SAP Screen Personas 2.0 SP03 Features

Knowledge Base Article - By Chinthan Yajamaan , Vandana Deep , Updated on

SAP Screen Personas 2.0 SP03 (SAP Screen Personas 1.0 SP05) comes with a host of new features to improve the user experience. Before you download and upgrade, please refer to the System Requirements article.

Performance Features 

Slim State

Slim state rendering involves client side and Kernel optimizations to reduce the overhead in XML metadata retrieved from server, resulting in decreased data transfer and faster rendering of screen. All of the screen information is sent to the client, so there is no loss of data when compared to normal rendering (full state). Please refer to Kernel prerequisites for the slim state feature. By default, this feature is not enabled and to enable it, you need to set the Rendering.State parameter in the system settings section in SPRO as shown below:

Disable XML Encoding

Special characters in XML metadata retrieved from server are encoded by default which results in bigger XML file. It is now possible to disable XML encoding to improve performance further. This feature has the same Kernel prerequisites as the slim state feature. To disable XML encoding, you need to set the Rendering.Encoding parameter in the system settings section in SPRO as shown below:

Delta Rendering Configuration as a System Setting

The delta rendering feature that was released in Screen Personas 2.0 SP02 (SAP Screen Personas 1.0 SP04) could be enabled for a transaction, flavor or a combination. With SAP Screen Personas 2.0 SP03, it is possible to enable / disable delta rendering system-wide using the Rendering.DeltaRendering parameter in the system settings section in SPRO as shown below

Lazy Rendering of Tree Control

Rendering of tree controls in SAP Screen Personas has been optimized to render only the nodes that are visible in the viewport. On scroll or expand/collapse of nodes in the tree control, the nodes that are not in the viewport will be rendered on the fly. This not only enables screens with trees to render faster, but also allows to render tree controls with a large number of nodes without crashing the application.

Usability Enhancements 

As part of usability enhancements,  the 'Save' and 'Save and Exit' button texts have been changed to icons in the SAP Screen Personas editor to accommodate for new buttons, some of which are described below.

Local History

Local history in text controls was already supported in SAP Screen Personas 2.0 SP02, but the history values had to be accessed using the up and down arrow keys in the text controls. So in SAP Screen Personas 2.0 SP03, when local history is enabled on text controls using the IsLocalHistoryEnabled property in a flavor, a dropdown with matching values are displayed while keying in the value or all values are displayed upon pressing the space bar. A list of all history values is shown if the space bar key is pressed on an empty text control.

The local history enhancement is also available with the OK code control.

Locate Controls

A new button is available on the editor toolbar to help locate the controls used in the flavor. Clicking on the "Locate control" toolbar button will make the control visible and will be highlighted. For this to work, the ID of the control must be available in the system clipboard. As before, the ID of a control can be copied to the system clipboard by clicking on the ID field in the control property panel.

The "Locate control" button is also available in the script editor window. When a script step is selected and the locate button is clicked, the control whose ID is used in the selected script step will be highlighted. Locating hidden controls also works with the control being made temporarily visible (visibility property remains unchanged) as shown below:

"Locate control" can also be used to locate a flavor that is used in the switch flavor script action. The flavor will be highlighted with a blue dot in the flavor bar as shown below:

Copy and Paste of Custom Controls

Custom controls in a flavor can be copied and pasted using the new copy and paste buttons in the editor toolbar. Multiple custom controls can be selected using the shift key and copy-pasted in one go. You can also copy custom controls from one flavor and paste it into another flavor and across transactions. The copy-paste feature only works with custom controls.

Text Control Wrapping

Text controls now support wrapping of text when it is too long to fit the width of the control. It can be enabled by checking the IsTextWrapEnabled property in the properties panel.

Invoke Script button from dropdown or checkbox or radio button

It is now possible to invoke a script button on value change event from a dropdown and checkbox or radio button controls by setting the control id of script button in "onvaluechanged" property of dropdown or checkbox control. This feature requires the latest patches for SAP Screen Personas 2.0 from cumulative note#1964257.

Show and Hide Script Actions 

Visibility of controls can now be changed using scripts. Two new script actions, "Hide Control" and "Show Hidden Control" are available. These actions are also available as 'IF' conditions to determine if a control is visible or not.

Enable Show keys by default in combo box controls

It is now possible to enable show keys setting for all combo box controls using ‘Rendering.ShowComboKey’ and 'Rendering.ShowComboKeyInTables' in the system settings section in SPRO as shown below:

Rendering.ShowComboKey parameter will enable all combo boxes outside table control to show key and value. Rendering.ShowComboKeyInTables parameter will enable comboboxes inside table control to show key and value. Please note, this feature requires latest patches for SAP Screen Personas 2.0 from cumulative note#1964257.

Dynamic update of table cells 

In SAP Screen Personas 2.0 SP02, it was possible to access table cell from script by selecting table column id and appending cell id to it as follows:

ses[0]/wnd[0]/usrUSRAREA/tblSAPM_GUITEST_PORTABLETABLECONTROL/colTABLECOLUMN[0]/cell[1]

It is now possible to read or write content from table cell that can be accessed dynamically using variables as follows:

This feature requires the latest patches for SAP Screen Personas 2.0 SP03 from cumulative note#1964257.

Switch Flavor by Flavor ID 

The "Switch flavor" script action now works with a flavor ID instead of the flavor name. This helps in switching to the correct flavor when there are multiple target flavors with the same name. The flavor ID can be obtained using the select control button in the script editor window as shown below. The flavor ID can also be copied to the system clipboard by double-clicking on the flavor name in the flavor bar in edit mode. This is useful to add a switch flavor action into the script where the flavor is of another transaction.

Existing flavors with the flavor switch action by name will continue to work, but users can no longer provide the flavor name for the Switch Flavor acton. So, it is recommended to update the script to use the flavor ID when you edit the script/flavor next time.  

Switch Flavor supporting Basic View and Default Flavor 

The "Switch flavor" script action now supports switching to Basic View for a transaction as well as the Default flavor. This helps in scenarios where user wishes to switch to the unmodified view of the transaction or switch to the default view for the user. The following format needs to be specified in the control field for the switch flavor action:

"*" - Switch to the Default view for the specified transaction

"+" - Switch to the Basic view for the specified transaction

For instance if the user wishes to switch to the Default view or the Basic view for the current transaction, you need to provide the following details in the script action:

To do the same for SU01 tcode, you need to provide the following details in the script action:

Resize Script Action Content

The script action content control can now be resized by holding the resize symbol at the bottom right corner and dragging it. It helps to view the contents of the step like in case of the "Calculate in JavaScript" action.

Moving and Resizing of Modal Popups

Modal popups can now be moved and resized on the screen in runtime. This helps to see the contents on the main screen if the popup is hiding some or all of its contents.

Skip close confirmation popup

When you try to close SAP Screen Personas browser window or tab, you will get a browser confirmation popup asking if you want to "Leave the page" or "Stay on the page" (NOTE: This popup and text looks different in different browser).

This confirmation popup can be disabled in SAP Screen Personas 2.0 by adding skipcloseconfirmation=true parameter in browser URL field everytime as follows:

<http/https>:<server>:<port>/sap/bc/bsp/persos/mainapp.index.html?skipcloseconfirmation=true&sap-client=200#Rendering

If you are using NWBC and navigate from one page to another, then the close confirmation popup shows up before switching tab. So this URL parameter can be helpful. If you are adding Personas as BSP Application in PFCG role menu for NWBC (as mention in http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-40891) then you can add parameter with:

Name: skipcloseconfirmation

Value: true

If you are adding SAP Screen Personas as Web address or File in PFCG role menu for NWBC then you can pass skipcloseconfirmation as URL parameter

Keyboard Navigation in ALV Grid

It is now possible to navigate across ALV grid cells using Keyboard arrow keys. This feature requires the latest patches for SAP Screen Personas 2.0 from cumulative note#1964257.

Match F4 popup font to Webgui font

To match the font size of F4 popups and ALV reports to that of Webgui or SAPGui in SAP Screen Personas 2.0 SP03 (for kernel prerequisites refer to note#2203136), you need to set the Rendering.EnableListViewFont parameter under SPRO - SAP Reference IMG -> Cross-Application Component -> SAP Screen Personas -> Manage Systems -> add new system in System Details -> select and double click to go to System Settings -> Click New Entries and add

System Settings: Rendering.EnableListViewFont

Property Value: true

as shown below:

below is the comparison of font in popup before and after adding the parameter:

Admin UI Features

As part of Admin UI enhancements, standard buttons like create, display, edit etc. have been moved to the application toolbar in all screens. Also, the user maintenance screen has been removed as the default starting screen when you open the Admin UI transaction.

Synchronization of PFCG Role Users and SAP Screen Personas Group Users

Users of PFCG roles can now be synchronized with users of SAP Screen Personas groups in the mass group maintenance screen. It also allows administrators to assign a default system and a Screen Personas role to the synchronized users. Administrators can also overwrite previously assigned systems or roles of existing users in the SAP Screen Personas groups with new default system and Screen Personas role. The synchronization program can be run on as needed basis or scheduled as a background job to run on regular intervals, thereby making user management easier than before.

Compress Flavor

A new screen is now available to administrators to compress flavors by deleting the change history from flavors. This reduces the data transfer between the server and client and enables flavors to load faster at runtime.

Flavor Maintenance

Flavors can now be renamed by administrators in the flavor maintenance screen using the "Rename" button in the application toolbar. Also, the flavor ID of a flavor is now displayed in the flavor maintenance screen.

Export/Import flavor to same system

Flavors exported in SAP Screen Personas can now be imported into same system from Import flavors screen. Also the flavor name can be modified in the table before importing as shown below. This feature requires the latest ABAP patches for SAP Screen Personas 2.0 from cumulative note#1964257.

Utilities

Personas Flavor Updater

Flavors created without Screen and Control overwrite rules can now be updated after adding overwrite rules into the system using this utility program. This helps to avoid recreation of flavor if the flavor was created without appropriate overwrite rules. If the flavor was created or updated with overwrite rules already, then this program does not update flavor for overwrite rule changes.

PersonasFlavorUpdater program can be downloaded from here. Please note, this utility program is not part of SAP Screen Personas 2.0 product. Please read the disclaimer at the start of the program carefully.

How to use the program?

1. Add Screen and Control id overwrite rules in the system
2. Export Flavors along with screen and control id overwrite rules into Personas archive file using Export Flavors screen in admin UI. 
3. Extract PerosnasFlavorUpdater.rar on Windows machine and open PersonasFlavorUpdater.exe
4. Click on "Browse" button.and select the downloaded archive file.
5. Optionally, you can change the flavor name suffix for updated flavors. By default, it is set to "_updated".
6. Optionally, you can turn on logging by selecting "Enable Log" checkbox. Also for more details, you can select "Enable Debug Logging"
7. Click on Run toolbar button or select from menu Run -> Run Updater.
8. Save the new archive file to desktop.
9. Import new Personas archive file using Import Flavors screen in admin UI.