What’s New in SAP Fiori Launchpad in User Interface Add-On SPS10 for SAP NetWeaver
This blog summarizes some of the new and changed features of SAP Fiori launchpad in User Interface Add-On SPS10 for SAP NetWeaver.
End User Experience
Personalizing the Home Page on Smartphones
Smartphone personalization of the homepage is now supported and is behaving the same as on tablets. You can now:
- Move, rename, delete, reset, and create new groups
- Move and remove tiles
Hiding and Showing groups on the Homepage
You can hide groups on the home page, according to your needs. A hidden group does not display on the home page, in the group panel, and in the “Add Tile to Groups” dialog in the tile catalog. For more details check out the Help Portal documentation.
On this image you see, that a new “Hide Groups” entry was added to the action sheet on the homepage:
When users click on “Hide Groups”, they will see a list of groups. The users can choose, if a group is hidden or visible (please click on image for better reading):
The hiding of groups can be enabled or disabled via the launchpad configuration. By default it is disabled.
Saving a Tile to a Specific Group
Users are now able – when saving an app as a tile – to select the group on the home page, to which to add the tile. The default group is My Home.
User Preferences
In the Options menu, the “login details” item has been renamed to User Preferences. The User Preferences dialog displays the theme that is in use.
When this option is enabled, it is possible to change the theme by selecting a different one from the list. For more details on the procedure, check out the Help Portal documentation.
Configuration
Dynamic Launchpad Configuration
Launchpad configuration files allow you to configure the launchpad in various ways, like:
- enabling/disabling personalization of the home page for the end user
- controlling the list of locations from where apps can be run in standalone mode
- a search option is displayed in the launchpad header bar
- displaying tiles with varying degrees of opacity, according to the frequency of their usage
The configuration is defined in a JSON file that is loaded on startup of the launchpad. For more details, check out the Help Portal documentation.
Translating Custom Tiles, Catalogs, and Groups
Administrators can update or delete tile catalogs and groups that are available in several languages only in one language. This is to ensure that an administrator does not delete a translation by mistake. For more details check out the Help Portal documentation.
Running the Launchpad in Headerless Mode
It is now possible to run the launchpad in headerless mode. In this mode homepage personalization options are either not available or disabled. This mode can be used, for example, when integrating the launchpad with SAP Enterprise Portal or with the SAP NetWeaver Business Client.
Performance
Performance was improved in the following areas:
- Retrieving user-specific target mappings: The performance of retrieving Target Mappings was improved significantly by storing them in the browser cache. This ensures maximum performance as roundtrips to the Frontend Server are avoided.
- Creating and retrieving user personalization: The personalization service is responsible for managing user personalization in the SAP Fiori launchpad home page. SPS10 introduces a new personalization persistency based on transparent database tables. Since personalization data are attached to a user’s life cycle it is ensured that these data are kept consistent throughout, for example when a user is copied, renamed or deleted. This has improved the performance significantly for both read and write operations and performance is constant regardless of the amount of data.
- Startup of SAP Fiori launchpad designer: The main issue in the startup of the Fiori Launchpad Designer was the call to read the catalogs. When reading the catalogs, it was necessary to drill down each catalog and count the number of tiles in it, which was a very expensive operation. The way how the number of tiles per catalog is calculated was reimplemented using an index table in which the number of tiles is stored per catalog. No expansion of the catalogs down to the tiles is needed anymore, instead the number of tiles can be read from this table.
Extensibility
APIs are provided to extend the SAP Fiori launchpad.
Add a Custom Tile Type
In the Fiori Launchpad Designer there are four standard tile types available: static and dynamic app launcher, news tile and target mapping. It is now possible to add custom tile types. As prerequisites the chip.xml needs to be registered per custom tile type in the chip repository via the SAPGUI transaction /UI2/CHIP. And the Fiori catalog containing the standard tile types needs to be enhanced (click on image for better reading):
Implementing a Custom Launchpad UI
You can implement a custom user interface for the launchpad. You create a custom UI that extends sap.ui.core.UIComponent and includes a SAPUI5 view. For more information about the procedure, check out the Help Portal documentation.
For more information see:
Thanks Vera. I was surprised to see this posted to the Enterprise Portal space since the UI Add-On is a AS ABAP component. I guess now that we can use the Fiori Launchpad in the portal, it makes sense but I think the User Interface Technology space would have been more appropriate.
Edit: removed the link to Lisa's document
Hi Samuli,
It could also be posted in SAP for Mobile or UI Development Toolkit for HTML5 Developer Center. The first is where the landing page for Fiori (What is SAP Fiori UX?) is located. Also where the majority of Fiori Discussions and Blogs/Documents current reside, though there are more popping up in the second community as time goes on.
Will add a link to the landing page regardless.
Cheers, Mike
SAP Customer Experience Group - CEG
True. I just realized that Lisa's document is only about the UI Theme Designer aspects of the UI Add-On, I have been looking at the UI Add-On from the UI Theme Designer perspective for too long. I guess the challenge here is that Fiori Launchpad is covered in the mobile space although Fiori isn't just mobile. That probably explains why information on UI Add-On keeps popping here and there, depending to who the functionality is relevant for.
Fiori just keeps evolving and expanding. When it started out, it was pretty much limited to Mobile which is likely how it got assigned to SAP for Mobile. Now that Launchpad is also on NWBC, Enterprise Portal, etc. it pops up in a lot of other places. It really is a UI Technology as well, so that community might have been a better place for it to start, but it did not. Oh well, ...
Since the Fiori apps were SAPUI5 based and Launchpad can link to "Fiori-like" SAPUI5 apps, a lot of content is now showing up in the UI5 space (UI Development Toolkit...). I would have preferred that it get its own space, but from my discussions with the SCN management and technical team members, that seems to be rather difficult to accomplish.
Yes, you are right. SAP Fiori launchpad is meanwhile part of many other areas, so that I was also not 100% sure where to post it, so I choose my homebase "Enterprise Portal". FLP is part of Mobile, Portal, SAP UX strategy, and it is now also running on HANA Cloud Platform. I could move my blog to the SAP for Mobile space, as this is also where the overview page is available.
Maybe we should create an own space for it, I know that some people are thinking about it, but here we have also to solve the same question: is it ABAP, Cloud or where should it be located on SCN?
Thanks
Vera
Does any one knows how to delete all data previously stored by the "user preferences" option in Launchpad?
regards
Nevermind, I'll answer myself.
🙂
Hi Ramon, Yea, strange that I couldn't find a standard program for this.
Other way is to use SE24 or a program which does below.
CALL METHOD cl_pers_admin=>delete_data_user
EXPORTING
p_pers_key = '/UI2/USER_PROFILE'
p_uname = 'USERNAME'
EXCEPTIONS
pers_key_not_found = 1
user_does_not_exist = 2
not_set_to_default = 3
internal_error = 4
OTHERS = 5.