Blog – Page 76 – Paper Street Enterprises

Variant Configuration – Using the PMEVC for Dependencies

Well, since I was talking about the PMEVC the other day, I thought I’d throw out the other biggest piece of functionality that I found helpful. That’s the improved editor for object dependencies and constraints. There are 2 big pieces that are absolutely a hit in my book.

The first piece is the editor. It’s finally a text based editor that is easy to use. You can use standard copy and paste, no longer do you need to to use the cryptic I9 command into the line number to add more lines. You can just hit enter. It’s also very easy to use the find and replace, copy and paste, etc.

The second part is that you can actually use a nice little Input help button. It’s a hand/question mark looking button. If you start a statement, it will tell you the options of what you enter next. This is especially nice for constraints if you forget the key words (like I often do. ha ha ha).

Short story, if you have access, I recommend doing your PMEVC to do your dependency coding.

Happy Modeling,

Marketing – Using Linked-In Ads

Well, in my never ending quest to improve my marketing skills, I’ve been trying all sorts of random things. Linked-In ads is one of the pieces that I’ve been trying. I’ve had mixed results using Linked-In ads, so i thought I’d chat a little about them today and give you some pointers.

First off, if you haven’t used Linked-In Ads, it’s another form of pay per click (PPC) that you can use to try to connect to all the people on linked-in. You can find it by going to: www.linkedin.com/ads. Now for me, this is my first foray into PPC. It’s actually pretty simple, but keep in mind that I’m still learning (right now, I’m learning about Google Adwords, so I’m sure I’ll have more pointers on that coming soon. =)

Anyway, start simple, make yourself an account. You connect the linked-in ad account to your linked-in account. From there, create yourself a campaign and list all the groups you’d like to market to. Now, connecting to a lot of groups in Linked-in can be good, or it can be a spam attractor. (As a side note, be sure to watch your email settings for each group you join, or your inbox might end up pretty cluttered). Now for each campaign you can assign how much you’re willing to pay for each click, what groups are assigned to each etc.

Now, the most important part is the ad. The ad gives you the option of a title, a little text, the ability to point to a linked-in page or a website, and even add a logo. You can make a bunch of these ads under a single campaign. Now the real work comes in from making different variations of the same theme over. Make a bunch to figure out what might actually attract someone to click on it. But remember, this is only the click… it still doesn’t mean “interest”. So here’s what you need to think about… you want people to click on your ad, but only if they are really interested. Every click means you have to pay… if you get a lot of people clicking, but no one requesting additional information, you’ve just spent a lot of money for nothing. If no one clicks… well, then it was wasted effort. You’re looking for the sweet spot.

I’ve been doing linked-in ads for around 9 months. Initially, I got no hits for a few months. This is likely for one of 2 reasons. One, every ad must be viewed multiple times before it “generates” interest (got this from marketing books). The other option… my titles just weren’t good enough to generate interest. So, you might need to keep tweaking your titles and text… over and over and over again… Now if you have ads that are working well, but aren’t getting clicks… I’d suggest adding even more detail to the ad… Either way… it’s a lot of trial and error.

If anyone out there has some good advice, I’d love to hear it… I’m learning things slowly… but if anyone can speed up my learning curve, I’d love it…

Thanks for reading,

Variant Configuration – Using the PMEVC for the Interface Design

Well, I’m still rolling on the variant configuration track. Today is a new revelation that I recently discovered. In some of my previous contracts I’ve had to set up some rather large interface design tabs. Often consisting of 20 – 50 characteristics. If you’re at all familiar with the original tool for creating/updating the interface design, you know how clunky it is. You have to manually page through the list of characteristics, and even click the checkbox in the appropriate sequence so they show up where you want them. It’s not challenging, but it certainly is tedious.

What I found is that the PMEVC actually has a great tool for creating and updating the interface design. Instead of doing the hunt and click method of adding characteristics, you can just type them in. You still have the option to select a bunch of characteristics in a method similar to the old method.

On top of everything, you can even easily change if it’s a tab or a sequence, or flag it as Sales or Engineering, just by flipping a tab. So much easier than hunting through a cryptic menu to find the characteristic grouping.

All in all, I’m pretty excited about this. I was thinking about writing a utility to upload the interface design from an excel sheet, but after finding this functionality, I don’t really need a need for that. Hope you’ve already found this trick, if not, enjoy the nice interface =)

Project Management – Redesigning your baby

Well, lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on the rework of Rapier. I’m sure you’ve noticed some of my posts in the past. My original baby, Rapier, started as a crazy idea I came up with on a plane ride home from my project in Boston. Rapier started as a BSP application, then when I realized that BSP was a dying technology, I moved to ABAP Web Dynpro. Now, I’m moving to add a ton of new functionality to the application that started it all.

Now, with all of these new ideas, it forces you to revisit what you originally designed, and come at it from a new perspective. While that sounds obvious to any developer, it comes with a price that I’m not sure everyone realizes (I didn’t at the time). When I first converted to Web Dynpro, I left most of the original structure intact, and focused on the web dynpro conversion and understanding that new coding. Now that I’m full blown into version 2 functionality, I’m realizing there are a lot of pieces that could be designed better.

This post is to remind you that a simply adding new functionality comes with a lot of additional work. For example, I’m looking at adding a new product designed around the field service engineer. There is a lot of shared functionality between the 2 products. So that required me to reevaluate all of my tables and classes, so they could easily shared. Suddenly, this meant that all of my tables, classes, etc. needed to be created under a new shared namespace. All of those items then needed to be swapped out of the existing code, etc. Get the picture? simply letting my code be reused, caused a huge chain reaction that took almost a week to reconcile. And all of this wasn’t changing any functionality. Just renaming things.

So, the word of advise for today is to remember that when you redesign, add plenty of time to your schedule. If you choose to do it right, it’s gonna take longer than expected. It’s worth it in the long run, but everything comes with a price.

Web Dynpro – Testing a Dynamic Table

Now, since I always learn things the hard way, and if you’ve been reading my posts for any length of time, you’ll know that I can be a bonehead when it comes to things… but I’m too stubborn to give up (hence why I’m writing this post. ha ha ha). Anyway, my latest discovery was in the testing of my new dynamic table. I really needed a table with some editable fields, but in the creation of my table, the context node was empty. So the table was being created, but there were no lines in the table. Well, maybe it was the lack of sleep, but my brain was moving a little slow, so I didn’t grasp that the dynamic table was empty… thus, impossible to see if there were any fields editable.

So, short story, you need to populate at least one row in the table, even if it’s empty. Here’s an example:

* navigate from <CONTEXT> to <NOT_ITEM> via lead selection
lo_nd = wd_context->get_child_node( name = wd_this->wdctx_item ).
lo_nd->get_static_attributes_table( importing table = lt ).
IF lt IS INITIAL.
APPEND wa to lt.
lo_nd->bind_table( new_items = lt set_initial_elements = abap_true ).
ENDIF.

this simple addition, and suddenly I could see my editable fields in my dynamic table. Probably obvious to a lot of folks, but yet another lesson learned in my never ending journey.

Thanks for reading.

ABAP – Web Dynpro Dynamic Table, again

Well, as it turns out, I didn’t figure out everything I needed for a dynamic table. =) The dynamic table code that I previously talked about works great, until you want to control the read only vs. editable aspects of the table. I found a great way of creating a Dynamic Table in ABAP Web Dynpro that gives me the control that I needed to do allow for editing.

First things first, you need to create a context node and the attributes for to define the table. You could do this dynamically, but I’m finding it’s cleaner to build it normally. Either way, once it exists, here how to build the dynamic table.

*** create dynamic table for Notification – Items
cl_wd_table=>new_table(
exporting
id = ‘TB_TABLE’
bind_data_source = ‘CONTEXT_NODE’
visible_row_count = 5
read_only = abap_false
receiving
control = l_table ).

*** build table columns
loop at <cols> into wa_config.
wa_cols = cl_wd_table_column=>new_table_column( ).

*For Dynamically creating Input Field
CASE type.
when ‘TEXT’ OR ‘TIME’ or ‘DATE’ or ‘DROPDOWN’.
CALL METHOD cl_wd_input_field=>new_input_field
EXPORTING
bind_value = lv_bind
id         = lv_id
state      = lv_state
read_only  = abap_false
on_enter   = ‘ON_ENTER’
RECEIVING
control    = lr_input.
wa_cols->set_table_cell_editor( lr_input ).
when ‘CHECK’.
CALL METHOD cl_wd_checkbox=>new_checkbox
EXPORTING
bind_checked = lv_bind
id           = lv_id
state        = lv_state
RECEIVING
control      = lr_check.
wa_cols->set_table_cell_editor( lr_check ).
ENDCASE.
ELSE.
CALL METHOD cl_wd_text_view=>new_text_view
EXPORTING
bind_text  = lv_bind
id         = lv_id
RECEIVING
control    = lr_textview.
wa_cols->set_table_cell_editor( lr_textview ).
ENDIF.

l_col_hdr = cl_wd_caption=>new_caption( ).
l_col_hdr->set_text( lv_col_text ).
wa_cols->set_header( l_col_hdr ).

l_table->add_column( wa_cols ).
endloop.

l_root ?= view->get_element( ‘TC_XXX’ ).
grid_data = cl_wd_grid_data=>new_grid_data( l_table ).
l_table->set_layout_data( grid_data ).
l_root->add_child( l_table ).
Now this code obviously won’t work out of the box, but you should be able to get the idea of how to use it. If you have questions on this let me know and I can expand on the code provided. Thanks for reading.

Variant Configuration – Set_Default

If you’ve ever had to use the SET_DEFAULT statement in variant configuration, you grasp just how cryptic the syntax can be. That’s why I wanted to point out this little trick that you might not yet be aware of. You can replace the SET_DEFAULT syntax with a nice little operator. Take a look below to see for yourself.

Example of the old way to set a default:
TABLE TEST( INPUT1 = INPUT1,
OUTPUT1 = $SELF.CHAR ),
$SET_DEFAULT( $SELF, OUTPUT1, $SELF.CHAR)

With this:
TABLE TEST( INPUT1 = INPUT1,
OUTPUT1 ?= $SELF.OUTPUT1 )

It doesn’t have to be used in a table, but can be most anywhere you use the = statement. So in my opinion, why would you ever use the cryptic SET_DEFAULT statement again =)

Variant Configuration – IS Invisible

Hello everyone, it’s funny, I’ve been doing a lot more Variant Configuration work lately, and it reminds me of all the fun tricks I’ve either heard about or have used in the past. The most recent one I was reminded of was the new IS INVISIBLE syntax. So, as a reminder:

Old method: $SELF.SCREEN_DEP_INVISIBLE = ‘CHAR1’

Cool new Way:$SELF.CHAR1 IS INVISIBLE

Now, either method you still need a reference characteristic that is attached to SCREEN_DEP-INVISIBLE.

Benefits include no persistent data storage, where used checking, and syntax checking of characteristic name. Why does this matter? for example, the biggest issue with the old method in my mind is that you have to enter the characteristic into quotes? this means, it’s just a text string, and if you spell it wrong, you don’t get an error, it just doesn’t work. Using the IS INVISIBLE, it will give you a syntax error if you enter in the wrong name. The same goes for conducting a where used of a characteristic, in the event you tried to rename it or remove it. the IS INVISIBLE syntax will show you it’s been used there.

It’s also much cleaner. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this tidbit.

Happy Independence Day

Just a quick wish to you for a safe and happy fourth of July. I also hope you stop to remember exactly why we celebrate this holiday. Our founding fathers worked very hard to provide us the freedom and liberty they so desperately wanted, yet didn’t have. Now today, every day we lose more of that liberty and more of those freedoms in the name of “security”, “political correctness” or “entitlements”.

Today, remember all the things you love to do and be grateful that a couple hundred years ago, our founding fathers earned that for us. And be vigilant, because Ben Franklin said it best:

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”

Variant Configuration – SSC Eclipse Editor

Well, I wanted to pass on my most recent and valuable discovery about the SSC Eclipse Editor. That is prototyping a new model is so much easier in this editor. Now, the VC purest in me still knows that at the end of the day, the VC rules must still be adhered to, and best practices in modeling don’t change. But here’s the value of the SSC Eclipse Editor.

If you model like I do, you work best by just jumping in and starting to put things together. Well, this is great up to the point of enter in master/transactional data. If you know SAP, you know that deleting things, renaming things, or going in a whole new direction is a royal PITA once you create a sales orders or production orders, etc. because at that point, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to do some renaming…

The SSC Eclipse Editor is not locked into the same issues. Because it’s text based, you put everything together, do your initial testing, and if you don’t like the way something is working… or more commonly, you find out new information half way through your model, you can quickly adapt, change names, restructure tables etc. With very little pain.

Now don’t get me wrong, you’ll still have these pains because at some point you need to connect the SSC Model to either ECC or CRM, once that happens, you’ll be back to the same pain, but when you prototype the model, it sure is nice (for me) to have that flexibility to change my design on the fly without a lot of headaches (in fact, something a simple find and replace everywhere gets me where I need to be). This is certainly not possible in the standard ECC Variant Configuration… Food for thought…

Thanks for reading,

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