SAP Screen Personas for Web Dynpro ABAP

SAP Screen Personas is widely known as a powerful tool to reduce complexity and increase efficiency for end users working on SAP GUI screens. Many people have asked when SAP Screen Personas would be available for other UI Technologies such as Web Dynpro ABAP. I’m pleased to announce that this capability is now available.

Motivation

Web Dynpro ABAP and especially the Floorplan Manager (FPM) already provide a large variety of adaptation options in configuration, customizing and end user personalization. Most enhancements and adaptations can be done with the available tools already. So, why should SAP Screen Personas be enabled for Web Dynpro ABAP?

There are multiple reasons why SAP Screen personas makes a lot of sense for Web Dynpro ABAP:

• Support of a new Role: Business Expert

In Web Dynpro ABAP, adaptation options are available for system administrators and personalization options are available for end users. But no support was available so far for any roles in between, such as business experts who want to do certain settings for their individual department.

• Sharing concept

Web Dynpro ABAP does not have any sharing concept. Customizing is valid in the entire client; end user personalization is only available for the individual end user. But with the support of other roles like Business Experts it becomes mandatory to support the sharing of adaptations.

• Simple editor

The configuration editor FLUID and the other enhancement tools are complex and intended for experts such as system administrators, but nor for end users or business experts. A lightweight editor is required for these roles – such as the WYSIWYG SAP Screen Personas editor.

• Scripting

Web Dynpro ABAP had no scripting engine so far. But scripting capabilities are highly desired when screens shall be simplified and clicks reduced.

Architecture

For consistency and efficiency reasons, it was clear from the beginning that reuse is the key to success. Thus the Web Dynpro ABAP implementation for SAP Screen Personas has as much as possible in common with SAP Screen Personas 3.0 for the GUI.

SAP Screen Personas 3.0 (for SAP GUI) and SAP Screen Personas for Web Dynpro ABAP share the same editor, flavor gallery, scripting editor, and administration tools. So, you do not need to learn new editor or admin functions. The flavor administration tool is available as a GUI transaction and as Web Dynpro application; both tools can administer all flavors regardless whether they are GUI flavors or Web Dynpro flavors.

There are a few functions exclusively for Web Dynpro or FPM. The runtime implementation of the changes in the flavors itself is handled in the Web Dynpro framework itself. The Screen Personas adaptations are integrated between customizing and end user personalization so that the end user still has the chance to do some individual personalization (e.g. default values) even in a scenario which uses a SAP Screen personas flavor.

Capabilities and Limitations

With the initial delivery of SAP Screen Personas for Web Dynpro, many features are already supported; some others are still on the roadmap. We are planning to release the following features:

• Coloring of most parts of the screen
• Support of custom styles
• All kinds of text formatting for most texts
• Background images
• Insertion of elements like text fields and labels, input fields, images and sticky notes
• Drag & drop of elements; most of the drop targets are absolute values within a given container. Some specific elements can be dropped logically in their environment (e.g. toolbar buttons)
• Resizing of elements
• Hiding of elements
• Undo and Redo of individual changes to a flavor
• Client-side scripting including object inspector and script button

In the first version the following features are not yet supported:

• FPM List ATS
• Conditional formatting of a Web Dynpro table or FPM List
• Web Dynpro ABAP Select Options
• Web Dynpro ABAP Popups and FPM Dialog Boxes
• Z-Layering (Bring forward, send backward), alignment and grouping
• Format copy
• Script execution on load or on roundtrip.
• Scripting across sessions.

As we are working on adding new capabilities, we are looking for customer feedback to react on customer input and requirements.

Availability

SAP Screen Personas for Web Dynpro ABAP is available with SAP Screen Personas 3.0 SP01 and Net Weaver SAP_UI 7.50 SP00 – please note that SAP_UI 7.50 can be implemented without the necessity to upgrade SAP_BASIS to 7.50 as well!

Also have a look at note 2181980 which explains availability, capabilities and limitations in some more detail.