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Author's profile photo Murali Shanmugham

Building Portal Sites on SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry – Creating your first portal site

Most of you would be across how the Portal service can be leveraged to create Fiori Launchpad and Freestyle sites in the SAP Cloud Platform Neo environment. The Portal service has evolved over the last few years and we have seen many organizations adopt it for various use cases ranging from Corporate HR Portals to Supplier portals. One of the recent advancements was around the support for a multi-cloud deployment. SAP Cloud Platform already offers many services in the Cloud Foundry environment and the Portal service is one among those. This is a major steps towards the Multi-Cloud approach to support deploying portal sites in some of those leading IaaS providers close to you. The Portal service on Cloud Foundry will also be the foundation for the Central Entry point as described in “SAP Fiori Deployment Options and System Landscape Recommendations“. Its important to note that the Portal service in Cloud Foundry is not yet in parity with the same service in Neo environment. Looking at the roadmap for this service, you can be assured that lot of work is going into both Neo and Cloud Foundry environments to add more capabilities to the Portal service.

There are plenty of SAP Community blogs and openSAP courses which you can refer to familiarize yourself with the service in the Neo environment. This blog series is dedicated to the Portal service in the Cloud Foundry environment. I will keep adding contents to it as when new capabilities are added and when I do get some spare time to blog 🙂

Vera Gutbrod had earlier posted a blog on how to get started with subscribing to this service in Cloud Foundry trial environment. Here is an excellent video which walk through the steps on how to setup your Cloud Foundry subaccount to launch the Portal service.

Creating a Portal Site

The process for creating a Portal site is not very different when compared to Neo. We still have the same portal objects like Catalogs, Groups, apps and roles. There has been come consolidation of tools. You may recall in the Neo environment – We have the Fiori Configuration Cockpit and Site designer (for creating Freestyle and hybrid sites). This has been consolidated to one single tool called the “Site Manager”.

Launching the portal service from the subscriptions will take you to the Site Manager where you can create new sites.

 

Once your create a site by providing a name, it opens up the Site Editor where you can configure your site and add pages/apps. By default, you have a Launchpad based page.

Click on the “+” icon to create a new free style page. Select the desired page template.

Once the new page is added, you can set it as Home page and also define the layout settings

This is exactly the same way you would design your freestyle pages in the Neo environment. All those widgets are available and you can add them to your page.

I have used few widgets to design my Home page shown below

The next step is to create your menu for a top-level navigation. Use the Menu Editor to design your navigation menu. Each item can refer to existing pages/app/URL links.

If you want to add apps to your portal site, you will have to use the Content Manager. By default, the only object which is available is the “Everyone” role. Use the “New” button to create new portal objects.

Lets start with creation of an App. You can configure an app for the following types:

I will show in a separate blog on how to create Fiori apps in Cloud Foundry and also configure WebDynpro apps and add them the Portal site. For now, I will stick with an easy example – URL apps. In the properties section, I have just add the title/description and the URL.

In the Navigation section, you can add the semantic object/action along with parameters to pass to the application.

Finally, in the Visualization section, define the tile UI settings.

The next step is to create a Group and Catalog and have the app assigned to them.

Ensure that you search for the app in the “Assignments” section and add them to the group and catalog which you create.

The last step in the Content Manager is to assign the app to the required roles. For simplicity, assign the apps to the default “Everyone” role. In the next blog post, I will cover how to create user-defined roles and assign them to users.

The below objects should now be available in the Content Manager. We now have a URL app which is assigned to Group/Catalog/Role.

To view this app within the Fiori Launchpad, I need to assign it to a menu entry. In the below example, I have assigned the Launchpad page to the “More Info” menu entry.

These are the basic steps required to create a simple portal site with freestyle as well as Fiori Launchpad pages. Once you have configured your site, hit the publish icon on the top right hand corner

This will open the portal site in a new window. Here is an example of my portal site which opens up with the freestyle page with all the defined widgets.

I can also view the Fiori Launchpad and apps within it by navigating the the “More Info” menu item.

As you can see the Admin interface has been simplified a lot and for those who have worked on the Portal service in the Neo environment, you would not see much of a difference as the concepts and approach remain the same.

Move on to the next blog to know more about Role concepts.

 

 

 

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      21 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Sitakant Tripathy
      Sitakant Tripathy

      Hi Murali,

      thanks for the intro blog on portal.

      Just checking, could we use the portal for external facing content with partner organisations who support daily operational activities. If yes, is there a lean way to do self service identity management for the external users rather than having dedicated named users.

      Regards,

      Sitakant.

      Author's profile photo Murali Shanmugham
      Murali Shanmugham
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks for your feedback. Yes, you can build external facing portals for partner organizations. Check out this video on some of the capabilities.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIq7ml1Ackw&list=PLFD0FA2183DC1F3B7&index=4

      With regard to self-service Identity Management, I had earlier posted on this topic. This may help

      https://blogs.sap.com/2017/07/31/implementing-a-user-self-registration-scenario-using-workflow-and-business-rules-in-sap-cloud-platform-part-1/

      Author's profile photo Sitakant Tripathy
      Sitakant Tripathy

      Brilliant & thanks, just the insights I need :).

       

      Regards,

      Sitakant

      Author's profile photo Joel Sanchez
      Joel Sanchez

      Hello, excellent blog!

      I need to create a WDA on SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry Trial Account, I already have R3 connected to HCC and the destination in the cockpit. When I enter the portal and create the new WDA app I have the following error:

      App could not be opened either due to an incorrect SAP Fiori launchpad configuration or a missing role assignment.
      Failed to resolve navigation target "# wda-display". This is most likely caused by an incorrect SAP Fiori launchpad content configuration or by a missing role assignment.

      The WDA that I am trying to show is Application ID. This application is active and I can see it from Se80.

      Regards,

      Joel,

      Author's profile photo Murali Shanmugham
      Murali Shanmugham
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Joel,

      My understanding is that this scenario of consuming Classic UIs via Cloud Connector is currently not yet supported and is in the roadmap.

      Author's profile photo Aviad Rivlin
      Aviad Rivlin
      • Did you follow the steps in the documentation: https://help.sap.com/viewer/ad4b9f0b14b0458cad9bd27bf435637d/Cloud/en-US/35a2b711aed448dd93b8e0112d662922.html
      • What's your back-end version?
      • (Note that there is a bug on trial currebtly that is planend to be fixed today).

       

      Aviad

      Author's profile photo Joel Sanchez
      Joel Sanchez

      Hi Aviad,

      • Yes, I followed those steps.
      • Mi back-end:

      SAP_BASIS 750 0014
      SAP_ABA 750 0014
      SAP_GWFND 750 0015
      SAP_UI 750 0015

      • Yes, this is an trial account.

      Regards,

      Joel,

      Author's profile photo yasuyuki uno
      yasuyuki uno

      Great article !
      It was a great help as I was just creating a portal.

      Author's profile photo Vinod Patil
      Vinod Patil

      Hello,

      How does this fit in cloud foundry architecture?

      This is not service that we are creating within CF Space scope rather we are creating something at Org level. Isn't it?

       

      Regards,

      Vinod

      Author's profile photo Murali Shanmugham
      Murali Shanmugham
      Blog Post Author

      The Portal service is actually a subscription which is accessed from the CF subaccounts. Portal Admins will use this to create portal sites and transport the contents between subaccounts. This is similar to other services like Business Rules, RPA etc which are provided as a service at the Org level

      Author's profile photo Wolfgang Röckelein
      Wolfgang Röckelein

      Hi Murali Shanmugham ,

      thanks for your helpful blog. Regading adding an onmpremise WDA or SAPGUI for HTML App to Portal in CF: Do I understand https://help.sap.com/viewer/ad4b9f0b14b0458cad9bd27bf435637d/Cloud/en-US/07436534d3ad4290ab617d27bddcc55c.html right that currently in order for this to work, I can’t access the onpremise system via cloud connector but have to expose it directly to the internet?

      If yes, is there any plan to change this? I have not found anything related onpremise access in the roadmap at https://www.sap.com/products/roadmaps/finder-all.html#pdf-asset=5c1b1e2a-c37c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa&page=10

      Thanks for clarification,

      Wolfgang

      Author's profile photo Aviad Rivlin
      Aviad Rivlin

      Indeed this is the case and YES, we plan to change/update/improve this and support the consumption via SCC (SAP Cloud Connector).

      Aviad

      Author's profile photo Wolfgang Röckelein
      Wolfgang Röckelein

      Hi Aviad Rivlin ,

      this is really good news!

      Do you have a rough timeframe when consumption via SCC will be possible?

      Thanks,

      Wolfgang

      Author's profile photo Aviad Rivlin
      Aviad Rivlin

      It's planned for Q4/2019.

       

      Aviad

      Author's profile photo shanthakumar k
      shanthakumar k

      Hi Murali,

      Useful blog... Thanks for sharing this..

      i am designing roles for Cloud portal and assigning roles to user ids in the cloud platform cockpit under authorization tab. Without TENANT _ADMIN Role user is not able to view the apps in the FLP.

      I am not comfortable to provide this role to end users as this is providing admin access such as Manage sites.. to the end user.

      Please could you share your idea on this..

      Author's profile photo Murali Shanmugham
      Murali Shanmugham
      Blog Post Author

      Hi shanthakumar k

      I think you are referring to the Neo environment when SCP cockpit has Authorization tab. End users should never be assigned "TENANT_ADMIN" role. You would need to create custom roles and assign them to end users. There are plenty of blogs/openSAP courses which cover this topic. I would recommend you to go through those and if you still don't find the solution, please post a question in the forum. Thanks

      Author's profile photo shanthakumar k
      shanthakumar k

      Hi Murali Shanmugham ,

      Yes i m referring the neo environment.. now created a custom role for end-users to access the FLP.. even for providing this TENANT ADMIN Role to other support consultants.. feeling discomfort able as it has wider access..still searching for the articles that allow me to customize these default roles

      Author's profile photo Boudhayan Dev
      Boudhayan Dev

      Hi Murali Shanmugham ,

       

      Thanks for this useful blog.

      I would like to know what is the difference between this Portal application and the portal service offered as a service in subaccount level.  I have created a FLP using MTA application in WebIde. The FLP launchpad can configure tiles from the UI modules in the project.

      So in that case, how is this Portal application any different from the portal service ?

       

      Regards.

       

       

      Author's profile photo Oleksii Konchyts
      Oleksii Konchyts

      Hi Murali Shanmugham ,

      thank you for the blog. I've tried to create portal site in CF with MTA UI5 app. I see two Fiori Launchpads. And both toolbar are active. See screen shot.

      Could you help me with that?

      Author's profile photo Vinoth Kumar
      Vinoth Kumar

      Hi Oleksii Konchyts

      I too have same issue where the tool bar shows 2 times. Can you share, how you solve this. Thanks. I am creating a portal site for MTA Application in CF.

       

      Author's profile photo DurgaPrasanth vemula
      DurgaPrasanth vemula

      HI,

      I have ECC 6.0 with SP 7.4 and want to display the Standard FIori Apps in Portal Service in SAP Cloud PLatform(CF) and can i know it is possible becuase it is Mentioned S/4 Hana only.

       

      Thanks

      Durga Prasanth