Blogs
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Improving the SAP note implementation confirmation process
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Introduction
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ince the launch of Idea Place I have periodically created ideas to improve SAP products in various ways. Some of those ideas have gotten a lot of support from the SAP community and as an effect a lot of votes. A few of those ideas have been picked up by SAP to do something with them. You could say Idea Place really works and that is great to see.
In this blog I will highlight an issue that I see and which annoys me as an end-user when I have to implement SAP notes. This issue can be solved easily by making a few minor adjustments to the software. Those could be delivered as corrections through SAP notes.
The idea
You can find the idea here https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/ideas/7902. Please read through the blog or the idea place content to understand the issue and the proposed solution.
The issue
Picture 1.0
Perhaps you have already come across a similar situation as shown in the screenshot above (picture 1.0). A central note has a lot of related notes. After the implementation of those notes you are looking at a huge list of implemented notes waiting to be confirmed.
Picture 1.1
Picture 1.2
To confirm a single note you can press Ctrl+F3 while the cursor is focused on that note. A pop-up appears (see picture 1.1) in which you have to click Compltd (see picture 1.2) and afterwards you confirm the action.
If you start on the top of the list you don’t have to move the cursor because the cursor moves down automatically by one. The balance is that you have to perform three steps to confirm each note, hit Ctrl+F3, select the Compltd button and enter.
When you have to do this for a large list of implemented SAP notes you are basically just wasting time to perform these actions. You could go on the internet and seek out a script tool to automatically hit the necessary keys for you and use the script when you are in this screen but that should not be the case. Or you could go into Oracle and use an SQL statement to confirm this list at once but none of the above options are really wanted.
The idea – selection options
An easy to implement idea is to offer better selection options. Currently it’s not possible to select multiple SAP notes and confirm them as Compltd. Having to go through the list one by one equals wasting time. Waste of time equals a waste of money for the customer in the end.
Better selection options would mean you can select multiple notes by "select them one by one" which would highlight them as being selected and also offer the option to "select in blocks" so you only have to mark the first and the last note of the list of SAP notes that were implemented to select all of them. Another options can then be "select all" and "deselect all".
Those selection options already exist in other parts of the SAP Netweaver core functionality. For example in transaction STMS in the import queue you can select transport requests in a similar way.
Because the functionality has already been coded in the past it shouldn’t be that much work to apply the same kind of selection functionality to the SAP notes implementation list. Yes you still need to rework some code as the confirmation has to be able to loop through what you have selected in order to confirm each separate SAP note but all in all this can be a quick win hence a good idea if you ask me.
If you like the idea and want to help get rid of the frustration end-users feel by having to go through the list and confirm each SAP note implementation one by one, please vote up the idea in idea place:https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/ideas/7902
Tom Cenens
is a SAP Technical Consultant for CTAC (www.ctac.be). Writings on SCN represent my own opinion and don't necessarily represent the opinion of my employer. Copyright © 2011 Tom Cenens. You can follow me on twitter @tomcenens. You can find SAP system administration related content using hashtag #SAPAdmin on twitter.
Comments are welcome. Do you like the idea? Would you like to see more ideas on ideaplace and in blogs?
Comment on this weblog
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- Voted up!
2012-01-09 17:37:33 Raquel Pereira da Cunha Business Card [Reply]
Hi Tom,
Happy 2012!
You had a great idea as usual. Have just voted up. I came across this situation many times. I hope SNOTE can be improved.
Best regards,
Raquel- Voted up!
2012-01-09 20:56:17 Tom Cenens Business Card [Reply]
Hello Raquel
Best wishes and hope you have a great 2012! I'm looking forward to this year and hope to meet you again at an event this year!
Thank you for the vote and the comment. I will be posting more of these improvements idea blogs and idea place ideas over the course of the year.
Hopefully some or all will get picked up so we can benefit from the improvements.
Best regards,
Tom
- Good idea
2012-01-06 06:42:00 Kevin Grove Business Card [Reply]
Tom:
I confess that I continue to be lazy about keeping my SNOTE screen "tidy". These suggestions certainly could ease some of the clean up.
Another feature of the SNOTE transaction that has always bothered me was the reaction after the note is downloaded. I would prefer that a new dialog open with the processing options available for the note. The current behavior is to return to the SNOTE list. When a list is rather cluttered, the next step is to go searching for the just downloaded note.
Thanks for adding this to idea place, perhaps 1 or 2 support packs in the future these improvements can be added.
Best regards,
Kevin Grove- Good idea
2012-01-07 23:15:14 Tom Cenens Business Card [Reply]
Hello Kevin
Best wishes and thanks for commenting.
I understand the point you make but what would you do when the end-user downloads multiple SAP notes at once? Show a dialog to implement all of them at once? Don't get me wrong, I do think you have a point but I don't know if the solution to the issue would be the best solution.
What is totally not useful is that a note that receives a gray status (not applicable) after being downloaded is kept in the top list of new notes because you can't do anything useful with it and it will just clutter up the list.
Perhaps a more simple solution is having a category "recently downloaded notes" which only displays the notes that were downloaded today or something or further filter or selection options so you can filter down the list to what you want to see (empower the end-user).
Kind regards
Tom
- Less work - I'm all about that!
2012-01-06 04:21:02 Michelle Crapo Business Card [Reply]
Great idea - thumbs up from me.
Michelle- Less work - I'm all about that!
2012-01-06 04:22:49 Tom Cenens Business Card [Reply]
Hi Michelle
Best wishes and thanks for commenting and voting.
I have more of these improvements hanging in draft form and I will be posting more of them in due time. Even small improvements can help reduce time spent on repetitive tasks and make the end-user happy ;)
Kind regards
Tom
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