KMAT’s that can be used across multiple product lines. In my first VC job, we did a lot cables with 35 or more different connectors that can be used. Well, since the same components were often used across multiple product lines, I could create a single phantom KMAT and use it on multiple top level KMAT’s. the Obvious value is maintaining changes in one spot. the hardest part of this method is thinking far enough ahead to make it useful. Now you can do the same thing with class type 200’s as well. So both methods are great for this.

A single component vs. as many as you need. Now another obvious drawback to class type 200’s is the limitation of only being able to select a single part number. If you had multiple part numbers, you would need multiple classes to select all the components. Within a phantom KMAT, depending on your selection conditions, you could select as many as you need.

So far, everything seems in favor of the phantom KMAT, but here’s one that is big benefit to the class type 200. If you work in an environment where parts change often, new options are constantly added, or perhaps you engineer as you need something… well, the class type 200 can be set to required. this means that your sales order will show as incomplete if the class doesn’t find a material. Phantom KMAT’s don’t have an easy way to accomplish the same thing.

Now there are other pro’s and con’s, but in my experience, these are the 4 biggest features to keep in mind. I’d love to hear your comments. Thanks for reading,

Warranty Claims – Layout – Define Screen Layouts

Well, I thought I might as well do posts on the Warranty Claims. I wanted to start talking about the Layout section of configuration. If you are familiar with the notification or equipment records, you should be very familiar with this concept. You have a lot of building blocks, and endless possibilities of what to show, what sequence and what tab. Let me show you just how flexible it can be. The Define Screen Layouts is ever more flexible, in my opinion, than the equipment record or notification. You have unlimited items you can load onto a tab, not just the standard 4 or 5 fixed locations.

blog5-01

Using OWTY, you can see the layout folder. Define Screen Layouts is our destination today.

So, you will now notice the familiar tree structure on the left. If you are designing your own layout, I highly encourage you to copy one of the existing layouts and change it to fit your needs. For demonstration purposes, I’ll walk you through the SAP layout. Highligh SAP, then double click on the Tab Page Title on the left.

Now on this portion, you can see each tab that is configured for the layout. Again, you can define as few or as many tabs to be displayed for your layout. You can also adjust the titles of each tab. For demonstration, I’ll select the Header Details tab, to show you the next drill down.

Now, for those of you familiar with the equipment configuration, this will be somewhat familiar. The nice thing to notice is that you are not confined to the 4 or 5 fields. You can add as few or as many boxes as you want. The Group Box contains sets of fields that you can add. Unfortunately, you cannot alter the fields within a group box, but at least you can limit what you show. As an example, check out some of the many group boxes available for the warranty claim layout.

This is the part that typically requires a lot of experimenting. Many of the options look similar, but will have quite a different look and feel. So I encourage you test each one to make sure the optimal selection is made.

You’ll just continue this process for each tab, until you have your claim layout. Remember, if you create a new layout, you will need to go back to your claim configuration and enter this new layout.

thanks for reading,

Warranty Claims – Control Data – Warranty Check

Well, I recently talked with some old colleagues about an upcoming new avenue of business for them. One of the options was Warranty claims, so that got me thinking that I should get back to this configuration piece of warranty claims 🙂 Today I’ll discuss the Warranty Check. The configuration itself is pretty straightforward. The idea behind this single piece of configuration is how the action (A200 Warranty Check) should behave.

Using OWTY you can see where to configure this step.

Now the configuration portion only has 2 pieces. One is the LinkItemResults which can be either AND or OR.

This field comes into play if you have a complex master warranty that contains more than 1 item. So if you have a simple time based, this won’t impact you at all. But if your master warranty has multiple items within it, and you select AND, then all items must be true for it to be considered under warranty. If you select OR, any one item will suffice to be considered under warranty.

The FactoryCalender is exactly what it sounds likes. Just another calender, that will be used to calculate time based warranties.

I’ll try to post more warranty claims config in the coming days, as I don’t have anything else interesting to post at the moment. I’m currently trying to catch up on my sleep after 3 incredibly long weeks.

Thanks for reading, and as always, if you want to hear about something in particular, let me know.

Powering Through… Is it worth it?

In my career, I’ve often had to fight through long stretches of work, with minimal sleep. I’m in the midst of another of those stretches, and I’m realizing a few things. The question I keep asking is “is it worth it?”. A simple question, with a very complicated answer.

Now I’m used to working long hours because I have my “day job” and also my business. Due to the nature of the game, my business has to take a back seat to the “day job”. So I’m used to working late nights to keep my business moving toward my goal of doing my business full time. So, I would’ve thought that doing the “night shift” during testing wouldn’t be bad. Initially, it was ok, I get to watch all the hockey games, even the ones that don’t end until after midnight. =) but after a few nights, I started to notice how exhausted I was ever day. Much of the problem is my controlling nature. I’m responsible for a big chunk of the work, so I don’t want anyone else touching my models. Now, this is a stupid mentality to have. I’m a contractor, so these models won’t be mine forever. Yet, I still don’t want to give them up. I don’t even know why… but I’ll save that conversation for another day. But this is driving me to work the late shift from 10-2am, get up at 7am, get Alex rolling and off to school, then I log in for most of the rest of the day. I take an hour off here and there, or maybe even take a brief nap, but in general, I’m “On” for the full day, and then again from about 9pm – 2am, Sunday – Thursday.

this is nearing the end of week 3. Happily, the final week. Here’s what I figured out…

1. I’m not as young as I used to be, so functioning indefinitely with little to no sleep, just doesn’t work. Read my post on the “Sabbath” if you want to understand why 🙂

2. I have 2 small kids. That means when I’m not working, I’m with them. either playing, feeding, or putting them to bed. That takes a lot more energy than I ever realized.

3. Being “on” at the day job is a lot more taxing mentally than moving onto my own business stuff. First off, I love doing my stuff for Javellin, so I don’t think of it as work. Doing the “day job” means I need focused on work for far longer than I like.

4. As the weeks have gone on, I’ve noticed that I’m getting sloppy, not focusing as well, and making a lot more simple mistakes that I generally wouldn’t make. Simply, I’m tired, mentally and physically, so I’m not at my best.

All these combine to one simple fact… I can’t do the 12 hour days for 3 straight weeks. 1 or 2 weeks, maybe for a go-live, but for testing, it’s not worth it.

The morale of this story… don’t kill yourself because you’re too stubborn to let other help you. It is not in anyone’s best interest.

Thanks for reading,

It’s Business – Don’t take it personally

You know, those words are so easy to say, but often difficult to live by. If you’re anything like me, when you get stressed and tired, everything can feel like a personal assault. It’s during these times that you really need to take a step back and not go on the defensive.

My current situation has me on a late night shift, and still working all day at my “day job”. Realistically, this shouldn’t be that different from my normal work schedule, except that I get to work on my own stuff during the late nights. But something about having to be “on” all day and “night” can be very tiring. Also, when I start to get tired, I can’t just call it a night until my shift ends. Because of this, I’ve noticed that I’m really tired, often irritable. When I read my emails, I have this tendency to see things as an attack. So, what’s important for me, and maybe you experience this too, is to hold off on any responses that you can while you feel like this. Don’t IM, text, call, or email until you are more rested (or at least are a few minutes separated from reading).

The other important thing is to remember that rarely is anyone out to assault you. If it’s a co-worker, they want everyone to succeed, so they are just pointing out opportunities to improve. If it’s family, well, they love you, and just might not realize your frame of mind… so there’s your word of advise…

thanks for reading,

Marketing – Segmenting your list

Well, lately it’s been marketing mode for me again. As much as I want to spend my time developing, need to build the business up a little first 🙂 So one of my latest lessons has been segmenting my mailing lists. Originally, when Mike and I started, we gathered up our prospect list, and put them into a couple of lists. Seemed good. It was based off of how promising the leads were. Well, this can work if we didn’t have 2 very different segments to the business (at that time it was 3). Since I’ve been the more focused marketer, it means I’ve been blogging more, and sending out more emails. Well the problem is that a list that contains SM and PP and VC prospects, what do you suppose happens when the list only receives information about SM? you guessed it… lots of unsubscribes, because in general, PP and VC people don’t care about SM.

Well, after getting ourselves a decent list of prospects from our recent conference, we realized that we need to break these lists up and target the group effectively. Of course, this is easier said than done, but Capsule CRM has actually been pretty good at helping me find the people that were broken into a segment. There will always be some people we have no idea about, so they will get everything… but the ones we know about, we can target to only send them PP stuff, or SM stuff. In general, it’s probably better to send less stuff, than the wrong stuff.

So, that’s been one of my recent endeavors, to classify all of our prospects… so now we have a few lists… the next step is to send them useful information. In general, I have more than enough blog posts, some white papers, etc. that I should be able to handle this 🙂 at least for a few months. ha ha ha.

Anyway, take it from me… focus the right information at the right people. The spray and pray method, really doesn’t work (at least it didn’t for me).

thanks for reading,

Time Management – Outsourcing… but what???

It’s interesting, because as I read more books and listen to more audio program, similar these constantly keep appearing. the latest thing I’ve heard is using outsourcing to do the work you don’t like. I’ve heard it a few times before, but like so many things I looked at it, and thought… eh… I don’t need to do that. Now that I realize just how valuable my time has become (maybe it’s because I feel like I have so little of it free), I find myself wondering, what can I outsource???

Those of you that know me, might describe me as hands-on (that’s a nice way of saying micro-manager/control freak) 🙂 While this isn’t all bad (as long as no one is micromanaging me. ha ha ha), it means that i Have a hard time letting things go to other people. I’m even noticing it in my “day job” that I just don’t trust other people to do things… so instead I try to run the whole show. This is a terrible trait for someone that aspires to be independently wealthy and be able to enjoy life. So my most recent struggle is… what can I let go, to get some time back into my life? I know myself well enough, to realize that I better start small, so I can get a quick win… but when I look at my to-do list, it turns out I have a lot of little things… none of which I’m anxious to hand over to someone else… for example…

Paying random bills – there are always some bills that I have to log into my bank or the website and send a check for. I could hand this over to my wife, but again… control freak. I don’t want to hand over the checkbook… so… what’s next…

check the garden, empty the compost pot… I actually like doing these things. Not glamorous, but I love mentally checking out… so what’s next?

Writing blog posts… well, as nice as it would be… that’s gotta come from me. Don’t get me wrong, anyone out there interested in doing a guest post, please hit me up. I’d love to take a day off =) but in general, this is something I can’t delegate…

File Papers… well, who the hell would understand my filing system. To me it’s logical, but my friends will attest, what I see as logical, doesn’t always gel with the rest of the world. Afterall, I was crazy enough to join the USMC at the age of 28. I can’t be all there…

Creating landing pages for some of my new White Papers… now, here’s a good potential. I know I’m not the creative type, and someone could likely do this better than me… ok. I think I found my first potential… but now what… where do I go? Elance? on-line search? crap, now I added something new to my list. ha ha ha. never ends. But going forward, this might be a great place to start.

Infinite Development Tasks. Now here’s a potential as well. I have so many things on my list, and really, coding another web app isn’t that exciting. Rather, I’d prefer to do the design work, and then let someone else handle the web dynpro portions… now, I need to find some help.

Well, thanks for letting me ramble… And if you happen to be interested in some free lance development work, please let me know. I’d love talk to you…

thanks for reading,

Variant Configuration – Balancing Options vs. Maintenance

Today, I’m going to talk a little bit about the “theory” of variant configuration. I use the term loosely, because, well, everyone has their own theory. I guess that’s why it isn’t a law 🙂 One of the struggles I encounter over and over again is clients that want to use the variant configurator to handle 100% of the options for a product. Without a doubt, the first place I learned VC was still one of the most solid implementations I’ve ever seen. But ever there, the line would occasionally get blurred.

Let me walk you through what I mean. Whenever I walk into a VC project, I go in with the expectation of being able to handle 80% of the product options. Some places more, some less, but it all depends on the complexity. For example, let’s just say you have an option that is order twice a year, but it works like everything else. It’s just a simple option, no complex logic, so in my mind, it’s a no brainer, add it and probably never sell it, but life isn’t any harder from a maintenance perspective.

Now, we take the flip side. We have an option that gets order let’s just say 12 times a year. But this option has a lot of extra rules built around when it can be picked, what it can be used with, complicated BOM components dependent on multiple things. Well, now what do you say? if it’s me, I try to push back saying it should be a special. What’s a special Mike??? Well, very simple. It’s a standard part number in the system, you can even copy the BOM rules from VC to get everything else right. But you keep that stuff out of the VC. “But why? VC can handle it?”

While that statement is technically true, VC can handle most anything. What becomes the defining factor is the increased logic that all the simple things now have to work around, along with the time to “decipher” what is happening every time a new option gets added, or something simple changes. That costs time, money, and even processing speed. For a “possible” 12 orders, that just as easily could have become standard part numbers.

Now everyone will take their own stance on this, and everyone is probably right… for their scenario. I’m just telling you from my standpoint, specials should be special… standards should be VC 🙂

Thanks for reading,

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