My Minddump on Fiori Launchpad

Hello everyone. I’m writing this blog as I felt really inspired by the blog by Jamila Schon.  It got me thinking about the clients where I’ve implemented the Fiori launchpad(FLP) in the past and how far the design on the FLP has come over the course of its lifetime.

We now have:

• Me and notification areas as view ports
• App finder
• Ability to search much better
• App finder
• Adding your own groups
• Adding links
• Better navigation via the title button

Just to name a few.

I’d say based on my experience I’ve seen my fair share of variety on the usage of the FLP. I’ve been on projects where the Personalisation was disabled, projects where everything was added in the very few groups and everything as tiles, projects where they would try to add everything you could possibly do into the launchpad.

Based on Jamila’s blog it sparked my interest and the importance in this area again. Lately I’ve been stuck in the development camp not focusing too much on the FLP  as it wasn’t my responsibility. However my current project I’ve got a more architectural role and hence therefore able to inspire and initiate the proper discussions needed in this area. Because in my opinion the set up of the FLP is not for a technical or security person to do, but more making sure the information architecture and usability has been thought through from a UX perspective, which is often neglected as it’s more about getting the application out there and not really about the importance on how it’s displayed ( or found).

The rest of the blog will be around some general knowledge on the Fiori Launchpad on how it functions. I’ll provide link to other blog articles that I often reference for this stuff.

Fiori Launchpad

The Fiori Launchpad main area consists of tiles, links and graphs of various kinds. Depending on your system level as well, some of these might not be as important to you. For example the graph is handled by the KPI Modeler

To add an entry-point(My common denominator for the tiles and links) to the launchpad you first need to add it to a catalog as a tile and also provide the target mapping of where that tile is navigating to. Secondly as an admin you can provide the user this particular tile as a link or tile on the launchpad by adding it to a group. However I see a lot of people mistakenly thinking that it is the group that controls the visibility of the tile. It’s not, that is the target mapping 

So you can add tiles to a group that comes from multiple catalogs, and it’s whether the user has the particular target mapping for the tile that controls the visibility in the users tile catalog and the group.

Also another common misunderstanding I meet is that the administrator thinks that all tiles should be present on the launchpad. But as Jamila’s also points out, there is numerous ways for the user to access the applications as long as they have it in their catalog. Such as from the navigation menu or using the search.

The search is really powerful even without HANA, as you can use it to search your available apps.

Especially if there is keywords attached to the tile (This can be done in the file configuration)

Personalization

Many clients that i’ve been to are now disabling personalisation. This is based on the rationale that if a user has personalised their launchpad, they wont get new content. That is partly true. Let’s delve into this a bit deeper.

There are three levels to the launchpad:

1. Personalisation
2. Customizing
3. Configuration

The priority is top to bottom. So if a user has personalised their launchpad, yes they won’t get a new tile in the particular group they have personalised. But they will to everything else.

Also as an admin you can choose which groups are open for personalisation. So arguably you could remove personalisation on all new groups and just let the user create their own. I wouldn’t advise this though.

Also another feature is that the groups where personalisation has been removed will go on top of your users launchpad

Secondly if you are providing a new tile and the user has customised that very group. Then as part of the user training they should know how to use the “Edit Home Page” from the Me area and reset the group, that will reset all their personalisation in that particular group, or they could simply just add the new tile via the app finder.

If you still as an admin want to brute force a change in, you can reset all the users personalisations as mentioned in this blog

My suggestions is that you keep personalisation open and provide proper training on how to fully utilize the Fiori Launchpad.

Tile consideration

Firstly you need to think on the information shown on the tile. What type of app is it?

Analytical – consider what graph you could add to enhance the usage of the tile space

List report or work list – could the tile be amended with a count to let the user know whether or not they need to action something

Transactional – what information and actions could be handy to explain the use case for the app

General thoughts:

• Icon – set a meaningful icon and make sure that icon isn’t overly used already
• Information – is a subheading needed to explain what the application does
• Actions – should thee be more than one activity possible to the tile (display, change, create)
• Count – think of any filters would be needed to get the best suitable count for the user
• Keyword – to enhance Searchability could you add keywords to the tile for it to be easily found via the global search or in the app finder

Target mapping considerations : the target mapping is the link between the tile and an application. This controls the visibility of the tile on the launchpad, if you don’t have the target mapping, you don’t see the tile. Also you can choose what form factors the tile should be available on. Example is it only a desktop app or only for phone.

Before you blindly go and add a tile onto the FLP in a group, give it some thought first.

Other suggestions

You could add a news tile and publish news about your new tiles/apps published on the launchpad for your users to add.  That way your users will always be informed about new apps coming into their catalog.

Enable the user assistance for your users. (thanks to @jocdart for pointing that out.)

Please add your comments if there is something that i’ve missed out in this blog. Hope you find it helpful.