UI5: SmartTable Personalisation/Variant Management Error - sapui5

Question

Hello Experts, I'm unsure why this error (pictured) is appearing. As far as I know, SmartTable should be able to take care of everything to do with variant management, right? In my controller, I dont have any code pertaining to variant management.
Here is the below code for my smartTable:
<smartTable:SmartTable id="smartTable" entitySet="Z9NRS_REQUESTSet" tableType="ResponsiveTable"
useExportToExcel="true" beforeExport="onBeforeExport" demandPopin="true" useVariantManagement="true" useTablePersonalisation="true"
header="Manage Requests" showRowCount="true" persistencyKey="SmartTableAnalytical_Explored" enableAutoBinding="true"
class="sapUiResponsiveContentPadding" initiallyVisibleFields="ZNRS_REQUEST,ZREQUESTOR_NAME,ZPRODUCT_FAMILY,ZOEM,ZTIER,ZCUSTOMER_PN,ZMATERIAL_NO,ZSTATUS_DESC,ZCONNECTOR_CONFIG" >
<smartTable:customToolbar>
<OverflowToolbar>
<ToolbarSpacer/>
<!--<Button icon="sap-icon://settings" type="Accept" />-->
</OverflowToolbar>
</smartTable:customToolbar>
<Table mode="SingleSelectMaster" selectionChange="onPress" inset="false" >
<columns>
<Column>
<Text text="Status"/>
<customData>
<!--p13nData is a keyword that links smartTable to this and let it identify this custom column-->
<core:CustomData key="p13nData" value='\{"columnKey":"ZSTATUS_DESC",
"leadingProperty":"ZSTATUS_DESC", "sortProperty":"ZSTATUS_DESC",
"filterProperty":"ZSTATUS_DESC", "columnIndex":7}' />
</customData>
</Column>
</columns>
<items>
<ColumnListItem >
<!--<ObjectStatus text="{ZSTATUS_DESC}" />-->
<ObjectStatus text="{ZSTATUS_DESC}" state="{path:'ZOVERALL_STATUS', formatter:'.formatter.DrawingStatus'}" />
</ColumnListItem>
</items>
</Table>
<!-- layout data used to make the table growing but the filter bar fixed -->
<smartTable:layoutData>
<FlexItemData growFactor="1" baseSize="0%"/>
</smartTable:layoutData>
</smartTable:SmartTable>

Answer 1

When I deployed and tested variant management it worked. But in FLPSandbox it wasn't working, so I guess it had to do with the app's access to some backend system(?)