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Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart

SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA – Notification Center – Part 1 – Activation

Latest update March 2021: Changed the title to SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA to fit with other SAP S/4HANA RIG blogs.

Latest Update 27.02.2020: Included notifications for Situation Handling from SAP S/4HANA 1909. All reference links updated to SAP S/4HANA 1909. Notifications examples updated for SAP Fiori 3 / SAP S/4HANA 1909

Latest Update: Links updated for SAP S/4HANA 1809. Also please note that notifications can also be provided by SAP CoPilot as of SAP S/4HANA 1709 FPS01, and subscribed SAP Smart Business threshold violation alerts as of SAP S/4HANA 1809.

The newest and for some people the most long-awaited features of S/4HANA and Fiori 2.0 is the Notification Center.  The ability to immediately notify someone of an action requiring their attention goes to the heart of typical Digital Transformation Goals for User Experience, such as Insight to Action and Processing by Exception.

This blog explains how to turn on the Notification Center, explains some general principles, and shows how to configure Workflow Notifications to appear in the Notification Center – SAP Business Workflow being the first Notification Provider released with S/4HANA 1610 and above. Finally we introduce how end users can work with and personalize the Notification Center.

Every time I’ve talked to customers and partners about Fiori 2.0, people always ask me about notifications.  It’s been consistently one of the top long-awaited features of Fiori 2.0. So when you are on S/4HANA 1610 – and therefore Fiori 2.0 – of course you want to turn it on and try it out.

Notifications as they appear in the Notification viewport of the Fiori Launchpad

Image Source: SAP

What we will cover in Part 1 – Activation:

  • Notification Concepts
  • Prerequisites for Fiori Notification Center
  • Enabling Notifications in the Fiori Launchpad
  • Enabling the Notification Hub

What we will cover in Part 2 – Providing Notifications:

  • Enabling the Notification Provider – using SAP Business Workflow as our example
  • Making the most of Notifications – what your end users need to know

Note: Notifications can also be provided from:

Our assumptions:

  • We will assume that we are running S/4HANA 1610 or above with Fiori Frontend Server in Hub mode or SAP S/4HANA 1709 or above with Fiori Frontend Server in embedded mode.
    • Note that the recommendations for embedded vs hub mode were changed as of December 2017.  You can find more information on the latest Fiori Deployment Recommendations and Options.
    • In practice, the configuration is much the same – the only difference is the target of your RFC destination behind your System Alias.
      • Note: Personally I find it useful to use a well defined logical system alias name so that the direction of information flow is always clear. 
  • Because we are using SAP Business Workflow as an example, we will assume that Fiori My Inbox is already activated including any Task-Specific extensions. Note: We need this because when we click on a notification we want it to take us to the matching task in Fiori My Inbox.

Tip: If you haven’t yet set up Fiori My Inbox you might like to try these blogs:

Leading S/4HANA UX – Fiori My Inbox – Part 1 – Activation

Leading S/4HANA UX – Fiori My Inbox – Part 2 – Task-Specific Options

And out of scope items:

  • Creating a Notification Provider – for that try the SAP Gateway Foundation documentation re Develop Notification Provider for your SAP S/4HANA version.

We will use SAP Business Workflow examples in this blog as that is the more common scenario for customers transitioning to S/4HANA from predecessor SAP platforms, and is the default workflow environment provided in the S/4HANA core server from 1610 and above.

NOTE: The screenshots in this blog are based on a S/4HANA 1610, Fully Activated Appliance trial system in the Cloud Appliance Library.  You can create your own trial system if you want to try activating the Notification Center for yourself.  Find the latest available S/4HANA trial systems on the S/4HANA Trial landing page.

Let’s begin.

Notification Concepts

There are only a few concepts to understand when activating notifications. These are:

  • Notification Center – the area in the Fiori Launchpad where notifications are displayed
  • Notification Hub – Collects notifications to be shown in the Notification Center
  • Notification Provider – Provides notification content to the Notification Hub

While you only need one Notification Center and one Notification Hub, there can be many providers. SAP Business Workflow can provide notifications. You can expect that providing notifications is in the roadmap of several Cloud and On-Premise SAP solutions.

To enable notifications you need to:

  • Enable the Notification Center in the Fiori Launchpad
  • Activate the Notification Hub, i.e. the SAP Gateway Notification Channel
  • Activate notifications from a Notification Provider – we’ll use SAP Business Workflow as an example

Lastly you want to make sure your users know how to make the most of the Notification Center so we’ll point to the user guides that will explain general notification behaviour and personalization options.

Prerequisites for Notification Center

The Notification Center is part of the Fiori Launchpad in Fiori 2.0.

This means you must have Fiori Launchpad that supports Fiori 2.0,  such as Fiori Frontend Server 3.0 or above. Always check the SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA Release Information Note for your SAP S/4HANA version to check which Fiori Frontend Server is available.

Note: Fiori Frontend Server 5.0 must be used by SAP S/4HANA 1809 and can be used by SAP S/4HANA 1709 SPS03.

Note: Fiori Frontend Server 3.0 is required for S/4HANA 1610 and not available for S/4HANA 1511.

NOTE: Fiori 2.0 is also available from S/4HANA Cloud 1608.

If you are using an on-premise SAP Gateway you must be on SAP NetWeaver version 7.51 or above. If you are using SAP S/4HANA, please make sure you always refer to the documenation for your SAP S/4HANA version.  If you are NOT using SAP S/4HANA please make sure you refer to the correct documentation for your ABAP Platform or NetWeaver version.

The SAP Gateway provides:

  • Fiori Launchpad
  • Notification Hub

You also need a Notification Provider. For example, from S/4HANA 1610, the S/4HANA system acts as a Notification Provider, e.g. for SAP Business Workflow Notifications.

Enabling the Notification Center in the Fiori Launchpad

The Notification Center needs to be enabled in the Fiori Launchpad in your Fiori Frontend Server.  When you install S/4HANA 1610 or above, the Fiori Launchpad is configured to show the Notification Center by default.

If for any reason you want to defer turning on Notifications until a later time, you will need to know how to find this configuration and change it.  The configuration sits in the FioriLaunchpad.html file which is part of the BSP Application /UI2/USHELL that controls the Fiori Launchpad. You can find the BSP application using transaction SE80.

The snippet that contains the parameters for Notifications looks like this.

"Notifications": {
    "config": {
        "enabled": true,
        "serviceUrl": "/sap/opu/odata4/iwngw/notification/default/iwngw/notification_srv/0001",
        "webSocketUrl": "/sap/bc/apc/iwngw/notification_push_apc",
        "pollingIntervalInSeconds": 30
               }

Usually the only parameter you will ever need to change is:
Parameter Value
enabled true (Notification Center is shown) or false (hide the Notification Center)

Tip: The FioriLaunchpad.html file is delivered by SAP. You should avoid changing this file directly, your changes might be overwritten when you upgrade or update your system to a new release or support package. During the upgrade or update, you will need to adjust it again. Instead consult the Fiori Launchpad Administration Guide for your SAP S/4HANA version for recommended options on how to Configure Launchpad Settings.

You can find more information on the other notification parameters in the official SAP documentation for the Fiori Launchpad – Enabling Notifications in the Launchpad.

Enabling the Notification Hub

The Notification Hub for S/4HANA 1610 or above is the SAP Gateway Notification Channel sited in the Fiori Frontend Server. Activating the SAP Gateway Notification Channel includes:

  • Activate the Notification OData Service
  • Configure the Web Socket channel

Tip: Even though the Notification Center is turned on by default in S/4HANA 1610, nothing terrible happens if you haven’t yet activated the Notification Channel.  However you might notice some rather repetitive error messages in the Console of their Web Browser Developer Tools complaining that the notification OData service is not available.

The SAP Help documentation for setting up the Notification Channel is found in the SAP Gateway Foundation documentation in the section Notification Channel. Always make sure you refer to the correct version of the help for your SAP S/4HANA version.

You find all the steps you need in the IMG (transaction SPRO) under SAP NetWeaver > Notification Channel Hub.

Menu path to Notification Channel Hub configuration in the IMG

Activate the Notification OData Service

This is one of the first OData version 4 services to be released. You activate this service in the new OData version 4 transaction /IWFND/V4_ADMIN – and not the predecessor transaction /IWFND/MAINT_SERVICE that you use to activate OData version 2 services.

You can also activate the service in the IMG (transaction SPRO) section Publish the Notification OData Service in the Configuration section for the Notification Channel Hub.

Publish the service group /IWNGW/NOTIFICATION in System Alias LOCAL – i.e. the service will run in the SAP Gateway. You should then see the OData version 4 service /IWNGW/NOTIFICATION_SRV is active in the Available Services section.

Your activated service should look like this:

Activated OData version 4 Notification Service

Activate the ABAP Push Channel

Notifications use an ABAP Push Channel to push notifications to the Fiori Launchpad.  The recommended approach is to use a Web Socket connection for this purpose.

You can also activate the Web Socket in the IMG (transaction SPRO) section Manage Web Socket Endpoint in the Configuration section for the Notification Channel Hub, or just go directly to transaction SICF.

The service name is /default_host/sap/bc/apc/iwngw/notification_push_apc

Add the SAP_WEBSOCKET channel to the list of Push Channels supported by in the IMG section Activate and Maintain Push Channels.

Activated SAP_WEBSOCKET channel

As always after changing configuration settings, make sure you clear the cache using IMG section Clean Up MetaData and Data Cache or transaction /IWNGW/H_CLEAR_CACHE.

Tip:  To regularly clear the notification data cache, check the notification clean-up utility job /IWFND/NOTIFICATION_CLEANUP is active in transaction SJOBREPO.

Testing the Notification Hub

Your notification users and administrators need certain permissions. The Notification Channel User Roles and Authorizations are listed in the SAP Gateway Foundation documentation. Always check you are using the correct version of the help for your SAP S/4HANA version.

To check your notification hub is working you can use the Demo Content provided for this purposes.  Follow the instructions and then run transaction /IWNGW/BEP_DEMO to send a demonstration notification.

This will let you create some simple example notifications like these:

Image source: SAP Fiori launchpad > User Guide for SAP S/4HANA 1909 

NOTE: For comparison with Fiori 2.0, here are examples of notifications in SAP S/4HANA 1809 and lower releases.

Image source: SAP Fiori launchpad > User Guide for SAP S/4HANA 1809

If you haven’t used ABAP Channels before, you can find more information on ABAP Channels in the blog Introduction to ABAP Channels.

And so to Part 2 – Providing Notifications

In Part 2 – Providing Notifications we’ll look at how to turn on notifications for SAP Business Workflow and give a brief summary what your users will need to know to make the most out of Notifications.

Becoming a SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA guru

You’ll find much more on our SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA wiki

Brought to you by the S/4HANA RIG

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      39 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Mike Doyle
      Mike Doyle

      Thanks Jocelyn for another awesome blog. It will make a great reference to get people started. Now I just need to work out how to turn notifications on in the cloud portal launchpad (HCP). I’m guessing they will add something to the configuration cockpit, but I don’t see it yet…

      Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart
      Jocelyn Dart
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Mike

      If you are not seeing the option in the Site Settings Editor and you are definitely on Fiori 2.0 then I would suggest raise a support message.

       

      Rgds

      Jocelyn

      Author's profile photo Mike Doyle
      Mike Doyle

      Mystery solved, Jocelyn.  If you set the UI5 version to 1.44 then the 'Notifications Area' option is enabled (in the Fiori Configuration Cockpit).  With 1.42 you get a '2.0' launchpad but no option to include notifications.

       

      Author's profile photo Masayuki Sekihara
      Masayuki Sekihara

      Nice blog. This helps consultants to implement the notification center. Customers are excited about using S/4HANA with Fiori 2.0.

      Author's profile photo Ankur Gokhale
      Ankur Gokhale

      Jocelyn,

      Thanks for sharing, I am unable to receive notifications at my end even after making configuratios. I am facing this issue from last 16 days and still things have not yet solved. The steps that your document mentions have been implemented in my Demo21 system but still no luck.

      Ref – https://answers.sap.com/questions/117473/s4-hana-1610-fiori-20-notifications-are-not-appear.html

      Thanks

      Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart
      Jocelyn Dart
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Ankur

      I notice in the thread you have already been through a lot of diagnosis and adjusted a lot of config... and reached a point where you have been asked to raise a Support Message.

      I did all of the above against a S/4HANA 1610 Fully Activated Appliance trial system and it worked perfectly.

      One thing I could suggest - I notice you have used a test user ABCUSER in some of your screenshots.  When you are setting up new functionality its always a good idea to use a user id that has the SAP_ALL and SAP_NEW profiles assigned. This prevents you from hitting authorization issues.

      I notice in the thread you were asked to check the authorization on your test user but you did not confirm this? It would be a good idea to check there are no errors be raised in the authorization trace transaction STAUTHTRACE as well

      In the section Testing the Notification Hub above I included the link to the authorizations documentation.

      If its not authorizations then please go ahead and create a SAP support message.

      Rgds,

      Jocelyn

       

      Author's profile photo Sascha Kiefer
      Sascha Kiefer

      Hi Jocelyn,

      great blog. Thanks for sharing it.

      I have one comment: You don't necessarily need to change the launchpad config file to enable the notifications. This can also be done via a Target Mapping. Alan recently wrote a blog post how to do that. The documentation about the parameters can be found here.

      Best regards,

      Sascha

      Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart
      Jocelyn Dart
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Sascha - yes thanks for adding the link to Alan's post.

      Much more convenient.

      Author's profile photo Oliver Russinger
      Oliver Russinger

      hello,

      does someone know if this is also possible - and how - when using Fiori 2.0 and ERP Backend. We did some customizing , are able to subscribe to an Entity, but have problems when it comes to den rest-client SEND method.

      or in other words, is is already possible to receive these notifictions than in the launchpad ???

      best regards

      oliver

      Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart
      Jocelyn Dart
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Oliver

      I'm not quite sure what you are asking?

      I take it you are using Fiori 2.0 on a Fiori Frontend Server 3.0 (i.e. SAP Gateway 7.51 with SAP_UI 7.51) in a hub mode with a backend SAP Business Suite or Suite on HANA?

      In that case you would have the Notification Center in the Fiori Launchpad - although you will need to explicitly enable it. You will also have the Notification Hub as your Fiori Frontend Server 3.0 can act as that and you should be able to run the demos.

      However you will need to create your own custom Notification Provider as you will not have one in your backend system.

      Does that answer your question?

      Rgds

      Jocelyn

      Author's profile photo Oliver Russinger
      Oliver Russinger

      Hello Jocelyn,

      we are on SAP UI 7.51, backend ERP EHP7

      we have activated the Notification-Button in der Launchpad.

      We also subscribed to one entity successfully.

      But when i click on the Notification-Button in the launchpad, system makes an oData-Call to a service we do not have:

      /sap/opu/odata4/iwngw/notification/default/iwngw/notification_srv/0001/Notifications

       

      We have our gateway on the ERP EHP7 system.

      Does this only works with a system > Netweaver 7.50 (ERP ehp7 is NW 7.40) ??

      regrads

      oliver

      Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart
      Jocelyn Dart
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Oliver

      As per the steps in section Activate the Notification OData Service above that OData Service should be run against the LOCAL system alias in your Fiori Frontend Server 3.0.

      Your system needs to support the minimum prerequisites for OData version 4, i.e. SAP Gateway 7.50 SP04.

      You can find more details in SAP Note 2323678 SAP Gateway SAP_GWFND OData v4 Protocol

      Just reminding also that this blog was aimed at S/4HANA 1610 sites - which would already be on Fiori Frontend Server 3.0 i.e. SAP Gateway 7.51.  So you may find some other differences when running against Business Suite or Suite on HANA.

      Rgds,

      Jocelyn

      Author's profile photo Oliver Russinger
      Oliver Russinger

      Hi Jocelyn,

      thanks for your reply.

       

      best regards

      oliver

      Author's profile photo SAP Seeker
      SAP Seeker

      Hi Oliver,

      Did you solve this issue ? We don't have HANA but the same SAP UI 7.51, backend ERP EHP7. I am still facing issues to get the data from Back-End.

      Thanks.

      Author's profile photo Oliver Russinger
      Oliver Russinger

      Hello,

      no as far as i know it is not possible with EHP7.

      You need to have something like EHP8 or above with NW 750 and above. as we have EHP7 and FioriServer on the same server, we have to upgrade to EHP8 which is planned in autumn.

      Maybe when you have the frontend-server not on the same server as the backend you can upgrade the frontendserver to NW 750.

       

      with EHP7 the oData V4 things are not there, only with EHP8 (Gateway 750 SP4).

      Author's profile photo SAP Seeker
      SAP Seeker

      Thanks for the information Oliver.

      Author's profile photo Rehan Sayed
      Rehan Sayed

      Hi Joceyln,

      I have configured Notifications as per your steps in our S4Hana 1610(Embedded Architecture) Landscape.

      But while checking bgRFC Monitor (Transaction sbgrfcmon), it is showing Data Not Available (PFB for the same)

      Although I have

      • Created an RFC destination name IWNGW_BGRFC with transfer protocol Classic with bgRFC
      • Created an RFC destination IWNGW_BEP_OUT_BGRFC for the background RFC queue with queue prefix set to Q
      • Registered the IWNGW_BEP_OUT_BGRFC destination for background processing by creating a queue
      • Supervisor destination BGRFC_SUPERVISOR already existed in the system.

       

      Please guide.

      Regards,

      Rehan Sayed

      Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart
      Jocelyn Dart
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Rehan

      Please post your question as a question...blog comments are not a good place to resolve specific issues.  That said I would not concern yourself with the bgrfc monitor for notifications.  The monitor is not something you need for this & I excluded it because it does not show anything useful re notifications. Please continue with the rest of the setup.

      Rgds

      Jocelyn

      Author's profile photo Smriti Gupta
      Smriti Gupta

      Hello Jocelyn,

      Thanks for the grat blog, however I am getting stuck at the step /IWNGW/BEP_DEMO. WHen I execute this transaction, I get Test Create Notifiation as not active.

      Provider with ID : /IWNGW/DEMO                      not active

       

      Can you pls suggest what is missing here

       

      Thanks

      Smriti

      Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart
      Jocelyn Dart
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Smriti

      Check you have registered and activated the demo notification provider using transaction /IWNGW/BEP_NPREG and activated it in transaction SM30 /IWNGW/VB_REG_P as described in the Demo Content .

      Rgds,

      Jocelyn

      Author's profile photo Tejas Chouhan
      Tejas Chouhan

      Hey Jocelyn,

      Some pretty confusing statements. Above you said that as part of Fiori 2.0 with business suite setting up notification is possible. But as part of SAP fiori 2.0 guide, they say that its not possible. Could you help validate this statement ?

      Source : https://experience.sap.com/documents/sap-fiori-2-0-welcome-pack-master-document.pdf

      Section 2.3 :

      2.3 The Fiori 2.0 User Experience for SAP Business Suite SAP Fiori 2.0 technology is also available as an option for the SAP Business Suite, via Front-End Server 3.0.

      "Note that the SAP Business Suite systems do not provide integration with SAP Fiori notifications "

      Regards,

      Tejas

      Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart
      Jocelyn Dart
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Tejas

      Everything is provided with Fiori 2.0 on S/4HANA - Notification Hub, Notification Center, and Notification Provider.

      However when you use Fiori 2.0 and Business Suite or Suite on HANA you need to be more careful... some of these features depend on the release/support pack level of your Fiori Frontend Server.  So you want to be on NetWeaver 7.51.  Also you do not get any provided notifications - so you must build your own. That is what is meant by the above statement "do not provide integration with Fiori notifications".

      Also you want to take note of Alan Rickayzen's blog https://blogs.sap.com/2017/02/15/configuring-fiori-launchpad-for-push-notifications-loose-ends/ to add in those loose ends..

      Rgds,

      Jocelyn

      Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart
      Jocelyn Dart
      Blog Post Author

      Meant to say.. NetWeaver 7.51 is preferred - as that is what we use for S/4HANA. You can go down as far as NetWeaver 7.50 SP04 as per my previous answer.  However I generally advise going to 7.51 if at all possible as there are other benefits for Fiori Launchpad and Fiori apps performance.

      Author's profile photo Team ABAP
      Team ABAP

      Hi Jocelyn,

       

      I think there are some confusion caused by the welcome pack master document as it does not really say what is the required front-end/back-end requirement to do the Fiori Launchpad push notification.

       

      We upgraded our front-end gateway to Netweaver 7.5 and our backend system to SAP ECC 6.0 EHP8 to have this feature. So if i understand correctly, the default notification feature from SAP inbox is not available on SAP Business Suite, but only available at SAP S4/HANA? So if the inbox integration is required, then it is something we have to develop on our own?

       

      Another thing that I'm not clear is the front-end gateway requirement to enable push notification, based on the thread, I think we'd need our gateway to run on Netweaver 7.51?

       

      Rgds,

      Suwardi

      Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart
      Jocelyn Dart
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Suwardi,

      NetWeaver 7.5 is fine for ABAP Push Channels and Fiori 2.0 as per the recommendations in the Fiori 2.0 Welcome Pack.

      Yes that is correct the Notification Provider for Workflow Notifications does not exist in SAP Business Suite so you would need to create your own or wait until you upgrade to S/4HANA. That is the exact meaning of the Fiori 2.0 Welcome Pack statement mentioned above by Tejas:

      “Note that the SAP Business Suite systems do not provide integration with SAP Fiori notifications “.

      Other solutions also starting to provide notifications, such as SAP CoPilot which uses notifications from S/4HANA Cloud 1705. And I understand SuccessFactors is also considering using notifications although you would need to confirm that officially if that's of interest to you.

      It's unfortunate that you upgraded to 7.5 & ECC 6.0 EHP8 for this without reading the Fiori 2.0 Welcome Pack carefully or getting advice/confirmation from SAP on this point.  I'd query whether such a significant upgrade was done for notifications alone. Hopefully the other reasons for upgrading still provide sufficient business benefit to justify your good work in upgrading.

      Rgds,

      Jocelyn

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Even i am not technical person. getting information in your blog is more helpful to get solid decision.

      Author's profile photo brahmarao cheruku
      brahmarao cheruku

      Hello Jocelyn Dart,

      nice blog, a lay-man can understand the steps to configure.Thank you very much 🙂

       

       

       

      Author's profile photo vishwanath vedula
      vishwanath vedula

      Great!

      Author's profile photo Kathiresan Jayaraj
      Kathiresan Jayaraj

      Hi Jocelyn,

      We have followed all the steps mentioned in the blog and maintained all the configurations in SPRO still we are getting an error while we execute Test create notification through /IWNGW/BEP_DEMO tcode as "Attempting to create a Purchase Order Notification Error creating the notification, Backend system alias not maintained"

      Expecting for a early response.

      Thanks,

      Kathir

      Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart
      Jocelyn Dart
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Kathir,

      Please remember that this is SAP Community and not official SAP Support - you are always welcome to raise an incident if you can't work something out.

      I'm guessing you have missed one or more steps in configuring the Notification Channel ... as referenced in the blog above.  I don't repeat all those steps in the blog because it's documented very well in the standard documentation.

      "The SAP Help documentation for setting up the Notification Channel is found in the SAP Gateway Foundation version 7.51 documentation in the section Notification Channel."

      Rgds

      Jocelyn

      Author's profile photo Egor Tokarev
      Egor Tokarev

      Hi Kathir,

      Had the same trouble and after debugging a bit found that the following IMG nodes need to be maintained:

      They update relevant /IWNGW/GENERAL table, in my case as follows:

       

      Best regards,

      Egor

      Author's profile photo Dinesh Chandra
      Dinesh Chandra

      Hi Jocelyn,

      Thanks for your well explained blog series.

      We are trying to build a scenario,where we want to show task notification of NW BPM system (like UWL in portal) in fiori launch pad.

      Can you please guide us how we can configure notification in Gateway for NW BPM?

      Regards,

      Dinesh Chandra

      Author's profile photo Ghadeer zahaiqah
      Ghadeer zahaiqah

      thank you Jocelyn Dart

      please advise why Notification Center  is disable in out front-server , even our version S4/Hana 1709  SP2

      Author's profile photo Pradip Jaiswal
      Pradip Jaiswal

      Hi Jocelyn,

      I have a gateway hub system with SAP_UI 752 SP06 and GWFND 7.52 SP04 and ECC backened system with SAP_UI 750 SP12 and GWFND 7.50 SP12,  will this be enough to configure the notification feature for our launchpad. Please do reply to it.

      Thanks

       

       

      Author's profile photo Sambhav Tripathi
      Sambhav Tripathi

      Hi Jocelyn,

       

      Thank you for sharing helpful details.
      We are on S/4 HANA 2020 ( on premise) and planning to activate Notifications in launchpad.
      1. Guide I can find is related to Fiori 2.0 1809 version, I am not able to find any document specific to Fiori 3.0 and S/4 2020.

      https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/467538692/How%20to%20setup%20Notifications%20in%20Fiori%202.0%20step-by-step.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1497371802000&api=v2

      2. Also, in case we follow the attached guide. In coming months we are planning  to upgrade to 2021.  Can there be any major changes related to notification framework ?

      If there is any reference document that can be shared for S/4 2020 or later versions, it will be very helpful.

      Regards
      Sambhav Tripathi

      Author's profile photo Arvind A
      Arvind A

      Hi Jocelyn Dart

      BIGG fan of your blogs !

      I would like to highlight the following troubleshooting steps which maybe helpful for developers when setting up Fiori Notifications for latest HANA releases.

      I faced following issues and analysis are from Fiori + BASIS + Authorizations.

      My landscape
      Frontend - SAP FIORI FOR SAP S/4HANA 2021 - NetWeaver 7.52
      Backend - SAP S/4HANA 2021

      1. Naming Conventions

        1. Fiori system / Frontend / Gateway / Notification Channel / Notification Hub / Notification Store
        2. S4 system / Backend / Notification provider.
        3. In Fiori Notif 2.0 setup guides by SAP

          K4A is backend
          S4A is frontend

      2. Automatic workflow config - Tcode SWU3
        1. Not necessary in Frontend, a MUST in Backend.
        2. User SAP_WFRT created in Backend.

          And the same user SAP_WFRT should be created in Frontend too.
          Creation of this user ID will not be mentioned in Blogs / SAP Notes.

          Report SBGRFCMON in Backend will say Trust RFC error for SAP_WFRT even though both S_RFC and S_RFCACL authorizations are maintained.

          "No authorization to log on as a Trusted System (L-RC=1 T-RC=0)"

          The above return codes means that SAP* and DDIC* user IDs are NOT to be used for Trusted RFC calls which might be misleading.

          But the solution is very simple - just ensure the same user SAP_WFRT is present in Frontend too.

          Note: SWU3 setup in Frontend will suggest creation of WF-BATCH id which is not to be confused with above step.

      3. Trusted RFC setup issues - Critical step in case of HUB deployment:
        1. Make sure Frontend is trusting Backend, and also ITSELF (self trust).
        2. In case Trusted RFC system connection fails
          1. Delete and start from scratch.
          2. Load balancing setup through Wizard setup might be an issue.

            A temporary workaround is to edit the RFC in each system -
            SMT1 -> RFC / Maintain destination -> Admin Tab -> Uncheck "Destination Not modifiable"

            Now set Load Balancing to "No" and connect systems based on Host / IP Address. Check the flag again in Admin tab.

            Note: Workaround only for Non-production environment, as Load balancing is critical for Production.

      4. The bgRFC setup should ONLY be done in Backend and NOT in Frontend even though the same transactions are available and its possible to set it up.

        By mistake - if you have done it and want to undo it in Frontend - you might face challenges in deleting the bgRFC destination - IWNGW_BEP_OUT_BGRFC - as it might have queue items still pending to it which have to be deleted first from the system entirely.

        Note: Deleting the queue items from SBGRFCMON will only set the Deletion flag.
        Only the scheduler can entirely delete those flagged items from system - so ensure its running  frequently, at least for time being.

      5. Debugging

        Backend - SWU3 -> Start Verification Workflow

        A very important and useful FM to debug the actual Notification FM with External breakpoint

        Backend - /IWNGW/FM_OUT_CREATE_NOTIF_BGR

        will trigger below FM in

        Frontend - /IWNGW/FM_IN_CREATE_NOTIF

      6. IWNGW_BGRFC

        When creating the SM59 destination - IWNGW_BGRFC - "Special Options" tab in Frontend - for the latest SAP releases - you might NOT find the options mentioned in the Guides / Notes for Transfer Protocol.

        "Classic with bgRFC" and might INSTEAD see 2 options:

        "qRFC Version" - "bgRFC"
        "Serializer" - "Classic Serializer"

        It worked for me.

        If someone could acknowledge that this is the correct setting, it would be great.

      7. The "Publish the Notification OData Service" step in only to be done in Frontend and should be mapped only to LOCAL alias,

        Incase the /IWNGW/NOTIFICATION is not available for Alias LOCAL, try pulling it from Backend - S4 alias.
        Later delete the Backend Alias and Add Alias LOCAL.

        Although its a bizarre step and might not be necessary for everyone - I had to do it and it worked.

      Anyone - please feel free to correct my analysis / steps in case they are wrong.

      Thank you.
      Arvind.

      Author's profile photo Ranjini Guha Niyogi
      Ranjini Guha Niyogi

      Hi Arvind,

       

      Thank you for sharing your analysis. I have a similar requirement in my project and your resolution was helpful to address the issue.

       

      Thanks and Regards,

      Ranjini Niyogi

      Author's profile photo Jocelyn Dart
      Jocelyn Dart
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Arvind! Much appreciated! And very well structured! 

      I see that you are using a Standalone FES solution - and these additions are focussed on that setup and will be very useful for those in a similar situation. 

      Fortunately, these days most customers use the recommended Embedded FES where set up is a little easier and these additional steps should not be necessary. 

       

       

       

      Author's profile photo Arvind A
      Arvind A

      Thanks Jocelyn!

      Thats true, all my past implementations were in an Embedded scenario, and this was my first HUB based implementations and hence my suggestions here.