Technical Articles
Activating and Running Fiori Cloud Subscription Apps in SAP Cloud Platform
I was not going to write another blog in January but I came across some questions during the #100DaysOfCommunityQA activities I have been involved in and found that there were a couple of new questions and a number of unanswered questions from way back that inspired me to write about this topic. I could also not find any other blogs that dealt with activating the Fiori cloud subscription applications provided out of the box with SAP Cloud Platform. So, thought I would write one. ?
For those following me, my goal for this year was to write 2 blogs every month so I am really happy that for this month I have surpassed my goal! Awesome! What a start to 2019!! OK, I digress. ?
For context, the following blog by Murali Shanmugham really helps in understanding the possible landscapes and scenarios offered – you can read it here. This summarises all you need to know about the key benefits of running applications in the Cloud and talks about the External access point scenario which is the most widely used scenario.
This blog assumes you have already purchased a subscription to the Fiori Cloud in SAP Cloud Platform. When you first log in you will see services and as you activate some of them you will start to see some applications in the Subscriptions area. Check the below screenshot, you can see 4 applications available.
Figure:1 Subscription applications
You may ask though – where are all of the cloud applications we purchased as part of the subscription?? Take a note of the number of applications you see above – 4 HTML5 and 2 Java applications. Don’t be worried – there are a large number of applications delivered as part of the SAP Cloud Platform subscription – these just need to be activated. I will now go into where you can find this information.
SAP Fiori Cloud Applications
You may be thinking – well what applications are delivered as part of the subscription offerings. Well, the answer is near – the good old Fiori apps library is the key!
The Fiori Apps Library is a great source of information regarding applications available generally but also those applications available as part of the Fiori Cloud apps in SAP Cloud Platform. You can check it out here.
When you first go in you will see the categories and one of them is Apps available for SAP Fiori Cloud.
Figure:2 Fiori apps library
When you drill into this you will be amazed at the total of S/4HANA applications that are available! Aviad Rivlin wrote a blog on this some time back when the number was less, you can check it out here. The number of applications for Business Suite and previous S/4HANA versions are also great!
Figure:3 Fiori apps library – SAP Fiori Cloud apps
I will select the Business Suite applications here showing the 61 that are available.
Figure:4 Fiori apps library – SAP Fiori Cloud apps
I will now go on to how we can activate the SAP Fiori Cloud applications.
Activating SAP Fiori Cloud Applications
Activation of the subscription SAP Fiori Cloud applications is carried out via the Portal service in SAP Cloud Platform. The trick is – all of the applications are only enabled when you create a portal site so this will be the next step.
First – make sure that the Portal service is Enabled.
Figure:5 Portal service – Enable it!
Click on the tile and you will be presented with the Overview page for the service.
Figure:6 Portal service overview page
If this service is Not yet enabled then click on the [Enable] icon (this will appear instead of the Disable). Once enabled, select the [Go to Service] link.
This will display the Portal Administration page.
Figure:7 Portal Administration page
Select the [Site Directory] to display a list of sites to maintain. We will use this service to create an initial site. When you first start out you will not have any sites so the site will only include 1 tile with the + icon.
Figure:8 Portal service Admin space
The cloud applications can only exist as subscriptions when you bring them into a portal site. I will include the steps now to create just a test launchpad site that will deploy the Fiori cloud subscription apps.
- Click on the + icon.
- Enter the Site name and select the SAP Fiori Launchpad as the template.
- Click on the [Create] button.
Figure:9 Create Site – Fiori Launchpad
This will start to create the site and you will then be presented with the following pop-up. This is the point at which the Administrator decides which applications can be included. This step is called Adding Business Content.
Figure:10 Add Business Content popup
There are basically 3 options that can be selected here.
- SAP Cloud for S/4HANA
- SAP Fiori Cloud for Business Suite
- Don’t show this again
I would not recommend the 3rd option as it can be quite elusive to get this selection screen back. I would recommend either option 1 or 2 but it will depend on what backend systems you intend hooking the cloud applications up to. You can also hook up both if you have both backend systems in your landscape.
Here is some more information on:
- SAP Fiori Cloud for Business Suite -> https://help.sap.com/viewer/p/SAP_FIORI_CLOUD
- SAP Cloud For S/4HANA -> https://blogs.sap.com/2018/06/06/sap-fiori-cloud-for-s4hana-its-prime-time/
For the example I am going to choose the 2nd option – SAP Fiori Cloud for Business Suite.
Figure:11 Add Business Content – Business Suite
- Select the checkbox as highlighted above and select the [Add Content] icon.
You will then be presented with this screen and you will see the ‘Content added’ message.
Figure:12 Add Business Content – Content added
- Select the [Activate Content] button.
The following screen will be displayed. Here you will also see the new Content Packages side menu option appear and this details all packages that have been activated in this SAP Cloud Platform subaccount.
Figure:13 Content Package – SAP Fiori Cloud for Business Suite
The last step is to Activate this. Do this by selecting the [Activate] button.
You will then be asked to supply credentials for SAP Cloud Platform.
Figure:14 SAP Cloud Platform login
NOTE: You will need to enter your S userid here, NOT the email address associated with the S userid.
Once you do this the dot dot dot will appear.
Followed by a successful message toast.
Figure:15 Content package successful message
You can also see the activation date. NOTE: You can always come back to the Content Packages section of the Launchpad to view this information.
Now if we go back to the SAP Cloud Platform subaccount and check the subscriptions again you will see magic has happened. 🙂
Figure:16 SAP Fiori Cloud subscription applications
You can now see 74 subscribed HTML5 applications delivered to your doorstep. ?
The main groups of applications included in the subscription are:
- Cross Fiori Inbox for My Inbox scenarios
- CRM applications for Sales Reps and Sales Managers
- MDG applications for Master Data Governance processes
- HCM applications covering ESS and MSS functionalities
- Retail applications covering retail store scenarios
- Procurement related applications in MM/Purchasing as well as SRM
Seriously cool that I now have a large amount of applications I could activate. When you look through them you will realise some of them are portal templates, web ide plugins and app templates but still pretty good!
If I check out the Content Management section of my Fiori launchpad I can see that 58 applications are available.
Figure:17 Fiori Configuration Cockpit – SAP Business Suite applications
I covered the Business Content area in another blog here however if you select the SAP Business Suite option you will see the standard applications appear. They will all initially be added to the SAP catalog and SAP group.
So, the next question is – how do I now run them. If I previewed the launchpad I can see that all of the applications have errors. Click on the Preview icon and the following screen will be presented.
Figure:18 Fiori Launchpad with SAP Fiori Cloud applications
The main reason why these applications are not working is because there is no connectivity to the backend systems with these applications. All we have done so far is activate the content packages so the next step is to hook them up to the backend via the Connectivity service.
Enabling and Connecting the SAP Fiori Cloud Apps
There are 3 steps required for enabling SAP Fiori Cloud applications to run successfully. But first – architecture!
The architecture I will showcase is using a direct destination to the backend via SAP Cloud Platform’s connectivity service and not going via Odata provisioning however the actions on the application are similar. To put this in context I will include a solution diagram showcasing the architecture we are talking about. The solution diagrams are brilliant and were showcased in a recent SAP Cloud Platform podcast which you can check out here. Additionally, the solution diagrams and icons powerpoint wiki site can be found here.
Figure:19 SAP Fiori Cloud architecture
For this example, I will showcase the My Inbox application.
The first step of enabling Fiori cloud applications if of course the related OData service being activated in the backend system. Whether or not you establish connectivity to backend systems, if the OData service for the application you are trying to run is NOT activated then the application will never run and errors will occur. So, I will first show that the TASKPROCESSING OData service (v2) is active in the SAP Gateway system and activated to established Aliases.
Figure:20 SAP Gateway Service Activation
As you can see above a number of OData services have been activated – including the TASKPROCESSING service required to run the My Inbox application.
The second step of connecting Fiori cloud apps is connectivity to the backend systems. This is achieved via a Destination which is part of the Connectivity service. I defined a destination that points directly to the Cloud Connector virtual host called testonpremisegateway.
Figure:21 Destinations in SAP Cloud Platform
Once the destination is defined we are on to the third step that involves assigning the Destination to the application directly. We will use the My Inbox application (crossfndfioriinbox) as the example.
Figure:22 Subscription applications
- Select the application you wish to enable. Click on the cross.fnd.fiori.inbox application as highlighted above.The following screen will be displayed.
You can see that there are no valid Destinations assigned to this application and all red lights under the Available column. This means that the application will not run.
- Click on the dropdown against the SAP_Gateway entry and assign the valid Destination created in the previous step.
You can see when the Destination is selected the box will go green and the Available icon will change to a green tick.
- Click on the [Save] icon to keep the destination settings.
So, we have now completed the enabling and connecting up of the SAP Fiori cloud My Inbox application delivered as part of the subscription.
NOTE: Don’t forget when using the Preview option to choose the SAP Business Suite in the Business Content dropdown! You should see a large amount of applications exist.
Let’s run the launchpad again to see whether this application runs successfully. I will run in Preview mode and we should see the My Inbox without an error and with any luck have an item ready to process.
Figure:23 Fiori Launchpad with successful My Inbox application
Woooooohoooooo! You can see above that the My Inbox application has no errors and it has found 1 item to process.
We have now completed the entire process of activating and enabling SAP Fiori Cloud applications in SAP Cloud Platform. I hope you enjoyed this blog and as always please feel free to leave comments.
Thanks for reading!
Nice article. I was not able to find a blog where we can add content and see all app in subscriber sub account. But after reading documentation & trial error I am able to find this option.
Nice and thanks for the feedback. I wrote the blog as I myself could not find anything specifically covering this topic in the community. Hopefully this can help out others like yourself.
Good blog! Had the opportunity to activate Fiori Cloud apps recently. Had some little troubles with destinations and back-end services. It would have been easier with this blog 🙂
Thanks Christian Tapia - appreciate the feedback. Yes, hopefully this can help a multitude of others when they get into this space. I've thought of additional items I can add to this so will update over time with some additional information so it will be even more useful.
Oh my. I love the step by step. I do not have Fiori for the cloud so I'll admit to skimming some of the paragraphs. The 2 blogs a month - good for you! I was going to do one a week. That stopped pretty quickly. Then I fell off of even reading blogs! Sigh. Got busy with work... learning so much... Just busy. I bet you aren't at all 😉 I'm not serious. I know you are. Thank you for this blog and the many more you'll be writing.
Thanks Michelle Crapo ...I think. 🙂 Nice that you read even though you don't have Fiori cloud and that you commented. Cool. Yes, sometimes difficult to keep up the blog writing and like New Years Resolutions sometimes the goal you have in mind is not reached (even on Jan 2!) - but hey we can keep trying...
Thanks for the feedback, and will look out for any future blogs that you may write in the future!
So right now I have a few minutes... And what did I do? Reread your blog, of course.
Fiori Cloud subscription.... Stupid me. We have Fiori. We don't have the cloud version of SAP. It's on-premise. As far as the Fiori Cloud subscription I doubt if we have it. So I probably can't download the new apps.
So as I have a chance I'll play with it. Even if we don't have it - there is a free trail.
Thanks for the blog!
But what can we do if the pop-up is not showing?
Regards,
Georgi
Georgi Nushev - which popup are you talking about? The one that asks you to select which SAP Fiori cloud apps you would like to activate? I can help if you can provide some more information please.
Thanks & Kind Regards
Phil Cooley
Hi Phil,
Following the guide, after creating the Launchpad page the Add Business Content Popup from figure 10 is not showing. I haven't clicked on the 'Don't show this page' checkbox as I haven't seen the Dialog at all.
Regards,
Georgi
Me pasa lo mismo... la version de prueba no permite habilitar las Fiori app de la library? o que sucede cuando no aparece la ventana emergente de Fiori Bussines suite... muchas gracias
Hi Georgi Nushev
Any chance you can show a screenshot. Additionally, did you try and create a NEW Fiori launchpad from scratch just to bring the screen up again. The next thing I would check is back at the SCP Cockpit under Solutions. See if you have any subscribed services - they need to be showing and in OK status.
Let me know how you go.
Kind Regards
Phil Cooley
Hi Phil,
Yes I did try to create new FLP from scratch, but no dialog was shown.
Under Solutions I don't see any items. What is expected to be deployed there?
The subscriptions look like the one on your screenshot:
Regards,
Georgi
Hi Georgi Nushev I'm wondering if you won't have a subscription for Fiori Cloud. This subscriptions delivers the apps I am talking about. I would check internally to see if your compnay has signed up for the subscription apps - SAP Fiori Cloud. Maybe they haven't. This is what you should normally see in the Solutions area.
Kind Regards
Phil Cooley
Hi Phil,
What a great blog, very well explained !
So following what you mention with the "subscribed solutions", if I don't have both solutions sfc_soh.1.0 and sfc_soh_common, it means that I don't have the subscription to the sap fiori app. Is that correct ?
Is a the on premise environment set up + cloud connector a prerequiste to see the "add content package" popup at the FLP creation ?
Like the upper related discussion, I don't have neither the popup "add content package" display on the screen nor the "content package" on the left menu in the FLP. The connectivity to the On Prem environement (with Cloud Connector) isn't yet installed. The only difference I could see is this "subscribe solutions" where I have nothing in my subaccount.
Best regards
Hadrien
Hi Phil,
Great Post which is very helpful to understand Fiori Cloud. One question here, is “Add business content” only available for Accounts which is not trial?
I can’t find this option in my trial account.
Thanks & Regards
Hi Wenbin Yin thanks for your comment. Unfortunately the Fiori cloud applications and content are only available for Fiori Cloud subscriptions - i.e. not trial accounts.
Thanks & Kind Regards
Phil Cooley
Gracias acabo de leer la respuesta. que pena que no este en la version trial 🙁
gracias igual por el blog
Hi Phil,
This is an excellent blog. I had a couple of questions and would like to know your thoughts.
Since you did not go with the Odata provisioning route, is that the reason you had to activate the odata service on the backend gateway system. However if you had gone with the odata provisioning route, you would not have to do this activation on the backend gateway system but would do this activation in the odata provisioning service in SCP. Is my understanding correct? Or do we need to activate the odata service on the backend system irrespective of whether you go with odata provisioning route or not?
2. Irrespective of whether you choose odata provisioning route or the not, you would still need connectivity to the backend via a destination that points directly to the Cloud Connector virtual host. Is my understanding correct?
Some background information on where my questions are stemming from.
Prior to getting SCP licences, I had a Front end server and I had activated the odata service for the standard fiori apps on that front end server. On the backend ECC system I only had to take care of authorizations. And the apps worked fine. However the pre-requisite was to have to relevant app s/w components installed on the Front-end server. Inorder to do away with this task of keeping the front end server updated with latest versions of the s/w components, we decided to go with SCP so that we don't have to worry about front end server.
Thank you
Julius
Hi Julius Pereira thanks for the feedback and glad you enjoyed reading it.
On 1 - yes. The Figure 19 diagram covers option 1 and option 2 which are definitely different options for connecting to backend systems. In the blog I covered option 2 where I used a direct destination configured in the SAPCP subaccount however I could have also used Option 1.
For this question: However if you had gone with the odata provisioning route, you would not have to do this activation on the backend gateway system but would do this activation in the odata provisioning service in SCP. Is my understanding correct?
YES - your understanding is correct. You either register and activate the service in the on-premise SAP Gateway (which is Option 2) or register and activate the service in OData provisioning (which is option 1). It is only one of these options. You can also mix the two together if you wish and if you have an embedded gateway in place. I've had to do this for a number of projects over the years.
On 2 - yes. You need to always go through cloud connector for back-end on-premise connectivity. Option 1 for Odata provisioning just uses 2 destinations, one an AppToAppSSO at subaccount level and another one at the OData prov level. Option 2 uses a single subaccount level destination.
Thanks for the background and yeah good decision. SAP Cloud Platform is the way to go to provide fast innovation with little maintenance and support to operate it. It also comes with the default set of applications you can started with very quickly.
Thanks for your comments and good luck with your future endeavours in this space!
Kind Regards
Phil Cooley
Thank you Phil. Appreciate it!
Hi Phil,
For the last 2 days I’ve been noticing that on the Fiori Apps library, the category – ‘Available via SAP Fiori Cloud‘ is not showing any results. Wondering if I need to raise an incident with some team on the support portal?
Thank you
Julius
Hey Julius Pereira - I tweeted about this and it was fixed last week. So should be good now!!
cheers
Phil
Thank you Phil. I see 'em now.
Cheers
Julius
Hi Phil,
After checking out all the standard apps, I want to show only a few of the available standard apps on the launchpad. I have managed to do that. However I still see the standard group SAP with all the apps showing up in my launchpad.
I have not assigned the standard SAP role to my id. But the standard group still shows up by default.
Any thoughts on how to avoid showing the standard group SAP with Apps?
Thank you
Julius
P.S I have created an incident with SAP. However this route seems faster. 🙂
Hi Julius Pereira
You will see all of the apps because you have TENANT_ADMIN (as administrator of the portal site). If you don't want to see them all then remove this access (but you will not be able to administer the portal site) and only give yourself the roles you need to see the apps.
The other alternative is to preview the site for a specific Role - that is if you are testing the role and app configuration. You can check out the blog I wrote on this from a couple of years ago.
https://blogs.sap.com/2017/07/31/new-portal-feature-site-preview-for-different-user-types/
NOTE: This is not a bug so I would withdraw your incident.
Thanks
Phil
Thank you Phil. Appreciate it.
Julius
Hi Phil,
I have a small doubt. If we only have a subscription for "SAP Cloud Platform Portal Service", and not for "SAP Cloud Platform Fiori Cloud" (which includes SCP Portal Service), are we able to activate Apps from Fiori Apps Library (https://fioriappslibrary.hana.ondemand.com) in category "Available via SAP Fiori Cloud" as you explained very well in your post?
Thanks for your help !!
Sergio.
Hi Sergio Medina Jara sorry for the delay in responding but I don't believe so. The Fiori Cloud will provide you access to the subscription apps but the Portal service on it's own will not.
Thanks for reading and hope you work through this!
cheers
Phil
Hi Phil,
Are you aware if there is the same functionality for SCP Portal in Cloud Foundry?
Thank you.
Regards,
Marco
Hi Marco SILVA I don't believe so. I've been working in Cloud Foundry for a number of projects and there is no such functionality included. The only option I can think of is to create a Central Launchpad in CF that calls a Neo FLP that contains the subscription applications - this would work.
Good luck with this!
Thanks
Phil Cooley
Hi Marco,
What is your specific use case for wanting to consume Fiori Cloud apps in SCP Portal in Cloud Foundry?
If you are currently not using Fiori Cloud productively, then before deciding to implement you should consider the following:
Regards,
Mustafa.
Hello Mustafa,
We have a customer with ECC6 and no Fiori at all. They want to have some purchase requisition functionalties in Fiori, but don't want an on premise gateway. They have some SAP Workflow already working in the backend for PR approval and want to use it as it is.
SAP is advising them to buy SCP Cloud Foundry subscription with IAS and SAP Portal. We would develop a CRU (Create, Read, Update) custom Fiori app to manage purchase request, but for workflow we would like to implement the standard Fiori app, that would be "Approve Requisitions" (F0401) or "My Inbox" (F0862).
Thank you.
Best regards,
Marco
Hello,
I have a requirement to have Fiori Cloud with a Custom app. For a custom app scenario should we still need to "Add Business Content" ?
Hi Phil,
Great blog, thank you for sharing.
The version 3 apps are not working, am I missing something or do I have to activate something in SCP? Fiori Version two apps are working fine.
BR
Daniel
Hi Daniel Weicht - can you please be more specific - any screenshots. With the limited knowledge I would say your backend system may not be at the right level - i.e. either the OData services do not exist or they are at the wrong version. Maybe check the fiori apps library and the detailed config steps for each app to see if this is the case otherwise provide some more screenshots of what the errors are.
Kind Regards
Phil Cooley
Hi Phil,
Thank you for your quick response.
the OData Services exist in the backend system and we have the correct version installed.
In this link you will find a detailed description of the problem, including some screenshots.
URL: https://answers.sap.com/questions/13293181/sap-cloud-platform-hcm-fiori-version-3-apps-not-wo.html?childToView=13293574#comment-13293574
Thank you again Phil.
BR
Daniel Weicht
Hi Phil,
The issue with the versioning is solved and version 3 apps are working fine.
Now we are doing a project for a client and on their SAP Cloud Plattform I do not see the "Content Packages" on the left pane in the Portal.
Do we need to active something or is it related to permissions?
Thank you and BR
Daniel
Hi Phil,
Are there any additional steps for activating the standard S4HANA apps? I ask because I was able to activate the standard apps. However when I click on the display sales order app, I get an error
"App could not be opened either due to an incorrect SAP Fiori launchpad configuration or a missing role assignment."
Secondly, in the fiori apps library I do not see any odata service listed in the implementation tab, for the app. Any thoughts why?
Thank you
Julius
Hi Phil,
Nice blogs regarding Portal Services
How to Activate/Add Standard Fiori Apps to SCP Cloud Portal(Neo Environment) and Backend System is ECC and No Front End System.
Phil!! Could you please through some light on this.
One more thing!! I still don't see Content Management[Dropdown option], any thing to be done in SCP
Note: I don't have subscription for SAP Fiori Cloud.
Thanks and Regards,
Raghu Ram
Hi Phil,
To the same my Inbox (crossfndfioriinbox) subscription, can we map more than one account level destination with different portal sites?
Suppose another portal site is already using the crossfndfioriinbox subscription, can we also use the same subscription for out portal site?
Regards,
Sindhuja
hi Phil Cooley
How can we prevent application components to upgrade on Fiori cloud , every time we have to upgrade backend components to match with UI components.
Please suggest
Regards
Manish
Hi,
Can you please look in to this Question.