This week at SAP TechEd in Las Vegas, we are excited to introduce a new feature in SAP Cloud Platform Mobile services named Mobile card development kit that allows users to publish virtually any data into a “wallet “ or “passbook” style application on mobile devices. This framework comes with a mobile app that lets you optimize the mobile digital experience to individual users quickly and easily.
Over the last couple of years we have seen a rise in interest for ‘no code’, and ‘low code’ tools to create simple mobile apps and micro workflows. Over the same time period, we have witnessed the rise of the ‘citizen developer’ (non-technical people) who want to create their own simple mobile apps without IT involvement. With the current release of the SAP Cloud Platform
Mobile Service for development and operations you can create these “micro apps” via a new framework.
What is it?
Mobile card development kit is a framework and companion app that helps you unlock business content and share it via micro apps. which is typically stored within SAP and 3rd party business systems. If you are familiar with wallet style mobile apps then you can easily understand how SAP Mobile card development kit works. We simply take content from business systems and deliver it into a wallet style card on your mobile device. Cards can be stored offline, auto refreshed, subscribed to, and maintained so that you have a single business content repository on your iPhone device. SAP Mobile card development kit support process approvals too, so it can be a great tool for simple workflow management.
If you want to mobilize SAP Fiori Launchpad content, you can easily do no with no coding at all! And you can enable other types of mobile content in a micro app form with very low coding (using simple HTML and regular expressions).
The first question we are usually asked is what are some of the popular use cases could be. Here are a few common ones:
- Location based distribution of corporate communications messages
- A personal briefcase that stores your personal important or frequent data from disparate systems in one mobile app
- An quick reference index including customer data cards, product cards, inventory status, order status, etc.
- A companion app that provides quick mobile access to important reports or KPIs that you would frequently reference from a larger, more complex application.
- A lean approval app where you want to talk simple actions from the SAP Unified Inbox or check service tickets in and out of a queue.
Here are the basics of how it works. There are two approaches to mobilizing content into cards:
- No code: Mobilize content from an SAP Fiori Launchpad.
- Administrator installs a plugin on your company’s Fiori Front End Server or Fiori Cloud Environment. The user sends personalized content from their Fiori Launchpad right into the SAP Mobile Cards app on their device. This option is available for SAP Smart Template apps and helps you make quickly mobilize personalized content.
- Low code: Mobilize any SAP, external or 3rd party content
- Connect to many non-SAP systems with an OData backend via JSON. Mobilize content like a weather feeds, pay stubs, vacation time accrued, workflows, or cards from SAP systems including SuccessFactors, Concur, SAP Cloud Portal, Hybris, and This option requires low code requirements and some basic HTML edits and JSON interpretation.
To learn more:
For more information on the different types of cards and how to create these simple micro apps, explore the tutorials:
https://www.sap.com/developer/tutorial-navigator/mobile-interactive-tutorials/content2go.html
You can also join the session on this feature at SAP TechEd.
DX614: Make It Easy for Mobile Users to Consume Data Using SAP Content To Go
Do you want to enable your users to move corporate data out of any back-end system with a few clicks? With SAP Content to Go, your users can consume corporate data delivered from SAP software quickly and easily.
Add the session to your agenda.
