Introduction
CRM application data is displayed in views. The views can be grouped into view sets. Views and view sets are displayed in windows. SAP delivers configurable and non-configurable views. A view is configurable if a configuration tag is assigned to it. This is the case for most of the CRM views delivered by SAP. Configuration tags enable changes and adaptations to the UI, with the help of the UI configuration.
You can use the UI configuration to do the following:
Add, remove, and change the position of UI elements
Rename UI elements
Add and change captions
Change field properties (for example, display only or mandatory)
Define other options (for example, load option for assignment blocks, visible search criteria, and default operators for the search)
View Types
With the UI configuration it is possible to make changes to the layout of a configurable view. Based on the view type, different configuration capabilities are provided. Distinctions are made between the following view types:
Form view
Tables and hierarchies
Overview pages
Home page and work center pages
SAP Configuration and Customer Configuration
For each configurable view, SAP delivers at least one standard configuration. All configurations delivered by SAP are saved in cross-client SAP tables. They cannot be changed by the customer. If configurations are adjusted or created by the customer, they are saved in client-dependent customer tables. At runtime, an access sequence is used to determine the configuration. The system always checks whether a customer configuration exists and if so, this is displayed. If no customer configuration exists, the SAP configuration is used. If a customer configuration is deleted with the UI configuration, the SAP configuration is determined.
Using Parameters
Additionally, it is possible to have more than one SAP configuration or customer configuration for a view. To implement this, the following parameters are used:
Role configuration key
Component usage
UI object type
Subobject type
At runtime the correct configuration is determined, based on these parameters. The role configuration key can be defined in Customizing, and assigned to a business role. With this parameter, it is possible to create business-role-dependent configurations. At runtime, this parameter is automatically determined by the business role with which the user is logged on.
UI objects types have been introduced to define UI objects independently of existing business object layer objects.
Example
CRM Service – Complaint (BUS2000120). Due to the use of different UI object types based on one BOL object, the UI objects 'complaint', 'inhouse repair', and 'return' were built.
Based on the UI object type, configurations can be created. The subobject type is a child object of the object type, for example transaction types, and can also be used. Therefore, by using UI object type and subobject type, you can have different UI configurations for different business processes. At runtime, object type and subobject type are set by the application. Component usage is automatically set by the framework at runtime.
Access Sequence
To determine configuration and labels, the access sequence is executed in two steps. In the first step, a configuration is determined, based on the parameters. The search starts with the definitive parameters (search key) and, if this is not successful, fewer parameters are used step-by-step. The parameters with which a configuration was successfully determined are called successful key. In a second step, the successful key is used to determine the labels from the text repository. If labels are not explicitly set in the configuration, they can be determined from the ABAP Dictionary. In addition to the UI configuration, the design layer Customizing has been introduced in SAP CRM. With this feature, it is possible to link UI-related settings to a new, generic design object that spans several views implementing the same business content.
The following picture shows the general access sequence at runtime:
