UWL Whats new in 7.4? Seriously ?

Hello All,

UWL is one of the most vital organs of SAP Enterprise Portal. But somehow I feel its neglected by SAP. Instead of releasing half baked Mobile UWL, better focus on desktop version.

I have been using UWL from EP 6.0 version and to be honest I have not seen much functionality getting added to it. I just went through Netweaver 7.4 material and do not see a single feature added to UWL.

Take “Manage Substitution” functionality in UWL for our discussion. It was implemented long back.  But till date it does not support “END DATE” when workflow substitution gets created.

I find diffcult to answer below queries-

• Why “Manage Substitution” link has be hidden somewhere in UWL which is hard to locate?
• Why should my substitute have access to my workflow tasks when I am back from vacation?
• Why I shall care to launch UWL and TURN off the rule once I am back from vacation? Isn’t that overhead?

Technical Limitation?

I dont think there is any limitation which shall prevent SAP implementing this. As per my analysis, UWL uses below 3 function modules from each connected backend system ECC, SRM etc.

• SAP_WAPI_SUBSTITUTES_GET
• SAP_WAPI_SUBSTITUTE_MAINTAIN
• SAP_WAPI_SUBSTITUTE_DELETE

I can see that SAP_WAPI_SUBSTITUTE_MAINTAIN is used to create the substitution. This function module already has field SUBST_END in its import parameters list.  See below screenshot.

All SAP needs to do is provide value for that parameters when it makes JCO calls internally. Instead of this SAP developer releases a note 1629677 – In UWL it is not possible to set the substitution end date. 🙁

I know POWL is there but not all customers have switched over to it.  Dear SAP – please go through this and take corrective action and keep UWL live & kicking.

Regards,

Vinod Patil