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Former Member

Hello Everyone,

Just want to share the recent problem with GUI menu buttons which we had observed in our project. Let me begin with the exact problem scenario and technical detail of our landscape so that the viewers can get better visibility of situation and can forsee its applicability.

Problem description: GUI menu buttons like "Create Session or Close session" are disabled for any T-code iview accessed through Portal. Refer screenshot for more understanding.

Note: GUI buttons are disabled for any t-code only through portal and not directly through GUI logon pad.

System Details: EP7.01 SP7

GUI version: SAP Logon for windows 7.20 Patch Level 9

Analysis and Solution:

After doing the initial analysis , we could observe that issue is coming for users who are installing a new version of GUI (Windows) released by client software management team to end users. Users who had not installed new version and continued to use the old version [SAP Logon for windows 7.20 Patch Level 3] were not facing the problem and could use the GUI menu buttons. Intially it looked to be a strange problem and we could understand that issue is due to installation of new GUI version. As many users had reported the problem, so as a wrokaround we asked users to use the alternative way of creating new session (refer screenshot).

For permanent fix, during the investigation of issue we came across SAP note 128154 which throws light on this behaviour of GUI screen thorugh Portal. This note points out that due to architectural reasons, the behaviour of WinGUI within the portal differs from its behaviour outside the portal and it is a expected behaviour that GUI menu buttons should be disabled through portal. After going through the note, we could understand that it is limitation set by SAP but we were wondering how the buttons were enabled in old version of GUI in our landscape. Further deep dive into this issue revealed that SAP had missed to put this limitation in one of the patch version of SAP GUI for windows like in our case Patch level 3.

Now coming back to SAP note, it also says that post SAP EP 7.02 SP10 version, this limitation can be corrected easily through SystemAdmin. Details of  solution mentioned in the note.

For lower versions applicable in our case, SAP has given the solution but clearly mentioned that solution is NOT recommended and  supported by SAP. This was a word of caution for us but  we were interested to fix the issue. After discussing the impact with clients, we finalized to implement the fix as per note.

The note says to  change the below mentioned runtime properties in the WinGUIRenderLayer.properties file included in com.sap.portal.appintegrator par file.

1. Set property -wp=false in SSDCommandTemplate section

2. Set property workplace=false in SSDCommandTemplate section

As portal admin, we directly went to change the above mentioned par through System Admin->Support->PortalRuntime->Application Console and deployed it on server. But this did not fix the issue which was a kind of disappointment to us. Later, with the help of Basis guy, we changed the same properties in the property file at OS level and bounced the system. Thsi time we were successful and GUI buttons were enabled.

So, going directly by the steps mentioned in note might not fix the issue. Changing the properties at server node level and immediate bounce of the system is required.

Hope the details help projects who might face similar problem. Do share your thoughts on this!

Thanks!

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