SAP FSM - February 2021 release

SAP will introduce some bigger changes on the releases scheduled for February 2021, see the full message below:

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In the 9.0.0 (Android / iOS) and 11.0.0 (Windows) releases scheduled for February 2021, we plan to introduce some logical changes that simplify the application logic and improve the end-user experience. 

Please take note of the following changes : 

1- Material Handling 

Currently, Material Stock levels on the mobile applications are calculated as :

• Android shows - available (In Stock + Ordered - Committed) - Material consumption limited to available
• iOS Shows - available (In Stock + Ordered - Committed) - Material consumption limited to In Stock 
• Windows Shows - available (In Stock) - Material consumption limited to in Stock 

Planned changed :

• All apps to show in In Stock - Committed. 
• All apps to limit consumption to In Stock - Committed.

These changes will affect all material creation screens. 

2- Available Quantity for reserved material. 

The logic is fragmented across the applications. Android and Windows do not take into account the USED field on the reserved material, while iOS does. 

The goal here will be to unify the logic and allow the cloud to be the source of truth for material consumption. The remaining quantity will be calculated from the "USED" field that the cloud updates on the reserved material.

While offline, applications will keep track of this used field locally to consider any transactions that have not been synced to the cloud yet. 

3- Smartfroms : Align the checkbox required functionality across all platforms

• Currently, if a checkbox is marked as mandatory, then the value will be evaluated to true when the checkbox is checked OR when it goes from a checked to an unchecked state.

The new logic for mandatory checkboxes will be as following:

1. REQUIRED NOT SATISFIED when the checkbox is unset (never interacted with) or unchecked.
2. REQUIRED SATISFIED when the checkbox is checked.

The Smartforms Designer has been updated so that by default, checkboxes have the unchecked state. 

4- Boolean values: True and False

Android, iOS will often create Yes and No values for items such as custom booleans or switches with values that can be YES or NO. 

While the mobile applications and Workforce management can handle displaying these values correctly (Yes, No, True, False), it causes some administration overhead in Business rules and other areas of the system. To simplify this process and make your business rules less error-prone, we will adapt the logic in the 9.0.0 (Android, iOS) and 11.0.0 (Windows) versions of the applications to only write True or False values. This way, you will no longer need to handle the case of casting yes or no values to true or false. This change will apply to all SAP FSM Suite applications.

We recommend to revise existing integrations to only handle boolean values as "True" or "False" as any other value on a boolean field will be disregarded starting February 2021