This is part of a multi-part series addressing myths about SAP Screen Personas.
As with myths 3 and 4, this myth probably originated when someone saw a great demo of SAP Screen Personas and imagined how the easy screen transformation process would work in their environment. Most of the scenarios we choose for demoing at TechEd, other events, or individual customers involve relatively simple use cases. We generally show the basic constructs (scripting, merging tabs, simplifying screens) out of which a customer might build a complete Personas-modified environment for their users.
The most important point to remember is that SAP Screen Personas is a tool kit. It allows you to simplify screens to drive productivity through personalization. While Personas make it very fast and easy to make SAP Dynpro screens more intuitive, it is still a process that involves IT and the business working closely together.
Before you even start simplifying any screens, we recommend you examine the steps required for a successful SAP Screen Personas implementation.
The first phase involves gaining a thorough understanding of your business processes: who needs what data, when do they need it, and with what additional context. Then, analyze your processes and determine what you can simplify. You can do this in house, bring in SAP professional services, or hire one of SAP’s partners.
As the diagram above shows, more than half the time you spend should be on understanding and streamlining the business processes. Then, you can start using Personas to simplify the screens, merge tabs, and automate repetitive actions.
For simple, mostly cosmetic changes, this can take a few minutes. For more complex scenarios that combine information from multiple transactions onto a single screen, it will take somewhat longer to build screens. The exception to the build one screen at a time paradigm is that with global settings, you can change all screens with one set of commands.
If you attended our 2-hour session at TechEd, you would have seen that it took us about 10 minutes to build the screen below. This includes adding all the background images, launch buttons, group boxes and other graphics. Plus, around another five minutes to add the script that takes an input on the SMEN screen and looks up the amount of a sales order on transaction VA03 and brings it back to display on this screen.
In almost every public presentation on Personas, our customers tell us this is the easiest solution they know for modifying the look of SAP GUI screens. They mention other approaches they have taken (including some products from competitors) and how they ended up doing way more development than they expected and still did not end up with what they wanted (or were promised by the vendor).
So, does SAP Screen Personas instantly transform your screens? Not exactly, but it’s about as close to immediate gratification as you will get.
In the next post, we will explore myth 6, about Personas and Fiori.
For SAP Imagineering, peter.spielvogel.
Read the entire SAP Screen Personas Myth vs. Truth series
Myth 5 (this post)