Adobe Interactive Forms !

As I have been working a lot recently with Adobe interactive forms I thought I would blog about my ups and downs with the technology.

To start with the technology is very cool and allows for some very boring monotonous standard business process’ to be transformed into something very cool and dynamic.

Rich user interfaces, and the added ability of adobe forms to be emailed to all kinds of devices, gives fast opportunities for exciting, fast and  forward-looking business’.

The interactive  forms often act as a notification perfectly and in most cases this is what the form is for, but of recent we have been using dynamic adobe forms to display data, take new data and make an approval decision. Top this off with it being linked with a SAP BPMN work-flow and you have a killer app!

We have stumbled across problems with dynamic rendering and paging but nothing that couldn’t be handled by the framework, and the decision to use javascript or FormCalc came down to the level of skill we have in each area not neccecarily the impact one may have over the other.

Java was are language of choice so we had to do without the automatic code validation that formcalc gives you. Looking forward i think formcalc needs to be understood to be appreciated and used.

interesting problems around submition points and the effect multiple sumit buttons has on the form caused us to stumble . . .

MORE TO COME . . . .

Back to the Blog !

Back to the Blog.

So its been almost a year since I started my blog an after a few post I found myself becoming more and more involved in my work, so much so that this blog fell of the edge of the earth for a while.

fear not it is back and will be updated weekly for all those interested in my progression through SAP.

That’s all for now, but the blog is back up and running!

Tom

SAP TechEd – 2009

As my last post was based on the Demo Jam, i thought id follow up with a post on the event that holds DemoJam, SAP TechEd.

This year TechEd is being held in 3 different locations, Phoenix, Vienna and Bangalore.

To my limited knowledge, TechEd is an SAP Conference that demonstrates current SAP Modules and technologies in use,  but mainly focuses on showcasing the additions that new versions and enhancement packs will be bringing to the table in the coming months.

Teched is usually 3 or so day event of which you can view seminars, demonstrations, DEMO JAM! and even classes. When you book your ticket for teched you can pre order a place in a number of classes and seminars but not all of them. once there if you wish to attend extra sessions you can check on line to see where there are available seats. Teched really should be made the most of, so if you have the chance to go, spent your time well.

This year the event in pheonix is a day longer, so that might be the best bet if you can afford the extra flight cost (thats from the UK obviously).

As mentioned earlier, TechEd is used very well to show of SAP’s advancements in current process’s E.g Guided procedures to BPM, adobe flex, flash islands and all that good stuff, this showcase on its own is a great reason to go to teched as staying at the top of the technology is becoming more and more important with the speed of progression.

SAP’s World Famous Demo Jam

SAP’s Demo Jam was something that excited me from the moment i started at comprise, Owen Pettiford a co-owner of compriseIT and SAP Mentor, opened my eyes to Demo Jam quite early on and after viewing a few videos of teched Berlin and Bangalore. I was convinced this was something we as a company should enter at some point in the near future, plus a cheeky trip to Vegas wouldn’t go a miss!

I had some initial ideas that I put down on paper, but as i learnt more about teched, demo jam and SAP in general i started to get a grasp of the type of 6 minute demo that was needed to compete.

It needs something innovative, clever, interesting, relevant, funny and if you can lean the application towards the idea of Green IT, this will also help. Past winners have even involved Nintendo Wii controllers in the demonstration.

For those who are unaware of the Demo Jam, entrants are given 6 minutes to display, demonstrate and sometimes build an application. After each 6 minutes the crowd clap, whoop and cheer, the loudest responsetakes  the title.

It looks like a great atmosphere and a lot of fun, it obviously offers the companies who enter a great deal of publicity and cu-dos!.

Take a look for yourself . . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_8x1gjst1U

The development team at the company I work for recently had their annual in house Demo Jam, which was very successful. (We didn’t have a 20ft clap-ometer, instead we had an iPhone app that did the job.)

This started the discussion on, should we enter? what should we enter?

The white board of ideas is beginning to fill. . . .

VC- Visual Composer (Love it or Hate it, there is a place for VC)

This is a debate that is currently running within our office, and i assume in other SAP development circles where composition is discussed.

There are many different ways to develop SAP composites, thers WebDynpro, Adobe Flex and VC but to name a few, but the question that keeps getting asked is . . .

‘Can VC cope with all the requirements, will this applicaiton be too complex for VC?’

The best place to start the decision is the requirements document, How solid is the document and is their potential for add ons and future iterations after Go live. If the requirements documentation is solid and highlighly unlikly to change, then you can think seriously if VC is capble. If it is then

Scope creep can often be a good reason to stray away from VC, as future addtions to an app (which in turn can often mean extra conslting and development days from the company creating the app I.e. revenue) may be seen as no longer possible becuse to much work has been carried out in VC to re think the development.

SAP from the ground up . . .

I suppose a good start would be to detail my short and incredibly exciting professional career.

Graduating from Nottingham Trent University with a Business and IT degree, i fortunately stepped straight into a job with my current employer CompriseIT, an SAP composite application and consultancy firm. Knowing very little about SAP i was excited that a company was willing to take on graduates and give them the SAP knowledge that could and hopefully will be the basis of a long career in IT and SAP. I was aware of SAP and what its function was in the business world as i was linked with an SAP implementation in my gap year at Xerox Europe HQ in London. The introduction at this stage gave me a good understanding of the importance of such systems and more importantly the need for such skilled professionals.

With this exposure i was well aware that a career in SAP was always going to be a good option, so when i was offered the job with CompriseIT it was a no brainer.

I was employed as an application developer, and within weeks i was exposed to SOA techniques, Web services, and an unfortunately awkward UI called SAP GUI, which in truth is one of the reasons for the new UI tools that SAP have provided in the last 6 or 7 years.

In my later years at Fairfax school, i would come home to hear nothing but sheer dislike for SAP GUI from my mother who was at this point being re trained to use SAP, at an early age i was well aware of the problems SAP were facing. (Whether i wanted to know about it or not!)

As the weeks went on at Comprise, i was introduced to Visual Composer, Adobe forms (life Cycle designer) WebDynpro and many other forms of SAP interaction. Its been 6 months + from when i first used VC and i would be comfortable saying that i am aware of all of its capabilities, but more importantly its downfalls. Half of learning Visual Composer is learning what elements of the program for one reason or another don’t work, when it appears that they should.

Welcome to the Blog – Journey into SAP

Welcome to my SAP journey.

As you can see on the ‘About’ page, I’m an SAP Composition Application Developer, and have been now for 7 months.

I have decided to start a blog about my experiences, invrestigations and thoughts about SAP, the CE environment and my progression through SAP.