Thank you to everyone that attended the third webinar in our 4-part series, “Enhance Usability with SAP Screen Personas” on March 13. tobias.queck and karl-heinz.brenzinger discussed planning, deploying, and managing Personas in your SAP environment. We have consolidated all the questions into the following Q&A guide, grouped into the following topics.
Compatibility
Question | Answer |
Is this in GA? |
|
Does Personas work with the SAP Portal? |
|
Can I personalize a Z transaction using Personas? |
|
Does Personas work with CRM especially CRM WCEM? |
|
Can I also customize ENJOY-transactions such as MIGO with Personas? |
|
I have SAP GRC and IDM To provision my users access, Can I provision against Personas? | Users in PFGC can be synched against user assignments in groups in Personas via the admin transaction. |
I have Hana Kernel 7.20, Can I install Personas? You mentioned previously If I have Hana I can run Personas. | You need Kernel version 7.21 or later to run Personas. (This was released in September 2012.) |
Which version of the SAP GUI do I need to run Personas? | SAP Screen Personas does not use the SAP GUI. Personas is completely browser-based. You do not need to have any SAP GUI installed on a system that is running Personas. |
Does this tool allow for mobile functionality? | Personas runs on Windows 8 mobile devices. However, Personas is not designed as a mobile solution as it is. |
If we start using Personas now and If SAP changes the UI Technology from MS Silverlight to something else, will our existing screens work with the new UI Technology? | SAP builds products to be backwards compatible. We plan to follow this convention with SAP Screen Personas. |
What is the advantage we have with this on Web Dynpros? | We built Personas to allow customers to personalize SAP GUI screens, which are built using Dynpro technology. Web Dynpro is a newer screen rendering technology. You can use Floorplan Manager to personalize those screens. Personas does not work on Web Dynpro screens. |
Rollout/Implementation
Question | Answer |
Are Personas transports governed by CTS+? | There is no recording of customizing changes. Transports are assembled via admin transaction. |
Can you override SAP properties for a screen field ? EG. Provide a custom searchhelp for a SAP field hardcoded to use an SAP Searchhelp. | You can overwrite most of the properties for most of the controls. However, it is not possible to assign a new search help to a field. |
Does Personas usually get loaded on the R3/ECC server or BW backend server? | Personas is part of the NetWeaver ABAP stack. It is loaded into the ECC server. PETER – insert personas_architecture.png IMAGE |
If a flavor has been created in PRD by a user and it is deemed to be useful to a larger audience, does it have to be recreated manually in DEV before it can be transported through the landscape, or can it be copied from PRD to DEV? | You can use Transports in both directions. In your example, you could move from PRD to DEV. And then presumably back from DEV to PRD later. |
Does end user need any training for this? | If the end user is using a Personas screen that IT built for them, they should not need any training. The purpose of Personas is to make the screens more intuitive. If IT allows the user to modify screens using Personas, then we recommend you provide some short training. Probably an hour would be sufficient for making simple changes. |
What happens during SPS upgrades? Do Personas need to updated in lockstep? | Personas integrates at the kernel level. So, Personas enhancements can occur on their own schedule, independent of SPS (support package stack) upgrades. |
What skillsets are required for "developing" flavors in Personas? Can a functional resource handle it or does it require specific technical skills - i.e. HTML/JAVA, ABAP, etc.? | Building screens in SAP Screen Personas is fairly easy. It is mostly drag and drop along with some point and click. You do not need any HTML, Java, or ABAP skills. You can create most scripts by recording your keystrokes. For creating or editing complex scripts, it would be helpful if you can write a macro in some application. |
Where is the new Personas admin screen stored in SAP. In SPRO or a new t-code? | Personas comes with a new transaction offering the day to day administration tasks. In addition, some of the settings can be done using SPRO. These settings are usually done during the implementation and updated rarely in the future. |
Will the portal language be passed to the Personas iView so that the Personas page is rendered in the appropriate language? | You can start Personas using the url parameter sap-language. Based on this parameter Personas chooses the requested language. |
Security
Question | Answer |
Do persona flavors accept SAP logon tickets to accomplish SSO? | Personas currently supports only certificate and user/password based logins. We are investigating the possibility to support this in the future as well. January 2014 Update: This works now. We have cusotmers that have used SAP Logon tickets for SSO with Personas. |
Features
Question | Answer |
Can we combine multiple screens (ie. From multiple tabs on a program)? |
|
Can you explain shortlinks in more detail? I did not understand how it works? Did I understand the link could be posted in a portal? Would clicking on the link cause a login? | A shortlink allows you to place a Personas screen into another browser-based application (generally in an iView). Placing in the Portal is one great use case. Shortlinks also allow integration of Personas screens into NWBC. Clicking/opening such a short link is what opens a connection to the target system so that authentication is required. |
Silverlight
Question | Answer |
Why did you use Silverlight? Microsoft has announced they are discontinuing this technology. | The short answer is that using Silverlight allowed us to bring SAP Screen Personas to market faster than other alternatives. Microsoft is supporting Silverlight through 2021, which should give us plenty of time to examine alternative technologies, which we are already doing. |
2013 H1 Personas Webinar Series
Original Broadcast Date | Recordings no longer available as of 2014 | Q&A Transcript on SCN |
February 27, 2013 | Make SAP ERP Beautiful with SAP Screen Personas | http://scn.sap.com/community/gui/blog/2013/03/05/qa-transcript-from-sap-screen-personas-webinar-1 |
March 6, 2013 | Streamline Quote to Cash Process with SAP Screen Personas | http://scn.sap.com/community/gui/blog/2013/03/09/qa-transcript-from-sap-screen-personas-webinar-2 |
March 13, 2013 | Planning, deploying, and managing Personas in your SAP environment | http://scn.sap.com/community/gui/blog/2013/03/18/qa-transcript-from-sap-screen-personas-webinar-3 |
April 3, 2013 | How to improve master data quality with SAP Screen Personas | http://scn.sap.com/community/gui/blog/2013/04/09/qa-transcript-from-sap-screen-personas-webinar-4 |
April 24, 2013 | Varian Medical Improves Sales and Distribution with SAP Screen Personas | http://scn.sap.com/community/gui/blog/2013/05/02/qa-transcript-from-sap-screen-personas-webinar-5 |