14    Introduction to SAP Screen Personas

In this chapter, we’ll discuss how SAP’s UX strategy relates to the SAP Screen Personas solution. We’ll also explain how SAP Screen Personas allows you to transform classic SAP screens into SAP Fiori-inspired designs.

Although incorporating the SAP Fiori UX is the ultimate goal for SAP S/4HANA, SAP is still on the journey to get there; therefore, SAP introduced a powerful tool in 2012 called SAP Screen Personas to transform the classic SAP screens into SAP Fiori-inspired designs. Several customers are now using SAP Screen Personas to improve adoption of SAP by personalizing screens for different groups. SAP Screen Personas allows you to personalize and transform the classic SAP screens to meet your business needs, without changing them fundamentally and while leaving the system as untouched as possible.

In Section 14.1, we describe SAP Screen Personas and its components to give you a grounding in the product. You’ll used what you learned in Section 14.2 to help you create your first SAP Screen Personas project. Then, in Section 14.3, we’ll cover some more advanced techniques and elements of SAP Screen Personas flavors. Section 14.4 will cover key administrative tasks associated with flavors. Finally, Section 14.5 walks you through how to deploy your SAP Screen Personas flavors to SAP Fiori Launchpad.

When should you implement SAP Screen Personas? The flowchart in Figure 14.1 provides guidelines. Basically, when there is no standard SAP Fiori app that meets your requirements, and when there is a standard SAP GUI or WebDynpro ABAP option that does meet your requirement, you can use SAP Screen Personas.

SAP Screen Personas Decision Flowchart

Figure 14.1    SAP Screen Personas Decision Flowchart

SAP Screen Personas is a visual product that lets users create flavors; a flavor is a specific, personalized screen of a specific, classic SAP transaction screen, and every transaction can have more than one flavor, depending on the business needs. SAP Screen Personas developers can create flavors by dragging and dropping components in the WYSIWYG HTML5 editor and can deploy them easily.

With SAP Screen Personas, you have an easy way to personalize screens by role, so your business users will see only what they need. A developer can edit screens directly in the browser, and end users can access the simplified screens from the browser or SAP GUI.

In addition, SAP Screen Personas lets companies refresh SAP screens without any disruption; that is, the existing functionality and authentication models are retained, and the changes are applied as a delta to the existing screens.

14.1    SAP Screen Personas 3.0 Architecture and Navigation

SAP Screen Personas is an add-on for SAP ERP, SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, and SAP S/4HANA. The installation requires no additional servers and, the best part, it’s nondisruptive to the IT landscape.

The latest version of SAP Screen Personas is 3.0 SP 04. Figure 14.2 shows the high-level architecture for SAP Screen Personas components.

SAP Screen Personas Architecture

Figure 14.2    SAP Screen Personas Architecture

  1. The SAP Screen Personas add-ons layer stores the flavors that are created/updated by users.
  2. The SAP NetWeaver basis component layer is a foundation layer for all SAP ERP applications. It contains the ABAP components that are part of every SAP NetWeaver ABAP installation. The minimum supported SAP NetWeaver versions are 700 SP 25, 701 SP 10, 702 SP 09, 731 SP 07, and 740 SP 03 or higher for installing SAP Screen Personas.
  3. Screen Personas can be installed on the Kernel versions 7.22 or 7.42 or higher. This layer contains the key component of SAP Screen Personas—that is, the internet transaction server (ITS), which provides the standard SAP screen definitions for each transaction code accessible via browsers.
  4. SAP Screen Personas Client is a JavaScript application that runs in a browser.
Note

Your system must have the SAPUI 750 SP 0 component installed to use the SAP Screen Personas for Web Dynpro ABAP applications.

Now, let’s navigate the SAP Screen Personas 3.0 screens in runtime and editing mode. Follow these steps:

  1. Log in to SAP Easy Access.
  2. Click the SAP Screen Personas Icon inline image to launch SAP Screen Personas.
    Note

    If you don’t see the SAP Screen Personas icon, that means SAP Screen Personas isn’t yet installed.

  3. You’ll see the My Flavors bar. Typically, you provide access to couple of flavors for each user or role based on what they want to do; in some cases, IT will choose default flavors for end users. However, if you’re running SAP Screen Personas for the first time, you should see an Original Screen button to view the original screen (see Figure 14.3).
    My Flavors Main Menu

    Figure 14.3    My Flavors Main Menu

  4. Now, let’s explore the options in the SAP Screen Personas flavor editor. To enter the editor, select a flavor and click Edit (see Figure 14.4).
    Edit Flavor

    Figure 14.4    Edit Flavor

    Note

    You need to assign the /PERSONAS/EDITOR_ROLE role to a user to allow that user to edit a flavor.

  5. Edit mode contains editing tabs, an Information area, controls, and so on, allowing you to personalize the look and feel of the current SAP standard transaction screen. Let’s discuss the options available:
    • Home
      From this tab (Figure 14.5), you can format the text of a selected control, add background images, or assign icon to a button.
      Home Tab

      Figure 14.5    Home Tab

    • Insert
      From this tab (Figure 14.6), users can insert buttons, images, and labels, and add screen events.
      Insert Tab

      Figure 14.6    Insert Tab

    • Tables
      If your SAP screen has a table, you can customize it with the options available from this tab (Figure 14.7), such as hiding columns, changing column text, moving columns, or applying conditional formatting.
      Tables Tab

      Figure 14.7    Tables Tab

    • Design
      From this tab (Figure 14.8), developers can create or edit a template and can add it to a flavor as well. You can add shapes and can apply styles to multiple objects.
      Design Tab

      Figure 14.8    Design Tab

    • Release
      From this tab (Figure 14.9), developers can manage different versions of the flavors. Here, you can maintain a history of changes, and once the flavor is ready, you can lock it to signify that it’s ready for transport.
      Release Tab

      Figure 14.9    Release Tab

Now that you understand the basics of the SAP Screen Personas flavor editor, in the following sections we’ll set up an SAP Screen Personas project, build a theme, and assign the theme to flavors.