WebGUI (ITS) best practices.

Hello all,

This blog post will help you in setting up WebGUI and follow its best practices to ensure no side effects to the existing standard services.

What is Webgui?

WEBGUI is a SAP GUI for HTML where you can access SAP system from your browser without installing any SAP frontend software.

WebGUI is a standard feature of SAP which can be launched by tcode WEBGUI or as per note 2203575

But the problem occurs when you need to customise the webgui where the standard webgui services has to be modified which is not recommended.

Creating an Alias

Rather than customizing and using the standard webgui services its better to create an alias for the same and call the webgui service internally by the alias and make necessary customization in the alias.

Create a new alias by the External alias creation under transaction SICF.

Select the target element i.e. standard webgui service  /default_host/sap/bc/gui/sap/its/webgui

Now all kind of customizations can be done to the alias without affecting the standard service. You can even cut short the webgui url by assigning a suitable keyword as the service name.

For example : http://<host><port>/webgui rather than the standard url : http://<host><port>/default_host/sap/bc/gui/sap/its/webgui

Look and feel

You can change the theme for webgui similar to the themes of sap logon in the GUI configuration. You have an option to choose from a variety of themes as per note 1508958

For more user friendly icon view follow the note 1148291 and use the parameter ~webgui_icon_toolbar accordingly.

To enable combo keys use the parameter ~webgui_combobox_with_keys as per 495409

Logout issue

To quote an example of the side effect of modifying the standard webgui service, we had to implement webgui and log off was not complete hence to redirect post logout we need to make the necessary changes in the standard service. This resulted in problem resolution but the users faced problem in the portal where the users were prompted for login again while accessing different tabs due to logoff redirect set in the webgui standard service.

Hence the alias created and the changes are made in it so the standard webgui service will not be affected and also the required complete logoff is accomplished.

Logoff redirect

If incomplete logoff is encountered in webgui follow the below procedure to resolve it.

Navigate to the created alias under SICF.

Under the ‘Error Pages’ find the ‘Logoff’ option and create the Explicit Response Page header and body as below.

Page Header:

<NO_TRANSLATION><HEADER>
ITS-Cmd:1
</HEADER><HEADER>
ITS-Cmd-XML:1
</HEADER></NO_TRANSLATION>

Page Body:

<?xml version=”1.0″ ?> <ITS> <cmd name=”ITS” /> <cmd name=”Redirect” url=”/sap/public/bc/icf/logoff?redirecturl=/<alias_name>” ></cmd> </ITS>

Replace <alias_name> with the created external alias name.

Do make sure the required sicf services like ‘webgui’ and ‘logoff’ are enabled.

WebGUI even has features where SSO can be configured so the user experience is increased.

This can be configured under the Logon Data and keeping Logon Procedure to alternative and using gmail or other authentication procedure.

Even though WebGUI sounds cool it comes with its own limitations and special behavior as explained under note 314568.

SAP constantly releases UR(Unified Rendering) updates via TCI or by kernel updates to overcome bugs and improve functionality.

Please do let me know your feedback ?.