Latest Update October 2020: Updated the title, added the SAP Notes with the latest improvements and explained the new feature to add recommended SAP Business Roles used to configure, adapt, extend SAP S/4HANA.

Latest Update March 2020: Updated the title to reflect that this process is available for SAP S/4HANA solutions 1709 or higher. This was already explained in the body of this blog post, however changing the title just makes it a little easier for people to discover this e.g. via Google Search.

Latest Update 15/05/2019: You can now download the Business Roles from the Fiori Apps Library, ready to upload into the tasklist! Just look for the link in the aggregated configuration details for your selected apps & roles.

In Part 1 – Overview you learned the history and purpose of the new Rapid Content Activation task lists for Fiori in S/4HANA. In Part 2 – Prerequisites & Foundation you completed the preparatory steps.  In this blog you will learn how to use the Rapid Content Activation task list itself.

So by now you have understood that the Rapid Content Activation will save you a lot of time in activating Fiori content.  Having checked the prerequisites and completed the once-off preparation using the Fiori Foundation task list, you are eager to get into the Rapid Content Activation task list itself.  Excellent! Keep reading!

You learned in Part 1 – Overview, that the new Rapid Content Activation approach is focused on deploying holistic business roles.  Each of these business roles contain a set of related apps and the app-to-app navigation that bring them together. When you take into consideration all the different country-specific variations, there are nearly 400 business roles currently available in the SAP Fiori Apps Library.  It’s highly unlikely you will need all 400 roles deployed in your system.  So to use the new rapid content activation task list you will need to:

• Select your business roles
• Execute the Rapid Content Activation task list for your selected business roles
• Testing your activated business roles

Once again here are the quick links to the blogs in this series to give you a complete understanding of the rapid content activation technique.

Part 1: Overview

• Why these Rapid Activation task lists were created
• What’s in the Rapid Activation task lists

Part 2: Pre-requisites and executing the Fiori Foundation task list

• Pre-requisites
• How to execute the Fiori Foundation task list

Part 3: Scoping & Executing the Rapid Activation Task List for your business roles (this blog)

• Selecting your business roles
• How to execute the Rapid Activation task list
• Testing your activating business roles

Part 4: Customizing & transporting your activated business roles

• How to customize the business roles you have activated by the task lists
• Transporting activation and activation alternatives
• Where to get help

Selecting your Business Roles

Recently I have been reading 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century by Yuval Noah Harari and I was particularly struck by this quote:

“Humans were always better at inventing tools than using them wisely”.

So how do you make sure you are using this new tool wisely? Control the scope by carefully selecting which business roles you want to activate.

In over 45 years of creating software SAP has created many 10s of 1000s of transactions in SAP Business Suite.  Most customers only ever used a small fraction of all these transactions.

In SAP S/4HANA simplification means a lot of duplicate or similar transactions have been removed or deprecated.  That still leaves you with over 10K apps to choose from out of all the available SAP Fiori apps, Web Dynpro for ABAP applications, and SAP GUI for HTML transactions.  You can check this for yourself by viewing the number of apps listed in the All Apps for SAP S/4HANA filter in the Fiori Apps reference library.

In the S/4HANA RIG we have seen several customers aim for some very high numbers of apps, and I’m currently working with a very large mining company working across over 50 countries, who are deploying one of the largest set of SAP S/4HANA apps yet seen.  Their SAP S/4HANA solution will cover all tasks for all business users across all countries.  Even so, the total number of all apps of all types is still less than 1500 apps in total.  That’s less than 15% of all the delivered Fiori launchpad content available.

Every app you activate needs to be tracked across the project & handed over to the support team after go-live. You will need to perform due diligence to check it’s fit to your business process. You may need to customize or extend it.  You will definitely need to authorize and test it. So turning on EVERY app available is not wise!

Instead consider which business roles you really need.

A good place to start is with the 3 business roles your project team will need to configure and extend other apps during the project i.e. Administrator, Analytics Specialist, and Business Process Specialist. Several of the apps contained in these roles are also business as usual support tools, so it’s an opportunity for you to take a first look at apps you personally may need later on.

After that, you’ll need some way to decide which business roles are relevant to your project.

Most SAP S/4HANA projects are organized & prioritized by workstream – such as Lead to Cash, Source to Supply, Procure to Pay, Hire to Retire. Usually the workstream lead will have some idea already of which business roles are most likely to fit, and which they need to look at first.  You can use the new tool to activate all business roles relevant to each workstream in turn.  Your project manager will know which workstream is most important to the business if you need to prioritize further.

TIP: Need some hints on how to enable your workstream leads? Refer to Best UX Resources for Functional Consultants

The SAP Fiori apps reference library helps to identify the relevant business roles for activation. The library offers various ways of selecting relevant Fiori apps and Fiori launchpad content for Fiori-themed GUI transactions and Web Dynpro for ABAP applications, such as:

• Providing recommended Fiori apps based on a list of SAP GUI Transaction Codes you upload
• Selection of apps along S/4HANA Scope Items
• Selection of apps along Lines of Business or Industries
• Selection of apps, which are mentioned in the SAP Fiori Lighthouse Scenarios

Independent of how you select the set of apps you are interested in, you can use the Aggregate mode to identify the list of roles for your selected. In the Aggregated Configuration Requirements you can see the list of related Business Role(s). You can download the list of business roles from here.

Remember some apps may be used by multiple business roles, so you may find more roles than you expect. To confirm which business roles are related to the apps you have chosen, just expand the Business Role(s) and confirm which roles you need. You can export the list using the  Export list of Business Roles. 

TIP: Each business role has a technical id and description. The technical id is also the name of the matching security role in transaction PFCG.

The downloaded list will look something like this:

To activate those roles in the system via the new task lists for rapid activation you just need to set the corresponding check-boxes in the role selection popup of the task list (see below).  You can also do this by uploading your downloaded list of business roles.

When all prerequisites are met and the composite note has been implemented, you can start to use the task lists themselves. You do this in SAP GUI using transaction STC01.

Executing the Rapid Activation task list

IMPORTANT: Further improvements have been made to the Fiori Content Activation for SAP Business Roles Task List. To take advantage of these, please ensure that you have read and implemented the following notes before you execute the task list.

• 2686456 – Fiori Setup: Content Activation for SAP Business Roles

After the Fiori Foundation task list has been successfully completed, you can proceed to the next task list for Fiori Content Activation.   Once again you open transaction STC01, this time enter the task list name SAP_FIORI_CONTENT_ACTIVATION, and you should see a short set of steps listed.

This task list allows you to automatically activate and configure one or many selected business roles (the scope definition). The process mode must be kept on co-deployed only.

As a first optional step you can enter a list of SAP Business Roles, which have been identified via a search of selected apps in the SAP Fiori Apps Reference Library. If you wish, you can cut and paste the roles you want to activate together from your downloaded list of business roles.

The number of SAP Business Roles has grown rapidly over SAP S/4HANA releases:

• SAP S/4HANA 1909 delivered more than 450 roles
• SAP S/4HANA 2020 delivers more than 480 roles

So the latest improvements have added some new options to make scoping your roles easier including:

• Sort selected roles – You can sort roles so that your selected roles are shown at the top of the list so you can more easily see which roles you have selected without scrolling down
• Select recommended SAP Business Roles – This adds the recommended cross-functional roles to your scoping list
  • These are the roles that contain the SAP Fiori apps that configure, adapt and extend other SAP Fiori apps including Administrator, Analytics Specialist, Business Process Specialist, and Configuration Expert – Business Process Configuration.

Improvements in the Fiori Content Activation of SAP Business Roles Task List

Once you have entered and confirmed your list, you should see a selection of the roles to be activated & can adjust the list further if you wish.

Press Save to confirm before pressing Back to return to the main screen of the task list.  You should see a count of the number of roles you have selected reflected in the main screen :

After completing the configuration you can start to run the task list. You can run the task list in dialog or background mode.  Once again check the logs to see if everything was successful, or if any errors have occurred.  If you do see any errors or warnings, check the composite note which might give a hint on the root cause.

Testing your Activated Business Roles

To test your activated business roles, you will need to find the generated test user.  The easiest option is to go to transaction PFCG, enter the SAP Business Role id, and check which users have been assigned to the role.

You can then logon as that user to the Fiori launchpad, either using the transaction code /UI2/FLP or just the launch URL directly, i.e.

https://<host>:<port>/sap/bc/ui2/flp

If you are activating a lot of roles, you may want to take advantage of some smoke test tools released on Github. These perform some simple checks of all the Fiori apps in the Fiori launchpad, e.g. to check that apps are loaded successfully without HTTP 4x/5x ODATA or console errors. These in come in 2 variants:

• Manual Smoke Test based on OPA
• Automated Smoke Test based on UIVeri5

So now you are all set to explore your activated roles in your sandpit or demo system.  You can start exploring what is delivered. You can also use your sandpit or demo system to discuss with your business stakeholders how closely the delivered SAP Business Roles map to your organization’s business roles, and what apps you want to use in your first phase.

Having decided what you want to deploy in your Development system, you will need to read on to Part 4 – Customizing & transporting your activated business roles.

Becoming a SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA guru

You’ll find much more on our SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA wiki

Brought to you by the S/4HANA RIG