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Author's profile photo Murali Shanmugham

Fiori Analytics on HANA Cloud Platform using Smart Business Service – 1

I have been using HANA Cloud Platform Fiori Launchpad for a while and have always wanted to see KPI tiles on my Fiori Launchpad. SAP Smart Business (SBS) framework has been around for a while and customers were able to visualize their KPIs/OPIs without writing a line a code in their on-premise solutions.

                   

I have been exploring this option for a while and I am excited to share the news that using SMART business services in HCP, it is now possible to create KPI Tiles on your HCP Fiori Launchpad. What is even more interesting is that you can also create rich analytical applications (out-of-the-box) which help you give more information around your KPIs.

I had earlier posted on fundamentals of KPI Modeler and how to use the generic KPI drill-down application which ships along with Smart Business Framework. It’s good to see the same on-premise functionality being ported to the cloud.

In this series of blog post, myself and my colleague Nash Gajic are going to show you how easy it is to enable Smart Business services on HCP and bring up KPI tiles on Fiori Launchpad.

SSB framework on HCP relies on OData services when it comes to consuming business information. As of today, it supports OData services which are either based on HANA XS, CDS or even Apache Olingo. It is important to note that these OData services need to be annotated following OData4SAP standard in order to identify dimensions and measures on each entity.

     

In this blog, we are going to take a scenario where a customer who has Business Suite on HANA system is looking to create Analytical/Transactional apps on HCP. One of the ways to expose data from a HANA system is via XS OData services.  We are going to show how to expose XS OData services from a HANA system and consume them in Smart Business Services of HCP to create KPI Tiles.

    

Prerequisites

  • Access a trial landscape, you need to have a developer account first. If you still need to create a developer account, you can start from here: Signing Up for a Developer Account.
  • For demonstration purposes, we are going to use the HANA MDC database which is available for free on the HCP trial account rather than an on-premise HANA system.

Enable Portal Service

In your HCP trial account, locate your Portal service and enable it. Launch the service to create a fresh Portal.

              

From the site directory, add a new Portal site of Fiori Launchpad type.

              

Once the site is created, navigate to the Site settings menu and publish the empty site.

              

After publishing your site, from the site directory ensure that the new site is made your default site

              

We have now created an empty Launchpad site. In the next step, we would be leveraging the Smart Business service to publish few apps to this Launchpad site.

Enable Smart Business Services

In your HCP trial account, locate the Smart Business service and enable it.

              

Navigate back to the Smart Business service and click on “Configure Smart Business Apps”.

              

In the Smart Business Configuration App, select the Portal site which was created earlier and click on “Import Apps”.

              

You should get a success message stating that the smart business apps are imported to your site.

Navigate back to the Launchpad site which you created earlier and launch the site. You should be able to see bunch of Smart Business Apps which are available in your Launchpad site. These Apps will allow you as a content administrator to build KPI tiles and make them available to end users.

You will notice there is a Portal role now available directly related to the corresponding Smart Business service groups shown above. As an administrator, you can assign these Smart Business service apps to your portal content developers accordingly.

In the next part of this blog, my colleague Nash Gajic will show you how to setup the data source (HANA Database) on HCP and use the Smart Business services to consume XS OData services in order to create KPI tiles and link them to generic drill down applications.

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      17 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Excellent Blog

      Author's profile photo Murali Shanmugham
      Murali Shanmugham
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Nanda

      Author's profile photo Rajesh Ragupathy
      Rajesh Ragupathy

      Good Blog Murali as you wrote the on-premise blog on Smart Business Framework last year gained from customer experience...This is important feature in HCP to have the Smart Business Capability to build KPIs.

      Author's profile photo Murali Shanmugham
      Murali Shanmugham
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Rajesh, Thanks for the feedback.

      Author's profile photo Roger Lennon
      Roger Lennon

      Great Blog!  I am curious to know if the SAP Smart Business Service is available to all HCP customers or is it only possible on the demo version?  We have HCP and the Fiori cloud edition but I don't see where I can enable that service.

      Author's profile photo Murali Shanmugham
      Murali Shanmugham
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Roger. I believe SBS comes along with HCP Portal Service and will be available to all customers who have subscribed to this service. You should be able to see SBS service as a separate service (should appear as a tile under the services menu) and use it along with Fiori Cloud Edition. If you don't see it, can you please reach out to your SAP contact within your organization and let them know that the SBS service is not provisioned for your account.

      Author's profile photo Ankeswara Rao Ketha
      Ankeswara Rao Ketha

      Hello Roger, Hope you were able to find Smart Business Service in HCP Cockpit. Please let us know if you are not able to use it.

      Author's profile photo Roger Lennon
      Roger Lennon

      Hello,  I found it on the trial HCP account but not on our app edition.  The service is not available to enable.   We have Fiori cloud edition, lauchpad and mobile. We have enquired SAP about adding SBS but no info as of this time. 

      Author's profile photo Ankeswara Rao Ketha
      Ankeswara Rao Ketha

      Sorry for the inconvenience, Please raise an OSS message through CSN : CA-GTF-SB-HCP Component with your HCP account details so that we can look into this issue.

      Author's profile photo Parag Jain
      Parag Jain

      Great Blog Murali!! Can the underlying source be a BW query (exposed as a odata service ) ? Any experience around this till we move to HANA.

      Regards,

      Parag.

      Author's profile photo Michael Appleby
      Michael Appleby

      Hi Parag,
      Unless you are asking for clarification/correction of some part of the Document, please create a new Discussion marked as a Question.  The Comments section of a Blog (or Document) is not the right vehicle for asking questions as the results are not easily searchable.  Once your issue is solved, a Discussion with the solution (and marked with Correct Answer) makes the results visible to others experiencing a similar problem.  If a blog or document is related, put in a link.  Read the Getting Started documents (link at the top right) including the Rules of Engagement. 

      NOTE: Getting the link is easy enough for both the author and Blog.  Simply MouseOver the item, Right Click, and select Copy Shortcut.  Paste it into your Discussion.  You can also click on the url after pasting.  Click on the A to expand the options and select T (on the right) to Auto-Title the url.

      Thanks, Mike (Moderator)

      SAP Technology RIG

      Author's profile photo Parag Jain
      Parag Jain

      Sure Mike, my understanding was to understand the scope of this technology (Smart Business Service) as this is an intro blog. It would be good to know what is covered and not "how to do it" which should ideally be part of discussion forums. Even the question above on how to enable this service in the comments seems relevant while one can argue that this should be in discussion forum. Such topics on an intro blog are natural i guess.

      Author's profile photo Michael Appleby
      Michael Appleby

      The point being, if there needs to be a change/clarification to the document, then questions in the comments are welcome.  If it is an expansion or related question and not strictly related to part of the document, then it should be a Discussion so the results can be searchable.  Generally I tell people that you want to err on the side of creating a new Discussion and not asking inside a Comment.  Hope that is clear, not just what, but the why behind it.

      Regards, Mike

      SAP Technology RIG

      Author's profile photo Ashok Kumar M
      Ashok Kumar M

      Hi,

      I am not getting the 'Smart Business Administrator Apps' tile? Any idea what I am missing?

      Best Regards,

      Ashok.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hello Ashok,

      You can access the Smart Business Administrator Apps like :
      Configure Business Systems , SB Configuration , Monitor Smart Business Destinations etc from the SCP Cockpit-> Services -> Smart Business Service -> Configure Service option.

      I hope you find what you are looking for.

      Regards,
      Ruchita Kasliwal

      Author's profile photo Saritha Koroth
      Saritha Koroth

      Hi,

      just wanted to share that the screenshots of smart business configuration app have a changed a bit with the latest versions available on hana trial cloud account atleast.. Also there are more options like import apps, import and publish apps, publish and launch site etc which now appear.

      Regards,

      Saritha

      Author's profile photo namdher colmenares
      namdher colmenares

      Hi, can you custom Local timeZone for SSB aplications? because i have one issue becasue i have 1 day less into my log file download.