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Author's profile photo Britt Womelsdorf

Changing the way we support our users – Web Assistant is here!

I’ve always had an opinion on the topic how to help users.  If you ask my friends, colleagues, people even who barely know me, they’ll probably say I have an opinion about everything.  That may be true as well, but not the topic of this blog!  The opinion that matters here is the best way to help users who get stuck and are in need of assistance.

Up until now, the approach that the mobile service for SAP Fiori (and also the mobile service for app and device management) has taken is this – if a user needs help, redirect them to the appropriate section of the SAP Help Portal, which is the central place for all product documentation.  Don’t get me wrong, I think there is a great deal of value in having a central documentation site.  Product documentation isn’t just for when you’re stuck, there are plenty of scenarios where I refer to documentation before I even start a process, just to prepare for whatever it is I’m about to get myself into.

But if I am in the middle of something, and I am stuck, redirecting me to the documentation site causes two cascading effects.  The first is that I lose context.  I have to find in the documentation where I am in the product in order to know what to do next.  The second is focus and continuity.  I refer to this as the “squirrel effect.”  You know what I mean, you having finally gotten into a groove, then something comes along and distracts you.  Once you lose the groove, it’s hard to get it back.  SQUIRREL!

Which brings me back to my opinion on the topic of how to help users.  Context sensitive help, embedded user assistance, delivered when and where and how he needs it.  That’s what I’m talking about!  And that’s why I’m excited about the introduction of a new approach, called Web Assistant, into these two SAP Cloud Platform services.

About Web Assistant
A delightful, intuitive user experience is a critical part of SAP Cloud Platform’s strategy for success.  The way that a user gets assistance is a critical part of the user experience and thus critical to that success.  Web Assistant has the following goals in regards to the presentation of user assistance:

  • shown real-time, exactly when the user needs it
  • delivered in a context sensitive way
  • shown directly within the application
  • give insights into how to use a control

Web Assistant keeps me in context, allows me to stay focused and get the task at hand completed.

Enabling and using Web Assistant
To enable Web Assistant in these two services, simply click navigate to the service cockpit for either service and click on the Question mark in the upper right hand portion of the screen:

An informational bar (called a carousel) will appear across the bottom of the screen, and elements that have in-app help will have a green circle on top of them:

To get help on the topic, simply click on the green circle:


If you want to look at the help topics and understand what are of the console they pertain to, click on the topic and it will connect you to the UX area in question:

To turn off the Web Assistant, simply click on the Question mark again, and the circles will disappear.  You can hide the carousel at any time by clicking on the double downward facing arrows on the right hand side of the overlay.  The carousel will disappear.

Whether you hide or show the carousel is up to you.  We anticipate that in the beginning, people will keep the carousel visible.  This gives visibility to the user not just insight into the current control, but at least introductory information on adjacent controls which might also have in-app help.  More advanced users, they may decide to hide the carousel altogether and focus on clicking on a circle as they need help.

Not all elements are documented with Web Assistant yet, the number of topics will expand over time until just about everything important is covered this way.  Please do give it a try and leave any and all feedback at the bottom of this blog.  I’ll be watching!

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      22 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Great Britt  Thanks for sharing and caring

      Author's profile photo Moya Watson
      Moya Watson

      Great blog Britt! Would be great if you could also add "SAP HANA Cloud Platform" as a secondary tag so it will also show up in the feed on https://go.sap.com/community/topic/hana-cloud-platform.html.

      Author's profile photo Britt Womelsdorf
      Britt Womelsdorf
      Blog Post Author

      Done!

      Author's profile photo Britt Womelsdorf
      Britt Womelsdorf
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks to Annette Bater for her contributions to this blog and to the entire Knowledge Management team for driving this topic!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      No thanks needed Britt. Well done with the post.

      Author's profile photo Mike Doyle
      Mike Doyle

      Nice approach, looking fwd to trying it out

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Great blog, Britt! We in SAP Mobile UA and P&I are excited about this next phase of user assistance in SAP products. Validation and feedback is essential for our success so please, everyone, don't hesitate to contact us via this blog and leave your contact information. We'll get back to you asap. -Jennifer

      Author's profile photo Bernd Herold
      Bernd Herold

      Hey Britt, where can one find documentation for the config / setup of this feature in S/4HANA 1610?

      Author's profile photo Bernd Herold
      Bernd Herold

      PS: Where can one find instructions on how to incorporate this feature (Web Assistant) in custom built Fiori applications? 

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Bump! Is this only available via HCP?

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

       

      Hi John,

      Only some HCP services have begun to roll it out. Other SAP products as well.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

       

      Hi Bernd,

      Are you asking about Web apps? Right now Web Assistant is only available for Fiori Web applications.

      Author's profile photo Nils Lutz
      Nils Lutz

      Bump! Would be very nice if we can use this in our custom developed ui5/fiori apps. At the moment we are trying to achieve this feature with intro.js but seems not to work very well due to the ui5 framework itself...

      Author's profile photo Britt Womelsdorf
      Britt Womelsdorf
      Blog Post Author

      Hey guys - I'm checking with our User Assistance team for some...well...assistance!

      Author's profile photo Toni Saarela
      Toni Saarela

      Hi Britt,

      Thank you for your excellent blog!

      Something was left a bit unanswered though.

      Is the Fiori Web Assistant available as well to S/4HANA 1610 On-Premise edition?

      In this blog there were only instuctions to deploy it on HCP, but can we deploy it also in 1610 on-premise with NW 7.50 FES 3.0?

      Thanks!

      BR,

      Toni

       

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

       

      Hi Toni,

       

      Web Assistant is not available to OnPrem products. Only Web-based so far.

       

      Cheers,

       

      A.

      Author's profile photo Evelyn Tang
      Evelyn Tang

      Hi Britt,

      Great blog +1!

      I have a question similar to Toni's though. Wonder if Web Assistant is available to on-premise ABAP products?

      I saw it in enable-how help for web assistant that for apps use latest UI5 version, theoretically we can apply Web Assistant. But we need to install and implement Web Dispatcher beforehand, wonder if Web Assistant is indispensable?

      BR,

      Evelyn

       

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

       

      Hi Evelyn,

       

      Please check my reply in Toni's post.

       

      Cheers,

       

      A.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Britt,

      Can I use this web assistant for web dynpro page? Or add an sap UI5 page into web dynpro to use it as workaround?

       

      BR,

      Leo

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

       

      Hi Leo,

       

      You can only use Web Assistant if you have an HCP destination configured for it. I'm not sure what Web Dynpro is, but think you'll need moret han just a UI5 page to support the framework and the connections required.

       

      Hope this helps,

       

      A.

      Author's profile photo saurabh vakil
      saurabh vakil

      We have enabled context sensitive user assistance on our S/4HANA 1610 on-premise Fiori Launchpad and it works well with the standard Fiori apps. Is there a possibility to add help texts for custom developed Fiori apps as well?

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Surabh. I believe you can create custom help using Web Assistant now. I believe the customer needs to purchase an add on of some kind to make this available.