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gregorw
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Don't forget to check out also the first part of my Blog on the SAP Skills Conference 2009 Keynotes wrap-up.

After luncha bus took us to the SAP International Training Centre, Walldorf, Building 5.Training Room 6 seems to be my home base for the CRM Track. Also here thereI've got a high performance WiFi connection. So the Twitter notes could becontinued. Thank you SAP.

SAP CRM 7.0: Web Client UI Customizing and Configuration

Thissession was conducted by Florian Heretsch. He was my trainer in the CR580SAP CRM User Interface course which I've attended in November 2008. TheTopics spread from: UI Concepts, Business Roles, Navigation Bar Customizing andTransaction Launcher, Architecture Introduction, UI Configuration and DesignLayer.

Because SAPCRM now uses also the Enhancement Pack concepts the CRM Web Client will be theset Framework for the next years. So hopefully the SAP CRM community gets arest on the UI side. My fellow SAP Mentor StephenJohannes mentioned on Twitter: "I'm personally on myfourth crm ui technology in eight years and I'm not counting ISA or mobile".The standard support for SAP CRM 7.0 lasts until 2017.

Here are myfavourite improvements in SAP CRM 7.0

  • Smart Value Help which works like Google suggest
  • Simple Search utilizing Trex as mentioned already before. Unfortunately it does not support full text search in Attachments of i.e. Opportunities in the standard.
  • You can set the User Parameter crm_ui_profile to *. That will assign all Business Roles without maintaining the organisational model to a user.
  • Because it uses the same components for CRM Interaction Centre and CRM UI. The rendering can be switched from assignment blocks (CRM UI default) or tiles (IC default)

Then welearned another new acronym: AET which stands for Application Enhancement Tool.It is a new tool to extend SAP Standard Objects. It is intended to replace EasyEnhancement Workbench (EEW).

SAP CRM 7.0 Customer Enhancements in Web Client UI

RonaldEberwein brought some insight into the topics: Web Client UI Architecture,Framework Enhancements and Presentation Layer Enhancements. One more details onAET: currently it only supports attributes and no table enhancements. Tablesshould be supported with EhP1.

Evening Event

For theevening event we where transferred back to St. Leon-Rot. Luckily the weatherkept warm and so we had BBQ in the nice wide garden. At 8.30 pm the Carreraracing competition started. After the qualifying where the fastest round of 10counted, I've entered the final. The final winner was Rene Schilke. After somemore cocktails in the garden we ended this nice evening.

SAP ERP and SAP CRM: Where to place the Sales Order?

After ashort walk from my Hotel in Walldorf to the SAP Training Centre I still hadtime to uploadthe pictures of the evening event to Flickr.

At 9 amMarcus Behrens, Product Manager for ERP and CRM sales order, execution andpricing kicked of the session SAP ERP and SAP CRM: Where to place the SalesOrder? As a conclusion I would say as in most cases "it depends".

Mycolleague Boris Ljepoja asked onTwitter "I don't get it, why wouldi want to create sales order in CRM in first place ... pfff" Ianswered perhaps if you want to use the SAP CRM E-Commerce Solution with WebShop. But there is also A E-Commerce ERP Edition.

With theCRM 7.0 release there are now 3 possibilities for a Web Shop in CRM: CRM Cataloguewith CRM Order, CRM Catalogue with ERP Order and ERP Catalogue with ERP Order.The main reason for the CRM Catalogue is the integration possibility intoMarketing Campaigns. The licensing for the SAP CRM Web shop is now based onpage views. Before it way per user for a B2B and per order in the B2C case.

Anotherreason for CRM sales order can be selling of solutions that include Materials,Services and Contracts. There is a screen cast SAPCRM 7.0 - Solution Selling showing this functionality.

Lukas Moll asked about thepossibility of global ATP Check via SAP SCM APO. Marcus Behrens described thatthere are 3 scenarios:

  • When the sales order is replicatedfrom SAP CRM to SAP ERP, a global ATP check with APO is not supported.
  • When the sales order is only held inCRM
  • or ERP then Global ATP can be doneto APO.

In additionhe told us that the scenario with sales order replication between SAP CRM andERP is planned to phase out by SAP and should not be used in future projects.

The sessioncontinued with a demo of the ERP Order interface inside the CRM Web UI. Here wefirst learned another new acronym "LORD" which stands for Lean ORDer. As MarcusBehrens also mentioned this acronym wasn't a great choice especially in Englishspeaking countries. The latest version of the Lean Order API is delivered withERP EhP4. To use the latest Lean Order API features the CRM release must be7.0. The current API also supports adding SAP and customer fields. Sales orderentry in the CRM Web UI supports also now arrow keys to switch between lines.Product proposals and campaigns are seamlessly integrated from CRM to the ERPorder.

SAP CRMPipeline and Performance Management do support only Lead and Opportunity instandard. When you want to see the whole sales pipeline, the reporting has tobe done in BW.

DocumentFlow is currently implemented from CRM Opportunity to ERP sales order. It isnot possible to create a CRM activity from a ERP sales order.

Anotherlast takeaway from this session: SAP ERP Enhancement Packs 3 and 4 extend thereturns management functionality.

Migration to SAP CRM 7.0 - Preparation key to success

FredericHeineman from SAP CRM Consulting who is responsible for Upgrade and MigrationServices Worldwide provided this session.

Mytakeaways of this session where:

  • New tools and assistants shouldreduce development time
  • An upgrade from SAP CRM < 4.0 to2007 or 7.0 is only possible via an Upgrade to 4.0 or 5.0.
  • In average SAP CRM 7.0 needs about20% more resources than a SAP CRM 5.0 with PC-UI or IC-Web Client. You can getmore details for resource utilization at http://service.sap.com/quicksizer(SAP Service Marketplace login required).
  • To avoid a long code freeze phaseyou should get a copy of your Production System (or QS if for security reasonsyou can't copy productive data) to a sandbox system and do the Upgrade there.
  • Involve key users as early aspossible. Show them all the features and let them decide what to enable andwhat not.
  • Train the people to click the button"reset to standard" before calling the hotline.

Anothergreat takeaway is this matrix to estimate project complexity

Lines of code

1/3 New

1/3 change

1/3 remove

> 200

5 x

1 x

0

100 - 2000

3 x

0,5 x

0

< 100

1 x

0,25 x

0

You have tofind out how many of your custom developments fall into one of the lines ofcode categories. Then you split this numbers into thirds and multiply it by thenumber of project days and add it all together. That can be a rough estimationof the resources needed.

SOA with SAP CRM 7.0

After alate lunch Leona Trossbach from the CRM Centre of Expertise started the SAP CRM7.0 SOA session. She works since 3 month on a SOA implementation project. Sheshowed us the development of SOA in the CRM area, the SDN ES Wiki, the CRM WSTool providing a Web Service for Word Integration and at last the VisualComposer. You can view a Demo of the CRM Web Service Tool here: SAPCRM 7.0 - Web Service Tool Enhancements. Also check out the EnterpriseService Workplace where there is now also a SAP CRM 7.0 System. Please visitthe Tips, Tricks & Must Knows about ES Workplace Page to read about how you canget access to this system.

Conclusion

As I toldalready on Twitter:

"@pixelbase conferencelanguage is German. But the slides are in English at the moment. That's thrueDe..."

It wassometimes hard to map the German talk to the English slides. One good exceptionwas Frederic Heineman who added his own German slide into the deck. In IT termsI would say it would be better if our CPU can avoid context switches.

The SAPSkills Conference is a great opportunity for functional focused consultants toupdate their knowledge. Or as the claim of the conference was: "SAP Skills 2009Conference - with SAP knowledge on the pole position". I remember my first SAPTechEd 2001 in Vienna where there still was content like this that I'm missingsince NetWeaver took over TechEd. Wouldn't it be a good chance for TechEd toattract also some more functional consultants?

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