Process Your Tasks with the SAP Fiori Element Worklist

Nobody enjoys having to deal with a worklist, but with the cool features that this SAP Fiori element offers (like delegating tasks to others), who knows, you might actually enjoy working with one.

A worklist displays a collection of items that must be processed. In most cases the user has to complete or delegate the work items in the list. Working with the list involves reviewing details of the list items and taking action.

As an app developer, you should provide your users with a worklist in these cases:

• If the user has numerous potential work items and needs to decide which ones to process first.
• To give the user a direct entry point for taking action on work items.
• To enable working with multiple views of the same content via tab bars, i.e. items with the status open, in process or completed.

SAP Fiori element worklist structure

The structure of the worklist is minimized to the most essential elements, so as to avoid distraction from the work items. The header title bar is used to display either a title or page variant.

Table variants also can be enabled in a worklist. Variants store settings such as selected tabs, or columns, sort order of column, layout, and other personalization settings. The header toolbar contains global actions, such as share. The content area mostly consists of the table, with a table toolbar and sometimes also an icon tab bar.

Figure 1:  Structure of Fiori element worklist floorplan

Worklist variations

This SAP Fiori element has its own floorplan. The simple worklist, the element’s most basic form, consists of a plain page with a table.

You can add the icon tab bar, which enables users to call up work items in specific categories. For example, you could switch between errors, warnings and completed tabs. The key performance indicator (KPI) worklist allows tracking a KPI while processing the worklist. This is handy, for example, in tracking a budget balance.

Figure 2:  Example of a simple worklist, worklist with tabs and a worklist with KPIs.

Worklist page content area

The main content of the worklist is the table. The table toolbar enables to search, filter, sort, and group items. It supports item count, the amount of items awaiting processing, individually, for each tab. These are application specific actions and they don’t always need to be present in the worklist app.

Figure 3: Example of worklist in table format.

Apart from actions in the table toolbar, there can also be actions that only affect a single item at a time, such as approve or assign. Accordingly, these actions are placed directly inside the line item. Below you can see an example of such an action.

Figure 4:  Example of worklist in list format.

For more information about the worklist floorplan, check out the detailed article in the SAP Fiori design guidelines and the product documentation on SAP Help Portal.

Discover SAP Fiori elements

SAP Fiori elements provide a framework for the most commonly used application patterns. They ensure design consistency and reduce the amount of front-end coding.

There are five SAP Fiori elements: list report, object page, worklist, overview page, and analytical list page. Watch our video to get an overview of all of them and read about how to stay smart with SAP Fiori elements.