Personal Insights
Transitioning from SAP GUI to SAP Fiori: A friendly user guide – Part One
As part of the SAP S/4HANA RIG we are privileged to work with multiple customers on the journey to SAP S/4HANA. We find countless customers converting to SAP S/4HANA with many users who are very experienced in SAP GUI and the transaction codes. This blog post series explains how these users can continue to take advantage of their knowledge of SAP GUI in a SAP Fiori environment and find simple answers to:
- How can I search for a SAP GUI transaction code in SAP Fiori?
- How can I search for an App in SAP Fiori?
- How can I create my Favorites?
- How can I change the name of the App?
- How do I know what role do I need to have access to the App?
- How can I know the functionality behind an App?
In part one I will be answering the following questions:
- How can I search for a SAP GUI transaction code in SAP Fiori?
- How can I search for an App name in SAP Fiori?
How can I search for a SAP GUI transaction code in SAP Fiori?
In SAP GUI the quickest route to any transaction was often the command /n followed by the transaction code, typically a short 4 alphanumeric char code. This code had little meaning to the novice or occasional user. However experienced business users quickly came to rely on this handy way to shift context from one transaction to the next, saving much tedious menu navigation
If you are coming to SAP S/4HANA with this valuable background knowledge, you can still use this approach in SAP Fiori to quickly shift to the transaction you want. There are couple of ways to do this:
Option A
- Open your SAP Fiori launchpad and select Apps
TIP! We select Apps to narrow the search
2. Type on the Search field the SAP GUI transaction code
TIP! Notice that when you start typing the name the system shows all the Apps that matches with your search criteria.
3. If the system finds Apps that matches your search, then they will be displayed
4. Double click on the App to execute it
Option B
- Open Search on the SAP Fiori Apps library
https://fioriappslibrary.hana.ondemand.com/sap/fix/externalViewer/
2. Type in the search box the name of the SAP GUI transaction code and click <ENTER>
3. The tool will display all applications that match with the key word that you used in your search.
4. Select the entry that you want to see to open the details
5. Select the title and use <CTRL+C> to save the name for later use
6. Open your SAP Fiori launchpad and select App Finder to search
7. On the Search field, use <CTRL + V>to paste the name and hit <ENTER>
TIP! This field is case sensitive
8. If the App exist on your Catalog then it will be displayed
TIP! Select pin button to save the App in one of your Groups
How can I search for an App name?
If you could not find the App with the SAP GUI transaction code then we can try to do the search with the transaction code description or name. Let’s use F110 – Automatic Payment Transactions as an example
- Open your SAP Fiori launchpad and select App Finder to search
2. Type on the search field the name of the App that you are looking for and click <ENTER>
TIP! If you do not know the exact name search for a more Generic one.
3. The system will display all the Apps that match the search word
TIP! The highlight pin indicates that the App is already part of one of your Groups.
This blog is a compilation of my own journey and experiences and is not intended to be the only or best way to do it. Please use the below link to learn another relevant way to search with the App to App navigation approach.
In summary, you can use this guide to help you to transition to Fiori and hopefully find answer to your questions. In future blogs I will be answering the remaining questions outline above.
Hopefully this is helpful, please add in the comment section any other topics you think are valuable to have included in this guide.
– Brought to you by the S/4HANA RIG –
Wow! That looks so simple with FIORI.
Thanks a lot for your blog Monica.
It could help if you can post about show OK field in FIORI and we can execute the transactions as in SAP GUI.If possible, can you please explain about the type of FIORI apps(GUI,Fact sheets,analytical apps).
Also, we are continuously getting the ODATA service missing (ESH_SEARCH_SRV 0001) error, after login to the system using FIORI link even after adding the same service at both front end,back end system roles. This error is found after we upgraded from S4 1610 to S4 1809 in both front end & back end systems.If you can throw some light on this service about & error, will be useful. We have separate standalone system for FIORI and we are using the Catalogs,groups at front end and transactions addition to the roles in backend.
Regards,
Gopinath A
Hi Gopinath
Please make sure you raise a SAP Incident for the OData error. Remember SAP Community is not an official support channel - and a single blog author can't know everything! 😉
If you do want to raise an issue in the SAP Community then blog comments is not the most helpful... as usually not that many people will notice it. Better to use the Ask a Question link for those sort as it gets to a wider audience who can help.
In the meantime please check your Web Dispatcher parameters are set correctly for the InA requests to be redirected to your backend system, and you will find some further advice on SAP Note 2776662 - "No service found for namespace", Name 'ESH_SEARCH_SRV', Version '0001' and 2227082 - Search fails in SAP Fiori Launchpad but is successful in 'Enterprise Search.
all the best,
Jocelyn
By the way, we don't usually talk about Factsheet vs. Analytical vs. Transactional apps in SAP S/4HANA - that was more a concept for SAP Business Suite in the early days of SAP Fiori.
With SAP S/4HANA a lot of the SAP Fiori apps are translytical anyway - i.e. a mix of analytical (insights) and transactional (actions) features. You can see this in many of the SAP Fiori elements floorplans. e.g. Overview Pages cards with both charts and stack card actions; Analytical list pages with filters/charts/tables and actions + list of links dialogs.
These blogs Overview Pages a good place to start and Understanding insight to action app to app navigation will help give you the idea.
By the way Factsheets are replaced by SAP Fiori elements floorplan Object Page.
GUI transactions are not SAP Fiori apps, they are classic user interfaces.
You can see this explained here:
The SAP Fiori User Experience for SAP S/4HANA
Classic UIs that can be launched from the SAP Fiori launchpad include SAP GUI transactions, ABAP Web Dynpro applications, and as of SAP S/4HANA 1909 WebClient user interfaces.
These will all work ok on desktop but you need to be a little more careful to check them on other devices, and do your due diligence - i.e. pay attention to the restrictions and test carefully. Most just simply were created before devices existed, so there is a limit to how much can be achieved when extending them to devices.
Did you solve the problem?
Good Blog.
Really nice blog! I have a question, please weigh in. The above blog does very well in explaining searching for fiori apps, very similiar to how app library works. My question revolves around GUI tcodes as HTML tiles.
A lot of non financial processes still need to use GUI tocdes, a lot of the time its the only option if timelines are tight or a lot of work is needed to extend or create. SAP have told us that if the the HTML flag is not set in se93 (which most are not). then its not supported….its a bit of a catch 22 wouldn’t you agree?
I have also seen that switching user profiles is not supported via HTML, so every user needs SU3 if they need this functionality, a whole new tile for this. If one wants to maintain a single point of reference, a cleaner UX, what is the approach supposed to be here? Leaves customers scratching their heads?
Hi Michael, I am not an expert in this topic. My advice is for you to post your questions in Ask Question to have a better chance to get an answer. Thx! Monica
Hi Michael
Re the transaction codes... do you have specific examples? We support over 8K GUI transaction codes in SAP S/4HANA.
From my own project experiences - I have a "Fiori first" customer with 1500 tiles/links accessed via the SAP Fiori launchpad. Out of all of the 1500 there were maybe 12-15 GUI transactions that we launched using GUI for Windows via SAP Business Client - which can be done as explained n https://blogs.sap.com/2020/01/06/sap-fiori-for-s-4hana-launch-sap-business-client-from-sap-fiori-launchpad/ Of these most were either in Project Systems or deep plant maintenance apps where there were special scheduling boards and other requirements. So in practice it's rare to have that problem, and even so there are ways around it.
Re switching user profiles, like Monica I am not an expert, but I think what you are looking at would be handled partly by the new Spaces and Pages concept especially multi-pages, which will help users swap between different roles.
Hope that helps.
Monica, gracias por esta serie de blogs. Super informativos.
Hello,
Nice blog. I will add some sigth regarding the transaction code. In my umble opition, we must use to forget the transaction code and use to focus to the user flow. Today, lot of transaction cannot be escape but the target should be TCode less.
A tips for those who like keybord : Crl+Shift+F will open the search area automatically 🙂
Regards,
Joseph