Product Information
Get to Know the New Spaces Concept for SAP Fiori Launchpad
*** Updated 11th August 2021: This blog post has been adjusted so that it reflects the current released state.
Within the scope of the recent SAP Fiori 3 innovations, there is an important innovation for the SAP Fiori launchpad: the spaces concept. With this new concept, we introduced the possibility to define the layout of the pages of whole user groups. This allows to consume the content of the launchpad in an easier and more structured way than before. This means, no overloaded home pages anymore, which led users to get lost with too much content, and no more confusion because of a missing structure.
Layout Elements
These are the layout elements to achieve this: spaces and pages.
- Space: defines the navigation structure and provides the overall context for the displayed content
- Page: contains apps for a business role, grouped in sections to guide users through work contexts
This helps increasing the flexibility in content structuring by providing several role-based pages to users instead of just one home page. For every role, one or more spaces are made available to users where they can find pages with their most important entry points and information. Those spaces can be found in the menu bar on top of the launchpad. Tiles in pages can be grouped into sections.
For the time being, spaces represent an alternative layout in comparison to the home page. This means, that the home page is still available and used per default and spaces can be used instead of them. At some point in time, the spaces will completely replace the home page.
Where Do I Find It?
Now, the launchpad will display spaces and pages, that your administrator has created for your business roles upfront, instead of groups.
You can find additional information, including a guided tour where you can try it out yourself, in the documentation.
Personalization
You may ask yourself now, if you are still able to adjust the pages with regards to their layout and the content, so that it best suits your needs. And the answer is, yes! You still have most of the personalization options that you already know from the home page. The App Finder even allows you to choose from your set of spaces and pages where you want to add the desired tile to.
In the edit mode of the launchpad, you will not only find the personalization options, that you already know, but you will also see that as part of the SAP Fiori 3 enhancements, the overall design of the edit mode has been slightly changed for a better user experience.
Availability
Spaces and pages are available:
- With cloud products like for example SAP S/4HANA Cloud
- As of SAP S/4HANA 2020
- With SAP Launchpad service – currently spaces and pages are only available in the user’s launchpad; there are no design time tools available yet
Further Reading
If you want to know more from an administration perspective, read the blog post Manage Spaces and Pages for SAP Fiori Launchpad.
So when and how will the spaces/pages feature become available to on-premise systems? Only with S/4 2020 or also for older versions?
Hello Steffen,
Spaces and pages will become available with S/4HANA 2020. Technically, the tools and features around spaces and pages will be available for S/4HANA 1809 and S/4HANA 1909 as well, if the belonging SAP Fiori front-end server components will be upgraded accordingly. For more information and details please have a look at SAP Fiori Deployment Options and System Landscape Recommendations. Please note, that SAP-delivered content, i.e. spaces and pages that can be used as templates, will only be available for S/4HANA 2020.
Best regards,
Sylvia
Hello Sylvia,
many thanks! I think spaces and pages are indeed a step in the right direction,
Steffen
Hello Sylvia,
We are contemplating an upgrade from 1709 to 2020. Does the Maintain business roles App allow the creation of Space for single business roles at a time, or composite roles (1 role composed of multiple business roles), or both?
Subh
Hello Subh,
I can see from the versions that you mention, that you are talking about on-premise. With SAP S/4HANA 2020 the Maintain Business Roles app does not exist, but the transaction PFCG is used instead for assigning spaces to roles. You can add a space to each PFCG role that is maintainable via the transaction PFCG, which is everywhere where also groups and catalogs could/can be added. Please have a look at the new blog post Set Up SAP Fiori Launchpad Spaces with SAP Fiori Front-End Server 2020 for S/4HANA dedicated for the SAP S/4HANA 2020 delivery. This might give you more insights on your question.
Best regards,
Sylvia
Hi Sylvia,
This is great and so stoked to use the new functionality. But have few questions which will help us in choosing the right design.
SAPs recommended approach is to have 2 to 5 sections and not to have more than 8 tiles in each section based on this blog - https://blogs.sap.com/2020/11/06/sap-fiori-for-sap-s-4hana-best-practices-for-structuring-spaces-and-pages/
Question 1:
If I want to stick to the recommendation, how can we control end-users not to add more than 5 sections - I see business users can also personalize their page but I don't see any authorization that will control when the end-user tries to add section # 6.
Question 2:
Same with tiles - How to control when end-user adds more than 8 tiles in each section - is there any authorization?
Question 3:
Say we have 3 sections A, B, and C - In section A the Admin added 5 tiles. Now as the end-user can personalize their page they added 3 more tiles - after a month if the admin added 3 more tiles then the total count would be 5+3+3 = 11. This exceeds the recommended approach, right?
what would be your recommendation?
let me know. thanks!
Regards,
Vineeth
Hi Vineeth,
Thank you for your questions. In the blog post by Jocelyn that you mentioned in your comment, the target reader is the administrator or key user from the business. There it is about defining how the spaces and pages structure should be created upfront, before it is handed over to the business users.
The general idea is to provide the business users with only the relevant apps that are necessary for the fulfilment of their daily tasks. If business users feel that they need additional apps for a certain work context or in general for their daily work, then this is totally fine that they add more apps. The recommendations by Jocelyn do not include the number of apps that are added to the sections on top via personalization.
If you would like to restrict personalization directly on pages anyhow but provide the business users with a place where they can add their favorites though, then an option would be to deactivate personalization completely and offer the user the new My Home space. The My Home space can be personalized even if launchpad personalization has been deactivated by the administraotr. The My Home space is already available with SAP S/4HANA Cloud and it is planned to be available with the upcoming SAP S/4HANA 2021 release as well.
I hope that this answers all your questions.
Best regards,
Sylvia
Thank you so much - I'll try to deactivate personalization and see how it works.
Also, Spaces and Pages is the alternate option for groups. Does this mean groups will be going out of support in the future?
Hi Vineeth,
At some point in the future, groups will be removed from the launchpad. This is planned to happen for SAP S/4HANA Cloud earlier than for SAP S/4HANA on-premise. For SAP S/4HANA Cloud there is an SAP Note available, which will be enhanced with information about the target release, when this will happen, once we have that information: 2970113 - SAP S/4HANA Cloud: Replacement of SAP Fiori launchpad Home Page by Spaces and Pages . For SAP S/4HANA on-premise we do not have any information about a timeline yet, that I could share with you.
Best regards,
Sylvia
Hi Sylvia Strack,
We want to have standardization in launchpad spaces across all users.
If there is a way to prevent users from setting up their own personalization?
If personalization is set or changed, how can users switch it back to original launchpad spaces?
Thank you.
Best regards.
KK Low
Hi KK Low,
You can disable personalization of spaces and pages with the launchpad setting HOMEPAGE_PERSONALIZATION.
For on-premise you find more information on this configuration parameter and further links on how to set parameters on Launchpad Configuration Parameters (on-premise). For SAP S/4HANA Cloud, you find more information on Manage Launchpad Settings.
Users can always reset sections from the edit mode of a page. This can be done section-wise and is the same for SAP S/4HANA Cloud and an on-premise solution: Personalizing a Page. Of course a prerequisite for this one is, that personalization has not been turned off completely by an administrator before. Otherwise, the reset operation cannot be performed by users.
Best regards,
Sylvia Strack
Hi Sylvia,
By turning off HOMEPAGE_PERSONALIZATION, users now can't find "App Finder" to add the Apps they want to "My Home".
What we would like to achieve is that we do not allow users to change the launchpad spaces we designed for them, but we want to have flexibility that users still could access to App Finder to find the Apps they want and add it to their "My Home."
Would appreciate if you may tell us how could we achieve this.
Thank you.
Best regards,
KK Low