Blogs

July 05, 2008

SAP Upgrades: When Should my Organization Convert to Unicode?
Part 8 of this blog answers one of the most frequently asked customer questions: When upgrading to SAP ERP 6.0, do we have to convert to Unicode?
MARTIN RIEDEL in Business Process Expert, ERP [09:57:35 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

ESME - The Demo
Who said enterprisey cannot be cool ? You need to check out the demo of ESME to believe it...
Abesh Bhattacharjee in Beyond SAP, Business Process Expert, Community Day, Community Projects, Emerging Technologies, SAP Developer Network, SAP TechEd, Widgets [05:45:24 AM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

July 04, 2008

Can SDN Mentors Serve a Useful Role as Ombudsmen/women between SAP and Customers?
When a customer writes code in an SAP-provided function group, and there's a problem with the code that appears to be due to SAP-written code, the customer will be told that SAP won't even look at the problem for free. Can and should SDN Mentors play a helpful role as "go-betweens" in such situations?
David Halitsky in Ranting [10:35:38 PM | 10 Comments | Permalink]

Delivery Modes in BPM.

Milan Thaker in Business Process Management, SAP Business Workflow, SAP Exchange Infrastructure (XI) [08:31:04 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

New Approaches to Virtual Worlds
Besides Second Life a couple of other virtual worlds exist, which offer exciting features like OpenOffice support, in-world browsing of the internet or phone calls out of the world. In this blog I want to introduce you to Qwaq, Sun's Project Wonderland, and OpenSim.
Alexander Bachmann in Public Sector, Virtual Worlds and 3D Web [08:30:31 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

"Bludgeoned" with Alignment? - Geek Gap Article
The IT jobs of today may not be recognizable in a few years. Where are the IT positions going, and how can IT professionals stay current with the coming world of business?
Bill Pfleging and Minda Zetlin in Beginner, Business Process Expert, Business Process Management, Ranting [08:29:54 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

Community serendipity delivers value
A couple of blog posts and chance Twitter conversations led to a self organizing development group that has created a submission for DemoJam. These are the lessons I learned about how community works.
Dennis Howlett in Beyond SAP, Business Intelligence (BI), Business Process Expert, CRM, Emerging Technologies, Enterprise Portal (EP), Enterprise Service Community [07:32:38 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

Everything you wanted to know about Web Dynpro but were afraid to ask, including...
Podcast from SAP NetWeaver Product Management about benefits and essentials of Web Dynpro.
Stefanie Bacher in Web Dynpro [07:40:40 AM | 0 Comments | Download Media | Permalink]

Use a new created bookmark ID in BI_COMMANDs
In my scenario I will call a BSP application from a web template. The web template is a generic template that supported a couple of query, like the 0ANALYSIS_PATTERN template. The BSP application is an IT support application. User can initialize a ticket by pressing a button in the template. For better support the action behind the button will first create a bookmark in the backend and then call the BSP application. The web template will hand over the ID of the new created bookmark by parameter to the BSP application.
Torsten Kessler in ABAP, Business Intelligence (BI), JavaScript [01:11:35 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

SQL Server Reporting Magic
While SQL Server is the de facto standard database platform for SAP Business One, the Business Intelligence stack (Reporting Services, Integration Services, Analysis Services) remains unknown to the majority of B1 customers. This is a pity, as the BI stack offers huge potential for building top-notch reporting solutions for SAP Business One.
Henry Nordstrom in Business Intelligence (BI), SAP Business One [01:09:34 AM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

Consultant’s Tools Part 1: Moving DB Table Content without CTS between Web AS ABAP systems
A tool is introduced which makes it easy to share database table content between different Web AS ABAP systems. The content can be downloaded to an XML file and uploaded again, Unicode and mass-handling support included.
Stephan Heinberg in ABAP [01:09:29 AM | 3 Comments | Permalink]

Learning at Your Fingertips
We are now used to searching for knowledge online. But what steps are you taking to make learning available at the fingertips of your users?
Gavin Heaton in Beginner, Beyond SAP, Business Process Management, Knowledge Management (KM), Organizational Change Management [01:07:59 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

July 03, 2008

Leveraging the Business Process Platform to Enable Military Personnel to Find & Focus on the “Right” Information in Hostile Environments
Leveraging the Business Process Platform to Enable Military Personnel to Find & Focus on the “Right” Information in Hostile Environments
Dante Ricci in Aerospace and Defense, Defense [02:25:23 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Creating identical print layouts with Crystal Reports 2008
A quick rundown on how to create print layouts that are identical across modules.
Davinder Singh in SAP Business One [07:29:27 AM | 2 Comments | Permalink]

Video Blog: SAP Developer Challenge -- Behind the Scenes!
The SAP Developer Challenge held in Palo Alto several weeks ago was a fantastic, fun event. We captured a lot of great video during the event and wanted to give everyone a feel for the event and the work the teams did "behind the scenes" to compete and build great Demos for the Demo Jam. Enjoy!
Chip Rodgers in ABAP, Business Objects, Community Day, PHP, SAP Developer Network, SAP NetWeaver Platform, SAP Network TV, SAP TechEd [04:56:51 AM | 2 Comments | Permalink]

Direct Store Delivery (DSD) - Efficient vs. Inefficient Practices in APJ
Direct store delivery (DSD) is a key method of selling and distributing products in the Con-sumer Products industry. Hereby, DSD varies on regional level. This blog will focus on DSD in the Asian-Pacific and Japanese (APJ) region, outline region-specific practice deficiencies and provide approaches how to overcome.
Ramin Shariatmadari in Business Process Expert, Business Process Management, Business Solutions, Consumer Products, CRM, ERP, Interoperability, Mobile, Retail, Wholesale Distribution [02:39:31 AM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

July 02, 2008

The Story behind Innovation Games: A new Web 2.0 collaborative tool
Decision-making is a crucial part of corporate existence. Current Web 2.0 tools, however, are not involved in this process – focusing more on informing / educating users. Innovation Games (soon to be a part of SAP’s Collaboration Workspace) meet this challenge and allows collaborative prioritization which provides the foundation for more collective decisions. Be one of the lucky seven to experience these new online tools - read this blog for details.
Richard Hirsch in Beyond SAP, Business Process Expert, Emerging Technologies, Enterprise Service Community, Ranting, SAP Developer Network [11:50:51 PM | 5 Comments | Permalink]

Social Networking hits the Community
Call it skunkworks, black ops, under the radar or what not but bottom line Social Networking is here!
Craig Cmehil in Business Objects, Business Process Expert, SAP Developer Network [02:34:52 PM | 5 Comments | Permalink]

Play & Study Providing Rice to Hungry People for Free
Click on the answer that best defines the word. For each word you get right, Free Rice will donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.
Marcelo Ramos in CSR and Sustainability [01:09:49 PM | 5 Comments | Download Media | Permalink]

How BPX is Helping SAP Customers Achieve REACH Compliance
In this twenty-six minute podcast, Jon Reed of JonERP.com asks Kieran O’Connor, Communications Lead with the Process Industry Cluster at SAP AG, about this BPX-REACH collaboration and how BPX community members can get involved.
Audrey Weinland in Business Process Expert, Chemicals, Governance, Risk and Compliance [12:03:41 PM | 0 Comments | Download Media | Permalink]

Creating Dashboards with Xcelsius 2008
This blog is ideal for anyone looking to get started with the Xcelsius 2008.
Anil Bhavaraju in Business Objects [10:04:51 AM | 2 Comments | Permalink]

SDN Day Hands-On Session Webinar Replay
So you just missed the SAP Mentor Dream Team SDN Day Hands-On Sessions webinar, that was introducing this year's SDN Day SAP Mentor Hands on sessions by Thomas Jung, Dan McWeeney, Ed Herrmann and Rick Heilman? No problem, check out the recording.
Mark Finnern in Community Day [09:23:49 AM | 3 Comments | Permalink]

SAP’s BPM Approach: The Building Blocks of BPM Transformation - Part 1
Working on SAP's roadmap towards a process driven company the author and his team identified around 30 essential "building blocks" that have to be considered in the companies BPM transformation. They make the more or less virtual concept of BPM more concrete for SAP.
Thilo Bischoff in Business Process Expert, Business Process Management, Organizational Change Management [09:03:39 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Business Process Challenges for today's BPXer
The first in a series of blogs on the topic of Business Process Mgt and Governance for those moving into the BPX world
Paul Taylor in Business Process Expert, Business Process Management, Business Process Modeling, Consumer Products, Governance, Risk and Compliance [07:43:03 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Information security: holes much ignored
Information security is most talked about word, but where do lapses usually occur? A strong password and a strong administrator are not all that are sufficient...
Rohit Channazhi in Beginner, Beyond SAP, Governance, Risk and Compliance [07:33:21 AM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

Technical configuration after installation: Spend hours instead of days!!!
This blog will introduce you to the Configuration Wizard. It will show you for which scenarios you can actually use the Configuration Wizard and how you can benefit from that.
Kathrin Winkmann in Business Intelligence (BI), SAP Exchange Infrastructure (XI), SAP NetWeaver Platform [07:33:17 AM | 2 Comments | Permalink]

About SOA at SAP
Discussion of SOA at SAP and analysts rankings: SAP's SOA Approach, SOA Middleware, Enterprise SOA in context of a conceptual architecture for retail.
Stephan de Haas in Business Process Expert, Emerging Technologies, Enterprise SOA, Standards, Retail, Beginner [06:18:55 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Next steps on improving quality
This blog discusses how to improve the quality in forums by moving to more strict rules and a process of archiving old and "dead" posts.
Michael Schwandt in SAP Developer Network [12:10:58 AM | 14 Comments | Permalink]

July 01, 2008

When the controls go wrong
When people deliberately conceal cost, it's hard to detect but better process controls can help. Communicating that is crucial to helping the office of the CFO.
Dennis Howlett in Business Process Expert, Governance, Risk and Compliance [08:06:06 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink]

Nominate the Next SAP Mentor
So you know this amazing SAP Expert, who knows his stuff, is an excellent communicator and helps out whenever needed in the community. You think to yourself: Why isn’t (S)he an SAP Mentor. Well now you can nominate your favorite SAP Expert to become one.
Mark Finnern in Business Objects, Business Process Expert, SAP Developer Network [03:28:56 PM | 6 Comments | Permalink]

Crisis in CRM : A Quick win using SAP MDM
Mastering the arts of customer delights through SAP-MDM
Neethu joy in Master Data Management (MDM), CRM [12:02:12 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Strategies for SAP BI-BO Projects in Consulting Companies
This blog is about the atragetgies that consuting companies may consider for handling SAP BI-BO projects in future.Since, Business Objects has been by SAP, strategies should be tailored to fit the business in consulting companies.
Sriee Khumar in Business Intelligence (BI), Business Solutions [12:01:42 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink]

SAP Mentor Dream Team SDN Day Hands-On Sessions
Update: The Webinar is tomorrow July 2nd.
One of the most exciting things we do this year at the SDN Day is a series of one hour cutting edge technology hands-on sessions held by a dream team of SAP Mentors Check in next Wednesday the 2nd of July 8am PST where all 4 of them will introduce the concept and their sessions.
Mark Finnern in Community Day, SAP Developer Network [11:53:46 AM | 4 Comments | Permalink]

Getting SMART about Outcomes
Being more effective at work means doing the right things.
Bob McGlynn in Analytics, Beginner, Business Process Expert, Enterprise Performance Management, Organizational Change Management [08:06:24 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

enterprise SOA Partner Enablement program - the first main step for realizing the benefits of enterprise SOA !!
This articles gives you an overview of enterprise SOA Partner Enablement Program which main objective is to enable selected strategic SI Partners to deliver on enterprise SOA and support partners create enterprise SOA awareness resulting in projects. By reading this article you will learn why and how we do it...
Oleg Figlin in Beginner, Beyond SAP, Business Process Expert, Business Process Management, Business Process Modeling, Composition Environment (CE), Enterprise SOA, ERP, Interoperability, Interoperability .NET, Interoperability IBM, SAP Developer Network [06:59:28 AM | 2 Comments | Permalink]

MarketTrends@ERP (1) Market trends and expectations from users
ERP is a widely spread category in our marketplace. Thus the definition could be very broad. This blog would like to outline our view and positioning of this category, and beyond, but more it should help to discuss and get feedback on market trends around ERP and incubate a vital dialogue with the community.
Sven Denecken in Aerospace and Defense, Automotive, Banking, Beyond SAP, Business Objects, Business Solutions, Chemicals, Consumer Products, Defense, Emerging Technologies, Enhancement Packages, ERP, Healthcare, Higher Education, Industrial Machinery and Components, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Mining and Metal, Mobile, Oil and Gas, Procurement and SRM, Public Sector, Retail, Shared Service Center, Travel and Logistics Services, Utilities Industry, Wholesale Distribution [05:14:16 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Using Flex Charts for MII Dashboards
Adobe Flex provides very rich internet experience.. every body knows , well we had a requirement to use the MII services and provide a UI which is very rich and extremely user friendly. Fortunately for us, Adobe flex was there to rescue.
Rupesh Bajaj in Emerging Technologies, Manufacturing, SAP xApps [05:11:35 AM | 2 Comments | Permalink]

Portal translation and transport problem and solution
Content translation is an important feature of the Enterprise Portal. Many companies have an environment with more than one portal normally following the standard scenario D-Q-P. The translation is normally done in Q and then transported to the P system. This is where some problems may occur.
Todor Petrov in Enterprise Portal (EP) [05:10:53 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Demo Jam 2008 @ SAP TechEd 2008
This is it, this is the last week to get in your submission! You've time though and still a very good chance!
Craig Cmehil in SAP TechEd [12:24:03 AM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

June 30, 2008

Café Innovation – Accountants are Second Lifers now!
Organizations should take notice of the fact that conservative professions are actively embracing emerging trends that are based on people-centric use of technology. This is essential in preparing the organization to take advantage of Enterprise SOA and Web 2.0 capabilities.
Puneet Suppal in Beginner, Beyond SAP, Business Process Expert, Business Process Management, Community Day, Enterprise Service Community, Enterprise SOA, ERP, Organizational Change Management, Professional Services, SAP Developer Network, Virtual Worlds and 3D Web [05:21:28 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

HCM Processes & Forms: Gotchas, Bugs and Other Curiosities
HCM Processes & Forms offers a world of possibilities for automating HR and other employee related processes. However, as the old maps of the uncharted seas would note "Here there be monsters".
Christopher Solomon in Business Process Management, Business Process Modeling, Business Solutions, Enhancement Packages, Enterprise Portal (EP), JavaScript, Universal Worklist, Web Dynpro [11:30:48 AM | 9 Comments | Permalink]

Certification versus Experience
When do we need a Certification and is it better to rely only on work experience?
Santosh V in Beginner [10:16:51 AM | 4 Comments | Permalink]

Managing Spreadmarts through SAP EPM
What are spreadmarts? Does this exists in your company? How is SAP Business Objects addressing the needs for spreadmarts in their solution, overcoming some of the perils that it brings, check this out in this blog.
Muthu Ranganathan in Analytics, Business Intelligence (BI), Business Objects, Enterprise Performance Management [12:39:07 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Only one InfoProvider? Using Multiprovider you could have lower TCO due to Logical Partitioning
Reflections about Multiprovider usage to reduce TCO: Logical partitioning approach and related advantages in application maintenace.
Gianfranco Vallese in Business Intelligence (BI), SAP NetWeaver Platform [12:06:15 AM | 4 Comments | Permalink]

June 29, 2008

Leveraging Business benefits from effective Supply Chain Management through SAP MDM- Part 1
Master Data Management : Foundation for your most critical Business Process
prabuddha roy in Master Data Management (MDM) [12:47:16 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

The easy way to SDK: The 8 SDK programmer principles
EN:This time, The easy way to SDK projet presents the 8 prinicples every SDK programmer must remember in order to create strong Add-Ons for SAP Business One. ES:En esta entrega del proyecto The easy way to SDK presenta los 8 principios que todo programador de SDK debe tener en cuenta para crear Add-Ons para SAP Business One.
Marco Blanco in SAP Business One [12:47:02 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

SAP Solutions Tour 08 - NetWeaver Developer Day - Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, July 8, 2008 - Come to see the last SAP technologies in action and enjoy networking with collegues - Happy hour included! Find all registration info in SAP Argentina invitation -->
Ignacio Hernández in SAP Developer Network [08:00:43 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

June 28, 2008

Where should SAP draw the line for standardization and reuse?
My thoughts on the good and bad and some things in between, of SAP's new product development.
Vijay Vijayasankar in Business Process Expert, Business Process Modeling, Business Solutions, CRM, Enterprise SOA, Business Process Management [10:16:52 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

New Features in Yahoo! Widgets 4.5
Widgets are tiny little application which runs on your desktop and can do vast variety of tasks without even opening a browser. This weblogs describes about the features in the latest Yahoo! Widget version 4.5 Release.
Tarun Telang in Beginner, Beyond SAP, JavaScript, SAP NetWeaver Platform, Scripting Languages, Widgets [02:07:17 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

June 27, 2008

The BPM Transformation: SAP's Journey to Process Orientation- ASUG Webcast
Mark Scavillo, Head of Process Governance, in SAP's BPM department (Business Process Organization), provides a behind-the-scenes look at the internal process side of SAP in a Webinar on June 30th, 11:00am EST.
Marilyn Pratt in Business Process Expert, Business Process Management [01:54:49 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Transportation Costs Suck
Transportation costs are escalating to the point of driving LSP's out of business (Jevic) and to the point of shippers issueing mass surcharges (Dow - $300 per shipment).
Raymond Adams in Business Process Expert, Chemicals, Manufacturing [09:40:59 AM | 4 Comments | Permalink]

Retail Innovation Strategy and SAP Technologies
Innovation strategy in the retail industry leveraging Gartner Hype cycle topics mapped to common enterprise architecture themes and discussion of SAP' capabilities relating individual topics.
Stephan de Haas in Retail, SAP NetWeaver Platform, Standards, Business Process Expert [09:40:34 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Expert On Phone Newsletter June 2008
Expert on Phone Newsletter June 2008
Kerstin Pauquet in SAP Business One [06:26:38 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Getting merged portal navigation nodes via Quicklink
What if you want to build a sitemap of only a fraction of your site? A fraction beginning anywhere in your navigation hierarchy? The NavigationTagLibrary of Netweaver Portal does not support starting with a node of your choice. With an example sub sitemap I demonstrate how to use any visible navigation node with a Quicklink as the root.
Juergen Wahlmann in Enterprise Portal (EP) [03:36:10 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Friday Morning Report - Man of the Community
Today's show is a tribute to a man of the community, tireless effort, high output and all around good guy.
Craig Cmehil in SAP Developer Network, SAP Network TV [12:11:49 AM | 5 Comments | Permalink]

Spicing up a Webinar: Bringing the Backchannel to the Front of the Conversation
Tapping into the backchannel chatter to make a remote session come to life!
Rebecca Sowards-Emmerd in Beyond SAP [12:08:27 AM | 3 Comments | Permalink]

June 26, 2008

What’s the Latest in Content Management, Search and Collaboration: A Report from the Gilbane Conference
A re-cap of some the sessions related to enterprise search from the Gilbane Conference in SF.
Christine Merten in Knowledge Management (KM), Business Process Expert, SAP Developer Network [03:02:58 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

Portal development with Portal DCs
How to adapt your portal development techniques to develop not only faster, but also cleaner and maintainable code:)
Todor Petrov in Java Programming, Enterprise Portal (EP) [01:15:25 PM | 4 Comments | Permalink]

Extend Duet Reporting Management with your own Roles
This blog explains how to create your own Duet roles for Reporting Management (REMA) to deliver report catalogs or templates to separate user groups.
Jochen Kranzdorf in SAP xApps, Emerging Technologies, Duet [01:15:01 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

SAP Strategy Management and Human Capital Management
In this post I will offer some thoughts on tying the SAP Strategy Management (SSM) application together with Human Capital Management (HCM).
Mike Bettencourt in Business Intelligence (BI), Business Objects, Enterprise Performance Management, Interoperability [01:14:54 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

Reversing a Depreciation Run in Asset Accounting
Here's an answer to one of the more frequently asked questions on the ERP Financials forum.
Nathan Genez in Business Process Expert, Business Solutions, ERP [12:57:08 PM | 3 Comments | Permalink]

Free Screen Capture Tool to Make eLearnings
Here is a free tool you can use to create your own eLearnings.
Jason Lax in ABAP, Business Intelligence (BI), Business Process Expert, Composition Environment (CE), CRM, Duet, Enterprise SOA, Java Programming, Master Data Management (MDM), SAP Developer Network, SAP Exchange Infrastructure (XI), SAP NetWeaver Platform, SAP Network TV, Visual Composer, Web Dynpro [06:08:04 AM | 3 Comments | Permalink]

Cross Reference in XI
This is about cross referencing or lookup used in XI. This document will tell us what are the different ways for cross referencing and how to achieve them.And
Soumyasanto Sen in SAP Exchange Infrastructure (XI) [05:43:16 AM | 1 Comments | Permalink]

New HowTo paper on Archiving of PSA data available
Did you ever think of reducing your PSA data, but still having the data available for potential new requirements or in case of disaster recovery. Think about archiving PSA data in SAP NetWeaver BI.
Andreas Keppler in Business Intelligence (BI) [01:43:11 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

BIA BLOG Series, Part III: Checking Data Consistency with SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator
How to check data consistency when using the SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator. For checking the consistency of data we recommend using the following reports and checks that exist in your SAP NetWeaver BI system: 1. Transaction RSTT: CATT traces of your TOP 10 business queries (scheduling via test jobs) 2. Transaction RSDDBIAMON2: Checks in the BIA consistency check center (scheduling of check set jobs e.g. in a process chain) 3. Checks in transaction RSRV (create packages and include them in a process chain)
Silvia Bratz in Business Intelligence (BI) [01:05:05 AM | 2 Comments | Permalink]

Upgrade MDM on Discovery System to SP6
Keeping the Software Versions of your Discovery System up-to-date is not that hard. This blog describes how you upgrade your MDM to SP6.
Markus Gerber in Enterprise SOA, Master Data Management (MDM) [01:04:57 AM | 0 Comments | Permalink]

Community Day Magic
For me the best day of every TechEd is the Community Day. It is smaller more intimate and magic happens every time. The sad thing is most TechEd participants don't even know that it exists or how much they could benefit from being there.
Mark Finnern in Business Process Expert, Community Day, SAP Developer Network [12:11:02 AM | 2 Comments | Permalink]