Technical Articles

Soeren Holst

September 17, 2020 3 minute read

Developing a Shell Plugin for SAP Fiori Launchpad Service on SAP BTP (Multi-Cloud Environment) with SAP Business Application Studio

Developers can extend the functionality of SAP Fiori Launchpad using Shell Plugins. The concept of plugins allows SAP Fiori implementers to hook into the Launchpad Shell and add new elements like menu items, custom footers, header extensions and many more.

In this blog post I will show you how to extend your SAP Fiori Launchpad on SAP BTP (Multi-Cloud Environment) via a HTML5 Application/Shell Plugin managed by SAP BTP (Multi-Cloud Environment).

In this example we will add a button to the SAP Fiori Launchpad header, which opens a pop-up with some basic information.

Following steps are necessary to deploy your shell plugin successfully to SAP BTP (Multi-Cloud Environment).

You can find the Source Code in this GIT Repository.

1. Open the SAP Business Application Studio

Open the SAP Business Application Studio in your SAP BTP (Multi-Cloud Environment) Subaccount.

Create a new Dev Space and select “SAP Fiori” for application type and click on the created item header afterwards.

2. Create the Shell Plugin Project

Select “Create project from template”. Choose “SAP Fiori Freestyle – Project Generator” and confirm with “Next”.

Select “Cloud Foundry” as target running environment and choose “SAPUI5 Application”.

Enter a Project Name and continue with “Next”.

Select “Managed by SAP Cloud Platform” as HTML5 application and enter a service name.

Enter some basic attributes.

Enter a view name.

Create the project and select “Open in New Workspace” afterwards.

3. Modify the created project to use it as a Shell Plugin

Please develop your own custom Shell Plugin code in the component.js file.

For my example you can modify the “init” Method as well as the Method “_getRenderer”.

Please also adjust the “manifest.json” as follows:

4. Build and deploy your Multi Target Application

Right click on “mta.yaml” and select “Build MAT”.

The folder “mta_archives” is created automatically. Please select the .mtar file and select “Deploy MTA Archive”.

Enter the Cloud Foundry endpoint, followed by username and password. Afterwards please select the organization and your space.

5. Check if deployment process was successful

Please go back to the SAP BTP (Multi-Cloud Environment) Cockpit and check if the following was created:

5.1 Service instances in your selected space

5.2 Destination

6. Assign your Shell Plugin to a SAP Fiori Launchpad

Open your Site-Manager and navigate to the Provider-Manager. Please refresh the “HTML5 Apps” content provider.

Afterwards you can see your Shell Plugin in the “Content-Explorer” and you can add it to your content.

Assign your Shell Plugin to the “Everyone” Role.

Please create a new Website (or choose an existing one).

Open the URL. You will see an additional button in the Shell Header.

I hope this blog post provides the necessary information to develop and deploy your Shell Plugins successful to SAP BTP (Multi-Cloud Environment). Please leave a comment if you have further questions.

If you prefer using Web IDE please check this blog post.

37 Comments

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Murali Shanmugham

September 17, 2020 at 9:26 pm

Hi Soren,

Thank you for posting this. I've been waiting for this feature.

Sagar Mantri

September 24, 2020 at 2:36 pm

Hi Soeren,

We have followed same steps but couldn't find plugin in content provider.

I have doubt about step 5, destinations in screenshots needs to be created manually or it will be created automatically ?

Regards,

Sagar

Soeren Holst

Blog Post Author

September 24, 2020 at 2:42 pm

Hi Sagar,

the destination is created automatically. Did you refresh the HTML5 Content-Provider (Screenshot 2 - Step 6)

Best regards,

Soeren

Sagar Mantri

September 24, 2020 at 4:05 pm

Dear Soeren

yes, I have refreshed HTML5 Content-provider.

Only difference is we are using portal service not Launchapad does that make difference ?

Regards,

Sagar

Sagar Mantri

September 24, 2020 at 8:05 pm

Hi Soeren,

Thank you for your help, our issue is resolved after adding "sap.cloud" in manifest.json.

Best Regards,

Sagar

Jorge Sousa Villafaina

October 9, 2020 at 10:20 am

I was looking for this! Thanks for sharing!

Revathi Raju

October 12, 2020 at 6:53 am

Hi Soeren, Thank you for the information, I am able to follow your blog and implemented successfully. 🙂 Is it possible to explain how do we call a on-prem destination created in the subaccount from this project?

Thanks,

Revathi Raju.

Soeren Holst

Blog Post Author

October 12, 2020 at 11:21 am

Hi Revathi,

does this help?

https://blogs.sap.com/2020/07/15/developing-sap-ui5-app-using-sap-business-application-studio/ ?

Regards,

Soeren

Krishna Kammaje

October 15, 2020 at 5:39 pm

This feature was overdue but happy that we got it. Thank you.

Krishna Kammaje

October 19, 2020 at 11:25 am

Could not get the destinations created even after refreshing the HTML5 content-provider. I am using VSCode instead of BAS.

The deployment went fine (I am even able to access the component.js of the plugin using the approuter URL). What else might have gone wrong?

I am using the Fiori Launchpad inside the 'Portal' service, (not the Fiori Launchpad service). So this does not work on Fiori Launchpad inside the 'Portal' service?

Any idea is welcome, please.

Krishna Kishor Kammaje

October 20, 2020 at 11:56 am

Found the issue. When you develop via BAS, it automatically created the required configuration within the mta.yaml to create SCP destinations to consume the plugin as a content provider.

But if you develop locally, you need to manually create a module within mta.yaml that has all the destinations you require (I copied them from BAS). This module has "no-source: true" parameter so that MBT will not complain while building. I had to upgrade my MBT for this to happen. (Otherwise it always errored out).

Deniz Cengiz

May 11, 2021 at 2:54 pm

Hi Krishna Kishor Kammaje ,

we are trying to run the plugin as part of the fiori portal service, too, and are experiencing some issues with it. We have tried wrapping the plugin in a module like described by you and quite similar to the example service found here: https://github.com/SAP-samples/launchpad-service-samples/blob/main/MyShellPluginProject/mta.yaml

Could you maybe provide some tips or sample code as to how you set up your mta.yaml so that you got the shell plugin to work with the launchpad as part of the portal service?

Kind regards
Deniz

Sriram V

October 21, 2020 at 8:20 pm

Thanks Soeren for the great blog. I have added the subheader to the shell header want to display the username and the role name of the user. Any idea on how to retrieve the logged in user from plugin? Thanks.

Soeren Holst

Blog Post Author

November 5, 2020 at 1:54 pm

Hi Sriram,

does this help?

https://sapui5.netweaver.ondemand.com/sdk/#/api/sap.ushell.services.UserInfo

Best regards,

Soeren

Antonette Venter

November 5, 2020 at 8:07 am

Hi Soeren,

Thanks for the great blog.

Select “Managed by SAP Cloud Platform” as HTML5 application and enter a service name.

There are many cases where we would need a custom app router in the plugin project, like for example activating the Notification Centre, however I can't seem to get the plugin to work if I choose to have a custom app router.

Have you been able to achieve this?

Regards

Antonette

Ingmar Lemke

April 2, 2021 at 8:56 am

Same problem here. I am struggling to understand of how to integrate a Shell plugin when not using a managed HTML5 repo/managed app router. The manual part just allows to create an App in the Content Manager but no specific Shell-plugin. Integrating a content provider with the html5-rt and html5-dt services is also not working. Any idea of how to achieve this?

Ankit Pundhir

May 19, 2022 at 7:51 pm

I had the same problem, what you can do is create and then deploy a separate ui5 application with settings as managed approuter. In that ui5 application make the changes as motioned above .Then what will happen is once u deploy the application you would get the ui5 plugin appearing in the content explorer. The logic is that a separate application/project deployed with managed app router will have the same launch pad as your existing stand alone approuter project.

Navya Krishna

January 19, 2021 at 11:45 am

Hello Soeren,

I followed all the steps and deploy was also successful, but it is not working and i get the below error in the browser console.

Thanks and Regards,

Navya

Michael Jess

February 17, 2021 at 3:48 pm

Hey Navya,

Please check your manifest.json. It appears that lately, the "sap.cloud.service" property isn't rendered by the template for some reason. The issue went away when I added the value. Note that I believe it needs to be the same value as in the destination.

Cheers,

Michael

Gregor Wolf

January 22, 2021 at 10:24 pm

Hi Soeren,

thank you for this post. Would it be possible that you provide your sample project in a public Git repository? That would help to avoid all the tedious manual steps.

Best regards
Gregor

Soeren Holst

Blog Post Author

January 25, 2021 at 8:41 am

Hi Gregor,

we are working on it. I will inform you here.

Best regards,

Soeren

Soeren Holst

Blog Post Author

March 18, 2021 at 4:22 pm

Hi Gregor,

you can find the source code in this GIT Repository:

https://github.com/SAP-samples/launchpad-service-samples

Best regards,

Soeren

Gregor Wolf

January 25, 2021 at 7:05 am

Hi Soeren,

it seems that the "SAP Fiori Freestyle – Project Generator" was changed and creates the parameters for the destination-content module as 'instance'. But for the Launchpad it should be 'subaccount'. Thanks to Holger Schäfer for this tip on Twitter.

Best regards
Gregor

Deniz Cengiz

May 11, 2021 at 2:59 pm

Hi Gregor Wolf

do you happen to have also tried running the shell plugin within a launchpad via the portal service? Any parameter that need changing from the sample code provided to get that working?

Best regards
Deniz

Taranam Dhindsa

February 12, 2021 at 5:43 am

hi Soeren

Thanks for explaining in detail . But now in BAS Trial account SAP Fiori freestyle template now shows deprecated listed here . So now what is the alternative for it as seems this option will be removed as its showing deprecated ?

Regards

Taranam

Soeren Holst

Blog Post Author

February 12, 2021 at 8:15 am

Hi Taranam,

please use "SAP Fiori application" and select "SAPUI5 freestyle" as Application Type in the next step.

Best regards,

Soeren

Taranam Dhindsa

February 12, 2021 at 8:17 am

Thanks Soeren for your help .

Holger Schäfer

April 12, 2021 at 3:11 pm

Hi Soeren,

thanks for the BTP update!

How do you test it locally?

I think BAS misses the localSandbox preview scenario like in NEO.

Since the index.html is not used, i changed it to the follwoing code, the be able to use start script to preview my coding inside SandBox FLP before deploying it to CF.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <title>MyShellPluginModule</title>

    <script>
        window['sap-ushell-config'] = {
            defaultRenderer: 'fiori2',
            bootstrapPlugins: {
                "ShellPlugin": {
                    "component": "ns.MyShellPluginModule",
                    "url": "./"
                }
            },
            applications: {
                "App1-display": {
                    title: "Wikipedia",
                    description: "Embedded",
                    applicationType: "URL",
                    url: "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptseite",
                    navigationMode: "embedded"
                },
                "App2-open": {
                    title: "Heise Ext",
                    description: "New Window",
                    applicationType: "URL",
                    url: "https://www.heise.de"
                }
            }
        };
    </script>

    <script src="https://sapui5.hana.ondemand.com/1.88.1/test-resources/sap/ushell/bootstrap/sandbox.js"></script>
    <script src="https://sapui5.hana.ondemand.com/1.88.1/resources/sap-ui-core.js" data-sap-ui-libs="sap.m, sap.ushell"
        data-sap-ui-theme="sap_fiori_3" data-sap-ui-compatVersion="edge" data-sap-ui-frameOptions="allow"
        data-sap-ui-bindingSyntax="complex"></script>
    <script>
        sap.ui.getCore().attachInit(function () {
            sap.ushell.Container.createRenderer().placeAt('content');
        });
    </script>

</head>

<body class="sapUiBody" id="content"></body>

</html>

Using bootstrapPlugins section inside sandbox config auto loads the plugin into the sandbox flp.

Even the services can be used/tested while local previewing it.

Maybe there is a better way of local test/previewing shell plugin, but this one fits my needs.

Best Regards
Holger

Maybe these snippets are also quite useful for others...

User Info

that._oShellContainer = jQuery.sap.getObject("sap.ushell.Container");

// UserInfo service
that._oShellContainer.getServiceAsync("UserInfo").then(function (oUserInfo) {
  console.log("oUserInfo", oUserInfo, oUserInfo.getUser(), oUserInfo.getUser().getId());
  that._oUser = oUserInfo;
});

Intercept Portal Navigation

registerPortalSiteNavigationEvents: function () {
            // Track app and page navigation events
            var oAppLifeCycle = sap.ushell.Container.getService("AppLifeCycle");

            oAppLifeCycle.attachAppLoaded(function (oEvent) {
                var oParameters = oEvent.getParameters();
                oParameters.getIntent().then(function (event) {
                    var sSemanticObject = event.semanticObject;

                    console.log("AppLifeCycle", event, sSemanticObject);
                });
            }.bind(this));
}

Sticky Sidebar

renderStickySidebar: function () {
            if (!document.getElementById(sId)) {
                var sId = "sticky-sidebar";
                var domContainer = document.createElement("div");
                domContainer.setAttribute("id", sId);
                domContainer.setAttribute("style", "display: none; position: fixed; top: 3.5rem; right: 1rem; bottom: 1rem; width: 320px; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3); box-shadow: 0 3px 7px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3); border-radius: 0.25rem;");
                document.body.appendChild(domContainer);

                var domView = document.createElement("iframe");
                domView.setAttribute("id", sId + "-iframe");
                domView.setAttribute("src", "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptseite");
                domView.setAttribute("style", "width: 100%; height: 100%; border: 0; border-radius: 0.25rem;");

                domContainer.appendChild(domView);

                this._domStickySidebar = domContainer;
            }
},

onToggleSidebar: function () {
            if (!this._domStickySidebar) {
                this.renderStickySidebar();
            }

            if (this._domStickySidebar.style.display === "none") {
                this._domStickySidebar.style.display = "block";
            } else {
                this._domStickySidebar.style.display = "none";
            }
},

// inside init
rendererPromise.then(function (oRenderer) {
                oRenderer.addHeaderEndItem({
                    icon: "sap-icon://documents",
                    tooltip: "Open Files",
                    press: function () {
                        that.onToggleSidebar();
                    }
                }, true, false);
});

Soeren Holst

Blog Post Author

April 20, 2021 at 7:26 am

Thank you Holger!

Ankur Babu

August 27, 2021 at 3:34 pm

Hi Holger Schäfer ,

Nice examples to test the app locally. As with the code,

applications: {
                "App1-display": {
                    title: "Wikipedia",
                    description: "Embedded",
                    applicationType: "URL",
                    url: "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptseite",
                    navigationMode: "embedded"
                },

the website (wikipedia) is loading inside Fiori launchpad page using this approach for local Sandbox file. Do you know if it is possible to do this on On-Premise Fiori launchpad. How can I configure a tile/target mapping for an external URL to load the website inside Fiori launchpad?

Best regards,

Ankur

Vladislav Volodin

September 27, 2022 at 10:28 am

You forgot a proper ID for this <script> block:

<script src="https://sapui5.hana.ondemand.com/1.88.1/test-resources/sap/ushell/bootstrap/sandbox.js"></script>

I use this block and it works fine:

<script id="sap-ushell-bootstrap"
        src="https://sapui5.hana.ondemand.com/test-resources/sap/ushell/bootstrap/sandbox.js"></script>

abhishek tiwari

October 13, 2021 at 1:14 pm

Hello Soeren Holst,

I had a requirement where I am fetching a JSON file and displaying it in my FLP using the shell plugin. I tried using the destination( cannot use URL directly to fetch the JSON as cross-site origin error) but the shell plugin was not able to get the destination configured in neo-app.json. Is there a way to fetch my JSON file via a URL, containing a message to be displayed in a popup, via a shell plugin?

Jibbril Berbres

April 5, 2022 at 7:30 am

Hello Soeren and thanks for the informative post!

I have tried to follow it but I am running into issues when deploying to cloud foundry. I wrote a question about it here, any insights you might be able to provide would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Jibbril

Marc Porath

July 12, 2022 at 8:49 am

Hey Sören,

ive implemented this scenario just like your example and it works fine in the beginning. After navigating into a UI5 freestyle application it vanishes. Any ideas?

Thank you in advance,

Marc

Luca Saccoccia

April 28, 2023 at 10:43 am

Hi Marc,

did you solved that issue?

Marc Porath

April 28, 2023 at 2:16 pm

Hey Luca,

i didnt change a thing. Maybe a new version solved my issue. I will have a look and reply again.

Timo Renner

November 22, 2023 at 4:31 pm

Marc Porath Luca Saccoccia

very likely you set the third parameter of method "addHeaderEndItem" to "true". Change this to "false" should change the behavior.

Also check the documentation on this, as it explains this.
https://ui5.sap.com/#/api/sap.ushell.renderers.fiori2.Renderer%23methods/addHeaderEndItem

Soeren Holst can you please adjust the screenshots?

Technical Articles

Developing a Shell Plugin for SAP Fiori Launchpad Service on SAP BTP (Multi-Cloud Environment) with SAP Business Application Studio

1. Open the SAP Business Application Studio

2. Create the Shell Plugin Project

3. Modify the created project to use it as a Shell Plugin

4. Build and deploy your Multi Target Application

5. Check if deployment process was successful

5.1 Service instances in your selected space

5.2 Destination

6. Assign your Shell Plugin to a SAP Fiori Launchpad

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