We at In Mind Cloud set a deep focus on research and development, which is why our software undergoes four product releases per year minimum. We are deeply committed to continuously improve our products and bring new and enhanced features to our customers.

With the new 1602 Release we are focusing on improvements in all major feature groups of the Configure-Price-Quote process: Configuration, Cost Calculation, Pricing and Proposal/Quote Generation.

The enhancements of this release are serving the specific requirements and industry use-cases of our customers in Manufacturing, Engineering and B2B Service industries.

We are proud to introduce the highlights of the 1602 Release to you in this article and have prepared four demo videos for illustration purpose.

1. Product Configuration

Our software is built to ease and automate the configuration process for sales representatives. With our new release, significant handling improvements have been made to enable an efficient product configuration process that saves time and ensures accuracy.

Introduction of Copy Feature*

With the new“Copy Quote” function all sales items in an old quote are copied to a new quote, which brings significant ease into the daily workflow of sales people. Closely related to this, the “Copy Sales Item” function allows for all sub line items to also be copied along with a parent line item within the same quote.

Sales Item Placement and Positioning

One crucial process step during the product/solution configuration is to position sales items either following a practical order (user choice) or pricing strategy (high to low priced). Furthermore, the new release allows the user to change the sales item parent or add a sub line item directly (in Cloud CPQ Express).

Sales Item and Product Images and Attachments

Sales reps often need to illustrate sales items or products with images or other attachments. With this release we introduce the feature to include attachments on sales item and product level. All images are displayed in the configuration page and are available in the proposal generation.

Video highlights:

The following video showcases these features in a demo scenario of a sales rep from an engineering company, who is configuring a titanium acceleration pedal for an underground loader. One of the main configuration challenges for sales people selling in the engineering or manufacturing industries are the large number of sales items and manufacturing processes they need to handle.

• copying of sales item whilst retaining its properties and sub line items
• renaming of sales items
• re-positioning of sales items
• attachment of multiple product images

2. Cost Calculation

Industries like manufacturing, precision engineering and high-tech often sell within tight margins, hence calculating costs accurately is one of the key business impacting factors. The accurate costing of products, components and services and the compliant optimization of margins towards profitability are mission critical tasks for sales people when creating a quote for a customer.

Introduction of Mass Update Feature*

We have made available a new view to first visualize the various parameters of the cost model in a fashion similar to an Excel sheet. In this view sales items are grouped by product type and all common attributes are shown. The sales rep can further update one or more items together making mass update possible.Video Highlights:The following video showcases these features in the engineering demo scenario as above. For sales reps in the engineering industry cost calculation is a time-consuming and error-prone process which is critical in regards to price determination and profitability calculations of a quote.

• Adding a manufacturing process to the Sales BOM via drag ´n drop
• Comprehensive configuration functionalities in the Costing View
• Mass update of attributes/costs for all OR for selected line items
• Mass changes in configuration

3. Pricing/Discounting

Our vision of making the sales process of our customers reasonable is incomplete without the product capability to increase their efficiency whilst guaranteeing accuracy, especially for tasks like pricing or respectively discounting. To facilitate this and also to support SAP Pricing, we have made available Document and Item Pricing (both coming from SAP ERP External Pricing and SAP SSC) in Cloud CPQ Express.

Quote Header Price Item View

With this release we enhanced the Pricing View with a Quote Level View and an Item Level View in order to provide a better overview for sales reps whilst pricing/discounting their quote. We now support to add price items for a Quote Header on a document level and also get this executed in SAP ERP via External Pricing approach.
Video Highlights:The following video showcases these features in a demo scenario of a sales rep from a B2B company, who is discounting a quote for servers, equipment and services. Applying discounts on quote and line item levels, he needs a clear overview of the final prices and discounts that he is offering to his customer.

• Discounting a quote on line-item level
• Applying quote discounts
• Reviewing discounts in the Pricing View
• in Quote Level View and Item Level View

4. Proposal/Quote Management and Generation

The 1602 Release also caters to the needs of sales people to generate proposals of different types, including different components and to export them in different formats.

Proposal Generation and Management

The new Proposal Generation feature supports custom additional report templates that can be used to generate cover pages, a cover letter, technical and commercial proposals. These templates can be merged and sequenced. Furthermore quote attachments, product description documents and any other PDF documents can be merged into a final proposal. With this release we are introducing a new view to manage the preferences and control over the mentioned functions and therewith provide a convenient workflow for the sales representative to select the templates and proposal parts he wants to download. The release also allows a custom selection of language in which the user wants to generate the proposal template.
Video Highlights:The following video showcases these features in a demo scenario of a sales rep from a B2B company, who is preparing a proposal for servers, equipment and services. Sales reps often work under unavoidable time constraints whilst creating proposals for their customers. Our software allows sales reps to edit, sequence and compile all required parts of a proposal and export it in a corporate design compliant way in a short time. The sales rep hereby can choose export formats such as PDF, Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel.

• Editing and reviewing of proposal details such as Quote Reference, Introduction Letter, Terms & Conditions in the Proposal Details
• Choosing from multiple proposal templates
• Merging and download of final proposal as PDF
• Download final proposal as editable Word document

These were the highlights of the 1602 Release, if you do have any questions referring our features, this particular update or our further capabilities, please drop us a comment or send us an email.

We at In Mind Cloud are proud to be contributing to our customer´s success via our reasonable software and are continuously working on further improvements for our customers.

*Feature not supported for SSC

About In Mind Cloud´s product Cloud CPQ Express:

Cloud CPQ Express is a generic enterprise level CPQ system built by In Mind Cloud for SAP Ecosystem. It has a ready set of features to run a company’s extended quotation management process in a very agile easy-to-use manner. It’s hosted on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform and allows customers to run their entire sales process on a single SAP platform from SAP CFC to SAP ERP. Find it in the SAP Store or on www.inmindcloud.com

Most of us know that, workcenter “ECC SEARCH” is available in C4C to perform a real time search on the sales orders in the backend SAP ERP System.

SAP did deliver a standard iFlow for PI which uses Outbound interface Chemical_SalesOrderSearch_Ext_Out and Operation mapping COD_ERP_ Chemical_SalesOrderSearch_Ext for “ECC SEARCH”. However there is no standard iFlow for ECC SEARCH, if you use HCI as the middleware.

If you use HCI as the middleware, then only option we have is to develop a simple custom iFlow, which does the same task as the standard one in SAP PI.

How do we achieve this? Attached document details the step by step guide in implementing a simple iFlow in HCI for the ECC SEARCH.

View PDF on Dropbox.

View PDF on OneDrive.

Performance problems: Some recommendations.

Performance in cloud depends on Client time, network time and server time as you can see in the below picture.

Thus it is very important to have all of these three contributors to performance running optimally for an acceptable End to End performance.

In this Blog, I would like to take you through the some of the points to look at to get optimal performance.

Client:

1.  Makes sure the client configuration as specified in the “System and Software Requirements”. You can access this from the service market place via following link:

http://help.sap.com/cloud4customer?current=on-demand

2. Make sure that all recommended browser settings are correctly maintained

3. Browser setting for spelling check to be disabled. You can go to settings-> Manage add 0n and disable   the spell check

4. Browser Auto complete form to be disabled. Go to Settings-> Options-> Contents->Autocomplete settings-> Forms (disable)

5. Frequent clearing of cache of the browser results in slow performance. So do let the users know to avoid clearing of cache frequently. Check and disable auto clearing of cache at exit etc.

Network:

1. Make sure you check the latency of the network. Latency check below 200 MS is acceptable. Anything over that is known to affect the performance.

Here is the link to the document that gives you instructions to measure latency.

https://desktopcloud.wdf.global.corp.sap

Server:

Some of the following activities is known to affect server performance and also end user performance so as a best practice to avoid performance problems:

1. Make sure not to run data loads and mass updates in business hours

2. Make sure to run territory re-alignment runs in non- business hours.

3. Avoid complex workflow rules as far as possible.  Eg. Having too many field updates and actions for every save. Complex condition groups etc.

4. Avoid sub-optimal design of reports. Eg. Reports without appropriate filters that work on large data sets. Complex aggregates , left outer joins, Using too many joins, etc

Here is the link to best practices document on reporting and Joins

http://scn.sap.com/community/cloud-for-customer/blog/2015/08/18/title-best-practices-for-sap-cloud-for-customer-cloud-data-source-creation-and-usage

Others:

1.     UI Mash up: Avoid too many UI mash ups. We recommend to not have mash up screen on the overview of Details screens to avoid loading times

2.     If Feeds are not used, remove them from the overview of the details screens.

3.     My filter tile on home page is known to cause performance. We recommend to remove it from the home screen.

4.     Avoid UI customization using KUT tools during the business hours. KUT tools does invalidate the cache and thus will impact the performance of end users.

5.     Optimize the PDI developments that might impact performance. Please do refer the best practice link:

https://scn.sap.com/community/business-bydesign/studio/blog/2015/08/27/sap-cloud-application-studio-performance-best-practices

6.     Check for too many and too frequent synchronous calls to external systems. Try to optimize it by bundling the calls.

Tools:

1. You can use the HTTP watch to measure request/response times.

2. Latency check tools provided in the link can be used to check latency

https://desktopcloud.wdf.global.corp.sap

3. Further the administrator can use In tenant performance monitoring report using “ (Beta) End to end response time “ report.

In addition to network, server time, you can see the following

a.     PDI processing time

b.     Workflow execution time

c.     Web services processing time

This will help you to analyze where the most time spent and find areas to optimize

To get more help from SAP

Further to these, if you continue to have concerns with performance, It is recommended to create a incident and send it to SAP including the following information

1.     Describe the scenario step by step, highlight the steps you have bad performance. The description should be such that the support should be able reproduce it.

2.     Include the latency test results in the ticket at the time when the measurements were made

3.     Include any HTTPwatch trace you might have taken.

4.     Please specify if whether the problem is reproducible consistently or intermittent.

5.     Please specify the pattern of the occurrence of the problem. Eg. Particular time of the day when the performance is bad etc

6.     Also, please specify any other information that you think could be useful.

Hi,

Lately, with first day of 1605 release, I played a bit with new functionality of Dynamic Target Groups.

unfortunately looks like it was disabled now - checkbox and tab for that in Target Group work center is not available anymore.

I have found such information also - Dynamic target group : View Idea.

So it looks like it was moved to 1608 release.

But in

What's New in SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer

this is still highlighted as part of May release.

Anyway, I managed to check this before. And looks promising, although some additions would be helpful.

So everything starts with creating target group, where on popup you have special checkbox to be set for target group being dynamic (it means if on TG automatic refresh process, data base would be checked again with criteria we set here, and new members added). And it controls type of Target Group. After setting it in Target Group view we have new tab "Member determination". Here we can choose criteria for members - among Accounts, Contact Persons, Individual Customers.

After that, similar as in jobs, we set to start gathering members immediately or in some time. We have also the recurrence option there - starting from 1 day frequency as minimum. So with this option TG will be refreshed then.

What is missing here for me are some more criteria especially for Contacts - like these related to Account that Contact is connected. E.g. address ones.

So if we can choose Contacts setting criteria for Accounts, or best for Accounts and Contacts. E.g. choose Contacts of function Manager from Purchase dept. of Companies from Construction industry, from Poland.

Hopefully in 1608 release it would be extended. Let's see.

BR
Radek

In many C4C implementation projects the groupware integration to synchronize appointments, tasks and contacts with MS Outlook or Lotus Notes is a big topic. The integration can be done either on the client-side via a plugin or on the server-side.

This blog post is intended to answer the question if both variants can be used in parallel. The simple answer is 'No'. The parallel usage of client and server-side integration is not supported.

There is no support of the parallel usage due to unpredictable round-trips which could lead to duplicate creation of appointments, tasks or contacts.

Support in a bi-directional integration scenario C4C <-> SAP CRM on-Premise

The parallel usage is also not supported if there is a bi-directional integration scenario between C4C and SAP CRM On-Premise in place, where the client-side integration is done via C4C and the serverside integration is done on the SAP CRM On-Premise side. Here is the same risk of unpredictable round-trips which could lead to duplicate creation of appointments, tasks or contacts.

You might think of reducing the risk by separating the users, e.g. the backoffice employees work with SAP CRM (server-side integration) and the field employees work with C4C (client-side integration), but this doesn't solve the issue. If a backoffice employee invites a field employee and sends an appointment, both groupware integration mechanisms are involved and could again lead to duplicates.

Hello there!

Many C4C implementations have some custom integration and use standard C4C webservices is essential.

Considering it, I wrote a document to explain its basic usage. Along with reports and OData, it's another usefull way to query and manipulate C4C information.

Getting started with C4C web services.

Best regards,

Alexandre.

With 1605 (May 2016) release, Cloud for Customer has come up with a new functionality which allows defaulting of combined sales area in a sales transaction. The combined sales area represent combination of Sales Organization, Distribution Channel and Division. Sales transactions include Sales Order, Sales Quote, Opportunity and Lead.

This functionality can be scoped in after selecting the respective scoping question available in Sales Order, Leads, Opportunity, Sales Quote and Activities sections. Below screenshot shows the scoping question as available under Sales Order section.

Once this option is coped in your implementation project, the defaulting of the combined sales area in a sales transaction would happen as per the below sequence:

Combined Sales Area Determination Sequence

1. Intersection of Account Sales Data and Employee Sales Data
   1. Compare match of Sales Organization + Distribution Channel + Division
   2. Compare match of Sales Organization + Distribution Channel
   3. Compare match of Sales Organization
2. Employee Sales Data
3. Intersaction of Account Sales Data and Sales Organization of Employee Assignment
4. Account Sales Data
5. Sales Organization of Employee Assignment

The determination logic will stop at the sequence step in case it finds relevant data. In case it finds more than one entry at a sequence step, the system would pick one from the list.

When this new scoping is in place, the value help on Sales Organization in a sales transaction create screen shows restricted values as per the above sequence. A sample screenshot shows the options available in this value help:

The user has options to filter the data shown in this value help. There is a possibility for the system administrator to adapt these queries. In case, the access to Acocunt's sales data be restricted then the system admin can remove this query from this value help.

Apart from this combined sales area determination, we also need to take a look at the sales unit determination. Combined sales area determination does not default the sales unit of a sales transaction. To default the sales unit on a sales transaction, we need to use Sales Unit determination as available in the maintain Involved Party configuration of that sales transaction. The involved party determination is a part of Cloud for Customer from past many releases.

The various possible steps for the sales unit determination are shown below:

The sales unit determination steps are:

1. Step 1 - Responsibility "Sales Unit of Sales"
2. Step 5 - Account's Sales Data
3. Step 20 - Functional Organization Unit of Employee Responsible
4. Step 30 - Organizational Unit from Org Model if only one suitable Functional Unit exists

In case you want to use the new combined sales area determination then only the Step 20 of the above list is relevant and recommended.

I have illustrated the combined sales area and sales unit determination in a below example.

Hi Experts,

After recent release of C4C Sales order was introduced in Cloud and also migrate to SAP R3 but it is not clear with integration to CRM (C4C to CRM) also not finding standard iflows in Hana cloud, But we can replicate Sales Quotation from C4C to SAP CRM so we are planning to use same sales quotation Iflow to replicate Sales order from C4C to SAP CRM

Any one done it Sales order migration from C4C to CRM?  And also any comment above?

Regards

Rachappa

First things first. When I say SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer, I mean C4C - we have rebranded, and this is how we are going to refer to C4C now.

SAP Education recently released two new courses to the SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer curriculum. This is in addition to the 3 courses that was launched in 2014. We also revamped the former C4C10 course  - it's shorter by a day (4>3) and includes  new chapters on Account and Contact Management, Product and Price Lists, a separate chapter on Territory Management, and so on.

Get all the details at  https://training.sap.com

Here's a high level overview of all the courses:

• C4C12: SAP Hybris Cloud for Sales
  • Goals:  Equip project team members to configure and implement SAP Hybris Cloud for Sales
  • Duration: 2 Days
  • Audience:  Project managers, system administrator, key users

• C4C14: SAP Hybris Cloud for Service
  • Goals:  Equip project team members to configure and implement SAP Hybris Cloud for Service
  • Duration: 2 Days
  • Audience:  Project managers, application consultants, key users, system administrators

• C4C10: SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer Project Implementation
  • Goals:  Equip project team members to configure and implement SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer
  • Duration: 3 Days
  • Audience:  Project managers, application consultants, key users, system administrators

• C4C30: SAP Cloud Applications Studio
  • Goals:  Empower development teams on SDK for C4C application extensions
  • Duration: 4 Days
  • Audience: Technical consultants, developers

• C4C50: SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer – Integration with On-premise SAP Solutions
  • Goals: Enable technical consultants to configure and implement C4C integration scenarios with SAP ERP and SAP CRM on-premise applications
  • Duration: 4 Days
  • Audience: Integration developers,  BASIS administrators, application and technical consultants

These course are intended for consultants, customers, anyone interested in learning more about SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer including hands-on details.   These classes are scheduled globally. They can also be taught onsite specifically for your company.   Please post your questions below or email  Geoffrey.Fu@sap.com  if you have any questions or need help finding a class.

Once you have taken the classes and are ready to get certified check out this blog:  C4C Certification

Dear Community,

we'd like to draw your attention to a SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer Webinar on Performance.

Date & Time: May 31st at 4pm CET | 9am CST (duration 1.5 hr)

Performance is one of the most important aspects of any Software as a Service (SaaS) application like SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer. However, sometimes factors like complex customizations in implementations and suboptimal client or network conditions can lead to a deterioration in end to end performance.

In this 1.5hr webinar, our Performance Engineering team will share the top performance pitfalls and best practices on how to avoid them. We will discuss keys areas, including:

• Customizations & Personalizations
• Client & Browser Configuration
• Business Configuration & Settings
• Network Requirements
• Performance diagnostics and reporting
• How to get help on performance issues

Recommended audience: This content is crucial for a broad audience, including SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer key users, business analysts, SAP Cloud Application (SDK) Developers, and administrators.

Register

Dear Community,

we'd like to draw your attention to a SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer Webinar on Integration Scenarios & Best Practices held by Sven Feurer, Director SAP Hybris Sales Solution Management, SAP SE

Date & Time: June 21st - at4pm CET | 9am CST (duration 1.5 hours)

Content:

In this webinar you get an overview on the latest integration scenarios of SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer. On the one hand side we will explain and demo the “front-office” integration scenarios with Hybris Commerce and Hybris Marketing. On the other hand you’ll see the “back-office” integration with SAP ERP, S/4HANA and SAP CRM in action. In addition we will inform you about implementation best practices to setup those hybrid system architecture most efficiently.

This blog shows a simple example how report navigation works and the configuration.

1. Short description of use case

2. Example

3. Configuration for this example

1. Short description of use case

In this example we have 2 reports.

1 report with 1 view

1 report with 2 views

We navigate from one report to the other and pass the parameter ‘sales unit’

Then we navigate within the second report to another view and pass the parameter ‘month’

2. Example

In this report we see the opportunity pipeline summed up on Sales unit level. From here you can drill down to the next level ‘by month’ for a selected sales unit

The parameter ‚sales unit‘ is passed based on your selection bevore and the result shows the details for this sales unit by month

The next level are the single opportunities for a certain month within this sales unit

Again the parameters are passed and you see the results – in this example the drill down shows all previous selections in the result list as columns…

But you can also hide these columns- which will lead to a better performance if you have large size reports with many columns & lines in the result list

3. Configuration for this example

Create two reports – 2^nd  report has 2 views defined

Mark the report you want to navigate to and define a new report navigation- here we want to navigate from the 1^st to the second report in the list.

Choose the view you want to navigate to and maintain a meaningfull description.

Choose the source report – system will also inform you about mandatory fields you have to consider in the next steps.

Do the field mapping. I want the parameters to be passed into the selection fields of the target report- so I maintain the mapping in the 2^nd section ‘variables’

In this example the sales unit is a characteristic & variable so I can fill either column 1 or 2- the currency fields are only variables so I have to maintain them in column 2. Since they are mandatory I have to maintain them. In this case I pass the actual variables – in the next case below I derive the default of the report.

Once the data is saved you will see your navigation target for the source report

next step in our example- configure navigation from one view to another of the same report.

Again mark the report that has the views defined you want to navigate to and create a new navigation target.

choose the view you want to navigate to and maintain a meaningful description

Choose same report as source report

Do the mapping.- in this case I want to take over the sales unit & the Month from my previous selections. The currency fields will be derived from the report configuration default itself

As a result you see the assigned navigation target for your report

Report Navigation in C4C

This blog explains the main technical details you need to know in order to use the feature ‘report navigation’. Report navigation allows you to navigate from one view to another within the same report and passing parameters from the first view – or navigate from one report to another by passing parameters from the first report.

By using this feature

- You can define drill down reports

- Keep reports simple by showing only relevant date based on your selection

- reduce performance if you only show the ‘relevant ‘ fields in the result list based on your previous selections

Good to Know:

Report navigation does only work (or can be tested by you as the administrator) if a report is assigned either to a workcenter you have access rights or to a role you are assigned to (if role based access restrictions for reports are switched on in fine-tuning)

Examples for report navigations are:

Use case 1

You have created one report with multiple views A,B,C .

You want to navigate from view A to view B.

In view B you only want to see data related to the selection you have already done in view A.

From B you want to navigate to C and again you want to consider your previous selections.

Use case 2

You have created 3 reports X,Y,Z.

You want to navigate from report X to report Y.

In In report Y you only want to see data related to the selection you have already done in report X.

From Y you want to navigate to Z and again you want to consider your previous selections.

Please check the following blog for an example on how to set up the navigation in detail.

Report Navigation in C4C - Example

How to configure the navigation

1.  Prerequisite 1 : You have to define your reports / views

2.  Prerequisite 2 : Assign reports

3.  Create navigation target

Mark the report you want to navigate to from another report and choose ‘report navigation’

If you want to navigate from one view to another view of the same report- choose the report with these views.

Choose the view you want to navigate to via this configuration and name the Navigation accordingly

4. Define source report

Add the source report from which you start your navigation

5.    Define which parameters have to be passed to the report/view you want to navigate

As a result all fields which are defined as characteristics in your report are listed in section 1 ‘characteristics’

All fields which are defined as variables are listed in section 2 ‘variables’

Difference between section 1 and 2 is

If you only want to consider the selection of values when you navigate to the target report without also passing the selection parameter- do the mapping in section 1

If you also want to pass the selection parameters- do the mapping in section 2.

Difference between columns ‘source report characteristics’ & source report variables’

If a field is defined in the report definition only as variable -> do the mapping in source report variables

If a field is only defined as characteristic in the report definition -> do the mapping in source report characteristics

If a field is defined as characteristics & variable in the report definition -> does not matter which one you map

If a variable has a default in the report definition you can set the default flag and no mapping required

This blog is intended to describe the functionality and the use-case for the consistency check in C4C transactions.

For example lead & opportunity are error tolerant objects i.e. in most cases if inconsistent data is maintained even though an error message is thrown , we allow the user to continue to save the data . However in such cases , we set the consistency status to ‘inconsistent’ . This will prevent follow-up object creation e.g. lead cannot be converted  to an opportunity or a follow-on quote cannot be created for an opportunity.

The consistency check is internally run in the BO when any changes are made and saved.  It just re-runs all the important validations of the object to determine consistency status.

User needs to trigger it manually ONLY in some cases (see below).

In the past we had seen following issue within implementation projects:

Imagine there were mandatory checks maintained in party fine-tuning due to which the objects get inconsistent, if this mandatory data isn't maintained. Now the fine-tuning is changed to remove the checks/the mandatory settings. But the already existing inconsistent objects remain inconsistent, thereby preventing follow-ups. This inconsistent status can be removed only by making any change and saving the object. Since this was not obvious to the user , we exposed the ‘check consistency’ action .

This action can be used in following cases  :

1. User should use this in conjunction with the consistency status in the header (field can be added via KUT). In case an object is inconsistent , this action can be triggered at any time to re-check the instance and display relevant error message
2. If user tries a follow-up and gets a message ‘Source document is inconsistent’ , this action can be triggered to check the issues.

If action is triggered and re-check is successful, the consistency status will be updated.

This blog should inform about the 2 general possibilities you have within C4C to restrict access to analytical reports.

The fact that you can define access contexts within the report definition itself is not subject of this blog.

The default setting for report access is:

Reports are assigned to workcenters when they are configured. If you have access rights for this workcenter, you can open the report. In the first example below- the opportunity report is assigned to the workcenter opportunity and therefore a user who has authorization for the workcenter view ‘opportunity’ can see the report in his list of reports (please keep in mind: the list shows always the variants defined for a report, not the report name itself!)

With this default setting you can not hide certain opportunity reports for users who have the workcenter view ‚opportunities‘ assigned.

To achieve this you have to switch on the role based access for reporting.

This is done in a finetuning option- not scoping!!

As a result of this configuration you can assign roles to reports in the ‚assign‘ transaction ( see screenshot in first example)

This allows you to define reports for certain user roles and not all users see all reports which are linked to a workcenter view to which they have access rights .

Overview:

High rendering times on the browser can be caused by a slow disk system. This is due to the fact that like any SaaS application, SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer (C4C) relies on browser cache to store static content (not business data). The static content includes JavaScript, CSS, images. When the disk system is slow, the browser takes a long time to read from the disk and render it on the screen. Slow disk systems can be caused, ranging from temporary background programs running like anti-virus scans to problems with virtual machine setup. 

In this blog, we will use HTTPWatch to troubleshoot the same.

Details:

High Rendering Time in the browser

In the following example, we notice that the blue bars which indicate the time to read data from the cache, is taking a long time. Typically, this should be in the low 10’s or 100’s milliseconds. However, in the example below we see that its taking more than 0.5 secs and in the last step it took 4.1 sec. This usually happens due to lack of resources (CPU or IO/disk access). Antivirus or browser plugins can typically cause this behavior.

High Blocked Time in the browser

In the following example, we see high blocked time, which happens if the I/O is blocked. This usually happens in a virtualized environment especially if the host system is stressed. In the example below, the overall end-to-end time was 6.5s, where 2.5s is overhead from blocked time.

OverView:

SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer allows key users and developers to add custom UI fields to meet customer specific business requirements. In many cases, these additional custom fields are in the form of embedded components. As of 1605 release these embedded components have their own floorpan metadata.  Even though this static floorplan metadata is cached on the browser for 14 days (or reset by HFC), for the business data itself, it is retrieved via POST requests. At least one additional roundtrip for each embedded component is required over the network from the cloud application servers. These requests are synchronous in nature and therefore adds to the end to end response time of that particular screen. If a particular facet/tab has multiple such embedded components then a heavy price is paid due to the additional roundtrips. 

In the example below and with the help of a free plugin from HTTPWatch, we will show, how by adding Feeds pane in the overview facet, the screen renders slower. For this, we will use the Key User Tool to implement the same. This is true in the case of PDI development as well.

In the non-customized Accounts overview facet screen below, we can see that there is only one network trip required (highlighted in green).

Example: HTTPWatch waterfall showing one roundtrip for a warm browser request to retrieve Accounts Overview

The first request in the screenshot above is a cached GET request for the floorplan which is stored locally in the browser's disk cache, the second is the actual POST request to retrieve the business data and the third is an asynchronous post request with performance measurements. The last POST request does not affect the end to end response time.

Now lets add a Feeds pane using the KUT by going into the adaptation mode.

               Example: Adding Feeds in the overview via adaption    

After adding the pane, we can now see three (3) additional roundtrips (image below) now required to render the overview screen facet. Therefore, in terms of user response, these additional roundtrips can cause sluggish behavior as its affects users end to end response times. This is also true for PDI development as well, where an Embedded Component is added to the screen and this additional roundtrip can cause slowness as well.

Example: HTTPWatch waterfall showing additional roundtrips after adding an embedded component.

Therefore when adding custom fields either via KUT or PDI, please check using HTTPWatch how much impact these additional embedded components are taking. If the total end to end times are high, consider moving these custom fields to other facets or tabs. This is true especially when the facet is the landing page facet. In this case navigating to this facet will take a long time and users will be dissatisfied with the performance

When SAP Digital CRM was initially launched exactly one year ago at SAPPHIRE NOW 2015, consumers from 32 countries were able to purchase the solution on SAPStore.com using just their credit card.

Within just one year, SAP Digital CRM achieved:

• 5000+ Orders (paid and no cost)
• Named winner of 2015 CUSTOMER Magazine TMC Labs Innovation Award and 2016 CUSTOMER Magazine Product of the Year Award
• Added email marketing campaign functionality for the same low price
• Reduced price from $23 euro to $21 euro

But this isn’t enough. We wanted to make SAP Digital CRM even more accessible. As of today, SAP Digital is pleased to announce that Digital CRM is now available online globally in approximately 190 countries on the SAP Store, along with the SAP Crystal solutions.

The SAP Digital team’s mission is to have all major offerings on the store available worldwide by year end. So stay tuned because this is just the beginning for SAP Digital!

To learn more or register for a free trial of SAP Digital CRM, visit www.sapstore.com/crm.

As part of our monthly blog series, this month we will take you through different Analytics features available in C4C.

In today's blog we will take you through high-level overview of C4C Embedded Analytics.

C4C Embedded Analytics is part of the solution. It sits on the same platform and is deeply integrated within the product. C4C delivers 150+ out of the box best practice reports. No activation required, these reports are ready to use on deployment.

Some of the key features of C4C Analytics are as below:

• Real-time analytics
• In-place drill down
• Home page based reporting
• Navigation to Business Object directly from reports
• Quick view of transactions
• Built-in Excel Add-in
• Interactive dashboards
• Single set-up for both mobile as well as web
• Exception based reporting on homepage
• Configurable alert and warning based reporting
• End user flexibility
• Fiscal year based reporting

Reports

Data can be visualized as Reports where end user can create his/her own ad-hoc reports. Users can easily slice and dice data and save their own views without contacting IT/admin team.

C4C provides wide range of charts to select from. Hierarchical based reporting allows you to drill down from parent to subsidies thus analyzing the amount of revenue at each level. Hierarchical report can help you get a bird's eye view of total aggregated revenue from your large customer base and helps you drill down further.

Users can quickly navigate to transactions from reports. This features provides users flexibility to edit transactional data while working on report.

C4C reports can be broadcasted to top level managers or sales rep can directly annotate and send email to their colleagues with report as an attachment.

Users can configure exceptions and conditions on report so as to highlight key information that they are interested in. All these features are available to the end user directly. They need not wait for an admin to configure these.

Built-inExcel add-inis very popular amongst excel friendly operations users. This allows them to utilize all excel based features while they are still connected to C4C and have access to latest data.

Interactive Dashboards

Interactive dashboard enables users to perform advance analysis. One can view all the related data together. Interactive dashboard allows users to pass filters from one report to the other thus enabling them to drill down and analyze the data.

In-place drill down can be used to add or remove additional characteristics and measures to slice and dice data for further analysis.

Quick-view of transactions helps users to glance at the transactions while still working on dashboard. For further insights user can directly jump onto transactions directly from dashboard.

Home Page based reporting

Keep track of your business! Configure reports and KPI on your home page.

You can add key reports to your homepage. Reports can be converted to tile pattern to help you track your numbers or else you can build KPI tiles that also allows you to drill down for further analysis.

KPI helps you track your performance with respect to target and reference points. Drill down to reports and dashboards for further insight. Multiple reports can be provided for drill down.

Configure alter and warning points to see where you stand. KPI overview provides you detailed analysis of your performance.

I will write in detail about each of these functionality in my upcoming blogs.

SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer Offers four simple ways to create target groups in the system .

Use Case 1 : Create target groups from data set: Assuming that the your marketing department has launched a new product and has asked each sales reps/account owner to add their respective accounts who would be interested to attend the new product launch event .

Marketing administrator can create an empty target group and share the Target group ID with all the sales rep/account owners .

Each rep can add their respective account / contact/customers to the TG without accessing the TG directly ( as this will result in locking issues ) from the account/contact /customer data set itself using action 'Add Members to Target Group' . Additionally we also offer another action called 'Create Target Group' to create unique target groups from the data sets.

Use Case 2 : Create Target groups from external source : You can also import target group-members assignment from external source using excel addin/web service .The marketing department can do the segmentation outside C4C and can bring in the members in C4C using pre-delivered A2X service or through excel add-in.

The user can download the template and add member in the template .

Use Case 3: Create target group from target group WoC : You can add Members directly within a target group .you can search for Customer/contacts/accounts based on different search parameters and also extension fields . It also possible to search for contacts/customer/accounts based on marketing attributes and add them to the target group. You can also mass delete members within a target group using action 'Remove from Target Group'

Use Case 4 : Create Target group from analytical reports:- Many marketing administrators would like to slice and dice the account/contact/customer data before creating a target group . C4C offer out of the box analytical reports which enables the marketing administrator to use our strong analytical framework to filter member list and add them directly to a TG in one single click . Yes in just one click.

We offer the following out of the box standard reports from which account /contacts can be exported to a new TG.

1) Accounts contact Data :- Marketing administrator can slice and dice account contact data and create TG from the report.

2) Accounts with Open activities :- Marketing administrator can check for open activities / opportunities and create TG

3) Campaign Response Details :- This report lists all the responses provided by the members of a previous campaigns. The Contact and Account data can be segmented based on different criteria. The contacts can then be exported into a new target group.

A example could be that you would like to add all contacts who are VIP contacts (COO) and who responded positively to a previous campaign ( first stage Email campaign) in another target group so that you can execute a more focused (second stage phone call) campaign for these contacts .

Use Case 5 : Dynamic Target Groups :

Marketing administrator can now define dynamic target groups in cloud for customer , you can define conditions within the target group based on which the system will determine the members and add them automatically to the TG.

A simple example ,you would like to add all 'A' classified members in US to be assigned to the TG .

You can define conditions based on extension fields also (required special configuration to be shared in another blog post).

Under the schedule section,you can also define if you would like the determination to be executed once or periodically (daily/weekly/monthly/yearly).

You can then activate the determination using action 'Activate'.