NWBC Feature Request and Improvement Register
The purpose of this document is to have a place to capture ideas for feature requests and product improvements around The NetWeaver Business Client (NWBC).
Feel free to add items to the list, add columns to the table etc… this is a community resource to own (please read to make sure your idea or a similar one isn’t already here before adding it).
This is open to everyone and I don’t necessarily expect SAP to deliver any of these suggestions, so you shouldn’t either. But hopefully SAP will take the list into consideration when possible.
***UPDATE: 30th March, 2015: (Julie Plummer, Product Manager, NWBC)***
Hi everyone, I am sorry to hijack Simon’s blog; I don’t usually do this, but I don’t want this message to get lost in the comments:
We are not planning to offer a Customer Connection in the near future. Our main development efforts are focused on NWBC-Fiori integration, at least till the end of this year.
Best wishes, Julie R Plummer.
| ID | Name | Description | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Context aware Quick Launch | In the current NWBC 4.0 release when you type a t-code in the Quick Launch bar it always tries to open that t-code in the main NWBC system (the role system). In some cases it would make more sense from the user perspective to try to launch the t-code in the system they currently have open in the canvas area of NWBC. Since NWBC lets you open transactions in remote systems you may for example have an SRM system open and want to run an SRM t-code that doesn’t exist in your NWBC role system (e.g. ECC). | Simon Kemp |
| 2 | Dynamic placement of Link Collection folders | It would be nice if the Link Collection folders were displayed in the menu panel of the NWBC aligned with the end of the menu tree. Currently the Link Collection is placed down at the bottom of the menu panel and there can be a lot of empty white space between the end of the menu tree and the start of the Link Collection folders. | Simon Kemp |
| 3 | Side Panel Favorites | Give users the ability to select the Side Panels they would like to see. | Lavaughn Urbano |
| 4 | Expand OS and Browser Support |
Expand support beyond Windows & Internet Explorer |
Lavaughn Urbano |
| 5 | Partner with Benchmarking, Test Automation, Browser Acceleration Tools | Partner with Benchmarking, Test Automation, Browser Acceleration Tools so their offerings support NWBC and capture traffic within Side Panels. |
Lavaughn Urbano |
| 6 | Add a transaction CHIP | Provide a transaction CHIP that allow parameter passing to Native SAP Transaction within the Side Panel. Also do this for SAP POWL, AWD, BSP. |
Lavaughn Urbano |
| 7 | Side Panel Analytics | Enhance Solman Analytics and ST03 to capture statistics about what runs within the Side Panel. |
Lavaughn Urbano |
| 8 | Side Panel Management | Better Side Panel management for User Menus beyond PFCG |
Lavaughn Urbano |
| 9 | Color Settings for NWBC | Provide color settings for NWBC as for SAPGUI. e.g. SAPGUI prod environments can be setup with a golden background, prevents mistakes. |
Lavaughn Urbano |
| 10 | XLS embeddedwithin a side panel. | Microsoft Office applications like XLS embedded in-place within a side panel |
Lavaughn Urbano |
| 11 | Restrict Scripting Authorization | More granular control of Scripting Authorization. To use NWBC users need scripting access. Restrict the amount of authorization that users can have with this Scripting Authorization. |
Lavaughn Urbano |
| 12 | Horizontal side panel | To appear at bottom of the screen – compare this with Window’s task bar. | Supriya Biware |
| 13 | Pin/unpin CHIP | To move the CHIP or re-arrange the sequence – compare this with MS Office communicator chat window | Supriya Biware |
| 14 | Favourites Management | Enable SAP Favourites defined by end users against composite role menu entries to not become corrupted when roles are adjusted and changed. (Currently work by referencing node identifiers that are changed when composite roles are changed). Not an ideal scenario, with the only alternative to use single roles as the provisioning option. |
Dianne Wheeler |
| 15 | Menu Management | Allow flexibility around how menu settings are able to be defined; folders sorting (alpha or folder sort priority) transactions sorted (technical name or text), all folders at the top/bottom, all transactions at the top/bottom, This would be especially relevant when defining how the merging logic is managed, for example managing the merge of two or more roles beyond the current sorting priorities. | Dianne Wheeler |
| 16 | Quick launch Box – Open up for allowing Enhancement (e.g. Input parameters) | The Quicklaunch box (aka Omnibox) today only accept a very limited amount of parameters (e.g. /n, /o; search engine etc); it would be great if it could be enhanced to accept more input parameters e.g. program variants (e.g. VA01 /vA1 -> execute Tcode with variant A1), default field values (e.. VA03 /f328800 -> Start VA03 with sales order # 328800). It would be best if it could be open up for guided enhancement by clients. | Damean-BF Chen |
| 17 | NWBC HTML – Side Panel and left navigational panel | Side Panel & the left Navigational panel (Both Favorites and Role based) is currently available on NWBC for Windows only. Would be great if this could be included as part of NWBC for HTML too. | Damean-BF Chen |
| 18 | Index Page – Allow user to personalize Work Center\Role | In the default NWBC Index page, user have no control for display of the Work Center Roles display. It would be great if user could be given the rights to do some basic changes to this Roles on the Index Page e.g. Hide Roles that they don’t need, Move Roles Up\Down the page depending on their personal preferences, Relabel the roles to something more applicable for them, Change the Font (Bold, Color, italic) display of the Role to highlight what’s the importance etc | |
| 19 | Windows 8.1 support for NWBC 5.0 | Windows 8.1 support for NWBC 5.0 and update PAM to include | Lavaughn Urbano |
| 20 | User input | After opening a new tab via shortcut (ctrl + t), the input field is not in focus and not ready to enter a transaction directly. That’s quiet annoying, because you have to move the cursor everytime by hand. There is even a shortcut to get the inputfield in focus, but ctrl + alt + L is not really useful. Getting the inputfield in focus automatically after opening a new tab would be nice. SAP GUI also behaves this way. | Mark Wilmowsky |
| 21 | System Selection dialog box |
The default view would be for all end users and would show ONLY entries for PRD systems. A training view would show ONLY training systems or PRD and training systems (configurable). An all systems view would show all systems (PRD, DEV, QAS, Training, Test, etc.) |
Roy Brasse |
| 22 | Use Index page column space more effectively | The columns under the work centres on the index page should adjust more dynamically to the space available on the screen, instead of being a fixed width. It looks silly to have the menu items squashed into the fixed with columns (some items with long texts spanning multiple lines) while there is a heap of empty space to the right of the last column. This should adjusted more dynamically. | Simon Kemp |
| 23 | Enhance PFCG based CHIP to include Parameter Tag |
Currently, it’s possible to add Dynpro transaction entries from their PFCG roles as a side panel chip. This type of ABAP based PFCG CHIP even support the use of Query String to specify screen fields. Regrettably it’s NOT easy to pass information from the Canvas to this Query String; also PFCG CHIP Import parameters does NOT come with a Parameter Tag; hence tagging (i.e. Transfer of info from Canvas to CHIP) is not possible. If SAP could enhance this capability to automatically accept the Dynpro Screen Field as Import Parameters; then all DynPro transaction\programs will now be open to be used as Side Panel CHIP. |
Damean-BF Chen |
| 24 | Help Center for DynPro as Side Panel |
Would like to have the option of displaying both Dyn Pro and Web Dynpro as Side Panel Content Currently, Only Help Center called from Web Dynpro App could be displayed as Side Panel App. Help Center that’s called from Dynpro (i.e. ABAP) transactions could only be displayed in a separate popup window. |
Damean-BF Chen |
| 25 |
System Selection (global Parameter) |
System Selection: There is no option or parameter to set this as an administrator and role out to the end users. (Explorer View etc.) | Patrick Lanz |
| 26 | Compatability view setting in NWBC | The webui client in CRM uses compatablility view when you upgrade IE to version 10 or 11, this causes troubles if you launch CRM via NWBC for desktop as this setting isn’t supported in NWBC. That means that you can’t open CRM using NWBC for desktop if you have more than IE 9 installed on your computer. | Jakob Marius Kjær |
| 27 | Open URLs from SAP GUI in NWBC tab | When using NWBC 5.0 as entry point instead of SAP logon you simply logon to the SAP system and get a tabbed experience. But when executing a web link in the user menu it opens in an external web browser and not embedded in NWBC. I would like NWBC to capture Web-links and embed them as tabs to maximize user experience in simple transition into NWBC. | Fredrik Borlie |
| 28 | System Message SM02 visible in indexpage | System Message SM02 for NWBC 5.0 (Desktop) visible in indexpage (splash), also for customers with SSO implementation. | Patrick Lanz |
| 29 | Pre generate NWBC menus for users | There is program /ui2/nwbc_delete_menu_cache to delete the NWBC menu cache for all users. This then results in a bit of a wait for each user when they logon again after this program is run. It would be nice if there was a way we could run a program to re-populate the menu cache for each user to avoid this delay for users. | Simon Kemp |
| 30 | Custom icons on index page |
It should be possible to change icons on the index page to custom icons. The service map symbol/Work center icon parameters on the PFCG roles already contains fields for this. Please extend them to handle references to the mime repository, e.g. following This Link |
Rasmus Ørtoft |
| 31 | Version check in backend | It would be of great help if there would be a function that could be enabled in the backend that blocks the user from logging on if the GUI used is not the “approved” version. There are always some users not getting updates and getting such a blocking feature would force them to contact the support in order to use the system. (I know this is more backend development but I take the opportunity to raise the request/idea). | Fredrik Borlie |
| 32 | Same favorites on multiple SIDs | Provide a possibility to have the same NWBC favorites over multiple SIDs (e.g. PRD, QAS, DEV). Currently, system-dependent favorites have to be made manually on each of the SIDs which is tedious for consultants or developers. | Wolfgang Essmayr |
| 33 | Back button like in browser | Provide a back- (and forward-button) like we are used to have in browsers. Button should be enabled for web-based contents (incl. WDA) in canvas. Long-press on button should allow for multiple steps back (and forward). | Wolfgang Essmayr |
| 34 | Option for exclude client number in system info in tab title |
It’s a very helpful feature since NWBC5, that you man optionally show system informationin the tab title containing SID(n)/ccc where n is the modus number and ccc is the client number.
However, it would be great, to have an option to include/exclude the client number. |
Wolfgang Essmayr |
| 35 | Usage Analytics for Index Page/Menus | It would be great if we could track usage of the index page, see which parts of the menu are used the most and which don’t get any visits etc… some way to track the clicks on the menu items would be a very useful feature to help optimise menu design | Simon Kemp |
HI Simon, thanks for setting this up - whatever comes of it (cant commit to anything, but I think you have alluded to this already).
TO EVERYONE ELSE 😉 : at the very least, please add your name as a contact when you submit a proposal.
BEst wishes, Julie
Hello Simon/Julie,
I would suggest some feature requests:
1. Horizontal side panel - to appear at bottom of the screen - compare this with Window's task bar
2. Pin/unpin CHIP to move the CHIP or re-arrange the sequence - compare this with MS Office communicator chat window
Thanks,
Supriya
Hi Supriya,
Please add them to the table above. You should have access to edit the table, just make sure to add your name (e.g Supriya Biware) in the last column.
Thanks for sharing your ideas.
Simon
Hi Simon, this is a great idea; One suggestion.....it would be good to have a way for people to do an equivalent of a 'Like' per request; that could help SAP gauge which features customers are valuing
rgds
Bala Suresh