The SAP Customer Connection for Workflow 2015 update call was held on January 11, 2016. Some previous blogs about the Workflow 2015 initiative are:
(I've only gone back to the four most recent ones... You'll have to search for yourself if you want to see more... hint: 'Customer Connection Workflow' might work)
New enhancements for SAP Business Workflow
The little things that mean a lot
SAP Workflow 2015 Customer connection Selection Call
SAP Workflow improvements - at last!
See the offical blog announcement here.
As usual, there are the normal legal disclaimers up front. And at the time I attempted to dial in, there were over 60 attendees on the call. (Sadly, a malfunctioning office phone kept me off). The call was led by Daniel-Alexander Heller and Ralf Goetzinger, with occasional sage advice from our good friend, Alan Rickayzen.
ALL IMAGES ARE COURTESY OF SAP and property of SAP.
The following two slides show the improvements that SAP has delivered and most of them are discussed in better detail in the recording of the call, which I can highly recommend - Listen HERE.
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These requests are in addition to the ones that have already been delivered (hey, Rick Bakker, maybe you can add these to your document?).
Here are some detailed descriptions - but seriously, you'll learn a lot more by listening to the recording. Ralf has been involved with SAP Workflow for a long time - so his explanations of the problems behind each request and how to use the improvement will make it time well spent.
Note 2197117 - Debugging Background workitems - if you've spent any time at all developing/debugging your own workflows, you already know the drill on this... set a background task to dialog, put yourself as an agent, and so on. I can't tell you how many times I've had to do this just to see how a certain method actually works ion context - and of course, you can only take those particular steps in non-productive environments. I'm not sure I'd recommend using this method in Production, but you will be able to set an external breakpoint in your BOR background method (yes, I said BOR).
See the pic, below:
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Note 2186821 - Shortcut to WF Admin functions - there have been times I just wanted to put my head down and cry for the number of steps it would take to, say, get from the technical workflow log to the various administrative functions that are necessary. This note promises you fewer clicks, easier Admin.
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Note 2188696 - This note has some real promise, I can tell you. By enhancing the WF System Class (WFSyst) the workflow developer will have the ability to use CONCAT, SUBSTRING, and other functions in the workflow container itself. No more programming goofy little methods to add First Name to Last Name! No more goofy little methods to convert to upper case! Youza!
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Note 2200908 - If you defined a terminating event at the header level, it wasn't easy to see that the event was indeed the reason the workflow ended. So here you go...
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I have about another half dozen notes to discuss, but I want to save this blog and allow you all time to digest what these improvements in the SAP Workflow Environment could mean to you while I work on the next blog. Granted, this is not earth-shattering, but for many of us who spend the days in the trenches of WF Development and Admin, our lives will be made a little bit SIMPLER.
If you do implement any of these notes, or any of the previously released notes, please let us know how they worked out for you. Personally, I can't wait for Note 2188631 to be implemented in our SRM system. We've already got it in sandbox and everytime I get to use it, I think 'Thank you SAP Customer Connection'. What's that note for? I encourage you to go search for yourself.
) you may get frustrated with always having to 'align' the model. You know, sometimes all the tasks are bunched together, or the branches look like something out of a nightmare. This is due, in part, to the way that the workflow build system saves your model. SAP has delivered a setting to eliminate this frustration via your personal workflow settings.
