Notes from the SAP NetWeaver Workflow 2015 Customer Connection Call
Hi all,
Below are my rough notes from today’s Customer Connection Call for SAP NetWeaver Workflow 2015. Apologies for any and all typos. Misrepresentations are solely mine. I’d like to give a shout out to a few folks who have been instrumental in this project so far… FIRST Alan Rickayzen, who has always had the back of Workflow people, Ronen Weisz, who worked very hard to get this Customer Connection started, Mike Pokraka, who ‘volunteered’ to come up with tags which we will use to help categorize requests, Martijn Wever and his colleagues from @VNSG, who are always ready to do some heavy lifting, and Tammy Powlas who probably took much better notes than I did.
Workflow Customer Connection Call, Feb 13, 2015
The Invitation:
Agenda:
• Influencing via Customer Connection
• Focus Topic project timeline-scope
• Process & Tools
If you are interested in getting to know more details about the program please visit our collaboration site: Customer Influence.
Here you will find presentations and videos explaining the goals and process in detail.
Please use the web conference link and phone numbers below to dial in.
In case of any questions please do not hesitate to contact me upfront.
Heller, Daniel-Alexander daniel-alexander.heller@sap.com
Heike Kalwak is running the call.
First, some background blogs on this initiative:
The Workflow community has a great history of working hand and hand with SAP to get improvements to this tried and true (evergreen) technology implemented.
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The recording will be posted on Influence.sap.com
Mandatory legalese:
ie: SAP is not making any promises, OK?
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53 people on the call at this time. Since we are talking about an existing product (heck, it’s been in existence for almost 19 years, right?) – so we are in the Customer Connection phase, not the Customer Engagement or Co-Innovation Councils.
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The development team evaluates all submitted improvements so not all requests will be implemented. Some may just not be feasible.
There will be milestone calls too. And via Influence.sap.com, continuous feedback loop where updates are posted.
Even if you are not interested in SAP Workflow, you should visit the Customer Influence site so you can see if there are improvements for the SAP areas you ARE interested in! (SAP Improvement Finder)
Alan Rickayzen takes over.
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Gracious and charming and brilliant as always.
There have already been internal discussions in the development group as to what *they* would like to deliver as well.
About 50 requests so far. Based on development capacity (as well as the level of difficulty) requests will be prioritized
- Takeaway – Clean up your requests – be specific about the problem and the impact on end users and administrators, but don’t necessarily be trying to write the solution
The call was pretty much all developers, administrators, and SAP partners.
Alan praises us for long hours in development, but at the end of the day, a workaround may be feasible. Our users don’t care necessarily whether we had to type in extra code or extra bindings. So there will be a focus on the end user functionality and on the administrative tasks. That does not rule OUT enhancements to the development environment, as we all know that if a developer has to go to great lengths to achieve a solution – that will also make the usability and administration of the workflow more difficult.
For example: Inbox Column formatted according to dates in various geographical formats. We could all envision how this could be helpful, but it may be doable by workaround.
Workload analysis – who substitutes for whom – seems to make sense. – my 2 cents, after long years of doing this – substitution and trying to backtrack to see who was a substitute for whom at a specific period of time is very difficult.
Comment: Florin Wach How particular requests are chosen…. Because it is important that the end user and the administrator have improvements – agreed. But asks also that the development for developers be improved because that makes it easier for the admin.
PROJECT TIMELINE:
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We are starting the Collection Phase now. So far there are 57 improvements in the tool. The end of collection phase is April 2, 2015. The Selection Call will be in June 2015.
Takeaway: Get other customers to subscribe (at least 5 customers) to subscribe to your request.
Delivery Call December 2015!!!
Takeaway: Have your conversations about requests on the Influence.sap.com platform. That way, all customers and SAP developers can also see the conversions.
Request owners should be ready to be contacted to explain their requests in detail, and also to support the testing of these requests.
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And a little chatting…
(g) Samuli Kaski: In the Customer Influence collaboration tool, would it be possible to categorize the requests, e.g. WF runtime, Inbox, Gateway, etc?
(g) Jake Schmidt: Analytics report….we’ve got SWI2_DURA, we don’t need anything beyond that 😉
(g) Mike Pokraka: Good point, at 50+ it’s already getting messy. Perhaps we could use tags?
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You submit it, you’re the owner. There is some expectation that you will act as a central point of contact, support the development phase, and optionally, become an active reference.
Mike Pokraka will develop a system of tags for request owners to use to help us categorize their requests.
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g) Mike Pokraka: A few people already added tag, we should just try to standardise them and tag the existing requests
(g) Sue Keohan: @mike – Agreed. Are you taking an action item to come up with the tags? 🙂
(g) Mike Pokraka: Me and my big mouth, OK 🙂
(g) Sue Keohan: @mike – good lad.
(g) Sue Keohan: @mike – I am sure you can handle it. 🙂
(g) Mike Pokraka: No prob 😉
(g) Sue Keohan: Again, advice to all: Be very detailed (and use Mike’s tags) when submitting your requests – or editing them. This will eliminate a lot of back-and-forth, and help everyone understand what the problem is and if we share that problem.
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Using the Navigate To panel, click on Products, below Database and Technology you will find Business Process Management and Integration. And here you see nothing because you’re not logged on. You need to REGISTER!!!
Once you’ve logged in, you’ll see SAP NetWeaver Workflow 2015.
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Example of a submitted request:
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This is where the recordings will be – under documents and events.
Mark your calendars, March 26 for final call of collection phase.
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More chat excerpts:
(g) Sue Keohan: Oh, and new request just came in! BSVW Support for OO ABAP (not just BOR)” (D8320) was added to the Focus Topic “SAP NetWeaver Workflow 2015
Alan Rickayzen: Yep… no traffice jam, and the tool is not Jam either (but I love both tools)
(g) Sue Keohan: How many people on the call right now???
(g) Jake Schmidt: I’m putting in more requests
(g) Samuli Kaski: Thank you all, have a nice weekend!
(g) Florin Wach (germany): thx & goodbye
Alan Rickayzen: about 50 Sue
(g) Sue Keohan: Thank you Heike – sorry to keep you so busy with the chat!!!
(g) Sue Keohan: Thanks alL! Lets get to work!!!!!!!
(g) Mike Pokraka: Thanks all
I think Mike said it best. Thanks all. I look forward to seeing how well all the WFers out there can collaborate and help make things even better.
I love the idea of using tags to organize the upcoming (and existing) requests.
Please make sure to "subscribe" to tags that matter to you! If you hover with the mouse over an existing tag you can choose to "subscribe" to this tag. If someone is using the same tag in another request, you get a notification automatically.
Mike Pokraka : if you send me the list of proposed tags to use, I can add them to the Home tab of the Workflow project. So, everyone visiting the project is on the same level of information.
Best regards, Daniel
Hi Daniel,
Sorry you were not on the call Friday, but it's good to see you here!
I have a question about the Influence site - is it possible to get all the current requests downloaded into a report? With 66 requests to-date, it's kind of hard to page and click through each one. I bet many of the Customer Connection subscribers would like to be able to 'export to excel' or something like that.
Then we could mark up, add comments, etc - and post it all back to the Influence.sap.com site of course.
Thanks,
Sue
Dear Susan,
of course - when you are on the tab "Requests"the blue action box on the right contains the function "Export requests". This will trigger an export of all requests in a spreadsheet format for a comprehensive view.
Hope you find this useful.
Best regards, Daniel
Thank you Daniel-Alexander! This will be very helpful to all the participants in this Customer Connection.
Great blog, Sue,
I've sent you a screenshot of how to use chat as bookmarks in the recording for those that are in this Customer-Connection group. Perhaps you could add this to your blog.
All the best,
Alan
And I may have misinterpreted Florian's remarks. A little birdie suggested this:
"If something is difficult for wf developers to implement or might involve being outsourced to other teams, there is a danger that it will not be implemented, which basically has an effect on the end-users, too."
So my apologies, Florian, if I misrepresented your remarks. I'll need to look at Alan's 'Using Chat as Bookmarks' as well.
🙂