Milestone 2: The New Lingo

SAP CRM 2007 comes with a new set of objects and concepts. Well "NEW" is a misnomer,those who are familiar with PCUI and e-commerce may find many common elements and functionalities.For those who are not ,you should familiarize yourself with a few key objects that I’ll explain in this section. Once you understand these, it makes screen configuration a simpler task. For those more technically inclined, it also sets a good foundation to commence development of new applications within the SAP CRM 2007 UI.

What is a “skin”? A skin defines the overall look and feel of the UI. Using Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) files stored on the Web Application Server, you can set the screen colors, fonts, and company logos to customize the UI. A set of skins with amusing names such as New Hope and Serenity are available as well. You can set your own UI skin by clicking on the Personalization option shown in Figure 1. This allows you to select your skin and change the font size and keyboard shortcuts.

What is a “view”? A view represents a set of logically grouped data. A view may contain a set of individual fields (a form view) or it may hold a table of data (a table view). The view contains all the logic for launching the data fields to the screen. The logic is actually built in HTMLB, which is an extension of HTML. Fortunately, the new BSP Component Workbench provided with SAP CRM 2007 means you shouldn’t need to view this code unless you want to be really clever. (I explain how to use this tool in the “Day 3: Getting Started with the UI Configuration” section.)

Views in the business partner maintenance include areas such as:

• Bank details
• Standard address
• Relationships
• Sales area data
• Roles

What is a view set? A view set is a collection of two or more views. When you choose to edit a view set, such as when you create a new individual account, you can open several views in one screen for editing. The view for editing the individual account address, the notes view, and the roles view are all opened for editing as a part of the view set .

What is a component? In non-technical terms, a component consists of a collection of views for development and configuration purposes. In more technical terms, it is an ABAP Object-Oriented (OO) class. When you need to configure a particular view, you must specify the view name and the component in which it was built. There are many aspects to a component — however, when you are getting started, the only area of the component you need to be concerned with is the view.