SAP Fiori apps for SAP CRM: hands-on
SAP Fiori is everywhere these days. If you don’t know what it is, I’d recommend to go through a few blog posts available here on SCN (non exhaustive list):
Fiori arrives – first impressions and thoughts
What is SAP Fiori? Maybe it’s more than you think
SAP Fiori Wave 2 is here – so what’s new ?
To sum it up very quickly Fiori allows end users to access some “transactions” from their mobile phone, tablet or desktop with the same user experience. All you need is a browser recent enough to display HTML5. As a SAP CRM consultant I wanted to give it a try and see what we can get with those ~10 apps dedicated to sales representatives… And the good news is: a few weeks ago I noticed this big orange button on http://marketplace.saphana.com/Line-of-Business/Sales/SAP-Fiori/p/3570 to try Fiori for free!
In fact this button never worked for me: I was just directed to a page asking me to actually buy the whole package… So I contacted someone from SAP support, who asked me to contact someone else who knew the guy that heard someone tried Fiori etc. (you got my point 🙂 But in the end I could finally get the links I was looking for (thank you Mr. Enrique Espinosa):
www.sap.com/natrysapfiori (americas)
www.sap.com/emeatrysapfiori (emea)
www.sap.com/apjtrysapfiori (asia pacific)
If you click on one of those links (depending on your location) and enter promotion code TRYFIORI during checkout, you’ll be able to download everything you need to install SAP Fiori applications on your CRM system to test it during 45 days for free.
Edit 15th May 2015: links are not working anymore. You may wait for the cloud trial version to be released instead: SAP Fiori, Demo Cloud Edition
That’s what I did, except that I didn’t have any CRM7.0 EhP3 (minimum required) available. So I created a virtual machine on my laptop running Win7 64bits, with 8Go RAM and 120Go free hard drive. I must admit that the installation process went quite smoothly until I had to download support packages: can you believe that you need someone to “approve” your download basket via Solution Manager? I’ll probably write another blog post about it because obviously I didn’t need to install SolMan to complete my installation, however I did had to contact a friend with a valid user on SolMan to be able to download the needed files from SAP Service Marketplace (which makes me think that this is a cra**y piece of software otherwise SAP wouldn’t have to force people to use it).
Anyway, now it’s working fine so I began to create a series of video showing what it looks like. I’ll update this blog post as soon as new videos are ready to go so don’t forget to click the “follow” button or “receive email notifications” on the right hand side of the page if you want to get notified when new stuff is out 🙂
Video 1 >> SAP FIORI for CRM: Getting started
Video 2 >> SAP FIORI for CRM: My appointments
Video 3 >> SAP FIORI for CRM: My appointments app vs WebUI calendar
Video 4 >> SAP FIORI for CRM: My accounts
Video 5 >> SAP FIORI for CRM: My tasks
Video 6 >> SAP FIORI for CRM: My opportunities
Enjoy!
PS: for the record after everything was up and running, I downloaded the following OSS notes to fix a few bugs:
1878995 LPD: Display of further attributes in LPD_CUST
1907696 New synchronization functions in the launchpad
1927493 Mapping Formats are saved inconsistently
1928317 News Tile Drill Down image correction
1929563 ACE Checks for Contacts and Accounts
1930670 BP_SRV: Runtime error GETWA_NOT_ASSIGNED in FSBP_CNS_TYPE_HA
1930684 KPIs for Account FactSheet not available
1930800 Performance improvement ‘resolvelink’in INTEROP Service
1930931 My Leads: Filtering the Search Results
1931051 SAPUI5 upgrade to version 1.16.4
1931635 Hotfix for UI AddOn 1.16.4 SC: UI2_SRVC
1931654 UI2_FND (SP06): Improving performance of Fiori Startup Page
1933579 UI2_FND, UI2_700 (SP06): Improving performance of UI2 Intero
Excellent find, Nick! Here I was scanning the marketplace every day to see if there are downloads available for Fiori wave 2...
Now downloading the package.
You make some good remarks in the videos on the usability of the apps. Account details should be clickable and partner determination would help in the usability. I guess/hope/presume that will come in a next version.
The list of notes will come in handy, thanks for that too!
Cheers, Roel
Thank you Roel!
Indeed I searched / waited for Fiori on sap service marketplace too, but it seems SAP decided to deliver it from (yet) another website... And it would be great to have your feedback about the "big orange button" to try sap fiori: did it work for you? Were you able to download the whole package for free without using the direct URL provided in this blog post?
Also, I find it very nice to be able to test Fiori for free, but isn't it surprising that SAP doesn't provide a demo website so we could test it without the need for installation on our own systems? I mean, I would give you access to my system if I could (unfortunately I don't have any server up and running 24/7: everything is installed locally on an external hard drive).
One last thing: I'm not a system administrator... so when I installed SAPCRM I didn't setup any virus scan server. As a result: I couldn't create or edit anything with Fiori (everything was read-only). So I had to run tcode /IWFND/VIRUS_SCAN and disable Gateway virus scan. Hope that helps!
Cheers,
Nick.
To add for Asia Pacific customers: www.sap.com/apjtrysapfiori
Can we download Fiori for trial from India. Accessing the mentioned link points to the payment link.
Hi,
Did you try to enter the promotion code mentioned above?
Regards,
Nicolas
Excellent videos and seems very good features in Fiori as I have not used, have tried to download from the above link u provided but i guess its not available.
Just want to know the Architecture of Fiori with CRM , is it follows same MVC pattern to retrieve the data from the database , just eager to know the scope in CRM technical.
Thanks again for the writing blog.
Keep posting
Regards,
Sumeet
Hi Sumeet,
The UI is based on MVC architecture but definitely not the BOL/Genil Framework. If you see the technology behind and the url correctly in the videos by Nicolas its related to the UI5_UI5 framework and I can see two classes in SAP which handle the calls:
/UI5/CL_UI5_APP_HTTP_HANDLER
/UI5/CL_UI5_HTTP_HANDLER
Hence the proprietary CRM Genil framework seems to be out of picture here.
Relatively I can also say that the Gateway services framework can also be used for CRUD operations.
/Hasan
Great work Nicolas ! Cheers to you 🙂
Nice blog and I really appreciate the video's you are putting up.
So if you are an existing SAP CRM UI customer, and have used the AET to generate a number of custom fields in the Customer & Opportunity how do migrate those to the Fiori app? Would you see customers using both the CRM UI & Fiori in their landscape and having to keep both up to date. Appreciate any thoughts you can share.
Hi Nicolus, Its just a great blog. I got a very good overview of SAP Fiori in just 1 hour and how it can be seen on SAP CRM.
Is it possible for you to share a some configuration steps for SAP CRM ?
We are looking to evaluate SAP Fiori for our company and looking forward for some kind of configuration steps.
Thanks
Siva Kumar Kada
Hi Siva,
Thanks for the kind words. And if you're looking for materials about Fiori installation & configuration I would definitely recommend the following links:
Installation guide on help.sap.com/fiori
SAP Fiori learning materials (2013 June edition)
Also be aware that a free course is currently available on open.sap.com about Fiori:
Introduction to SAP Fiori UX
Best regards,
Nicolas.
Thank you very much Nicolas for the valueable information.
Thanks
Siva
Hi Nicolas,
Currently the above mentioned Links for exploring Fiori is not working.
can you please tell me the alternatives.
Regards,
Abhishek
Hello Abhishek,
Thanks for letting me know: indeed those links are no longer working... and I think this is probably because SAP will soon release a Cloud trial version of Fiori applications: SAP Fiori, Demo Cloud Edition
So you may be able to test it soon: stay tuned!
Cheers,
Nick.
Hello, Nicolas
The link for SAP Fiori Demo Cloud Edition is this one.
You can take a look and provide feedback here.
Regards
Joaquin
Thank you for making the red edits Nick - I think we can all appreciate how rapidly things are moving in the world of SAP Fiori.
Community members - keep an eye on this document (SAP Fiori, cloud edition) for updates related to the demo/trial/cloud journey.
Also as a reminder, you can either use the track in communications or receive email notifications for any updates or comments posted to the All Things SAP Fiori document page. You can also look at the trail of comments at the bottom of the page (page 13 is the newest as of today) and get excellent insight on recent additions, announcements, etc.
Best Regards,
Jeremy Good
SAP Technology RIG
Very Nice, though the links are gone but videos are still helpful. how is Fiori sailing in market ? any views ?
Hi Nicholas,
Can you please share something related to How to implement SAP Fiori on CRM .
What are the pre requisites , procedure etc etc..
Regards,
Sumit
Thanks Nicolas, putting all things at one place is great help.
Thanks,
Warm Regards
Hemendra
Thanks for the information & resources .