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SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance: Demo Guides

JoergWolf
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎04-23-2019 1:15 PM

This blog gives information on the pre-configured sample demo scenarios in the SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance. If you stumbled across this blog "by accident" and are interested in bringing up your own preconfigured SAP S/4HANA sandbox system within a few hours, please see this overview for the SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance.

Direct links to past appliance releases in SAP CAL are (see https://cal.sap.com for more appliances):
2023 SP00 / 2022 FPS02 /  2021 FPS02

Known issues for recent releases are listed here:

2023 / 2022 / 2021 / 2020

Table of content

A) Demo guides (valid for various appliance releases)
B) General remarks on the demo guides (scope, support, ....)
C) Post-deployment steps
D) System log-on
E) Archive: Demo guides for earlier appliance releases

A) Demo guides

Below are links to the pre-configured demo guides of the most recent appliance releases (FPS = Feature Package Stack).
Demo guides for older appliance releases can be found in the archive at the end of this blog.

Important: Before you start with these guides , please be sure to read sections B), C) and D) below at least once to prepare your system in the best way.

Overview

Logistics

Finance

Further LoB & generic scenarios

Analytics & AI

Data Migration & Migration Cockpit

User Experience & Extensibility

Technical

    • Apply a fully-qualified domain/host name & SSL certificates to your instance
      All releases
    • Change the Web Dispatcher port from 44301 to 443 (if a firewall allows only 443)
      All releases

B) General remarks

What does fully-activated and pre-configured mean ?

The appliance is largely based on the fully-activated scope of SAP Best Practices.
SAP Best Practices provide a suggested pre-configuration for a large variety of business processes so that these processes can be executed "out-of-the-box" in the described way (see the SAP Signavio Process Navigator https://me.sap.com/processnavigator for details).

In addition, some further capabilities that are not covered by the SAP Best Practices have been pre-configured in the appliance (such as Master Data Mgmt., Portfolio Mgmt., Human Capital Management, Migration Cockpit, etc.).

The demo guides take you on a "guided tour" through some of the pre-configured areas but your are also free to step away from these tours.
However, if you explore additional features of the SAP S/4HANA system beyond what is provided in the demo guides (or the more comprehensive test scripts of SAP Best Practices, see link above), you might find functions or processes that are not pre-configured and, hence, will not provide a meaningful system response. In this case, you need to configure those scenarios or functions using SAP standard procedures (e.g. via transaction SPRO) to make them work.

You might also find errors and bugs as you explore the appliance. In this case, please search for SAP Notes and corrections and decide if you want to apply them. The system behaves like a regular customer system once you have your own instance and will not be updated automatically by SAP i.e. you will need to implement these fixes in your system.

Where to get support ?

If you are using the appliance as part of a 30-day trial (the default if you don't close any contract with SAP), support is offered via the SAP Community. There, SAP employees, customers and partners will do their best to help you, however, there is no service level agreement attached to it.

For support of appliances within the SAP CAL subscription license (i.e. appliances that are running longer than 30 days), please report an incident on components BC-VCM-CAL (for SAP CAL & connectivity issues) or the respective functional components (e.g. FI-* or LO-*).

Master data structure in the appliance

The SAP Best Practices customizing and sample master data have been activated in client 100 of your SAP S/4HANA system. Typically, the demos flows use the company code 1710 (US-based) since only this contains transactional data for the demo scenarios.
Details for the organizational and master data structure of SAP Best Practices can be found on https://me.sap.com/processnavigator.

Initial system performance

When you access the system for the very first time, you will need to wait some time (can be as much as a few minutes) until the Fiori Launchpad or the SAP GUI show up. Using system functions such as the Create Sales Order Fiori tile for the first time will be significantly slower.

This is a normal behavior since the system needs to cache certain areas for first use after startup. The performance will improve significantly if you continue working with the system (note to administrators: SGEN has been performed).
Also, if the system has been re-activated after a "Suspend" period in SAP CAL , the system response will be slower during the first clicks on applications.

Browser messages about certificates & pop-ups

When accessing the Fiori Launchpad for the first time, you will be prompted about missing / unsigned certificates that might be rated as a security thread (exact message depends on the browser version). This behavior happens since the appliance doesn’t contain signed root CA certificates for the connection between browser and backend, but only certificates that are self-signed by SAP.
Please ignore these messages and add the Fiori Launchpad URL to the list of secure sites in your browser. If this is not possible (restricted corporate proxy/browser settings, etc.), please see if the above technical demo guide for fully-qualified host/domain names and SSL certificates might be an option.

Also, some of the Fiori apps will open in a separate browser tab/window. If you have a pop-up blocker activated, please confirm that you always would like to open pop-ups from vhcals4hcs.dummy.nodomain.


C) Post-deployment steps

When you start an instance for the very first time, certain time-based settings are still at the date when the appliance was assembled for shipment. For the appliance to fully work, you should adapt these settings to the actual date when you use the appliance.
Below you can find a list of the most important settings to change, but depending on how you use the appliance, you might need to touch further areas.

Open Inventory Management Period

To post any goods movements (goods receipts for procurement or goods issues for outbound processing), the inventory posting period must be the same as the goods movement date.

When you start an instance for the very first time, the open period is the month where the development of your appliance release was finalized, e.g. 11/2019. If you want to post goods receipts or goods issues in the current period (let's say 03/2020), you must first close all previous periods and open the period for the current month. This action must be performed sequentially and only once for each month.

The procedure below uses SAP GUI (TCode MMPV) but you can also use the Fiori Launchpad (user S4H_MM_DEM, tile Close Periods). If you are using the system for a longer period, you might also consider creating a scheduled job that  automatically adapts the MM period each month.


What to doWhat you will see


    • Log on to SAP GUI (see below if you don't know how to do this).

    • Enter tCode MMRV to see the open monthly period (i.e. month) in your delivered system (e.g. 11/2019). This needs to be changed to the current month.

    • Enter tCode MMPV and adapt to the current month

        • From company code: 1710

        • To company code: 1710

        • Period / Fiscal Year: current period +1 (e.g. 12/2019 if the value in MMPV showed you 11/2019)

        • Check and close period:X

        • Click Execute.




Sequentially repeat this for all periods in MMPV until you have reached the current month.

Hint:

If you change a period of a previous year (e.g. changing from 11/2019 to 12/2019 during January 2020), you will see a warning saying "The specified year 2019 is not the current calendar year".
Simply hit Enter / Execute again and the period will be changed accordingly.



Right-click image and open in separate tab to enlarge


 

D) Log-on to the system


To logon, open the Fiori Launchpad via the following link: https://vhcals4hcs.dummy.nodomain:44301/sap/bc/ui5_ui5/ui2/ushell/shells/abap/FioriLaunchpad.html

IMPORTANT:
The URL above uses the system alias vhcals4hcs. To make this link work on your local computer, you need to maintain your local Windows ‘/etc/hosts’ file.

If you access the trial via the included remote desktop of the appliance, these settings have been maintained already on the remote desktop.

Both methods as well as the access via SAP Logon are described in detail in the Step-by-Step Guide on the SAP S/4HANA Trial Page , or in the Getting Started Guide that is linked from the respective solution/instance details page on cal.sap.com.
 

E) Archive: Demo guides for earlier releases of the fully-activated appliance


Known issues are listed here: 1909 / 2020

Overview



Logistics

 

 

 

 

 



Finance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Further LoB & generic scenarios

 

 

 

    • Master Data Governance, MDG (separate blog with multiple scenarios)
      All releases

 



Analytics

 



Data Migration & Migration Cockpit

 



User Experience & User Interface

 

 

 

 



Technical

 

    • Change the Web Dispatcher port from 44301 to 443 (if a firewall allows only 443)
      2021 & 2020



 

 

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