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Author's profile photo Dana Sarfati
Dana Sarfati
December 23, 2020 2 minute read

Transitioning from the Portal Service to the Launchpad Service – How to Guide

[Update 2023]: 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

Hello,

I’m Dana, a Product Owner of the SAP Cloud Portal service (Portal) and the SAP Launchpad service (Launchpad) on the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).

In this series of blog posts I would like to share some insights and recommendations to guide you  step by step regarding how to move from your existing SAP Cloud Portal service to your SAP Launchpad service with minimal efforts and optimal reuse of your portal investments such as content, user role collection assignments, destinations, cloud connector, HTML5 apps, plugins, custom themes, content providers and more.

Whether you are considering using the Launchpad service in the same subaccount as the Portal or in different subaccounts, this blog post will assist you in understanding what’s the effort required by each alterative. The idea is to maximize the reuse of existing configuration and content, to avoid the need to configure everything from scratch as a result of this transition from the Portal service to the Launchpad service.

! Please note that as the Launchpad service does not support Freestyle sites, your Freestyle sites and content won’t be available in the Launchpad service.

My blog series consists of this blog post and the following two posts:

They cover the end to end process which is composed of the following steps:

  1. Prerequisites
    1. A fully configured and running SAP Cloud Portal service enabled
    2. SAP Launchpad service enabled and configured (please follow initial setup)
      • If you developed on the Portal subaccount custom launchpad modules and consumed them as a content provider, you should keep your custom solution in the Portal service; Content consumers can subscribe to/enable your solution and consume its content via Portal service or Launchpad service.
      • You should avoid manual content creation before import.
  2. Define your environment:
    1. How to move Portal service to Launchpad service in the same subaccount TIP! This option is recommended as all destinations, cloud connector, custom themes, HTML5 apps and user collection assignments are configured in subaccount level, hence, you could re-use them in Launchpad
    2. How to move Portal service to Launchpad service in the different subaccounts
  3. Start with the Portal service
    1. Export Site/s + Content; Export Selected Content
    2. Export Destinations (Only for different subaccounts)
    3. Export Custom themes (Only for different subaccounts)
  4. Move to the Launchpad Service
    1. Import Destinations (Only for different subaccounts)
    2. Import Cloud Connector (Only for different subaccounts)
    3. Deploy HTML5 apps (Only for different subaccounts)
    4. Subscribe to all SAP/Custom Launchpad modules solution (Only for different subaccounts)
    5. Add Content Providers
    6. Import Sites/Content
    7. Assign users to Role collections (Only for different subaccounts)
    8. Import Custom Theme (Only for different subaccounts)
    9. Content import validation
    10. Run your site/s
      • Validation
      • Custom themes
  5. Move back to the Portal service off-boarding
    • Unsubscribe

 

Important Point: If you want to keep the Portal role collections and re-use them in Launchpad service, you should avoid manually delete the role from portal, you should un-subscribe Portal. this will keep the role collection as they are.

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      Author's profile photo Deniz Cengiz
      Deniz Cengiz

      Hi Dana Sarfati

      in your post you've stated, that

      If you developed on the Portal subaccount custom launchpad modules and consumed them as a content provider, you should deploy your custom developed solution in the Launchpad subaccount and subscribe to/enable the solution.

      Our current setup has one subaccount with several multi-tenant applications that various other tenants are subscribed to. At the moment, this is setup is relying on the SAP Portal Service and deploying the application with a custom launchpad module as this exposes a dedicated content provider for the application that is subscribed, so that we can then add the application to the respective subaccount's launchpad via the Portal.

      Now, the nagging question for us is, wether the new Launchpad Service is capable of reproducing this setup? What I mean by that is, we would like to have one providing subaccount with various subscribing other subaccounts that have an active Launchpad Service subscription without having to deploy the application to each customer subaccount. This would kind of make the multi-tenancy approach absurd in itself, as we'd need to have the app deployed to each interested party's tenant.

      If so, could you please provide a quick explanation of how to achieve this or point me to the right blog post / documentation.

      Thanks in advance.

      Best regards,
      Deniz Cengiz

       

       

      Author's profile photo Dana Sarfati
      Dana Sarfati
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Deniz Cengiz,

      You/customers can consume your current applications(content) as a content provider in the launchpad service as well, however, the Portal service should be kept for your custom developed solution. 

      For example if you are a partner and you developed your custom developed solution("Custom solution")  in the Portal service. Your consumers, that has launchpad (or Portal) service will be able to consume your content as a content provider if they enable "Custom solution" (subscribe to this solution). This "custom solution" should be available the provider manager's table for content consumption.

      I suggest to have a direct channel with us, to understand exactly your requirements and scenario. Could you please send me a mail "dana.sarfati@sap.com" with an overview on your scenario and we could have a discussion to better understand your needs.

      Looking forward to hear from you,

      Best Regards, Dana.