Embed an HTML landing page into your SAP GUI home screen
Not too long ago I was faced with an interesting conundrum …. if you run an SAP Portal it is relatively easy to syndicate announcements of useful information into the home page of that portal, given that it is effectively an HTML page. But what if you would like to provide similar information to your SAP GUI users (who might be a different user-base than your SAP Portal users)?
Some example scenarios might be :
- Corporate announcements
- Notifications about system outages
- Links to corporate policies (eg. terms of use)
- Information about help desk numbers
- Links to system help pages (non-contextual)
- Links to system training
- Simple SAP data lookups (see my previous Deliver dynamic search of SAP data into a website using RESTful services)
- Personalised data (favourites etc.)
- etc.
Of course we know that SAP GUI users can receive messages which pop-up when the user logs in, but this is often not an appropriate mechanism for delivering some of the information types listed above.
So, I came across a useful OSS Note 1387086 ‘HTML Viewer in SAP Easy Access Screen’ (via an SCN forum response that was answered by Sandra Rossi). I wasn’t sure how many others in the community were aware of this, so I thought I should blog about it.
Firstly as a pre-requisite, the OSS Note only applies to Basis releases 7.0 and above.
Based on the OSS Note, you simply need to do the following …
Navigate to table SSM_CUST via view maintenance transaction SM30. Create a new entry with the following …
NAME = SESS_URL
VALUE = <your web address>
Try it Out
To make it easy for you to try this out, I have created a demonstration site (from a previous blog Deliver dynamic search of SAP data into a website using RESTful services) which you can use. DISCLOSURE: Under terms of use for the original website template, I created the hosted demonstration site based on a sample provided by Free Website Templates . I incorporated my own images and aligned the themes to the SAP GUI Signature Design.
Alternatively you can use any other web address you prefer.
Enter the following for ‘VALUE’ …
VALUE = http://www.johnmoy.com/demos/ztransactioncodes
An example screenshot is below …
Then when you next launch a new SAP GUI session, you should see something like this …
Of course you would ordinarily optimize the layout for your SAP GUI users (the example above has not been optimized).
I should mention that if and when your SAP GUI users migrate to using NetWeaver Business Client, the same web page can simply be integrated into that client also.
Thanks!!
Thanks for sharing!!!!!
Thanks for this, it will be very usefull; I can see the website, or an HTML include within the website, being used as a central place for updateing SAP Gui users.
Depending on what was being communicated, the same HTML code (or include) could be used for the Portal. This would mean one place to update the 'information screens' for MOST environments and users. I haven't investigated the NWBC much; does anyone know if there is an equivalent ?
Rgds
John
I knew you can "easily" change images using the SSM_CUST transaction which lead me to ideas such as regularly refresh the images to provide information... This Web approach makes much more sense! 🙂
Thanks for sharing.
Best regards,
Guillaume
You raise a very valid point! If those people don't have access to your internal website then I presume they would be presented with a 404 page. I guess there may be ways around this but I can't think of an elegant solution for that situation. So thanks for mentioning this for all of us to consider. If anyone has any suggestions it would be great if you could add them here.
Rgds
John
Best Regards
Saujanya
I am student at victoria University and I tried integrating web page onto my miniSAP what I am using on my computer but its asking for transport could you please help me how can I transport the program .
Regards
Chinmay Bhatt
All you need to do is to create a request, give it whatever dummy name, and save it. I presume since this is a miniSAP system the transports won't be going anywhere. If you still are unsure, I expect Tony will be able to show you how.
Rgds
John
Thanks very much for your reply , but I just want to inform you that I did try creating a dummy request in my miniSAP but still can't see the webpage on my front screen of SAP and I also consult Tony about it but unfortunately we couldn't get it going. So what would you recommend.Would much appreciate your response.
P.S.
We guys will be privileged to have you in one of our session at Victoria University in class of BCO6181 (ERP Application).
Regards
Chinmay Bhatt
It is very possible that your release level of miniSAP is inadequate for this feature. If you made the simple configuration entry I mentioned in my blog, and it didn't work, this is probably the case. Unfortunately SAP doesn't release miniSAP systems to be able to be patched by normal means. Maybe Tony will have some ideas. Did anyone else in your class get it working?
I have already had a quick discussion and you will probably see me later in your course.
Rgds
John
And looking forward to see you in our class in few weeks .
Thanks heaps for you quick response.
Regards
Chinmay bhatt.
Hi John. Good info. Is it possible to pass some user context like user name to the URL setup in this table ?
Cool
Hi John,
thanks to Lars Hvam I was pointed to your blog. As I wasn't able to find it using a search for SESSION_MANAGER url or website. So adding this comment now to make it easer the next time.
Best regards
Gregor
Hi Experts,
Is it possible to pass some dynamic parameters to the URL set in SESS_URL parameter. Any reference document/tutorial would be appreciate.
Thanks in advance.