Manage Characteristics As Custom Fields
Application component: Fiori UI of Advanced Variant Configuration
App type: Transactional
Line of business: Supply Chain
Leading industry: Cross Industry
Solution capability: Advanced Variant Configuration (S/4)|Material Requirements Planning (S/4)|Sales Order Management and Processing (S/4)
Description:  With this app you as an administrator can create custom fields for characteristics that are used in Advanced Variant Configuration and Classification. This helps to extend the apps such as Manage Batches, Manage Production Orders and Capacity Scheduling Table with characteristic fields in the search using data source extension. The business user can then filter batches and production orders based on the product characteristic values and display these custom fields as columns in Fiori List Views. 
This app allows the key user to expose characteristics as custom fields, which can be added as extensions to the CDS views. This enables the filter and search of business objects data based on characteristic values both from classification and variant configuration for the end users.
Key features:  This app provides the following key features:   Overview of business contexts and their custom fields for characteristics   Creation of custom fields for characteristics   Deletion of custom fields for characteristics   View additional metadata for custom fields   Identify the differences in metadata like ID, description, type, and length between the published custom fields and original characteristics   Republish the custom fields in case there are differences in metadata   Optimized search and filter capability for Variant Configuration based object list apps like Manage Production Orders and Capacity Scheduling Table by using secondary persistency storage for Variant Configuration data, alongside the primary persistence. You can perform the following:   Reload: This loads the Variant Configuration data from the primary persistence to the secondary persistence for the selected custom fields referencing to characteristics. Note: This option must be used only if there is a difference in the Variant Configuration data for the same characteristics between primary and secondary persistency.     Limited functionality in business contexts marked as "obsolete"   Obsolete business contexts are indicated as such when navigated into   Creation of custom fields for characteristics is no longer possible in obsolete business contexts. Other operations are unaffected.   It is highly recommended to migrate custom fields from obsolete business contexts to their successor business contexts. Migration can be executed manually using the application by deleting the custom fields from the obsolete business contexts and re-creating them in their successors. For more information, see SAP Note 3220904 .     
Business roles: BOM Engineer| Product Configuration Modeler
BOM Engineer : 
Creates bills of material and consistent overall product model, drives changes across organizations, and is responsible for the change process until handover to manufacturing. Is typically a member of the R&D group of the company.

Product Configuration Modeler : 
Creates and maintains product configuration models, including the creation of classes and characteristics, setting up object dependencies and configuration profiles. Validates the models by simulating different configurations and solves issues.

Administrator (Marketing Cloud) : 
An administrator who configures the settings and functionalities in SAP Marketing Cloud