Paint away your SAP Systems!
Paint away your SAP Systems!
Here is something fun. Having heard from many that the SAP Editor’s UI is so bland & monotonous, I came across something that would give it a bit more oomph & make your SAP experience interesting. 😏
Usually it happens that you are either working on many landscapes at the same time or while fixing a production issue, you need to have several of your logons open. In this case, it becomes difficult for us to differentiate between them. 😕 What most of us do, is look at the bottom right corner to see which system the window belongs.
However, we also like to see the transaction which is open in that particular window. The solution I came across for this is to change the color for each system in order to differentiate between systems as well as give us an idea of how careful we need to be with that particular system. 😎 I’ll tell you how we achieve this in a while.
To change the color of each system, we need to change the active theme for our SAP GUI. ℹ This is done by clicking on the Customize Local Layout button in the top right corner of your SAP window and select Options.
In Theme Preview/Settings, change the Theme to ‘Enjoy theme’. 😳
You will then notice the addition of 2 more options under ‘Visual Design’ drop-down. Choose the Colors in System option and Color away your systems!
We need to Login again for the changes to take effect. Also, the color of each system will need to be changed in each of the individual systems.
We can give Blue to all the sandbox systems, Green color to all the development systems, Orange to all the Quality systems and RED (Pink) to all the Production systems. What this can achieve is it can be regarded as a way to indicate our freedom in that particular system. Blue – You can do anything you want, Sky is the limit. Green – do your development as expected (green signal ➕ ). Orange – Testing time! Slowdown (usually a stop) on the coding front. Red – Oh oh! ❗ Need to be careful while making code (by transporting) or data changes. 🙂
These are just my implications of various colors. You are free to choose yours!
I wish you a colorful and cognizant SAP experience! 😛
Code changes can't be done in Q or P systems.
Thank you for your comment Manish Kumar.
However, for the Q system, i wrote a "slowdown" just to be analogous to what an Orange Traffic signal does, and that is why i wrote "usually a stop" in bracket. Also, in the P systems, by "code changes" i actually meant the data changes that often occur when we execute various transactions (when we use them for testing) that render the rest of the data inconsistent, since its the PRODUCTION system. Nonetheless, i have amended my statement to convey the same.
Regards.
I have used this trick for several years now. It's a key reminder of where you are and what you can (and more importantly, cannot) do. I believe the only issue I had was clicking on 'Apply' rather than OK, which caused the logon pad to adopt the color I had just chosen, and all the preceding systems as well.
I use Blue for Dev, Green for QA, and Pink for Prod - because I want everything in production to be coming up roses.
Sometimes I do wish we could choose the colors using a color wheel, but perhaps the differences between systems would be too subtle.
Oh, I thought the pink was because it's closest to red (and red itself might be too dark) and you wanted to be cautioned about entering precarious territory 😆
In all honesty I was already hovering over the 'Report abuse' button, but after reading the Susan's comment above I feel a bit torn. 🙂
This actually has already been published in SCN Wiki. Please don't feel discouraged, but for the next blog you might want to run some search first. Also this is technically not ABAP related. Although I'm not sure what the right place would be for this kind of general tips and tricks...
Thanks a lot for your comment Jelena Perfiljeva.
I was aware of the blog on the Wiki page. However, the reason i have repeated the procedure, in brief, AND in a blog is because i wanted the readers to look (or give an idea of how they can perceive it as) at the benefit of doing it, particularly, warning about the freedom of accessibility in each of the systems. This is not stressed upon on the Wiki page & that is why i put it in a blog stating why I do it (which, as you must be aware, is what a blog actually supposed to convey. Kind of giving a sentimental feel to it).
Hoping you understand what i want to accomplish by this,
Regards. 🙂
The best part is that it applies only to your screens... and it is a useful way to know where you are.
Plus, it is always fun to see the faces in the room when you open your SAP Gui, and it is - pink, purple or green... I've heard so often complaints about "the blue screens", and in the old R/3 this was the best defence 😆
We all need a sense of humour these days.
Thank you for your comment Chiara Bersano.
I can so connect with you when you say " it is always fun to see the faces in the room when you open your SAP Gui" as well as "We all need a sense of humour these days." 🙂 The latter being a part of my overall intention while writing this blog! 😆
Regards.
Since I love colors and am an "eye" person, this was one of the first things I found and used when starting in the SAP team. It, too, is mainly to differenciate between the systems and something I have included in the SAP trainings, I give for new users, because they learn in our Q-system and have already access to the Prod-system, too. This way they see the difference, because most of the time the names of the systems don't make much sense to them. *gg*
But it looks like I'm the only one doing the colors after another system, since Prod is green as in "done" in my case. ^^ Q is blue as in "in process" and the Test is red-ish. One could say, because it's "raw". 😀
Thank you for your comment Steffi Warnecke.
I am an "eye" person too! Also, a great tip for new students to let them get accustomed to various systems. ➕
I also like your interpretation of colors for all the systems! 😀
Regards.
Rather than 'Enjoy Theme', I enjoy the new corbu theme in GUI 730..
The icons look so cool in this theme..
Color coding is great but I'd rather look at the bottom right corner of the window to see what system I m currently working on..
Thanks for your comment Yuvaraj S.
The new theme in UI 730 does look really cool. Thanks for sharing the snapshot! I'd like to get the feel of working on UI 730. Let's see.
Regards.
I'm using the Corbu styling for SAP Signature Theme & IMO looks better than the Corbu theme 😉
Interesting...Colourful.
Best Regards,
Naresh K.
Thank you Naresh Krishnamoorthy 🙂
Nice idea 🙂
Will be very handy and avoid confusion when working parallely on DEV,QAS and PRD systems 🙂
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Regards,
Madhu.
Is it possible to change this color coding for all the SAP users globally?
Thanks,
Rajesh K Sahu