Create SAP screen personas basic example in 6 simple steps

You may have already heard of SAP Screen personas but what is it exactly and how does it fit in with the new Fiori UX future of SAP. Basically, Personas allows you to personalise your standard SAP ERP GUI transactions so that they can share a similar User Experience to your newer Fiori or other Web based applications. Originally this meant that you could change/enhance the look and feel of your SAP standard dialog/dynpro transaction screens but screen personas now allows you to do the same to web dynpro screens without having to rewrite them from scratch.

But it�s not just the look and feel, the main benefit of this technology is that it allows you to give the complex SAP transactions a more user centric role based approach. I.e. you can create a different flavor (the name given to each version of the SAP transaction altered by SAP personas) for each type of user/role. This means that you can hide or pre-fill certain fields based on the current user's needs. But not only that you can bring fields to the forefront that would usually be hidden within a tab strip or sub screen.

...take for example IW32 the main screen has several tabs and sub screens with input fields in each tab. The user may only be interested in 4 or 5 fields spread out across all these elements. Using Personas, you could show just the fields from each tab that the user needs to access and hide everything else. But as far as the transaction is concerned nothing has changed and all functionality will continue as normal ensuring consistency within your system.

How to access the SAP Screen Personas development tools

Anyway, enough about the theory lets get started and show you how easy this is to do. The first thing you need to know is that this is all based on the SAP GUI for HTML and not the windows based version of the GUI you probably use as standard. If you don�t know how to access this then give your basis team a shout or see here for how to access your SAP Web GUI



How to create your first screen personas flavor

Once you have access to the SAP HTML Web GUI and Personas is active on your system creating a screen personas flavor is very simple to do.

Step 1 - Access the personas flavor toolbar

Hover over the "..." in the centre of the blue bar at the top of the screen.


This should reveal a "P" icon.


Click on the "P" icon to display the personas tool bar where you can select, edit and create a persona flavor.


Step 2 - Create a new Personas flavor

As mentioned before flavor is the name used to describe a new version of a SAP transaction that has been modified via screen Personas. You can create many of these for different users or roles. Now click the + icon in the top right to create a new flavor


Give the flavor a name i.e. MY_IW31


You will now see the SAP transaction screen with the default fields and screen elements


Step 3 - Change transaction screen colour using SAP Personas flavor

This is only a very basic "Hello World" type example to show you the end to end process of implementing a SAP Personas development. In this example, I am going to change the colour and add a simple text label.

To change the colour, select the object you want to change and use the fill color option from the development toolbar


Select the colour you want to use.


Step 4 - Add text label to transaction screen using SAP Personas flavor

Now we are going to add a simple text label saying "hello World". Select the label option from the development tool bar


Enter label text i.e. "Hello World"


Now position the label in the desired place by simply dragging it with the mouse


Step 5 - Save your new Personas flavor and set it as default

Simply select the save icon to save your new personas flavor, followed by the exit icon (X)


Click the tick symbol at the top right of the flavor box to make your flavor the default


Once your flavor is set as the default, exit the personas development tool bar


Step 6 - Test your new transaction which has modified using personas

To test your transaction simply execute it as you normally would


The Transaction should now execute and include all the changes you have just implemented via your flavor

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Accessing to SAP Web GUI to Create your first SAP screen personas development
Accessing to SAP Web GUI to Create your first SAP screen personas development
Create SAP screen personas basic example in 6 simple steps
Create SAP screen personas basic example in 6 simple steps
Create SAP screen personas basic example in 6 simple steps
Create SAP screen personas basic example in 6 simple steps