Journey to SAP Fiori Launchpad on Portal
Journey to SAP Fiori Launchpad on Portal
About 6 months ago, our company wanted to mobilize our ESS MSS functionalities running on the SAP NetWeaver portal. As we started researching, we found ourselves overwhelmed with the options available. In this blog, I wanted to share our findings and decisions that we made along the way. I apologize in advance if I didn’t explain any functionality thoroughly, but this is how we approached the decisions given our company’s scenario.
Our Environment:
- Portal 7.4 SPS11
- ECC EHP7
- Separate Gateway with Fiori wave 2 apps installed (HUB deployment)
- We are also using Portal functionalities like Web Page Composer
DECISION : “Portal on Device” OR “Fiori”
Official documentation of Portal on Device is this:
“SAP NetWeaver Portal acts as a gateway to enterprise information systems and provides connectivity to SAP and non-SAP back-end systems. Using mobile Web browsers, you can access the portal from mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets. This capability is referred to as “portal on device”.
When you decide to implement portal on device, you need to create portal content that has been designed for mobile users and has been tailored for display on
mobile devices. Here, it is clear that Fiori is a must as it actually is the mobile content.
We also brainstormed the idea of using them together but ‘portal on device’ seemed inessential with introduction of SAP Fiori Launchpad on Portal. We came to the conclusion that Portal on Device looks nice, but it only gets us 20% of our overall goal, and quickly dropped this idea to pursue Fiori.
DECISION: Fiori or HR Renewals Landing page or Both for ESS MSS
To be clear, these 2 technologies don’t necessarily serve the same purpose, but I just wanted to share where we saw the greatest benefits.
Our initial plan was to replace Portal’s ESS\MSS with HR renewal landing page, and Fiori would run independently on mobile devices.
We had begun with configuring both, but shortly shelved the HR Renewals Landing page. We have a HUB gateway deployment, and getting Web Dispatcher to run both Fiori and HR Renewals became very challenging. We got it configured by using multiple Aliases for Odata services, but looking at the complexity and ongoing support, we never pursued it.
Even though HR Renewals landing page for ESS\MSS looks the coolest of them all, we couldn’t commit for supporting both. And HR Renewals alone would not fulfill our mobile needs! So, we continued on our Fiori path.
DECISION: Launching point for Fiori? Fiori Launchpad or Portal Fiori Desktop?
Once we were pursuing Fiori, we had to decide the launching point for Fiori. Below are the PROS and CONS that we came up with.
SAP Fiori Launchpad on Portal
|
PROS |
CONS |
|
One URL – Same Portal URL from desktops and Mobile |
|
|
Utilize existing portal content. Example, we placed all help files in KM and created a Fiori Tile to show KM iView. We also could embed our Web Page Composer content. |
Direct Fiori Launchpad:
|
PROS |
CONS |
|
Better performance |
Two URLS – Desktop portal url, Mobile > Launchpad URL. |
|
Can only create tiles for Fiori. |
|
|
If Gateway is Hub, then New password for users to remember. |
For us, the clear winner here was the SAP Fiori Launchpad on Portal. The features for Portal’s Fiori Desktop are being released fast and furious. I would highly recommend reading the this link, specifically the table that shows SAP Fiori Features Comparison in SAP NetWeaver 7.4 Releases
**NOTE: If you plan to use Fiori Launchpad on SAP Portal, I highly recommend the approach of consuming “remote catalogs” instead of consuming each app
individually in iViews.
Other Tips & Recommendations:
- Learn to troubleshoot Fiori (i.e. Client side Developer tools in Chrome); there are many other great posts on SDN that explain how.
- Always apply the Consolidation fixes for apps right after installing the app. Most of issues are covered by notes. And even if you don’t face any immediate issues, just apply the supporting notes to avoid redundant testing.
Conclusion:
NetWeaver 7.5 includes some key enhancements for SAP Fiori Launchpad on Portal, so our decision is looking good thus far.
I apologize in advance if I didn’t explain any functionality thoroughly, but this is how we approached the decisions given our company’s scenario. I hope this helps…
Thank you.
Excellent Blog Herman. It gives idea on where to apply fiori .
This is really structured way of presentation.
Hi Harman!
Thanks for sharing this information. It is great to read how customers are using the FLP on Portal features which are developed in our department. I will feature your blog on the SAP Enterprise Portal SCN space.
Regards
Vera
Thank you Vera.
@Herman, nice to see customer experience using FLP on SAP EP.
Hi Vera,
We use SAP EP and Gateway/UI5 embedded solution in our CRM system and would like to leverage the existing systems/landscape but I'm confused when it comes to making decision towards our UX and UI strategy, some time mid last year I heard from SAP conference that SAP EP and NWBC will eventually merge into Fiori Launchpad so they have recommended existing SAP EP customers to continue using SAP EP but need to rethink about roadmap to move to FLP on ABAP.
In the same context, recently SAP roadmap on EP will continue to deliver latest and greatest UX using FLP on EP.
Also in another context SAP is not making any further development/investment for WPC and KM on SAP EP, more focus on SAP mobile documents.
New release SAP EP 7.5 has lot more feature when it comes to cloud integration and easy upgrade of Fiori component (SCA deployments) rather than upgrade. It looks promising now and we would like to continue using SAP EP.
However, FLP on Portal still lacks some functionality compared to FLP on ABAP, for example News feed. Also new Fiori app OVP is only made available in HCP but I still have no confirmation from SAP if we can deliver OVP apps on FLP running on SAP EP ! provided we meet OVP requirements of SAP UI 1.32 and ODATA 2.0 on our embedded gateway/UI solution.
Is there a plan to deliver FLP's new features to be made available at the same time to different solutions like Cloud portal, On-premise portal (e.g. 7.4 or 7.5) and FLP on AFS ?
With the rapid growth, advancement and rollout happening around SAP UX and UI, as a customer sometimes we want to build and deliver some nice features (e.g. OVP) to our customers quickly but rather some features delayed or made available in Cloud portal first and then to FLP on ABAP and then to FLP on Portal.
What is the SAP direction towards keep the FLP features consistent across different SAP solutions (Cloud, EP, AFS) ? Is there continued investment and development planned for SAP EP ?
Regards
Siva
Hi Siva!
We strive to match functionality across platforms as much as possible, but due to delivery timelines, technical reasons and platforms differences a 100% alignment is not possible.
The key differentiation of Fiori on EP is the ability to manage Portal content in the Fioir launchpad with high reuse of existing investments.
This makes it a natural choice for Portal customers. At the end the goal is to give customers different options to deliver the FLP user experience.
The way customers choose to do so depends on the scenario they want to achieve, their current landscapes and deployment strategy. The investments in EP will continue
as part of the overall SAP Fiori story.
Kind regards
Vera
go with abap flp.
ep sooner or later will be out of the game.
[removed by Moderator, let's keep it polite]
Thanks for letting us know about your experiences and thoughts Harman.
Very interesting article.
Great, Portal Launchpad is the way to go for most use cases !
Thanks Harman, it was a good read and helps one decide.
I have a question for you, What if I am not running SAP portal and using SAP NWBC HTML, what do you think is we should go for? the direct fiori launchpad?
Also, I did not get your point ":If Gateway is Hub, then New password for users to remember", is this really required there should be an SSO between the R/3 and gateway and it should take care right.
regards,
Raghavendra
Thanks Raghavendra.
Regarding NWBC, One thing you need to check is if there is device recognition capability NWBC. The key feature in Portal is “Configuring Desktop Display Rules for Mobile Devices” as explained below. This is why we are able to use one URL.
https://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73/helpdata/en/bb/8754ad7143459182dffea99aae8f33/frameset.htm
For your second question: What I meant was: If we didn’t embed Fiori in our Portal, then users would use Gateway Fiori Launchpad URL to access Fiori. This means that we would have to provide users their Gateway ECC System URL, and credentials.
Thanks,
Harman
Hi Harman
What was your before upgrade environment?
Anyone:
NW 7.4 SP7 Enterprise Portal upgrade to SP13 straight away. Is it possible. (HR, FI, RPM)
NW 7.4 SP5 Federation Portal upgrade to SP13 straight away. Is it possible. (BI, BO)
Advice please.
Regards
Wynand
If Portal has Fiori Launchpad and SAPUI5 SCAs, is it possible to deploy the SAPUI5 apps and FIORI apps on Portal?
depends on the where the backend service is
for fiori app, you won't be able to
if you develop and deploy the service to portal, then you can deploy your ui5 app to portal (generally)
I am talking about custom Fiori like application. SAPUI5 can be deployed anywhere right?
only if you have oData service, SAP gives flexibility only to develop and deploy in Gateway.
But if you are using JSON APIs and create RESTFUL services then Gateway is not necessary ..
When you have already Portal in your landscape, why do you want another front end server.
SAP need to think of ability to create and deploy oData Services in Portal using Java oDATA APIs..
I said yes, right?
When you said on the Cons for Direct Fiori Launchpad,, that you can only create tile for Fiori.. What do you mean?
If we are implementing ESS and MSS will there be any limitation regarding the ESS/MSS functionality per se? will any ESS/MSS process be left out by following this approach?
Regards
Henry