Understand a new feature (released July 30th 2018) in the SAP Fiori apps reference library that enables you to combine your selected apps with their related apps, for a holistic end-to-end user experience.

In SAP S/4HANA, most individual SAP Fiori apps work together with other apps for a holistic user experience.  So when you choose to deploy a specific Fiori app for your business user and as part of your business process, you are likely to want to deploy related apps at the same time.  Now a new feature in the Fiori apps reference library makes selecting all the apps you want to implement together easier.

You can see how this works by using the Procurement Overview Page as an example.

In an Overview Page, you can navigate to other apps via:

• The header of each card
• A row of a List or Table card
• The links on a Link List card
• A quick action button on a Stacked card
• A navigable data point on an Analytical card

In most other types of SAP Fiori apps, you also have multiple places where an app may navigate to other apps such as:

• Links
• Actions buttons
• Expanding the row of a table
• Drill down on a chart.

Up until now to select all of the apps you could navigate to – i.e. the Navigation Targets of the current app –  you needed to either:

• Select all the apps of a Business Role as described in Role-based for app discovery and activation, or
• Select all the apps of a Business Catalog, using the hyperlink on the Business Catalog name in the Configuration section of the Implementation Information tab, or
• Follow each link in the Related Apps section of the app’s details and add them one by one.

Selecting all apps for a Business Role, or for a Business Catalog (a subset of a Business Role) is fine in a sandpit/exploration system or when you have a mandate to introduce maximum Fiori capability.

However sometimes you may need to carefully control the introduction of new Fiori apps, such as when you have existing users who you need to carefully transition from SAPGUI to Fiori.  If that is your need, you now have an easier way to select only the minimum apps you want to activate right now.

Start by finding and selecting your desired SAP Fiori app itself.  This app is the source app for all the navigation targets.

In this example, you can see the Procurement Overview Page app has been selected in the app list, and in the left side of the footer you can see the number of Selected apps is 1.

Now go to the Implementation Information tab and look for the Related Apps section.

NOTE: If an app doesn’t have any related apps, the Related Apps section will not appear.

Notice in the Related Apps section, there is a Related Apps table listing the related apps and their relation type. The relation type indicates whether the related app is required or optional.

Relation type Required indicates this app is necessary to correctly operate the app.

Relation type Required – UI Reuse Library indicates this app is used to provide some underlying component of the app, such as attachment services. You can find out more about reuse apps in Not Every App is a Tile.

You can see in the Procurement Overview Page example that for many of the apps the Relation Type shown is Navigation Target. This indicates a related app that is an optional target of the current app, i.e. the current app navigates to the related app via one of the options mentioned earlier (link, button, chart, etc.).

What happens if you don’t include the navigation target? Typically the navigation from the link, button, chart or whatever is simply disabled in a non-intrusive manner. For example if the navigation was from the header of a card, the user can still see the card, they just won’t get an option to navigate from the card header.

You will also notice a new Update Apps in Current Selection button in the header of the Related Apps table. Press the button and you will be asked to confirm which apps you want to add.

By default all related apps that are navigation targets are selected.

TIP: You can exclude any apps you don’t want by simply unchecking the checkbox for the app you wish to exclude.  If you change your mind you can always come back later and add it in.

Press the Update Selection button in the footer. You are given one last opportunity to confirm or cancel before the apps are added to your current selection.

Confirm by pressing Ok, and then your current selection list is updated. In the below example you can see you now have 11 apps selected.

If you want to check what is in your current selection, just press the Selected (n) button in the footer.

Once you are ready to activate the apps in your system, you can get all of the configuration details you need by using the Aggregate button just as you do when selecting apps by Business Role or Business Catalog.

A couple of last items to note.

To avoid the selection becoming too complex (and possibly even recursive), only the immediate navigation targets are added. Of course each Related App may have additional navigation targets of its own. If you want your users to navigate further, you can simply repeat the same process for any of the related target apps.

The Related Apps section in the Fiori Apps Library may also contain a Where-Used table listing all the source apps that link to the current app as a navigation target.  You won’t see the Update Apps in Current Selection button for the Where-Used list.

Find out more at Adding Related Apps to the Current Selection section of the SAP Fiori apps reference library guide.

Note: If you believe there are Related Apps missing in the Fiori apps reference library for a specific app, please raise a SAP Incident to the support component of the source app. You will also find the support component of the app in the Fiori apps reference library.  Just go to the app’s details, and on the Implementation Information tab, expand the Support section as explained in Speed up you Fiori Support Incidents

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