Mark Huffman, Workflow Management Solutions
Damien O’Neill, Neural Solutions
Executive Summary
The LSX environment provides easy access to SAP R/3 via remote function calls and standard transactions. This functionality will appeal to many SAP sites that already have a substantial investment in a Notes infrastructure. There will be intense internal debates about the relative merits and development effort for new "front-end" applications. There will also be ample opportunities for development teams to combine the strengths of the ABAP/4 Workbench with those of Lotus Script. Paradoxically, sites that have yet to go live with SAP may well have the most to gain in terms of user acceptance, if they can provide access to the new SAP system from an already familiar Notes environment.
Introduction
We recently had the pleasure of attending the roadshow seminars held by Lotus Australia, where Peter Lindlau of Chorus GmbH (Germany) demonstrated the newly released LSX development environment . Damien attended the Sydney seminar and Mark caught up with the show in Melbourne. We later discussed our impressions of what this technology is about and how it can be applied in our customer situations.
An underlying assumption of the following comments is that a given customer site already has a Notes infrastructure, with substantial user acceptance of Notes. This site either has implemented SAP already or has not yet gone live, but in either case, management has also made a commitment to the SAP product as an enterprise solution. The issues then become:
The LSX Development Environment
The Lotus Script Extension (LSX) for SAP R/3 enables applications created in Lotus Notes to easily access the R/3 database. LSX provides new object classes for the script environment which principally allow SAP remote function calls and transactions to be called from Notes. In this environment, much of the development effort for an application is moved away from ABAP/4 and into Lotus Script.
Although many different scenarios are feasible, the course concentrated on applications where SAP served only as the data repository. All screen handling, sorting and data entry functionality was provided by Notes. As an addition to the course, Peter also showed convincing demonstrations of a Lotus forms-based workflow which processed the familiar SAP purchase requisition and a browser front-end that allowed customers to enter their own sales orders into SAP.
Drivers for Integrated Applications
Depending on the experience level of SAP and Lotus resources available to a project manager, there are potentially many drivers for the use of LSX, however the following stand out for us as the most important ones:
1) Many SAP customers also have a substantial, ongoing investment in Lotus Notes, where Notes is used by all (or nearly all) departments. These sites want to experience synergy between the two products and gain return from their respective investments.
2) Typically, the users on a large SAP site can be divided up into several classes, categorised by a decreasing need for SAP expertise. Given this scenario, there can be customer resistance to offering the SAP GUI to all users. This will usually manifest itself in the desire for a more basic front end environment, especially for those users who will only process a minimal number of different SAP transactions.
3) There may be cost savings and/or cycle time reduction in moving some development effort away from the ABAP/4 environment and into the Lotus script environment.
The current lack of integration between the two products is often experienced first-hand by many SAP consultants who are implementing SAP while also using the organisations’ Notes environment for email. Rarely are the two products used together in a direct, meaningful way, although from the overall information technology viewpoint of the organisation the products often share many common goals.
Application Categories for early Experimentation
Later in the article, we will discuss the different considerations for SAP sites that have not yet gone live vs. mature SAP sites. At this point, we want to list our impressions of the general application categories that will be of most interest. The major categories for early SAP-Notes integration experimentation appear to be:
1) Notes front-ends for data entry and display, especially for users in the field who can replicate when they dial into Notes.
2) Notes as the main menu for certain groups of SAP users, so that all authorised SAP transactions are called via a Notes form.
3) Notes as an additional and/or alternative display point for SAP Workflow.
Pre-SAP Go Live
Perhaps the most immediate decisions will apply to sites that are still in the throes of implementing SAP and have yet to go live, but already have a significant user acceptance of Notes. It now appears very realistic to offer at least some users a simplified front-end via Notes and avoid the rollout of SAP GUI, with the subsequent training on-costs, to these user groups. There could well be an intense debate between the implementation consultants and the clients’ project manager about the relative merits of the two different front-ends, especially if the LSX environment is introduced into the project plan of a fixed price contract, where only SAP-oriented resources have been planned!.
Of course, this debate has been around for some time, originally in the form of access to SAP via a Web browser. The familiarity of Notes to users in the organisation and its’ often key position as a central access point for all users appears to us to add a new dimension to this debate.
Post-SAP Go Live
These sites have typically already made the substantial training and infrastructure investments required to rollout SAP GUI to their numerous users. They will have SAP "power users" as well as users that do not login frequently to the system. The focus for these sites is likely to be:
Appendix A: Comments on the LSX course
Mark’s view:
The LSX course, provided by Lotus Australia, attracted a mix of SAP and Lotus developers. Few, if any, had substantial skills in both environments, so that Peter Lindlau tried to pair off Lotus and SAP people into two-person teams. Even so, the course plunged deeply into the Lotus Script environment, that left the SAP practitioners (not just myself) struggling to keep up with the frantic pace of the exercises. I found myself wishing for the familiarity of the ABAP/4 workbench, but must say that the basic concepts of Lotus Script came together for me during the course, which probably says a lot for the simplicity of Lotus Script. If any SAP developers have the opportunity to do the course, I highly recommend some Lotus Script practice first.
The course continued at a furious pace for the whole two days, as Peter reaffirmed his GURU status with every new topic. Peter seemed to subscribe to the "give them more than they can possibly handle and they won’t complain" style of teaching, but that may have had a lot to do with his compressed time frame and busy schedule while in Australia.
I would like to experiment more with the software as the course really provided an outlook on the vast range of possibilities available. Peter’s workflow solutions, where Notes was integrated with SAP workflow on different levels, depending on the demo, especially caught my interest.
Damiens’s view:
Just a few things to add that as a Lotusscript aware person, I found the course well paced. Neural Solutions has developed a Help product for SAP and Notes that keeps users in their context !!!
About the Authors
Damien is a veteran Notes
implementer and Lotus Business Partner since 1994. He has led several large
rollouts of Notes for major clients and has developed new user help products.
A regular exhibitor at LotusSphere, Damien will try to catch up with Peter
Lindlau in Berlin ’98. Please contact him at the following email address:
doneill@neuralsolutions.com
Mark Huffman has 3+ years of configuration and analysis experience in SAP R/3 as an independent consultant, including a number of assignments as an FI/CO team leader for Big Six consulting firms. He has published two articles and has taught courses for Sap Australia as additional dimensions to his consulting activities. Recently, he has focused on specific technical areas of SAP, including Workflow configuration and ABAP programming. You can reach Mark at: mhuffman@ozemail.com.au)