Q&A transcript from SAP Screen Personas webinar 2

[PeterSpielvogel]

Thank you to everyone that attended our second webinar in our 4-part series, “Enhance Usability with SAP Screen Personas” on March 6. tobias.queck and peter.spielvogel discussed how to “Streamline Quote to Cash Process with SAP Screen Personas.” We have consolidated all the questions into the following Q&A guide, grouped into the following topics.

• Compatibility
• Scenarios
• Rollout/Implementation
• Security
• Features
• Licensing
• Silverlight
• Training

Compatibility

Question	Answer
How do you position SAP Screen Personas against NetWeaver Business Client?	NWBC (NetWeaver Business Client) is a shell. It provides  generic features and holds the canvas area. In the canvas area of NWBC you can ran e.g. the classic SAP GUI or Personas.
Can Personas be used over NWBC desktop client?	Personas screens can appear inside the NWBC canvas, similar to the way Personas works inside the Portal. Personas can also communicate with side panel applications.
Can you display a Persona-built screen in an iView & iFrame in the portal?	Yes, it is very similar to using Personas in the canvas area of NWBC.
Is the use of Personas only available for modules deployed in the Portal or can it be used on the ECC side as well?	We designed Personas to address usability issues in the SAP GUI. This applies to most ECC screens. Personas is independent of the Portal, other than that Personas screens can appear in the Portal.
Can Personas be used with any SAP module such as Environment, Health & Safety, LSO or CRM?	Personas works with any module that relies on Dynpro rendering for ITS screens. This represents approximately 60-70% of the Suite screens.
Can Personas be built over CRM?	CRM uses a newer, non-Dynpro rendering technology.
Can Personas connect with GIS and Geo spatial systems?	Personas can embed or call other web applications using WebRFCs or anything you can implement in JavaScript.
Does SAP plan to expand the scope of Personas to Web Dynpro screen customization?	Personas was designed to modify Dynpro screens. To modify Web Dynpro screens, you can use SAP Floorplan Manager.
What version of Personas was used in this demo?	We used the current version, which is version 1.0 with Corbu theme.

Scenarios

Question	Answer
Can you mix transactions on the same screen... line view an order and confirm its operations on the same screen...?	Personas allows to fetch data from different screens/transactions and to present them to the users as one screen. Please have a look at http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-35492
Is the end user able to switch between Persona and Basic views?	The Personas product allows this. It is up to IT to provide users the ability to change between different flavors.
What about role based customization... different screens based on role for example?	This is exactly the use case we expect most customers to follow. They will build separate screens based on the department or role.
What do you need to consider when upgrading SAP GUI?	You do not need to upgrade SAP GUI to use Personas. Personas is browser-based and requires no client software but a browser with Silverlight support.
What workflows are the best to implement this technology on?  Creating an invoice seems logical but where else would be a practical application of this technology to get high ROI on the additional cost?	This depends on the individual customer environment. We recommend looking at areas where usability is hurting employee productivity and starting there. This is often a complex transaction or one used by many people.
Will we have a manual or a 'way to do' what you are going to demo, or would we be able to share a ''flavor''?	It is very easy to share flavors within an organization. People can share with their peers or IT can push out flavors to specific individuals or groups.

Rollout/Implementation

This is the main topic of the next webinar. We will go into much more detail on how to deploy and manage personas in a customer environment.

Question	Answer
Can you discuss how to deploy screen Personas to users?	This is the topic of the next webinar.
Do you normally allow users to create/change the screens directly in production system or do they do it in DEV, do a FUT there, the move to QA like a normal development project? Are transports supported?	Generally, customers create Personas screens in their development environment, test them with users in QA, and finally move them into production. They accomplish this using transports.
Do you have productive customers that use Personas today?	Our early customers (Personas went on sale in December 2012) have installed SAP Screen Personas into their development environments and are building screens. The prototypes we have seen look great.
Is there a tool to see if users are using specific flavors, or using the basic view instead, to determine if flavors need improvement?	You can see what users have chosen as a default flavor per transaction. Further analytics features are prototyped but not yet part of the product.
What is the transport mechanism for moving Personas through the landscape to Production?	Personas follows the standard SAP transport mechanism.

Security

This one of the topics in the next webinar. We will discuss different aspects of how Personas fits into the existing SAP security model.

Question	Answer
Does Personas security authenticate to the ECC backend?	Yes.
How do we secure the Personas to the users and developers?	IT controls who has the ability to make screen changes.
How are these screens assigned to a user? Security role?	IT assigns specific flavors of screens to individual users or groups.
If you embed Personas in say a portal like SAP Portal, does single sign on work?	Yes, Personas supports certificate based login.
Is there a published security guide?	This is part of the system documentation.
What is the security impact?  What type of role changes need to be made?	No changes are required. Personas sits on top of existing SAP transactions. If you don’t have rights to perform an action or see a screen in ECC, Personas cannot bypass that.

Features

Question	Answer
Does Personas allow use of BAPI or Web services calls in case we want to use it for a little complex scenarios?	Personas allows to call web enabled RFCs (more at http://scn.sap.com/community/netweaver-as/blog/2012/08/07/webrfc--simply-calling-an-rfc-from-javascr...) and supports JavaScript snippets that are executed on client-side.
If someone has customized messages in customer enhancements would you get the popups?	Yes.
How does it work when a yellow or red error is returned when you are in the Persona view?	You receive the standard error message in your status bar. Using the scripting you could copy a status and paste it on a different screen.
Is it possible to add additional functions like output issue and other reports within the screen?	Personas allows to embed web content. As a result, if you can run it in a browser you can embed it in Personas.
With Personas can you launch programs from different SAP systems with sub screens?	Using the embedded web content, you can also embed other business applications like BSPs or WebDynpro applications.
Can you have a list edit results show up in a nice pie chart or bar chart?	There is currently no analytics screen included in Personas to visualize executed edits.

Licensing

Question	Answer
Is Personas GA? I don't see it on the Product Availability Matrix. (And several variations of this question.)	Personas is generally available as a repeatable custom solution (RCS). This is a product sold through our custom development organization. We released it on December 7, 2012. There are no services that are bundled with Personas, although you can hire SAP professional services to assist with installation, assessment, deployment, screen design, etc. for an additional fee.
What are the Licensing requirements for SAP Personas? (And several variations of this question.)	Personas is licensed on a per-user basis. Users are defined as anyone that uses a modified screen. There is no developer license for people that build Personas screens. This is included in the license. This is a separate product and not part of standard SAP.

Silverlight

This will be part of the architectural discussion, which is one of the topics in the next webinar.

Question	Answer
Why Silverlight? (And many variations of this question.)	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 that enable broader platform support.

Training classes

Classes to learn how to use SAP Screen Personas are taking place the week of March 18, 2013. We have a web site where you can find more information and register.

Question	Answer
Is the class 1 or 2 days?	The class is 1 day.
Will the 1 day class include any scripting instruction?	The class is mostly a hands-on workshop. We guide you through a series of progressively more difficult exercises in which you use Personas to design intuitive screens. Customers that have taken this training leave the class able to build their own screens to suit their specific scenarios.
Who is teaching?	Product experts will be teaching the class, including the people who invented and designed the solution.
Is there a downloadable manual or book on utilizing Personas?	The class workbook is only available to students who attend the class.

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