My Experience with Rapid Activation for Fiori in S/4 HANA 1809 FPS 02

With the release of the new tasklists for the rapid content activation last year, I think Fiori consultants around the globe were intrigued to see how efficient and robust this tool would be (Offcourse, Me being one of them) 🙂 . There are multiple informative blogs already published in this topic, especially the blogs by Jocelyn Dart and Mahesh Sardesai.

I got an opportunity to implement a new Fiori landscape for an Utilities client, for a Greenfield S/4 HANA project. Hence all circumstances suggested that I dip my hands in the rapid activation tool now. 🙂

In this blog I am going to share my personal experience and lessons learned from using the rapid content activation tool in this environment. This is NOT a step by step guide to rapid Fiori activation.

Prerequisites

SAP Notes Implementation

We had an S/4 HANA 1809 FPS 02 system at our disposal. We followed the official SAP architecture recommendation and set up an Embedded system.

The first rule that I set for the implementation, was to follow the SAP Note 2823926 line by line.

Rapid activation for Fiori is supported from S/4 HANA 1709 FPS 01 or Higher. There is a separate composite note for each version of S/4 HANA system.

SAP S/4HANA 1709 FPS01 or higher: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2695653

SAP S/4HANA 1809 FPS 00: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2704570

SAP S/4HANA 1809 FPS01: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2777142

SAP S/4HANA 1809 FPS02: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2823926

SAP S/4HANA 1909 FPS 00: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2834415

It is highly recommended that we should follow the respective composite note for the relevant S/4 HANA version.

The SAP Note is very descriptive and self explanatory. But I would still like to highlight a couple of points.

Before we start executing any rapid activation tasklists, the relevant SAP Notes for the S/4 HANA version, needs to be implemented. We can find the list of Notes to be deployed at the bottom of the Composite SAP Note,

Initial Configuration

The tasklist SAP_FIORI_FOUNDATION_S4 should be executed for the initial Gateway configuration as one of the prerequisites.

But in most projects we require that the Logoff page for the Fiori launchpad should be redirected to the logon page. This configuration is still not automated by these tasklists. It is still a manual process.

(It is though very easy to setup,

Step1: Go to transaction SICF

Step2: navigate to the node /default_host/sap/public/bc/icf/logoff

Step3: in its properties Error Pages-> Logoff Page, select the option Redirect to URL, and paste the following relative url,

/sap/bc/ui5_ui5/ui2/ushell/shells/abap/FioriLaunchpad.html )

BW Analytics Configuration

It is also a prerequisite to setup the embedded analytical engine of the S/4 system.

I followed the SAP Note: 2289865 and 2636754 for this configuration.

In the SAP Note it is mentioned that the tasklist SAP_BW_SETUP_INITIAL_S4HANA automates all the manual steps needed for the analytical engine configuration, but the step to configure the DDIC user, should still be performed manually.

(Set parameter “without Java” for DDIC user to prevent activation of Java content at next step (which must be performed with DDIC user) 
a. User parameter RSWAD_DEV_MDVERSION = ‘072’
b. User parameter RSWAD_SKIP_JAVA = ‘X’ )

I would recommend doing this manual configuration before starting with the tasklist.

The Enterprise Search Configuration

The next prerequisite for the rapid activation is the setup of the Enterprise Search. This is a very straight forward step, and can be done easily by running the tasklist SAP_ESH_INITIAL_SETUP_WRK_CLIENT with the parameters mentioned in the Note.

The Gateway Setup

Also this is a very straight forward step, and can be done easily by running the tasklist SAP_GW_FIORI_ERP_ONE_CLNT_SETUP

The Rapid Content Activation for Fiori

We start the rapid activation with the tasklist SAP_FIORI_CONTENT_ACTIVATION this tasklist activates all SAP Fiori apps based on selected SAP Fiori Business Roles.

The Co-Deployed mode

Co-Deployed is basically embedded mode. It means the OData services are being called and activated from the same system.

Generally The Fiori Rapid activation is designed for Embedded system architecture. Hence the Processing mode for the Tasklist should be selected as Co-Deployed.

(NOTE: If OData services are activated through the ‘Co-Deployed’ mode then you wont see a system alias assigned to them, when checked from /IWFND/MAINT_SERVICE)

Selecting the Business Roles

There is a step in the SAP_FIORI_CONTENT_ACTIVATION tasklist where you can select the Business roles you need to activate from a list of approx 414 standard business roles.

There is also the possibility to select all the roles at once. I would like to share a few points regarding the role selection,

My advice is DO NOT SELECT ALL AT ONCE.

SAP themselves, recommend selecting less than 100 roles at once.

I personally observed better and efficient performance when small batches of roles were selected (eg:- 20).

The benefit of selecting smaller role batches are,

1. The processing time is less.
2. It is more efficient to monitor and mange the overall activation process.

Everyone wants to see Green in the run status. 😉

Special Roles

Before selecting any role for the activation, it is of utmost importance that the Special Roles section of the relevant Rapid Activation Composite SAP Note is checked.

The special roles mentioned in the SAP Notes, are the Notes which in all probability might block the rapid activation flow. Some of these roles require additional manual setup, some of them require special authorizations, because they deal with some business function activation. Now these activities will have some impact on the full system. Hence I would recommend not to select these roles during the initial run of the rapid content activation.

These roles should be selected separately, and only if required, as they will might make some irreversible changes in the system, which may not be relevant for the project.

What to do when its all RED ?!

DON’T PANIC !!

Though we don’t want to see it, but alas, there could still be failures, even after following all the prerequisite steps.

But like all other issues there are some pretty straight forward fixes for them.

Lets discuss a few common issues,

OData service activation Failure

The most common failure that can occur during Fiori rapid activation, is the failure to activate some OData services.

Now the we can get a summary of the failed services from the tasklist error logs,

The first thing we shoudl do is copy the list of services that failed, and then try to activate them using the old tasklist,  SAP_GATEWAY_ACTIVATE_ODATA_SERV

In most of the cases this step will be successful.

If some specific OData service still cant be activated, then manual error investigation should be made for them.

Metadata cant be loaded for the OData service

If the metadata for a service cant be loaded because of the search connector, then the index of the search connector for the relevant software component and model needs to be re generated.

This can be done easily by using the tasklist SAP_ESH_CREATE_INDEX_SC

This tasklist is a subpart of the SAP_ESH_INITIAL_SETUP_WRK_CLIENT tasklist. This one only activates search connector indexes for a perticualr software component.

Use this to activate the search connectors for the component EAPPLH. This is the parent component for SAPAPPLH.

After activating the connectors, try to activate the failed OData service again. This time you should get a positive response. 🙂

Authorization Inconsistency

Sometime the rapid activation tasklist could be blocked due to inconsistent default values for standard authorization objects. This is generally observed in a completely new system.

To resolve this issue, I followed SAP Note 1861859.

(In SE38 the following report should be executed,

SU24_AUTO_REPAIR

Especially the option ‘Repair bad lists in SU24‘ should be checked.

And the option ‘Test Mode, No Update‘ should be unchecked).

Irrelevant OData Services

There could also be cases where the failed OData service is for certain components which are irrelevant for the project.

For example, I got an issue with the service,

NPA_BILLINGEXCPTN_SRV, because Patient accounting was not active in my system. But this was also not relevant for my project.

This issue mostly comes from the business role SAP_BR_PA_REPRESENTATIVE.

Thus please be careful while selecting the business role from the rapid activation tasklist !!

My Inbox configuration

Well, I think most of us would agree that My Inbox is probably the most famous Fiori application. Its like the Angelina Jolie of Fiori. 😉

Every Fiori consultant who has activated this app before knows that the Taskprocessing OData service, relevant for this app, requires a special system alias which is assigned with the software version  /IWPGW/BWF.

Well this step of the activation still needs to be performed manually, it cant be handled by the rapid activation tasklists.

Previously we used to create a custom system alias for this, but now SAP provides a standard system alias LOCAL_TGW for this.

The processing mode for this OData service needs to be changed to ‘Routing based’ and then add the system alias LOCAL_TGW

What to do after the activation?

Well after you have the Fiori apps activated, all that is left to do is to allow Functional consultants to play with them. 🙂

Generally now we need to assign the custom roles created by the tasklist (The rapid activation tasklist creates Z replicas for all the business roles that are selected for activation. These Z roles contain all the necessary authorizations) to the test users.

For this part of the story please read my next blog on My Experience with Fiori Lanuchpad Content Manager

Inference

I drew the following inferences for the Rapid Activation for Fiori, from my experience in S/4 HANA 1809,

• Fiori Rapid Activation is a really effective tool for Fiori landscape setup.Makes a system easily available for the initial fit gap analysis for a new S/4 HANA implementation project.
• Most of the configuration are transportable (Not All).
• Manual steps might be required in special cases.
• Standard Business roles are replicated with a ‘Z’ prefix, hence significant effort is reduced for role maintenance. 🙂
• It is also possible to generate specific test users for each business role. Somehow I dont use this feature as it is not always a good idea to create a lot of test users in your system. 🙂
• For activation of services through custom business roles instead of standard, the tasklist SAP_FIORI_FCM_CONTENT_ACTIVATION should be used. for details please read my blog on My Experience with Fiori launchpad Content Manager.

Thus we can now start to play with Fiori apps quicker and faster after the initial system setup, and this makes life much much smoother for  Fiori consultants. 🙂 🙂