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Author's profile photo Marcus Zahn

Monday Knowledge Snippet (MKS) – 16 On-the-Fly Scenario Building on the TM 9.0 Geo-Map

You need to quickly prepare a sales demo for SAP TM? Or discuss a business scenario with experts? Something visual and easy to understand?

That can be a challenge. Okay, for the visual part you can use the Geo-Map component SAP Visual Business integrated into SAP TM since the 8.0 release. But still it was required to first maintain locations as master data. But where to get good coordinates from? It’s just a demo system with no GIS connected! Okay, open the browser, check the internet, create locations one at a time, enter the coordinates manually, check it on the TM Geo-Map. That takes time! Why can’t you simply click on the TM Geo-Map where you want the location to be and create it there?

With SAP TM 9.0 and the refreshed SAP Visual Business 2.0 component you can! Simply open the Transportation Network Cockpit under Master Data, zoom to the spot where you want to create the location, right-click on the map, and select the function ‘Create Location’ from the context menu. A window comes up asking you for a location ID, a description, a type, and a country. Done. The location is created (if your input was good enough though…) and immediately displayed. When right clicking the location, you can select the function ‘Show Details’ and the standard master data location maintenance opens. Here you can see everything you have already entered plus the coordinates. You can now maintain everything that you need here. By the way, you can navigate this way into each object (zone, schedule, …) from the Transportation Network Cockpit. Since I am not a fan of searching menus for different transactions, I never use something else when checking the network. Everything at hand, visualized and connected.

Now you have the foundation for your scenario and can create what you require to make it complete (lanes, schedules). This is unfortunately not yet possible in the TNC. For example I could imagine a drag&drop logic to connect 2 locations having a popup asking what you want to create. If there will be enough people asking for this, it might come. 🙂 One obvious next step for the location creation is to make the entry of the country information obsolete as this is given by the coordinates.

But since the location coordinates are now accurate, everything based on this (distances, durations, planning) will have a demo-ready quality.

Of course pre-requisite is to have SAP Visual Business 2.0 installed and the Geo-Map activated for SAP TM. But who would run such a geographical business without a visualization?

I once did a test to compare the ‘old’ and ‘new’ way to create a scenario, and it save a lot of time. Try it out. Here is a scenario in Canada:

MKS16_01_TNC_Entry.jpg

Transportation Network Cockpit – Menu

MKS16_02_TNC_Start.jpg

Transportation Network Cockpit – Start Screen

MKS16_03_TNC_Create_Airport.jpg

Create Location – Context Menu function

MKS16_04_TNC_Create_Airport_Popup.jpg

Create Location – Popup

MKS16_05_TNC_Create_Airport_MapDisplay.jpg

Create Location – Display

MKS16_06_TNC_Airport_ShowDetauls.jpg

Create Location – Show Details

MKS16_07_TNC_Airport_LocationMaintenance.jpg

Location Maintenance

MKS16_08_TNC_Scenario.jpg

Complete Scenario – Overview

MKS16_09_TNC_ScenarioDetails.jpg

Complete Scenario – Details

Will there be many standard TM users sitting around and creating locations on the Geo-Map? Most likely not as the Network is build automatically. Does it support the setup phase? I think yes. What do you think?

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      Author's profile photo Marcus Zahn
      Marcus Zahn
      Blog Post Author
      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Marcus,

      I have just saw that there is also a function in SAP TM 9.1  "Move Location" which is very helpful for the case the geocoding was not good enough. I am not sure how long this function already exists. Was it already available in 9.0? I did not find any information about it in SCN or somewhere else.

      How does it works:

      1. Right Click on Location which you want to move

      2. Select "Move Location"

      3. Right Click in the map (to where the location should be moved)

      4. Select "Move Location Here"

      Done

      Maybe you can describe this function more professional. My screenshots were not so pretty.

      Best regards,

      Rajiv

      Author's profile photo Marcus Zahn
      Marcus Zahn
      Blog Post Author

      Yes,

      should be available since TM 9.1, when I did the VB 2.1 migration. Thought it would be a helpfull function, so I just did it. I think also Zones can now be moved.

      Marcus

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Ok.

      What also could be a good additional function. During Location creation on the map, only coordinates are determined (maybe our system is wrong configured, then let me know).

      However, it makes sense to retrieve also the address data (not only the country). As far as I know GIS (at least PTV) provide some services like backwards search: Coordinates -> Address.

      This would reduce the maintenance.

      Rajiv

      Author's profile photo Marcus Zahn
      Marcus Zahn
      Blog Post Author

      Here is the link to the famous TM podcast about this topic: TMP013: TM Geography | tmp