Introduction
Last month (Jan 2023 end) the latest Service Pack (SP11) of Focused Build for SAP Solution Manager has been released for the Customers. With this SP release again a lot of exciting and much awaited features have been added across all Focused Build and Focused Insights Fiori apps. You can find more information about all the improvements in different areas of the Requirements-to-deploy process in the blog detailed out here. However, in this blog post I want to highlight the improvements which has been made in Mas Change Operations (MCA) app for Requirements process type.
Support of Customer Fields:
With SP10 release of Focused Build we introduced a new feature for allowing customers to add the fields of their choice as part of Requirements process type in Requirements Management and My Requirements app. Many of our customers liked this feature and requested if we could extend it to Mass Change Operations app and also to other Focused Build process types. So with SP11 release of Focused Build we have extended customer fields feature to Mass Change Operations app. In future releases we may extend it to other process types as well based on the customers demand.
If you have not already configured any of the customer fields in your system then please go through the below well written blog post by my colleague to understand the steps to create customer fields in your system.
https://blogs.sap.com/2022/02/17/search-and-maintain-customer-extension-fields-from-focused-build-fi...
We highly recommend to first create one customer field in your development system, configure it properly and then after proper testing transport it to your production environment. If everything works fine, you can create as many customer fields as you want for Requirements process type in your system.
In the below screenshot you can see two customer fields (Product Lead and S4 HANA Relevant) has been added and configured for Requirements (S1BR) process type. By default the added customer fields are hidden from the screen and you need to add it to the filter bar by clicking on Filters button and selecting them from the available filters list. Similarly for result list table the customer fields need to be added from table settings icon present at the table header.
Mass Change Operations for Requirements Filter Bar Settings
Once the customer fields are added from the settings they would be ready to be used as standard fields. These customer fields are also well integrated and supported with the variant management of filter bar and of the result list table. These are also available in the downloaded excel from the result list table.
Mass Change Operations Requirements FilterBar and Table With Customer Fields
Redesign of Mass Change Dialog as per SAP Fiori Design Guidelines:
The mass change dialog for Requirements process type has been reworked and have been simplified for the end users. Prior to this change a user used to get a lot of warning messages when mass change button is clicked in MCA app which sometimes was very much repetitive. With this redesign we got rid of most of the warning messages and now only changeable fields for the set of selected of requirements would be available in mass change dialog.
Also, we have used a new SAPUI5 Multi Edit control to have better usability and accessibility experience of the mass change dialog.
Mass Change Operations Requirements Mass Change Dialog
For most of the available fields in mass change dialog you would get 3 options to choose.
- Keep Existing Value: This is the default selection for all the fields. If a field has been selected with this value then there won't be any change on that field for the selected requirements from the result list table on click of Change Selected button.
- Replace Field Value: This option needs to be selected when the user wants to change the value of the field. As soon as this option is selected a new field appears below this field where user can change the value as desired by using a value help dialog. This option is not available for the fields like Status, Priority as these fields have fixed set of available list items.
- Clear Field Value: This option is selected if a user wants to clear the value of a field like Category. This option is not available for the mandatory fields which cannot be made empty as Owner.
Mass Change Operations Requirements Mass Change Dialog Change
We have also provided support for customer fields in the mass change dialog. The customer fields also follow the same multi edit field design. One important point to note here is that the customer fields in the mass change dialog would be available only if that customer field is added to the result list table from the table settings.
Once the values are selected from the available fields and Change Selected button is clicked the selected values are copied to the selected requirements in the result list table. Then the user can proceed with the save operation.
Along with these improvements we have also provided email search functionality in business partners search help dialog. Please visit the below blog post for more information on the newly added feature.
https://blogs.sap.com/2022/02/01/new-and-advanced-business-partner-search-in-test-suite-in-sp09-rele...
Key Takeaways
- Customer fields are now fully supported in Mass Change Operations app for Requirements process type in fIlter bar, result list table and in mass change dialog.
- The mass change dialog for requirements process type has been redesigned to provide better user experience to the end users. This new design also improves the accessibility of the dialog. With upcoming releases, we will apply the same design for other process types as well.
Please feel free to provide feedback either directly here in the comment section or, in case of questions, you can submit them here. You are also encouraged to follow SAP Solution Manager tag here and Focused Build for SAP Solution Manager tag here.
Important Links and Resources
- Usage Rights
- SP11 delta presentation to get an overview of the changes and read the highlights blog
- Read how SAP Activate and Focused Build with SAP Solution Manager is working together
- ALM Community page
- SAP Managed Tags:
