Posted on 08 April 2012 by Tony
Over the last few years one of my colleagues, Jim O’Farrell, has done some excellent work in terms of working with Winshuttle customers and calculating the ROI of business process acceleration. Part of this work includes looking at customers’ logs in the SAP Workload Monitor (ST03N). These logs keep a tally of all transactions handled in the system and provide valuable insights into usage patterns in SAP. Usage logs from individual customers are highly confidential, but analysing the data in aggregate is quite interesting. For example, the table below lists the top 20 transactions based on actual usage data aggregated from more than 250 SAP customers worldwide.
| Rank |
Tcode |
Description |
| 1 |
VA02 |
Change Sales Order |
| 2 |
IQ02 |
Change Material Serial Number |
| 3 |
CAT2 |
Time Sheet: Maintain Times |
| 4 |
VA01 |
Create Sales Order |
| 5 |
FBL5N |
Display Customer Line Items |
| 6 |
ME23N |
Display Purchase Order |
| 7 |
IQ01 |
Create Material Serial Number |
| 8 |
VL02N |
Change Outbound Delivery |
| 9 |
FBL1N |
Display Vendor Line Items |
| 10 |
MD04 |
Display Stock/Requirements Situation |
| 11 |
LM13 |
Put Away Clustered |
| 12 |
MIGO |
Goods Movement |
| 13 |
ME21N |
Create Purchase Order |
| 14 |
FBL3N |
Display G/L Account Line Items |
| 15 |
VA03 |
Display Sales Order |
| 16 |
MIRO |
Enter Incoming Invoice |
| 17 |
QE51N |
Results Recording Work List |
| 18 |
IW32 |
Change Order |
| 19 |
VL03N |
Display Outbound Delivery |
| 20 |
FB03 |
Display Document |
A really interesting aspect of this list is that it includes eight display transactions. In other words, some of the most frequent use of the SAP GUI is simply to retrieve information and not perform any updates on the system. We are all familiar with the well-known usability issues of the SAP GUI. Having to navigate and master this generic interface for quick lookups and retrieval of business data, often while performing work in other tools, is an unnecessary burden on productivity.
I am often asked about how to qualify business scenarios for SAP/SharePoint solutions, which is primarily focused on extending the reach of SAP and serving casual users in their tools of choice. Building such solutions involves various degrees of complexity and effort, but the table above helps you identify the quick wins. There is obviously a lot less complexity and effort involved in creating an interface in SharePoint that is merely reading information from SAP. These eight frequently used display transactions is a good place to start when considering how to realise productivity gains by surfacing SAP through SharePoint.
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Posted on 27 November 2011 by Tony
Introducing the new whitepaper, “Hybrid SharePoint Environments with Office 365.”
hy·brid (n) – something (as a power plant, vehicle, or electronic circuit) that has two different types of components performing essentially the same function.
- Merriam-Webster.com
Are you evaluating how Office 365 fits into your overall communication and collaboration strategy plan, both today and into the future? Specific to SharePoint, are you planning for full cloud adoption within your firewall, or will you begin your move to the cloud with a mixed deployment across SharePoint environments – both on-premises and online within Office 365? To provide insight in this area, we’re excited to announce the new “Hybrid SharePoint Environments with Office 365” whitepaper – downloadable here: www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=154e9524-27a1-4c1f-b4ea-efeb0027b1bc
As of June 28th, 2011, Office 365 introduced the ability to achieve single sign-on (SSO) via Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). Once established, this enables end-users to securely move between on-premises and online boundaries. The “Hybrid SharePoint Environments with Office 365” whitepaper provides step-by-step guidance for extending SharePoint and SharePoint Online beyond SSO – covering best practices for planning your cross-domain information architecture, direction for approaching security and compliance requirements, and insights on the ways branding & navigation play an important role in building a consistent end-user experience. The paper equally weighs a variety of business scenarios providing clear guidance about which deployment approach might make the most sense in your organization.
We believe you should move to the cloud on your terms and we encourage you to use the hybrid guidance and technical capabilities in this whitepaper to chart your cloud roadmap. The SharePoint team continues to plan and design for future hybrid scenarios and we are committed to supporting you every step of the way. We believe a thoughtful hybrid deployment plan will bridge gaps between existing investments, ease migration to the cloud and foster rapid, cloud-first innovation for your organization.
Enjoy the read,
The SharePoint Team
Related resources:
o Prepare for single sign-on (SSO) – Office 365
o The main Deploying Office 365 page
o The Microsoft Office 365 Deployment Guide for Enterprises
o SharePoint Online Planning Guide for Office 365 for enterprises
o Exchange Online hybrid deployment and migration with Office 365
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Posted on 04 April 2011 by Tony
Two years ago I had the chance to attend and present at the SharePoint Best Practice conference in London. Last year I had the same op but was stuck in Norway when the volcano screwed travel up for most of Europe. Thankfully I get another shot at it this coming April! This is by far one of the best held conferences around for SharePoint folk. It’s a top notch crew of speakers, content and is one of the better shows in terms of logistics and implementation.
I’ll be presenting two sessions at this show:
- Incorporating Managed Metadata in Custom Solutions in SharePoint 2010
The Managed Metadata Service application in SharePoint 2010 allows users to create and utilize taxonomies in various ways. Microsoft has included a robust taxonomy API in SharePoint 2010 that can be leveraged in custom solutions. In this session we’ll explore how you can import taxonomies programmatically and create custom solutions that leverage taxonomies in various ways.
- SharePoint Ribbon Customization Deep Dive
SharePoint 2010 introduced a new paradigm in the user experience: the ribbon. This user friendly control contains all the controls and tools available to users when interacting with SharePoint to get their job done. Developers can customize and extend the ribbon for custom solutions. In this session we’ll examine the different components of the ribbon as well as how to create page components, asynchronous callbacks and prompt the user with intuitive dialogs.
This show also features Chris Johnson from Microsoft as the keynote speaker, someone I got to co-present with back at the SharePoint Conference in 2009 (still goes down as my most fun session ever). They’ve even got a video advertisement… check it out!
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Posted on 04 January 2010 by
How can I install Windows SharePoint Services? Help ASAP
Chosen Answer:
Install
Step 1
Go to the Windows SharePoint Services download page (see link in Resources). Click Download > Save. Double-click the “SharePoint.exe” file to start the installation process. Click “Yes” to accept the Microsoft terms and agreements. Click “Continue.”
Step 2
Choose “Basic” to allow the program to be installed in its default location. Click “Advanced” to select a location for the program. Click “Next” to start the set-up wizard.
Step 3
Click “Finish” when the set-up phase is complete. The configuration wizard will open.
Configure
Step 1
Click “Next” to exit the welcome page. Click “Yes” to indicate you understand that some services may be modified during the installation process. The configuration wizard will begin. Click “Finish” when the process is complete. Open Internet Explorer to allow SharePoint Services access to the Internet.
Step 2
Click the “Tools” tab and choose “Internet Options.” Click the “Security” tab and choose “Trusted Sites.” Click “Sites.” Uncheck the “Require Server Verification” option. Type in the SharePoint Services URL and click “Add.”
Step 3
Click “Close” to exit the trusted sites window and click “OK.” SharePoint is installed on your system and ready to use.
by: Keyano Reev
on: 10th January 10
Posted on 10 August 2008 by Tony
We’re using SharePoint as a document management solution on our corporate portal. I have tried understating what’s going on inside in terms of usage reporting… and I have found out that the SharePoint server is simply not collecting the required usage data… even if I use some log analyzers… the data is simply not there for me to crunch… can a sharepoint server be configured to collect more usage data? Anyone knows about this issue?
Chosen Answer:
Hi … indeed there’s an issue here… SharePoint out of the box is not providing the sufficient information, actually, SharePoint is not even collecting the required information needed in order to analyze the usage data… especially when it comes to working with documents stored in SharePoint sites/libraries etc.
Try this third party tool – CardioLog form Intlock – they have an independent tracking agent so they collect usage data of almost any action users are performing, and they offer some advanced usage reports specifically targeted also for your solution – look at the “SharePoint Enterprise Content Management Analytics” bundle.
(their web site – http://www.intlock.com )
let me know how it went…
by: Uri U
on: 12th August 08
