Category: Blog

iCRM – a free mobile app powered by ES Workplace

paschmann

A *little* while ago, I developed and blogged about a app which used ES Workplace’s enterprise services to power a simple CRM client on the iPad – I also mentioned it was going to be a free downloadable app in the app store, well that time has finally arrived. You can now download iCRM for SAP in the app store, create an accounton the ES Workplace landscape and test it out. The best part is that if you have any of these ES Workplace services/configured or implemented in your own CRM landscape you can connect to them by simply changing the configuring in the app’s settings.

Some of the app features:

– View your business partners. read more

What SAP Netweaver Gateway is NOT ….

paschmann

I believe that there is a lot of talk online where people are asking the question … Why should I use Netweaver Gateway if I have Netweaver Process Integration (PI) or vice versa. I was recently on a SAP mobility call which included a great slide entitled “What SAP Netweaver Gateway is and is not!”. I thought I would share this with everyone and a couple other posts and links I have come across on the web, which hopefully people wanting to learn more about what Gateway has to offer, will find useful.

SAP Netweaver Gateway is NOT:

– The SAP Gateway process in the Netweaver Application Server ABAP that enables external communication (e.g. RFC). read more

Notes Viewer for Mac

paschmann

Since I have been spending the last few weeks getting some Netweaver instances running on my new Hyper V server, I have spent a considerable amount of time on the SAP Notes website debugging and troubleshooting everything from installation to master guides. Since my SAP Note Viewer apps for iPhone and iPad are fairly popular and I was tired of having to login so many times, I figured I would develop a “clone” for the Mac.

The free app features a pretty basic status bar menu and when you open it for the first time, requests your s-id and password and your search language (German and English). Once opened, you can enter a Note number or search term, submitting will automatically bring up the note in your browser. If you enter a search term, the app will search and return a list of results which you can select, opening the note. The search is fairly slow, as it is, in essence, making two round trips (one for the page and the second for the results). read more

Supplier Analytics – a new free iPad app

paschmann

After writing about utilizing javascript charts in iOS apps a little while ago, I decided it would be a good marketing tool for my company (Lithium Labs) to develop a free/public app which demonstrated the features of using such technologies on handheld devices. The free app is called Supplier Analytics and when using the sample dataset gives you some insight into how a enterprise app could be used in an automotive manufacturing/supplier environment. The app gives operations or managers insight into the performance and operational well-being of a company globally, and nationally by subsequently drilling down into a production facility or branch. read more

Using Netweaver Gateway Development Tool for XCode and Gateway 2.0 SP03

paschmann

I recently downloaded the Linux pre-configured gateway trail along with the developer tool for XCode and ran into some issues that none of my newly created services were being displayed in the service list from the tool. 

After doing some digging it seems the tool was originally developed for Gateway 2.0 SP02 and currently does not seem to support SP03 perfectly. When trying to discover the services it is checking the SData ICF Node versus the OData node which is where all services are defined for Gateway 2.0 SP03. Whats even more odd, is that the services show up only when the new OData Node is completely disabled.

If you are having issues discovering the services you have created (possibly in one of the awesome pre-configured gateway trials) open up the /IWFND/MAINT_SERVICE Tcode and try to disable the OData ICF Node. By default the services are created with both SData and OData nodes for backwards compatibility. Then refresh your services in the tool to check if the service is now available. read more

Integrating Apple Siri with SAP Gateway

paschmann

After hearing about folks hacking Apple’s Siri to do things like starting their Viper and controlling their thermostat, I thought about utilizing voice based integration with SAP to retrieve data. By default, Apples technology is pretty well locked down, but it didn’t take long for a developer to introduce a small workaround using a ruby app and a DNS filter. The filter intercepts the call to apple and allows you to inject your own questions, responses and data. If you are interested in learning more, this summary can guide you through the process of setting up and actually communicating with SAP from Siri.

Click here for a short demo video on youtube. read more

Insight for SAP – A new free app from Lithium Labs

paschmann

Here is a little app we threw together for SAP Customers, developers, users and generally interested parties in the ERP world.

We wanted to aggregate mutliple, interesting sources of SAP data and news and present it in a simple easy to use interface. The app pulls data from google, SDN, interesting blogs and the SAP news site.

As usual our apps always welcome news ideas and constrctive critism, so feel free to provide some feedback!


Here is a link to the app in the iTunes app store

SAP Note Viewer for iPad and iPhone v2.0 Released

paschmann

Thanks to everyone who has downloaded the app to date (roughly 9000 of you!). Also thanks to all the people providing feedback and ideas for future versions, keep them coming. 

Version 2 of the app has been given some major improvements to the iPhone version including the ability to review the comment attributes (version, applications and status) which was already in the iPad version. Another improvement to the iPhone app is the ability to launch the note in Safari on the device. Basically a quick link to the note but you will still need to authenticate yourself.

The biggest improvement in v 2.0 is the ability to now search for notes rather than having to know the specific note numbers, as per the previous releases. Another interesting improvement is the ability to “Tag” notes, currently, Implemented, Deleted, Success and Failed are the options. A bunch of bug fixes were also made. read more

A Proof of Concept: The social aspect of enterprise data

paschmann

Something I truly enjoy about my job is that fact that I am given freedom to explore creative solutions to business challenges. Being in manufacturing and the extremely demanding automotive industry, we are consistently challenged to produce better product, at a lower cost and in a shorter time in order to maintain reasonable margins. We are often faced with implementing solutions which augment our manufacturing processes and enable production employees to have better insight to the products being produced which ultimately ensures better quality. Some of these solutions include real time production labeling (tightly integrated from PLC’s to SAP), On-line visual display of requirements and products being produced and even include metrics like OEE.  read more

Custom BI on iPad using Javascript

paschmann

Introduction

After developing multiple iOS apps (SAP Note Viewer for iPad  (SAP Note Viewer for iPad) and iPhone  (SAP Note Viewer for iPhone), iOS CRM  (iOS CRM for SAP and iPad – A free Mobile CRM App)) I recently stumbled across one of my biggest hurdles so far (aside from learning Obj. C!) in creating a Sales dashboard within a native application. Charting and Graphing in business applications, including SAP, is a everyday necessity providing users, managers and CEO’s a visual representation of important, monotonous and a downright boring set of data. 

Dashboards, charts and graphs have become a common place within organizations and new releases of Business Objects BI 4, are making these easy to deploy, user friendly, interactive and can be very helpful in making game time decisions. Utilizing these visualizations from a mobile platform is something which is being actively developed ({code:html}Business Explorer for iPhone{code} for example) but currently there are very few plugins/frameworks/controls or libraries which make adding custom visualizations to your XCode project easy. A good example of some great looking charts in iOS would be Roambi  (http://www.roambi.com/). In my quest to solve this challenge I came across a solution which allowed me to mashup javascript and objective c creating a solution which is working fairly well so far and felt like some others developing on this “newish” platform might find helpful. While my solution does not come close to being comparative to products like Roambi, it does provide some tricks to making charting fairly simple for anyone wanting to do so. This post will be  read more