What's new in Portal with NW 7.4 SPS9?

[SibylleBrehm]

In this blog, I would like to share the new Portal features of SPS 9 of NetWeaver 7.4 (or SPS 14 of 7.31).

There are just two new features in this Support Packages Stack, but nevertheless, they represent important improvements.

1. The most important one in my eyes, is the availability of the Ajax Standards Mode Framework Page.

This new feature solves an old problem with Internet Explorer. So far, the Ajax Framework page did not render properly in standards mode, but only in quirks mode. To get a better understanding of the problem, I highly recommend Maya Amit's blog on IE and Portal - Standards/Quirks Mode Evolution. It explains in a very detailed way what problems exist, when the portal runs in quirks mode, but web dynpro applications start in standards mode or SAP UI5 is written in standards and how you could work around those problems so far.

Now you can just use the new Ajax Standards Mode Framework Page and run SAP UI5 applications in the Portal window. The new Ajax Standards Mode Framework page and the Ajax Standards Mode Portal Desktop can be found at Portal Content > Portal Users > Standards Portal Users > Ajax Standards Mode Framework Content. With fresh installations (no upgrades) as of 7.4 SPS 9, there is an URL alias portal/standards already available that will launch the new Ajax  Standards Mode desktop.

However, there are still some limitations, for example that this Framework Page should not be run in quirks mode (sounds logical :-)) and only supports IE 9 and higher. In addition, it is still true that standard and quirks content cannot be displayed together on the same page, so if you want to render content in quirks mode while using the new Ajax Standards Mode Framework Page, the content must be opened in a new window using the Launch in New Window property. Finally, the new Framework Page does not support administrative scenario, so if you want to use the Content Administration or System Administration for example, you should stick to the old Ajax framework page.

Here is what you have to do to test it after upgrading to SPS9:

1. Create a new URL alias for the portal in standards mode in the URL Alias Manager

2. Assign the new alias to the Ajax Standards Mode Portal Desktop in the master rule.

3. You need a portal page with a UI5 iView for testing. Open the UI5 iView's properties and change the value of property Launch in New Window to Display in Portal Content Area.

4. Now logon with your test user using the Portal URL with the alias for standards mode (using IE, or course)

5. Open the page with your iView. The UI5 iView will now be displayed in the portal content area. Opening a new window is not necessary any more.

If you are interested in more details, please read Matan Mizrahi's detailed blog on Ajax Framework Page in Standards Mode.

2. URL Alias for Fiori Launchpad on Portal

Before SPS9, you had to create a URL alias with URL Alias Manager in System Configuration and then create a new display rule to assign the Fiori desktop to the new URL alias. For new installation, there is now a preconfigured alias portal/fiori that is already assigned to the Fiori desktop in the master rule collection:

This feature will save you some time when setting up the new Fiori launchpad desktop, but as mentioned above, it is only available in new installations, as in an upgrade there might be a risk to overwrite existing master rule configurations.

Enjoy,

Sibylle