https://blogs.sap.

com/2014/04/25/sap-screen-personas-getting-started/ SAP Screen

Personas Getting Started

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The Authors of this E-Bite

Peter Spielvogel is senior director of product marketing for the SAP Imagineering team. He
currently leads the go-to-market activities for SAP Screen Personas, and is the co-author of two
books.

Tamas Hoznek is a development architect in the SAP Imagineering team, focusing on customer
support, project success, issue resolution, and education around SAP Screen Personas.

Sylvia Barnard is marketing director for the SAP Imagineering team. She focuses on helping
European customers improve their productivity with SAP Screen Personas and channel customer
feedback into the product.

Steve Rumsby is the SAP Technical Manager at the University of Warwick and the Universitys
primary SAP Screen Personas expert.
Tobias Queck is the lead architect on the SAP Screen Personas team. He is the co-inventor of
SAP Screen Personas and has been involved with developing the product since its inception.

Sebastian Steinhauer is the product owner for SAP Screen Personas, and has been working on
SAP Screen Personas from the vision to the latest version. He has more than 10 years of software
development experience.

Learn more about the authors at https://www.sap-press.com/using-sap-screen-

personas_3975/authors/.

What Youll Learn

We wont deny it: the usability of classic screens in SAP GUI can be improved. Luckily, SAP
Screen Personas is here to save the day. Use this E-Bite to learn how to edit SAP screens, merge
tabs, automate keystrokes, and more. Youll be delivering personalized and intuitive UX to users
in no time!

1 Introduction

1.1 The Objective of Screen Personas

1.2 Screen Personas and SAP ERP

1.3 SAPs UX Strategy and SAP Screen Personas

2 Example Scenario: Plant Maintenance

2.1 Example Scenario

2.2 Design Thinking Process

2.3 Understanding End Users Needs

2.4 Prototype and Test

2.5 Unique Needs of Plant Maintenance

3 Editing Screens

3.1 The Screen Editor

3.2 Creating a Theme

3.3 Hiding Screen Elements and Moving Fields

4 Merging Tabs

4.1 Planning Your Screen

4.2 Reducing or Eliminating Tabs

4.3 Moving Information Out of Tab Containers

4.4 Merge Tabs and Finish

4.5 Completely Eliminate All Tabs

5 Scripting

5.1 Copying Data between Screens

5.2 Error Handling

5.3 Conditional Skipping of a Screen

5.4 Dynamic Flavor Switching

6 Deploying SAP Screen Personas

6.1 Installation and Configuration Questions

6.2 Transports

6.3 Training

6.4 Documentation

7 Integrating with SAP Fiori Launchpad

7.1 Enable SAP Screen Personas Flavors for the SAP Fiori Launchpad

7.2 Create a SAP Fiori Launchpad Tile Pointing to an SAP Screen Personas Flavor

7.3 Role Maintenance

7.4 The Final Result

7.5 Additional Possibilities

8 Whats Next?

1Introduction
For more than forty years, SAP customers have used its enterprise resource planning (ERP)
systems to run their businesses. As markets and supply chains have become more complex, the
software has added new capabilities. Now, we are reaching an inflection point; customers are
shifting their focus from features to user experience (UX).

A simple user experience allows people to get more done in less time with a minimum of
training. Recently, SAP has introduced several solutions to improve the user experience of its
software. SAP Screen Personas is one such solution, focused on streamlining business processes
in SAP Business Suite ERP software.

SAP Screen Personas is a personalization framework built into the SAP GUI for HTML (also
known as Web GUI) that enables customers to reduce data and feature complexity, shorten
navigational steps, and decrease the number of screens end users encounter as they do their jobs.
SAP Screen Personas is a non-modifying add-on that can be installed on selected servers in SAP
landscapes. We will focus on Web GUI transactions, which can be displayed in browsers such as
Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Mozilla Firefox.

This E-Bite will discuss how you can simplify transactional screens with SAP Screen Personas to
improve usability. We will go through a complete scenario, starting with planning and design. We
will include specific instructions on how to edit screens, merge tabs, write scripts, and deploy the
new screens into your environment.

While enterprises use SAP for many purposes, we will focus on one example used by many
organizations. Even if you use different SAP modules, the overall processes for simplifying
screens are the same across all areas of the business. Focusing on one specific example will
allow us to provide detailed information for specific user roles, how they interact with the SAP
system, and the advantages of simplicity to improve their job performance and satisfaction.

After reading this E-Bite, you will:

Understand how SAP Screen Personas fits into SAPs UX strategy

Discover how to start your UX transformation journey

Learn how to use SAP Screen Personas to simplify ERP screens

1.1The Objective of Screen Personas

SAP Screen Personas allows companies to improve user productivity by personalizing their SAP
ERP screens. By providing the right information to the right users in the right context, they can
get more done in less time with greater accuracy. With more intuitive SAP screens, organizations
can enhance user satisfaction, minimize training time, and spend less money on screen
modifications.

With SAP Screen Personas, you can rearrange your screens to organize the most common tasks
in a logical manner and automate recurring keystrokes to drive efficiency.

The key to a successful project is to first understand the needs of the users you are working with,
then observe how they interact with the system, and finally remove unused elements from the
screen, leaving only the fields required for people to perform their jobs quickly and easily, with
minimum distraction. Each personalized collection of screens belonging to one transaction is
called a flavor. There might be multiple flavors for commonly used transactions, but for a
specific role, there will likely only be a small number.

This E-Bite will cover the most important process steps for using SAP Screen Personas to
simplify SAP ERP screens.

1.2Screen Personas and SAP ERP

SAP ERP helps large and small organizations manage their business processes such as sales,
service, manufacturing, procurement, finance, and human resources. There are specific
capabilities for a variety of industries. The breadth of this software means there are many
functions that an individual company or person might not need in their daily work.

Most people access SAP modules through the SAP GUI for Windows, a desktop application that
runs on Windows desktop, laptop, and tablet computers. The SAP GUI family also includes a
version of SAP that runs through the browser (SAP GUI for HTML, also known as Web GUI).
These interfaces were developed in the 1990s, so there is often a significant gap between the user
experience (UX) in SAP GUI and the UX in more modern web or mobile applications. SAP
Screen Personas allows you now to bridge that gap without disrupting your enterprise systems.

In Figure 1, you see a screenshot of the SAP Easy Access screenTransaction SMENas most
users see it.
Figure 1Accessing SAP Functionality through SAP GUI

In Figure 2, you see a slightly different look and feel of the same SAP Easy Access screen as it is
displayed in SAP GUI for HTML (Web GUI). Because Web GUI, and therefore SAP Screen
Personas, render in web browsers, there are a few technical limitations that must be considered
when personalizing screens with SAP Screen Personas. See OSS Note 2050838,
http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/2050838.
Figure 2Web GUI Functionality through a Browser

But before going into more detail, let us explain SAPs user experience strategy and how SAP
Screen Personas is anchored in it.

1.3SAPs UX Strategy and SAP Screen Personas

The SAP user experience (UX) strategy is aimed at making SAP software easier to use.

The UX strategy focuses on three main areas:

Creating new applications built with a consumer-grade UX

Renewing existing applications by improving the UX for the most commonly used
business scenarios

Empowering customers with tools, education, and services to improve the UX of the SAP
software

Core to SAPs user experience strategy is the SAP Fiori user experience (see Figure 3). SAP
plans to use the SAP Fiori design for all new applications. SAP Fiori apps help to renew common
business scenarios. SAP Screen Personas is one tool that allows customers to personalize any
SAP GUI transaction, including their own custom transactions.
One example of an SAP Fiori design can be seen in Figure 4.

You can access SAP Fiori designs by purchasing new software from SAP such as S/4 HANA,
downloading one of the application templates, or creating your own SAP Fiori designs using the
design specification and SAPUI5 development tools such as SAP Web IDE. If you want to have
a SAP Fiori design for your SAP ERP transactions, you can achieve this easily by using SAP
Screen Personas.

Figure 3SAP Screen Personas Helps You Build Screens with the New SAP Fiori UX

Figure 4SAP Simple Finance Using the Fiori User Experience

A user experience is not just about prettier, more modern screens, although this is certainly the
most visible aspect of UX. The real benefit is the business value that individuals and their
companies gain from a more intuitive UX. By providing simplified screens, organizations can
expect to:

Improve productivity

Increase user adoption

Decrease user errors

Save training costs

Section 2 will discuss how to get started with a SAP Screen Personas project.

To Recap

An intuitive user experience helps employees get more done in less time with a minimum of
training time.

SAP Screen Personas is built into the SAP GUI for HTML, allowing you to simplify screens
based on user roles.

SAP Screen Personas is part of SAPs long-term strategy to allow customers to personalize
transactions, whether SAP transactions or customer-developed ones.