General

Material Profiles are assigned to User Profiles so that users will have access to the materials relevant to their daily work, without the overhead of making all materials available. 

Important Information

See important information on online search functionality and possible restricted in the Online Search sub section below.

CONTENTS

Preparation

Spend some time analyzing requirements before creating or modifying profiles. Consideration points include:

  • Look to use Online searching to reduce the requirements for Offline data
  • Include only what is necessary for that user or set of users to do their job. Take special note of Performance and Data Limits recommendations on data volumes
  • Do not include data that might only be helpful in rare cases
  • The impact on sync times (users waiting) and cellular data volumes from large data sets
  • Material Profiles can be assigned to one or many User Profiles. So for example, if one User Profile has the need for larger data sets but generally they can be confined then create smaller sets and allocate accordingly
  • Consider how frequently people's roles change and how this might impact the data they need

Maintaining Profiles

Material Profiles are accessed from the Maintain User Profiles menu tile. 

Click on the Add New Profile button to create a new profile.  You can also create a new profile by clicking on an existing profile then clicking the Copy button in the page footer. 

When you create a new profile, either starting fresh or as a copy of an existing profile you need to provide a unique profile key, a profile description, and complete the mandatory filters.

Before a profile will be considered (in the material selection process) it must be marked as active.  This is done in the Profile tab.  Remember to Save once you've activated the profile.

Profile Filters

Navigate to the Profile Filters tab to complete the filter selections. These filters are for Offline data only their values have no bearing on the Online Search setting - see following section for more information.

Filters for the mandatory filters will be automatically added according to the Profile Type.  You can add new filters by clicking on the Add Filter button and selecting the type of filter from the Filter Object selection box.  There is no limit to the number of filters you can create for each type.  They will be additive.  Duplicates will be removed during save.

Profile Filters

The following data profile filters can be controlled:

  • Material Type* - Material Master Material Types
  • Plant* - Inventory Plants. Only one 'Low' Plant is available per Plant line, this is by design and means that the logical Option operand to use is EQ (Equals)

  • Storage Location - Inventory Storage Locations.  Consider that all matching storage locations for all matching plants will be included.  You may wish to create separate material profiles per plant if you need well-defined storage location selections.

* These are the mandatory filters.  Values must be provided. 

IMPORTANT 

  • Null filters for other settings will mean that they are included - i.e., without any filters for Storage Location you will get inventory data for all storage locations at the filtered plants
  • SLOCs values are maintained without explicit reference to their Plant. Meaning that if you have more than one Plant in a given Profile, all SLOC filters will apply to all Plants. Where this is not valid, create another Material separate profile.

Once you have completed the filter entries save the new profile using the Save button in the page footer.

This tab is used to maintain the values used for Online searches. The values are completely independent from Profile Filters defined in the sections above. The only parameter that can be maintain in the Plant. All Storage Locations for this Plant will be included in Online Search Results. The Material Types included in the online search are maintained in Settings Tab - Materials.

As of Support Pack 11 BlueWorx now allows for Online Material Searches, when connected, in addition to of device searches. This allows you to limit the data taken to just that required for offline operations, whilst maximizing the search results when online. Online searching is the only mode available from browsers - thereby removing the need to download material data to the browser.


As of Support Pack 13, if you have maintained Storage Location Authorisations in SAP Configuration, then you can further control what Storage Locations users can access when performing online searches. This is SAP Configuration (SPRO) as follows: 

Material Management > Inventory Management and Physical Inventory > Authorization Management > Authorization Check for Storage Locations. The setting, when switched on for a Storage Location is used in conjunction with authorization object M_MSEG_LGO which should be set in an authorization profile assigned to a user with the values for the Plant and Storage Location and Activity Type 1. The Movement Type is not referenced. To reiterate, this check is only made for online searches, the data for offline searches is aggregate, and not user specific data, configured in the main profile. 

Association with User Profiles

Material Profiles are not directly assigned to Users. They are assigned to User Profiles making use of the wide range of options for assigning User Profiles to users and keeping the administrative effort as low as possible. They are added to the User Profile as a Material Profile filter.  


The screen image below shows a User Profile with two assigned Material profiles.  See the Maintain User Profiles for more information.

Generating/ Regenerating Profile Data

On Save of the User Profile, there is no automated update of the SAP BlueWorx Sync Tables. This is deliberate to avoid end-user disruption during working hours and systems load. Changes to the User Profile, including assigned Material Profiles, require that the User Profile is refreshed before they come through to the BlueWorx on Sync.


IMPORTANT The updates must be scheduled as a background job and in SAP using the program: /SOLTIUS/PM_PROFILE_ADD_MD with an appropriate variant.

Export and Import Profiles

To assist you to shift profiles between instances you can export and import Material Profiles. This functionality has been documented Export and Import User Profiles