FLP - "Test RF Environment" - Personas

[perlundh]

Hi,

I am a bit confused about RF, MOBGUI, SAP GUI for HTML, Personas etc. I'm trying to find info by reading notes, blog posts, wikis etc. but it's not getting any more clear. Maybe it's just me. We run Embedded EWM On-Prem, unfortunately not upgraded to 2021 yet.

Question: What is the official recommendation from SAP on how to run the RF Framework in a browser on a "modern" touch screen Android Scanning Device, for example the model TC72?

I mean, today I can run the tile "Test RF Environment" via Fiori Launchpad / GUI for HTML on desktop but it is hidden from phone. Can we just change the tile-config to allow phone and remove "Test" from the name? Will any of this change with 2021 and MOBGUI? Will the tile just say RF Environment and we are good to go?

I can also use Screen Personas today on ITS Mobile-screens and run it via Fiori Launchpad / GUI for HTML. What will be the noticible difference with 2021/MOBGUI?

Thankful for any advice/help!

[Mathew_S72]

Hello Per,

as we got our 2021 FPS1, I was able to test the "brand new" EWM_MOBGUI SICF Service.

As mentioned by J.Michaelis and K.Polloczek, idea is to leverage screen personas instead of ITSMobile "Editor templates / HTML generator" features to get browser pages for mobile devices generated during runtime.

This was possible in the past already by using SAPGUI for HTML

You could easily start a SAPGUI for HTML on a mobile device and then start transaction /SCWM/RFUI there. The problem is, that SAPGUI for HTML (WebGUI) goal was to emulate look and feel of a SAPGUI 1:1 including the shell header and footer from SAPGUI (marked in red). These areas consume too much space on small devices and the SAP standard GUI functions offered are neither required in a warehouse nor supported by RFUI framework.

/SCWM/RFUI renderd in SAPGUI for HTML using sap/bc/gui/sap/its/webgui

The EWM_MOBGUI service does the same rendering but without all the SAPGUI for HTML shell header/footer decorations which is exactly what we need, because RFUI screens offer a full blown menu system with no need of any SAPGUI standad functionality. Why the screen title is missing (the CUAAREA in ITSMobile) is not clear right now.

/SCWM/RFUI rendered in browser using /sap/bc/gui/sap/its/ewm_mobgui

As you can see, you now you have 100% of the browser screen (in kiosk mode) availible for 100% of the mobile device screen. Starting with that, you can use screen personas per dynpro to re-layout SAP RFUI screen by screen as you did with SE80 editor templates / HTML generator in the past

As screen personas is a really good & well known tool to reformat classic dynpro screens (luckily all RFUI screens are classic ABAP, no control framefwork) you could leverage it also to get responsive designs mentioned here
Responsive Design with SAP Screen Personas - SAP Imagineering - Community Wiki

The responsive design pattern in screen personas may allow you to support different screen sizes without the need of creating several screen layouts (devices/presentation variants) in RFUI itself.

As of now, I would still recomend to copy the RFUI screens to customer namespace and think about function key usage if you have touch only mobile devices.

Best regards,
Matthias

[perlundh]

Hi Matthias and thank you for the reply!

Yes, I also understand that the top/bottom menus are hidden using MOBGUI. However, these can also be hidden using Slipstream Engine within Personas. I also see other benefits using RF with Slipstream Engine such as the "offline/black spot"-functionality in latest SP14 etc. but it seems the SAP EWM team does not recommend using it.

Regarding launching RF from Fiori Launchpad. Mattias, are you using FLP? Because with 2020 the RF Tile is called "Test RF Environment" and is by default not possible to launch via mobile device. I wonder if this will change in S4 2021 or what the recommendation is from SAP. I want to use the FLP so that the end user has one point of entry whether on desktop or mobile device. We can create a tile launching Slipstream of course but that is not recommended I guess..

[Mathew_S72]

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/3048632 describes some details (and SAP recommendations) also for S4 on premise

[perlundh]

mbucher, I have now tried a lot of ways to use Personas with EWM RF..

I'm curious, have you thought about these issues?

1. Personas just displays active fields. Meaning, if a material is not serialized, the "serial number"-field might now show up in Personas when you create the flavor. If the user then works with a serialized material - the field would be somewhere randomly placed on the scree (initial placement).

2. How would you work with with Display Profiles when using Personas to change the look and feel? Use standard Display Profiles? If we create a custom Display Profile, the Flavor is directly linked to that specific Display Profile (or rather, to that template screen program). Really looking for some guidance/best practice from SAP here. Custom Display Profile would allow custom number of buttons and probably work better with custom development?

I've also experimented with moving the buttons to the top and bottom menu bar in Slipstream/GUI for HTML (see screenshots). That makes RF really feel more like a modern App. Unfortunately, Slipstream is buggy and displays the wrong text when function buttons change dynamically in RF. In GUI for HTML we can only use top bar. Also, the MOBGUI makes the menu bars go away 😞 A much nicer function would have been to enable the usage of these menu bars for placement of buttons!

This is a djungle, so helpful it we could continue helping out each other in this journey 🙂

[Mathew_S72]

Hi Per,

thanks for sharing your experience. As we currently still use ITS mobile, we do not have too much tests done with screen personas (SP) using EWM_MOBGUI.

1. hearing that, my first feeling was ... "sounds like a bug in screen personas" (or at least a missing feature)
If flavour edit mode is started from a current screen state (containing hidden objects), these objects (invisible='X') should/could/expected to be visible and shown as "invisible" in personas editor at it's original position. There are some notes regarding hidden objects like https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/3128911
peter.spielvogel is one of the SP masters. Maybe there is a "how to" handle ABAP screens with lot of PBO screen changes

2. before S4 2021 the /SCWM/RFUI was not usable with "touch only" devices with default display profile, because not every available action has a visible push button assigned... thus screens are not usable w/o hardware F-keys. Even with the 2021 feature to add F-Keys dynamically, from out perspective it is not really usable, because depending of the SAP RFUI screen developer group, the visible push button config differs much (sometimes PB1 is SAVE, sometimes PB4) so the user has to read button text to understand where "SAVE" is located depending on the RFUI logical transaction
So we created our own display profiles (one landscape for forklift trucks+tablets, one portrait for devices like shown), changed ALL function profile assignments to a static & consistent definition and increased ABAP screen size to "as big as required" .
We also have the challenge with a mixture of devices with hardware keys (often WinCE) and touch only (Android) devices. As we like to support hardware F-Keys as consistent as possible, same screen action must be located always on the same PB and use the same F-Key

This is the menu on a touch only portrait device with 5 PBs profile. If same screen would be used on a device with 5 hardware F-Keys, the push buttons PB1-PB5 are exaclty located above the hardware F-Keys of the device.

Best regards,
Matthias

[perlundh]

Hi mbucher,

Late reply here. Thanks for the input! It seems we (as many other companies) are in the same situation here trying to move RF into 2022 🙂

I'm interested in how you changed the appearance to the device in your image. If you click on "Follow" on my profile I think I should be able to send you a private message. Maybe we could exchange knowledge and experiences there!

[Mathew_S72]

Hi Per,

funnily we are facing the same issues with some tiles in FLP. In 2021 there seems also no tile for /SCWM/RFUI in catalog/role.

Also some other EWM tiles are not shown on smartphones but on tablets. I think it's derived from the properties of the app.

But I'm not sure which properties for SE93 transactions rendered in WebGUI needs to be set that they are shown everywhere.

Personally, I would also like to have the FLP as one entry point for all devices (desktop/mobile) and all kind of users (occational,power,devs), thus I requested the S4 stardard menu to be available as source for apps but only for power&devs that they can add every SE93 transaction. With FIORI 3 FLP spaces it is a little better (but still not fine) for power users with hundreds of tiles.

For RFUI, we created own tile with URL to <...>/sap/bc/gui/sap/its/ewm_mobgui?~TRANSACTION=/scwm/rfui
If you would add RFUI from SAP menu, you'll get .../webgui URL with the header/footer.

Best regards,
Matthias

[perlundh]

Yes, I've also disovered that only a few of the EWM UI5 "Fiori Apps" are supported for mobile as default. It's pretty clear in the "Fiori Apps Library"-website. However, the apps I've tried have actually adapted if a simulate a mobile device in the browser. But maybe they are not optimized for it.

Okay, so even with 2021 and MOBGUI you had to create your own tile for RFUI and set it active for mobile/phone? I will try to do this myself but then using webgui and yes - get the header/footer. We will be on 2021 when we go live so this is just for evaluation purposes.