Latest Update October 2022: Corrected the link to Task Gateway Service Configuration - this has changed with recent SAP S/4HANA releases.
Latest Update October 2021: Added new sub apps available from SAP S/4HANA 2021 On-Premise and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition, plus updated the list for 2020, 1909, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition. Plus noted there is a new Flexible Workflow Administration app!
Latest Update October 2020: Added new sub app available from SAP S/4HANA 2020 and for the My Inbox scenario for Plant Maintenance, Quality Management and Bank Account Management.
Latest Update 29 April 2020: Added 2 new apps available from SAP S/4HANA 1909 FPS01. SAP Fiori app ids included to make identification easier. Also updated the references as Getting the Good guides blog has been retired. Also added a section on the related flexible workflow apps. Removed Marketing Approvals app for SAP S/4HANA Cloud which has been deprecated.
Latest Update 02 Oct 2019: Added new inbox app for Purchase Order Accruals available from SAP S/4HANA 1909.
Latest Update 22 May 2019: Added new inbox app for Payments available in SAP S/4HANA 1809 FPS02
Latest Updates: Added links and new My Inbox sub apps available as of SAP S/4HANA 1809, and updated link to the FES Deployment Recommendations. Note that embedded and hub are possible for S/4HANA so please check the specifics - the configuration steps are the same in both scenarios.
Latest Updates: Added links and new My Inbox sub apps available as of SAP S/4HANA 1709
While activating most SAP Fiori apps in SAP S/4HANA is a simple matter of activating the app’s ICF node and OData Service(s) on the Fiori Frontend Server, SAP Fiori My Inbox is something of a special case that requires more explanation. Much of this is similar to Fiori My Inbox on predecessor platforms, but there are some special additions with the introduction of S/4HANA 1610. This blog explains how to configure SAP Fiori My Inbox. In the next blog we look at the extensibility options that come with My Inbox as of SAP S/4HANA 1610.
So you want to activate SAP Fiori My Inbox on SAP S/4HANA 1610 or above? Of course you do! It’s arguably the most requested app in the entire SAP Fiori Apps reference library. Of course, if you’ve activated Fiori My Inbox before on Business Suite, Suite on HANA or SAP S/4HANA 1511 you may think you’ve seen it all before. But don’t be misled – SAP S/4HANA 1610 and above provides some additional options worth knowing. And even if you have done this before, it’s easy to miss some of the recent improvements.
Tip: You will find more information in the General Functions for Key Users guide, section Business Workflow for your SAP S/4HANA version, and in the app documentation for My Inbox in the SAP S/4HANA product page for your SAP S/4HANA version.
Tip: Some of the extension options are also covered in more depth in the Fiori My Inbox wiki.
What we will cover:
In part 2 we will look at:
Our assumptions and out of scope items:
We will use SAP Business Workflow examples in this blog as that is the more common scenario for customers transitioning to SAP S/4HANA from predecessor SAP platforms, and is currently the default workflow environment provided in the SAP S/4HANA core server.
Let’s begin.
The pre-requisites are:
First and foremost SAP Fiori My Inbox is a workflow inbox. That means our first prerequisites are simply:
SAP delivers SAP Fiori My Inbox with 2 workflow providers: SAP Business Workflow and BPM.
For example, if we want to use SAP Business Workflow as our workflow provider, we need someone with workflow skills to confirm:
Tip: We find out which workflow ids we need activated in the app’s documentation or sometimes in SAP Notes such as SAP Note 2371741 - Additional Information for approval of Purchasing Documents within S/4HANA
Once again it’s good to check the documentation and SAP Notes for hints on what’s needed to assign workflow agents to the workflows in scope. If you are using Best Practice Guides also check the Best Practice Guide for that functional scope area.
We should also check that the Fiori My Inbox modules are installed on the Fiori Frontend Server and SAP S/4HANA core Server. Even though these are part of the standard SAP S/4HANA install, we should confirm the support packs versions installed, as one of our first steps is to make sure that the My Inbox installation is in the best possible state.
VERY IMPORTANT: SAP Fiori My Inbox is arguably the most requested, most used, and therefore most tested Fiori apps in the entire Fiori Apps Library. There is no business value in rediscovering issues that have already been discovered and resolved by other customers. So before we begin configuration we should check the Fiori Apps Library and the SAP Support Launchpad to find and apply the latest support notes for Fiori My Inbox relevant to our landscape.
The version of SAP Fiori My Inbox used in SAP S/4HANA is Fiori My Inbox 2.0.
IMPORTANT: It is important when configuring that only Fiori My Inbox version 2.0 requirements are applied. Activating older versions can interfere and cause unpredictable behaviours in My Inbox.
Patches required to support the Task Gateway services that are the foundation of My Inbox capabilities are summarized in Note 2221151 - Release Information note for SAP Fiori My Inbox 2.0
There is also a specific software installation module for My Inbox UIX01CA1 that is applied to the Fiori Frontend Server. This module holds the Fiori My Inbox User Interfaces themselves.
Make sure this module is likewise patched to the best available level. Patches and the changes they implement are listed in SAP Notes such as 2365275 - My Inbox 2.0 SP03 Patch (2.2.10)
This is the first of the SAP S/4HANA 1610 and higher specifics. With SAP S/4HANA 1610 and higher a number of sub apps are delivered for Fiori My Inbox. These sub apps provide delivered task-specific detail displays for standard workflows. Even if you aren’t using a standard workflow, these are great as a starting point for your own task-specific extensions.
NOTE: Be careful not to assume that predecessor Fiori Approval apps still apply in SAP S/4HANA. Many of these have been moved to Fiori My Inbox, e.g. Note 2211398 - MM-Transition to S/4: Fiori Apps
Current sub apps include:
From SAP S/4HANA 2022:
No new apps but these apps have been updated
From SAP S/4HANA 2021:
From SAP S/4HANA 2020 FPS01
From SAP S/4HANA 2020
From SAP S/4HANA 1909
From SAP S/4HANA 1809
From SAP S/4HANA 1709
From SAP S/4HANA 1610 and above
Sub apps for S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition only include:
While you can’t use SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition sub apps directly in an SAP S/4HANA On-Premise system, they can be a starting point for ideas for your own custom task-specific extensions.
In addition if you wish to use the new Flexible Workflow for SAP S/4HANA to create workflows for My Inbox you will also need to activate the following apps:
Find out more about the new flexible workflow in the SAP Help Portal > General Functions for key users guide for your SAP S/4HANA version, section Manage Workflows
You will also find a comparison in this useful blog SAP S/4HANA Flexible Workflow Overview and comparison with SAP Business Workflow and a video guide at SAP HANA Academy - SAP S/4HANA RIG: Adapting Workflows in S/4HANA
Under the covers, SAP Fiori My Inbox uses the SAP Gateway “Task Gateway” services to gather, present and action work. In our example we will focus on a single S/4HANA Core system as this is the default scenario for most customers.
However it is worth noting that we can use SAP Fiori My Inbox to show multiple work items from multiple workflow providers hosted in multiple systems. It’s important to understand this multi-provider approach, as it drives much of the configuration and extension approaches for Fiori My Inbox. For example we might have a SAP S/4HANA core with a SAP BPM system and an older SAP SRM server in our landscape, and want to bring all work items in one place.
There are 4 steps to configuring Fiori My Inbox:
SAP Fiori My Inbox needs to be able to extract work items from multiple providers. To do this My Inbox needs not just a System Alias and RFC Destination, it needs to know the system id and client to be used for the task gateway service itself. As the Task Gateway runs in the Fiori Frontend Server, this System Alias is created in the Fiori Frontend Server and points to the SAP S/4HANA core, i.e. to the workflow provider.
We can reuse an existing RFC destination, but its best to create a specific System Alias just for My Inbox with the suffix _PGW, e.g. S4H100_PGW. This is done in the IMG (transaction SPRO). You can see the path in this image:
Instructions for Task Gateway Service Configuration can be found in the SAP Gateway Documentation.
Like all SAP Fiori Apps, SAP Fiori My Inbox needs to be activated in the Fiori Frontend Server. So as usual we need to:
IMPORTANT: Please note the recommendation for SAP S/4HANA solution for activation is to use the relevant activation Task Lists for greater efficiency, i.e. Rapid content activation (if using embedded mode and standard SAP Business Roles) or the Fiori launchpad content manager (if using hub mode or custom Business Roles).
As usual these details can be found in the SAP Fiori Apps reference library.
The ICF node is /sap/bc/ui5_ui5/sap/ca_fiori_inbox and can be activated using the Task Manager (transaction STC01) with task list SAP_BASIS_ACTIVATE_ICF_NODES in the same way we activate the ICF node for any other Fiori App.
The main difference to other Fiori Apps comes when we activate the OData Service which is /IWPGW/TASKPROCESSING version 002. Like other Fiori Apps we can activate this using the Task Manager (transaction STC01) with task list SAP_GATEWAY_ACTIVATE_ODATA_SERV.
However we need to be especially careful to use the _PGW system alias, i.e. do NOT use the usual system alias with suffix _RFC that is used for other Fiori Apps. The reason for the _PGW system alias is to assign the OData Service to the special Task Gateway services for work item extraction.
Sub apps often have their own OData Services which need to be activated. Again, it’s best to check the app’s documentation in the SAP Fiori Apps reference library and SAP S/4HANA Product Assistance.
Depending on which task-specific configuration is being used, the SAP S/4HANA core system may need to build launch URLs and other details required to be passed back to the Task Gateway services. To facilitate this we need a system alias that points back to the SAP S/4HANA Core system and it needs to be marked with the system id and client.
This system alias in the SAP S/4HANA core needs to reference the System ID and Client listed in the _PGW system alias used in the Fiori Frontend Server. Example in the screenshot below:
There are two (2) main approaches when positioning Fiori My Inbox as a tile in the Fiori Launchpad. We can:
Which options to provide is both a business process and a user experience decision. SAP delivers both options and it’s possible to provide both options in parallel as part of a user’s Launchpad – just make sure the tile descriptions are clear to avoid confusion.
Don’t forget that it’s not just managers and other approvers who need My Inbox. If we want employees to respond to a rejected request then that may be done via My Inbox as well. It all comes down to which tasks we want to provide to which users as work items.
It’s also worth discussing whether these users typically in a single business role or more likely to be in multiple business roles. Where users frequently handle multiple business roles they are typically more likely to want all their work in one inbox.
There’s also a best of both worlds option. When we give users the All Items tile, we also have the option to authorize them to create and save their own filter combinations to their Launchpad.
Whether we are using an All Items or Scenario specific Inbox depends on the parameters for the Tile in the Tile Catalog.
An All Items tile is provided in the Tile Catalog SAP_TC_CA_MYINBOX. You can see the allitems=true parameter in the screenshot below:
If we do want to configure a scenario specific inbox, we need to know what tasks to include for what workflows in our scenario. These are often provided as part of the SAP S/4HANA documentation.
For example the following are scenarios including in the Environmental Health and Safety:
You can also create Scenario Specific inbox tiles for other workflow scenarios such as
The Scenario is applied to the tile configuration using the parameter scenarioId -as with this example from Tile Catalog SAP_TC_EHS_HS_COMMON showing the parameter scenarioId=EHS_HS_HAZMAT
The Scenario ID defines the list of tasks to be included in the Scenario Specific Inbox. In other words the name of the Scenario ID must match that defined in configuration in the IMG in the Fiori Frontend Server. We see where the Scenario Definition is found in the Task Gateway section of the IMG in this example:
The next example shows the exactly matching Scenario Definition configuration for the Scenario ID EHS_HS_HAZMAT. In the Task Definition of the Scenario we list the Task Ids that are included in the Scenario.
In part 2, we look at the Task-specific Configuration and Extension Options for S/4HANA.
You’ll find much more on our SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA wiki
Brought to you by the S/4HANA RIG
Latest Update October 2021: Added new sub apps available from SAP S/4HANA 2021 On-Premise and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition, plus updated the list for 2020, 1909, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition. Plus noted there is a new Flexible Workflow Administration app!
Latest Update October 2020: Added new sub app available from SAP S/4HANA 2020 and for the My Inbox scenario for Plant Maintenance, Quality Management and Bank Account Management.
Latest Update 29 April 2020: Added 2 new apps available from SAP S/4HANA 1909 FPS01. SAP Fiori app ids included to make identification easier. Also updated the references as Getting the Good guides blog has been retired. Also added a section on the related flexible workflow apps. Removed Marketing Approvals app for SAP S/4HANA Cloud which has been deprecated.
Latest Update 02 Oct 2019: Added new inbox app for Purchase Order Accruals available from SAP S/4HANA 1909.
Latest Update 22 May 2019: Added new inbox app for Payments available in SAP S/4HANA 1809 FPS02
Latest Updates: Added links and new My Inbox sub apps available as of SAP S/4HANA 1809, and updated link to the FES Deployment Recommendations. Note that embedded and hub are possible for S/4HANA so please check the specifics - the configuration steps are the same in both scenarios.
Latest Updates: Added links and new My Inbox sub apps available as of SAP S/4HANA 1709
While activating most SAP Fiori apps in SAP S/4HANA is a simple matter of activating the app’s ICF node and OData Service(s) on the Fiori Frontend Server, SAP Fiori My Inbox is something of a special case that requires more explanation. Much of this is similar to Fiori My Inbox on predecessor platforms, but there are some special additions with the introduction of S/4HANA 1610. This blog explains how to configure SAP Fiori My Inbox. In the next blog we look at the extensibility options that come with My Inbox as of SAP S/4HANA 1610.
So you want to activate SAP Fiori My Inbox on SAP S/4HANA 1610 or above? Of course you do! It’s arguably the most requested app in the entire SAP Fiori Apps reference library. Of course, if you’ve activated Fiori My Inbox before on Business Suite, Suite on HANA or SAP S/4HANA 1511 you may think you’ve seen it all before. But don’t be misled – SAP S/4HANA 1610 and above provides some additional options worth knowing. And even if you have done this before, it’s easy to miss some of the recent improvements.
Tip: You will find more information in the General Functions for Key Users guide, section Business Workflow for your SAP S/4HANA version, and in the app documentation for My Inbox in the SAP S/4HANA product page for your SAP S/4HANA version.
Tip: Some of the extension options are also covered in more depth in the Fiori My Inbox wiki.
What we will cover:
- Prerequisites for Fiori My Inbox
- Basic Fiori My Inbox Configuration in S/4HANA
- When to use the All Items or Scenario Specific Approaches
In part 2 we will look at:
- Task-specific extension configuration and options
- General extension options
- My Inbox in action – how to validate and test my inbox
Our assumptions and out of scope items:
- We will assume that our SAP S/4HANA 1610 pr above is already installed including any add-on modules required
- We will assume that we are running S/4HANA 1610 or above with Fiori Frontend Server in either Embedded or Hub mode
- Note: Check the FES Deployment Recommendations for S/4HANA to confirm which one applies to your scenario.
- We will assume that other Fiori apps and other App types are already activated
- We will not cover authorizations – these behave much the same as for any other app and for workflow
- We will not cover the inclusion of Fiori My Inbox in Tile Catalogs or Tile Groups – these behave the same as for any other app
- We will not cover creation of workflow providers – these are already covered in the blog How to Implement an OData Provider for My Inbox
- We will not cover integration of Cloud workflow providers (that's for a future blog)
- We will not provide a guide to creating task-specific extensions using annotations (also a future blog) – however we will cover how such extensions are configured for use in My Inbox
We will use SAP Business Workflow examples in this blog as that is the more common scenario for customers transitioning to SAP S/4HANA from predecessor SAP platforms, and is currently the default workflow environment provided in the SAP S/4HANA core server.
Let’s begin.
Pre-requisites for SAP Fiori My Inbox app
The pre-requisites are:
- Active work items in an active workflow environment
- Up-to-date installation of SAP Fiori My Inbox app
- All sub apps in scope installed
Active work items in an active workflow environment
First and foremost SAP Fiori My Inbox is a workflow inbox. That means our first prerequisites are simply:
- We must have an active workflow environment
- We must have one or more active workflows
- We must have one or more work items assigned to a workflow agent, i.e. our test userid
SAP delivers SAP Fiori My Inbox with 2 workflow providers: SAP Business Workflow and BPM.
For example, if we want to use SAP Business Workflow as our workflow provider, we need someone with workflow skills to confirm:
- In the S/4HANA Core server, our workflow environment is activated for runtime usage. We can check this in transaction SWU3.
- In the S/4HANA Core server, one or more workflows must be active. It’s a good idea to check that all the workflows in scope are active. We can check whether the workflow id is active in transaction SWETYPV, i.e. the Type Linkage Activate checkbox is checked.
- In the S/4HANA Core server, one or more work items has been created and assigned to a workflow agent, our test user id. We can check this in transaction SWI1.
Tip: We find out which workflow ids we need activated in the app’s documentation or sometimes in SAP Notes such as SAP Note 2371741 - Additional Information for approval of Purchasing Documents within S/4HANA
Once again it’s good to check the documentation and SAP Notes for hints on what’s needed to assign workflow agents to the workflows in scope. If you are using Best Practice Guides also check the Best Practice Guide for that functional scope area.
Up-to-date installation of SAP Fiori My Inbox
We should also check that the Fiori My Inbox modules are installed on the Fiori Frontend Server and SAP S/4HANA core Server. Even though these are part of the standard SAP S/4HANA install, we should confirm the support packs versions installed, as one of our first steps is to make sure that the My Inbox installation is in the best possible state.
VERY IMPORTANT: SAP Fiori My Inbox is arguably the most requested, most used, and therefore most tested Fiori apps in the entire Fiori Apps Library. There is no business value in rediscovering issues that have already been discovered and resolved by other customers. So before we begin configuration we should check the Fiori Apps Library and the SAP Support Launchpad to find and apply the latest support notes for Fiori My Inbox relevant to our landscape.
The version of SAP Fiori My Inbox used in SAP S/4HANA is Fiori My Inbox 2.0.
IMPORTANT: It is important when configuring that only Fiori My Inbox version 2.0 requirements are applied. Activating older versions can interfere and cause unpredictable behaviours in My Inbox.
Patches required to support the Task Gateway services that are the foundation of My Inbox capabilities are summarized in Note 2221151 - Release Information note for SAP Fiori My Inbox 2.0
There is also a specific software installation module for My Inbox UIX01CA1 that is applied to the Fiori Frontend Server. This module holds the Fiori My Inbox User Interfaces themselves.
Make sure this module is likewise patched to the best available level. Patches and the changes they implement are listed in SAP Notes such as 2365275 - My Inbox 2.0 SP03 Patch (2.2.10)
All sub apps in scope installed
This is the first of the SAP S/4HANA 1610 and higher specifics. With SAP S/4HANA 1610 and higher a number of sub apps are delivered for Fiori My Inbox. These sub apps provide delivered task-specific detail displays for standard workflows. Even if you aren’t using a standard workflow, these are great as a starting point for your own task-specific extensions.
NOTE: Be careful not to assume that predecessor Fiori Approval apps still apply in SAP S/4HANA. Many of these have been moved to Fiori My Inbox, e.g. Note 2211398 - MM-Transition to S/4: Fiori Apps
Current sub apps include:
From SAP S/4HANA 2022:
No new apps but these apps have been updated
From SAP S/4HANA 2021:
- F5932 My Inbox - Approve Awarding Scenario
- F5934 My Inbox - Approve Sourcing Project
- F6012 My Inbox Sales Documents
- F5444 My Inbox for Payment Requisitions
- F5764 Verify Intercompany Variance Adjmt
From SAP S/4HANA 2020 FPS01
From SAP S/4HANA 2020
- F5043 My Inbox - Approve Preliminary Billing Documents
- F5044 My Inbox - Approve Sales Quotations
- F5042 My Inbox - Approve Credit Memo Requests
- F5053 My Inbox - Approve Customer Returns
- F5041 My Inbox - Approve Sales Orders
From SAP S/4HANA 1909
- F3646 Process Inbox (Fiori 2.0) (available as of 1909 FPS01)
- F3517 My Inbox - Review Purchase Order Accruals
- F4076 Routing Signoff Task
From SAP S/4HANA 1809
- F3705 Payment Factory Component for My Inbox (available as of 1809 FPS02)
From SAP S/4HANA 1709
- F2953 My Inbox - Maintenance Management (available as of 1709 FPS01)
- F3099 Approve Time Events (Fiori 2.0) (available as of 1709 FPS01)
- F2286 Earmarked Funds: Approval
- F2584 My Inbox - Approve Leave Requests (Version 3/Fiori 2.0)
- F2446 My Inbox – Approve Service Entry Sheets
- F2797 My Inbox for Manage Bank Accounts
- F2728 Verify General Journal Entries for Processor (Inbox)
- F2729 Verify General Journal Entries for Processor (Outbox)
From SAP S/4HANA 1610 and above
- F0400A My Inbox – Approve Purchase Contracts
- F0402A My Inbox – Approve Purchase Order
- F0401A My Inbox – Approve Purchase Requisitions
- F0545A My Inbox – Approve Supplier Invoice
- F0410A My Inbox – Approve Travel Expenses
- F0411A My Inbox – Approve Travel Requests
Sub apps for S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition only include:
- F5136 My Inbox for FI-CA
- F5331 My Inbox for Legal Contract
- F5121 My Inbox for Payment Items (China)
- F4546 My Inbox-Process Rejected Payments
- F3328 My Inbox - Approve Timesheets
While you can’t use SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition sub apps directly in an SAP S/4HANA On-Premise system, they can be a starting point for ideas for your own custom task-specific extensions.
In addition if you wish to use the new Flexible Workflow for SAP S/4HANA to create workflows for My Inbox you will also need to activate the following apps:
- F5343 Flexible Workflow Administration (available from SAP S/4HANA 2021)
- F3932 Manage Teams and Responsibilities for General Journal Entry Verification (available since SAP S/4HANA 1909)
- F3067 Manage Workflow Scenarios (available since SAP S/4HANA 1809)
- F2787 Manage Workflow Templates (available since SAP S/4HANA 1809)
- F2412 Manage Teams and Responsibilities (available since SAP S/4HANA 1709)
- F2190 Manage Workflows (available since SAP S/4HANA 1610)
Find out more about the new flexible workflow in the SAP Help Portal > General Functions for key users guide for your SAP S/4HANA version, section Manage Workflows
You will also find a comparison in this useful blog SAP S/4HANA Flexible Workflow Overview and comparison with SAP Business Workflow and a video guide at SAP HANA Academy - SAP S/4HANA RIG: Adapting Workflows in S/4HANA
Basic SAP Fiori My Inbox Configuration in SAP S/4HANA
Under the covers, SAP Fiori My Inbox uses the SAP Gateway “Task Gateway” services to gather, present and action work. In our example we will focus on a single S/4HANA Core system as this is the default scenario for most customers.
However it is worth noting that we can use SAP Fiori My Inbox to show multiple work items from multiple workflow providers hosted in multiple systems. It’s important to understand this multi-provider approach, as it drives much of the configuration and extension approaches for Fiori My Inbox. For example we might have a SAP S/4HANA core with a SAP BPM system and an older SAP SRM server in our landscape, and want to bring all work items in one place.
There are 4 steps to configuring Fiori My Inbox:
- Create System Connections for the Task Gateway
- Activate the Task Gateway services
- Activate the Fiori My Inbox app
- Activate sub apps in scope
Create system connections for the Task Gateway
SAP Fiori My Inbox needs to be able to extract work items from multiple providers. To do this My Inbox needs not just a System Alias and RFC Destination, it needs to know the system id and client to be used for the task gateway service itself. As the Task Gateway runs in the Fiori Frontend Server, this System Alias is created in the Fiori Frontend Server and points to the SAP S/4HANA core, i.e. to the workflow provider.
We can reuse an existing RFC destination, but its best to create a specific System Alias just for My Inbox with the suffix _PGW, e.g. S4H100_PGW. This is done in the IMG (transaction SPRO). You can see the path in this image:
Instructions for Task Gateway Service Configuration can be found in the SAP Gateway Documentation.
Activate the Task Gateway Services
Like all SAP Fiori Apps, SAP Fiori My Inbox needs to be activated in the Fiori Frontend Server. So as usual we need to:
- Activate the ICF node that is the app’s entry point
- Activate the OData Service(s) that provide data content to the app
IMPORTANT: Please note the recommendation for SAP S/4HANA solution for activation is to use the relevant activation Task Lists for greater efficiency, i.e. Rapid content activation (if using embedded mode and standard SAP Business Roles) or the Fiori launchpad content manager (if using hub mode or custom Business Roles).
As usual these details can be found in the SAP Fiori Apps reference library.
The ICF node is /sap/bc/ui5_ui5/sap/ca_fiori_inbox and can be activated using the Task Manager (transaction STC01) with task list SAP_BASIS_ACTIVATE_ICF_NODES in the same way we activate the ICF node for any other Fiori App.
The main difference to other Fiori Apps comes when we activate the OData Service which is /IWPGW/TASKPROCESSING version 002. Like other Fiori Apps we can activate this using the Task Manager (transaction STC01) with task list SAP_GATEWAY_ACTIVATE_ODATA_SERV.
However we need to be especially careful to use the _PGW system alias, i.e. do NOT use the usual system alias with suffix _RFC that is used for other Fiori Apps. The reason for the _PGW system alias is to assign the OData Service to the special Task Gateway services for work item extraction.
Activate sub apps in scope
Sub apps often have their own OData Services which need to be activated. Again, it’s best to check the app’s documentation in the SAP Fiori Apps reference library and SAP S/4HANA Product Assistance.
Assign the System Alias in the S/4HANA Core
Depending on which task-specific configuration is being used, the SAP S/4HANA core system may need to build launch URLs and other details required to be passed back to the Task Gateway services. To facilitate this we need a system alias that points back to the SAP S/4HANA Core system and it needs to be marked with the system id and client.
This system alias in the SAP S/4HANA core needs to reference the System ID and Client listed in the _PGW system alias used in the Fiori Frontend Server. Example in the screenshot below:
All Item or Scenario Specific Inbox Approaches
There are two (2) main approaches when positioning Fiori My Inbox as a tile in the Fiori Launchpad. We can:
- Provide a single “All Items” tile that gathers all work items from all workflow providers for that user
- Provide one or more filtered scenario specific tiles that gathers specific work items based on a selected tasks for a specific business role
Which options to provide is both a business process and a user experience decision. SAP delivers both options and it’s possible to provide both options in parallel as part of a user’s Launchpad – just make sure the tile descriptions are clear to avoid confusion.
Don’t forget that it’s not just managers and other approvers who need My Inbox. If we want employees to respond to a rejected request then that may be done via My Inbox as well. It all comes down to which tasks we want to provide to which users as work items.
It’s also worth discussing whether these users typically in a single business role or more likely to be in multiple business roles. Where users frequently handle multiple business roles they are typically more likely to want all their work in one inbox.
There’s also a best of both worlds option. When we give users the All Items tile, we also have the option to authorize them to create and save their own filter combinations to their Launchpad.
Whether we are using an All Items or Scenario specific Inbox depends on the parameters for the Tile in the Tile Catalog.
An All Items tile is provided in the Tile Catalog SAP_TC_CA_MYINBOX. You can see the allitems=true parameter in the screenshot below:
Configuring a Scenario Specific Inbox
If we do want to configure a scenario specific inbox, we need to know what tasks to include for what workflows in our scenario. These are often provided as part of the SAP S/4HANA documentation.
For example the following are scenarios including in the Environmental Health and Safety:
| Documentation Title | Scenario ID |
| Inbox Configuration for Environment Management | EHS_ENV_MNGR |
| Inbox Configuration for Hazardous Materials Management | EHS_HS_HAZMAT |
| Inbox Configuration for Industrial Hygiene | EHS_HS_IH |
| Inbox Configuration for Incident Management | EHS_INCIDENT |
You can also create Scenario Specific inbox tiles for other workflow scenarios such as
- My Inbox implementation for SAP Plant Maintenance
- My Inbox implementation for Quality Management
- My Inbox for Bank Accounts
The Scenario is applied to the tile configuration using the parameter scenarioId -as with this example from Tile Catalog SAP_TC_EHS_HS_COMMON showing the parameter scenarioId=EHS_HS_HAZMAT
The Scenario ID defines the list of tasks to be included in the Scenario Specific Inbox. In other words the name of the Scenario ID must match that defined in configuration in the IMG in the Fiori Frontend Server. We see where the Scenario Definition is found in the Task Gateway section of the IMG in this example:
The next example shows the exactly matching Scenario Definition configuration for the Scenario ID EHS_HS_HAZMAT. In the Task Definition of the Scenario we list the Task Ids that are included in the Scenario.
From Inbox to Tasks
In part 2, we look at the Task-specific Configuration and Extension Options for S/4HANA.
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You’ll find much more on our SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA wiki
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