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Author's profile photo Murali Shanmugham

Building a central Launchpad using SAP Launchpad Service – Integrating HTML5 apps

[Update 2021]: Note that this asset was created before our branding changes related to SAP technology were announced on January 2021. Note that SAP Cloud Platform Launchpad was renamed to SAP Launchpad service, and SAP Cloud Platform Portal was renamed to SAP Cloud Portal service

[Update 2022]: Please note that this blog was published prior to the re-branding related to SAP Build portfolio, which was announced at SAP TechEd 2022. SAP Launchpad service and SAP Work Zone come together under the SAP Build Work Zone brand, with two editions: standard edition (formerly SAP Launchpad service) and advanced edition (formerly SAP Work Zone). You can learn more in this announcement blog post: SAP Build Capabilities Explained | SAP TechEd | SAP News Center

 

This blog covers the aspects around how you would integrate a HTML5 app (with managed appRouter) with the Launchpad service. The previous blog post focuses on how the HTML5 application is built using SAP Business Application Studio. The Launchpad service is available in the trial environment and you can get started following the instructions in the blog – “Start your free trial for SAP Cloud Platform Launchpad”. There is a  developer tutorials which will guide you on how to enable the service and setup a basic central Fiori Launchpad using URL tiles/apps.

Building a central Launchpad using SAP Launchpad service on SAP BTP

Part 1 – Getting Started

Part 2 – Understanding the options around developing HTML5 apps in Cloud Foundry

Part 3 – Developing HTML5 apps

Part 4 – Integrating HTML5 apps with the Central Fiori Launchpad

Part 5 – Integrating 3rd Party apps with the Central Fiori Launchpad

Part 6 – Integrating chatbots with the Central Fiori Launchpad

Part 7 – Integrating with remote content providers

Part 8 – Enabling Notifications

Part 9 – Transporting Launchpad sites using SAP Cloud Transport Management service

 

Once you have enabled the Launchpad service and configured it using the above mentioned tutorials, you should be able to access the Launchpad service and begin the integration of HTML5 apps. Navigate to the “Provider Manager” to fetch the updated contents.

In the Content Manager, navigate to the “Content Explorer” and select “HTML5 Apps”.

Select the HTML5 apps which you want to integrate into the central Fiori Launchpad.

You should now be able to see these HTML5 app as views in the “My Content” section.

 

From here on,  it’s the usual steps which you would follow. I have assigned this app to a Catalog.

I have assigned this HTML app to a Group

Finally assigned this app to “everyone” role

When I access the Launchpad, I should now be able to view the tiles and access the HTML5 apps within the Launchpad shell.

The HTML5 app is able to connect to my backend ES5 system and display the Sales orders. The HTML5 apps also is displayed within the Fiori Launchpad shell.

In the next blog post, I will show you how you could integrate 3rd party applications within the central Fiori Launchpad.

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      48 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Parth Jhalani
      Parth Jhalani

      Hi Murali,

      Thanks for the detailed blog. How do I specify a specific UI5 library version say 1.71.25 in central Fiori Launchpad for all my Fiori apps?

       

      Thanks,

      Parth

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

      Unlike the Fiori Launchpad in the Neo environment, I dont see any option to set the SAPUI5 version in the central Fiori launchpad

      Author's profile photo Parth Jhalani
      Parth Jhalani

      Thanks Murali. I see that this option is not included in the Product Roadmap as well.

      Author's profile photo Sudeep Singh
      Sudeep Singh

      Hi Murali,

      Thanks for the nice blog.

      I am using a trial account and I can launch my app from the dev space using the Application Routes; however, it is not visible in launchpad content explorer. Can you please help .

      Regards,

      Sudeep

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

      In order to view those apps in the Content Explorer, you will have to deploy the HTML5 app as a managed app. Please check out the previous blog post on how to deploy such an app. In your scenario, you will have to convert your existing app to a managed appRouter.

      Author's profile photo Jeremy Chabert
      Jeremy Chabert

      Hi Murali,

      Do you know if it's possible while using SAP Managed Approuter to configure the application with 2 differents intents ?

      We tried to declare 2 intents in the manifest.json and then deploy the application but the content provider only displays one app and we don't have the possibility to modify the App in Central launchpad to precise which intent it shall use.

       

      Author's profile photo Umer Farooq
      Umer Farooq

      Hi Jeremy,

       

      I am also trying to achieve the same but could not possible find the right path as of now.

      1 app with multiple intents and different parameters with Cloud Foundry Managed Router Apps.

       

      Let me know if you get any clue on this.

       

       

      Author's profile photo Jeremy CHABERT
      Jeremy CHABERT

      None so far. Still digging.

      Only way found which is not what we want to do is to use a launchpad module inside our project and use this launchpad module to serve the app with 2 intents as declared in the manifest json.

       

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

      Currently it is not possible to define multiple intents nor visualizations (tiles) for one business application. This is in the roadmap. Today, the only way to achieve the flow of 2 different tiles launching the same application is by defining the application twice (with different intents).

      Author's profile photo Jean Boustany
      Jean Boustany

      Hello Murali,

      First of all thank you for the very useful blog.

      We are considering moving from the Portal Service to the newer Launchpad service,

      However we face the same issue with the intent parameters. On the Portal we currently

      have 8 different tiles linked to a single business app, with 8 combinations of intents.

      Is there any planned date for the availability of this feature in the Launchpad service ?

      Thank you.

       

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

      Hi Jean,

      Does this option of "create a local copy" help? You can create multiple copies of the tile config and edit the intents.

      Author's profile photo Alexandre Fossati Filho
      Alexandre Fossati Filho

      How do I assign the app to the Catalog or Group?

      For me, the "Assignments" tab on the right is empty and don't show the app if I search for it.

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

      Did you ensure that you are in the Edit mode of the catalog?

      Author's profile photo Alexandre Fossati Filho
      Alexandre Fossati Filho

      Yes, but I cannot find it.

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

      Not sure why you are not able to see the app. It could be a temporary issue as there are no roles/assignments which need to be performed for it to work.

      Author's profile photo Alexandre Fossati Filho
      Alexandre Fossati Filho

      Turns out that I forgot to include the "crossNavigation" section in the manifest.json that you mentioned in the previous blog of this series. Now I've added this section and the app was there for me to add it to the catalog. Thank you for the excelent blog series!

      Author's profile photo Matthias Beck
      Matthias Beck

      THANK YOU!

      Had the same issue and could be solved by adding the “crossNavigation” section to the manifest.json as described in this Blog Post (as already mentioned).

      However, it did not work with a demo app that was already deployed. Had to create a new one from scratch.

      Author's profile photo Hari Krishna Dandhibhotla
      Hari Krishna Dandhibhotla

      Hello Murali,

      I want to launch Standard Fiori Apps  (Ex: Purchase Order) from Central Fiori Launchpad.

      We are having S4HANA 1909 FPS02

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

      Hi Hari,

      For the content discovery approach, you need SAP Fiori Front-End Server 2020 for SAP S/4HANA.  If you don't have this version, you could try to manually integrate the apps. The steps are documented in SAP Help. If you get stuck, please raise a question in the forum.

      https://help.sap.com/viewer/8c8e1958338140699bd4811b37b82ece/Cloud/en-US/a7e6bbbd849f4718bce3c5a3e879d27c.html

      https://help.sap.com/viewer/8c8e1958338140699bd4811b37b82ece/Cloud/en-US/b7fa275656b94a3cb4f65e70c31d6ef1.html

       

      Author's profile photo Umer Farooq
      Umer Farooq

      Hi Murali,

      Can we have a different version for Fiori/SAPUI5 than the Portal itself.

      for instance, portal is always running on Latest version and we want to run our app on an earlier version due to compatibility issues?

      Looking forward for your kind response.

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

      Yes, That's the goal of central Launchpad. It will allow you to launch Fiori apps in different SAPUI5 versions.

      Author's profile photo Umer Farooq
      Umer Farooq

      Thank you for the reply Murali,

      Can you see my question here and kindly reply of the possibilities?

      We are unable to change the UI5 version of our apps on cF Portal. It always points to latest version.

       

      https://answers.sap.com/questions/13206015/sap-cloud-foundry-custom-sap-ui5-version-for-fiori.html

      Author's profile photo Thomas Derlande
      Thomas Derlande

      Hello Murali,

      Thank you for your blog.

      I came accross the same requirement as Umer: I need to launch an app from the central Launchpad with a specific ui5 version. But whatever I do in my application, it still runs on the latest version.

      I did specify the ui5VersionNumber in my manifest.json file in the "sap.platform.cf" property as described here: https://help.sap.com/viewer/ad4b9f0b14b0458cad9bd27bf435637d/Cloud/en-US/3a0e6d6b791c4c2189f6a0a424188362.html

      But this has no effect...

      Any input would be much appreciated.

      Thanks

      Author's profile photo John Long
      John Long

      Please see attached screen shot of how to validate which version of ui5 your application is using when rendering from SAP Launchpad site. As shown, my app is running a different version of ui5 than the one provided by the launchpad site by using the following setting in the apps manifest.json.

      "sap.platform.cf": { 
              "ui5VersionNumber": "1.89.x" 
          }

      Author's profile photo Thomas Derlande
      Thomas Derlande

      Sorry for the (very) late response.

      Thank you for your message. I checked today and the problem seems to be gone now, maybe this was a BTP issue that has been resolved since.

      Anyway thank you for your tip, it may be helpful in the future for double checking with the Technical Information Dialog (CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + P)

      Regards,

      Thomas

      Author's profile photo Francisco José Carrasco Valverde
      Francisco José Carrasco Valverde

      Help please.  I can't see any app I deploy in launchpad content explorer. I can see them when I run the command "cf html5-list" on the terminal and I've already refreshed "HTML Apps" on the proveidor content (launchpad).

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

      Hi Franscisco, can you please raise this as a question in the forums. I didn't see this issue when I tried to deploy the HTML5 app recently. Thanks

      Author's profile photo Francisco José Carrasco Valverde
      Francisco José Carrasco Valverde

      Hi Murali. Thank you for your answer. I have raised the question https://answers.sap.com/questions/13222758/launchpad-content-explorer-doesnt-show-the-apps.html

      Today, I tryed again the tutorial https://developers.sap.com/group.launchpad-cf-add-custom-app.html in a new trial sap cloud platform foundry and I stuck in same step when my app doesn't appear in content explorer    🙁

      After deployment, Should I see the app in Sap Cloud Platform here ?

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

      Thanks. I see Sibylle has picked this up and will be able to support with your query. With regard to your question above, deploying HTML5 Managed AppRouter apps will not reflect under Applications.

      Author's profile photo Thomas Swolfs
      Thomas Swolfs

      Is there any update on this issue?

      This issue came up recently with our applications. (It was working just fine before)

      We already logged a ticket. Just wondering if you found a solution Francisco José Carrasco Valverde

      Author's profile photo Francisco José Carrasco Valverde
      Francisco José Carrasco Valverde

      Hi Thomas, I found this blog https://blogs.sap.com/2021/01/13/business-application-studio-launchpad-services-in-cloud-foundry/comment-page-1/#comment-548730

      I did the following changes and then I could see my app in launchpad htm5 content explorer:

      1. "Replace the instance with subaccount"
      2.  add in the manifiest "hideLauncher"

      I'm not sure if they had to do it. Can you give it a try and let me know?

      Thanks in advance

      Author's profile photo Thomas Swolfs
      Thomas Swolfs

      Hi Francisco,

       

      Thanks for your reply!

      I was already using "subaccount" instead of "instance" in the mta.yaml file.

      I added the "hideLauncher" property, just in case, but this didn't change a lot for the moment.

       

      Kind regards,

      Thomas

      Author's profile photo Francisco José Carrasco Valverde
      Francisco José Carrasco Valverde

      Ok Thomas, thanks for your feedback.

      Please let me know if you manage.

      Get luck!

      Regards

      Author's profile photo Husain Dahodwala
      Husain Dahodwala

      Hi murali,

      Can we connect On premise S4HANA FIORI apps to the central launchpad? We currently have an On prem FLP with all the corresponding roles and catalogs . Is there a way to move all this on central launchpad ? We want to have a central point for the on premise FLP as well as other Cloud applications like ARIBA, Concur , SF,C4C.

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

      Please check Part 7 of this blog series.

      Author's profile photo Steve Guo
      Steve Guo

      Hi Murali.

       

      Thanks for your detailed introduction.

      I have a question here

      Is that possible to have multiple central launchpad within 1 subaccount ?

      For example, a customer has 3 products , each product is in one space, and in each space, there are several MTAs.

      The reason everything is in one space is they can share the same security and sso settings and they can share HANA Cloud resource.

      When it comes to launchpad, there is also a need that different product want to have different title for the launchpad and they want to take owner ship of their own launchpad, and we don't see there is a need to combine them together, because they have totally different user.

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

      Hi Steve,

      You can have multiple Launchpad sites in one subaccount. Each of these Launchpad sites can subscribe to different products and have different apps within the same subaccount.

      Author's profile photo Amey Mogare
      Amey Mogare

      Hello Murali,

       

      Thanks for the wonderful blog.

      I have created a Launchpad site in my SAP BTP CF environment. I want to show some of the apps as "links" and not the "tiles".

      Could you please let me know how to do that? (I browsed all settings/properties, but unable to locate anything)

       

      Warm Regards,

      Amey

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

      Thanks Amey. The ability to show links on Launchpad is currently only available for federated contents which are coming from SAP systems. There are plans to make this available when creating custom Apps/tiles in the Launchpad.

      Author's profile photo Henning Pohlhausen
      Henning Pohlhausen

      Hi Murali,

       

      this blog series helped immensely by converting from NEO to CF Portal.

       

      One issue remains, I can't seem to find a possibility to reset the ui5AppInfo.json/FDC-Cache. I recently renamed a custom library, but the portal does not pick it up and instead tries to fetch the old library. The ui5AppInfo.json does also contain the old name in the asyncHints.libs array.

      In NEO, I could tell the Site to reset caches, is there a way to do this in CF?

      I found a Github issue regarding the cli deployer, indicating that the FDC-Cache is out of reach whatsoever. Do you have any experience with this?

       

      Regards,

       

      Henning

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

      Hi Henning, Can I request that you post a question in the forum for the expert to provide their inputs. Thanks

      Author's profile photo Aishwarya Laxmi
      Aishwarya Laxmi

      Hi Murli ,

      I am trying to integrate central fiori launchpad with html repository .

      I want to achieve multitenancy with central fiori launchpad ,i am not sure if i can achieve it .or how it will work .

      do you have any information related to this or any blog which can help me out .

       

      Thanks ,

      Aishwarya

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

      Hi, Can you give me an example of how multi-tenancy is supposed to work?

      Author's profile photo Aishwarya Laxmi
      Aishwarya Laxmi

      When another subaccount(tenant) will subscribe my app ,they will be able to see my app so my question is in that case html tiles also will be visible to subaccount member?

       

      Multi-tenant systems are like having several individual SAP Commerce installations with:

      • Isolation of data between tenants
      • Option of using separate databases
      • Option of setting individual time zones and locale settings

       

      Thanks,

      Aishwarya

      Author's profile photo Aishwarya Laxmi
      Aishwarya Laxmi

      When subaccount or tenant will subscribe my application ,in that case how the launchpad will behave .

      it will go with all the tiles which has been deployed by provider ?

      Once tenant will subscribe launchpad service ,he has to do manual configuration setup related to html apps ?

      Tenant is like subaccount who will consume service provided by provider (who has created app)

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

      Hi Aishwarya Laxmi,

      The multi-tenant apps which you develop on Cloud Foundry will need to be manually integrated into the launchpad service. These multi-tenant apps based on MTA and are deployed within the spaces. These apps will not show up in the "HTML5 Applications" menu.

      Reference: HANA Academy - BTP Multi-tenant apps

      Author's profile photo Shaun Oosthuizen
      Shaun Oosthuizen

      Hi Murali,

      Thanks for some great content as always.

      I have a question around accessing HTML5 Application content across different sub-accounts.

      Scenario:

      Sub-account A: Set up a central workflow service instance with Launchpad and the My Inbox app.
      Sub-account B: Subscribe to Launchpad service and create a content provider to gain access to My Inbox app of Sub-account A.

      The main goal is for users of different sub-accounts to be able to access user tasks of a central workflow service instance of a different sub-account.

      The SAP help documentation seems to suggest the app needs to be deployed to the same sub-account as the Launchpad service, but I wanted to check if you've come across a scenario like this and if there is a way to achieve this requirement.

      Thanks,

      Shaun

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

      Hi Shaun, I haven't come across this scenario. I don't think the "Content Provider" supports integrating apps (like Workflow apps) which are subscribed to in a different subaccount. Archana Shukla : Do you have any thoughts to share on this? Thanks