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Author's profile photo Saskia Guckenburg

Journey of Managing Sales Orders in SAP Fiori: #1 Overview

The SAP Fiori application Create Sales Orders is the new face of SAP S/4HANA order management. With this app, the classic VA01 SAP GUI transaction transitions to an SAP Fiori application for an intuitive user experience. Complexity has been reduced without any compromises in transactional business requirements. Additionally, the app offers in-app analytical features leveraging S/4HANA and personalization features for end-users.

Watch in the video below how the Create Sales Orders app ensures effectiveness and efficiency. Dave’s daily task as an internal sales representative is to ensure customers’ buying orders are processed correctly and on time.

Efficient and Delightful Work

The simple and intuitive user interface significantly minimizes training costs and enables higher throughput for sellers. Transparency of features and visible functionalities provide a good overview.

To boost efficiency, power users will love the app’s keyboard navigation, for example to enter their new product and service items and specifying their details around pricing, customer data, or terms and conditions more efficiently.

Heart of the intuitive user interface is the clear structure of the sales order in header and items. Via the extensible header area of the sales order, customers can add or remove KPIs according to their needs. Context relevant data, for example credit limit and net sales volume, can objectively support decisions in sales processes.

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Context-relevant data is visible at first glance in the header. The user can immediately see that the check of the credit limit utilization is in the green and thus positive.

The embedded graphical process flow provides easy to understand latest processing status, the most important status and dates, or indicates fulfillment issues. Semantic colors visualize the state of data: Users can detect critical situations or get informed that everything is on track right from the start. Critical states are displayed in Red, green highlights positive states.

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The embedded graphical process flow displays all of the steps and their status.

Full Integration and Great Extensibility

Create Sales Orders is fully integrated into other sales order related applications and provides an easy navigation to other related apps like Credit ExposureSales Volume Analysis and Track Sales Order if the necessary authorization is given for the target apps. The responsive and adaptive design allows the app to also run on tablets.

The app is the first transactional app built using the new SAP Fiori programming model (ABAP Restful Programming model (RAP)) with SAP Fiori elements and OData V4. In this way, metadata-driven UI changes or evolutions are possible without any or very few application efforts. Consequently, the cost of development is being reduced drastically. Also, this approach enables modification-free customer enhancements: Customer and SAP owned fields can flexibly be placed on the screen.

Finally, Create Sales Orders’ features cater to multiple industries and countries in terms of localization. Thus, the existing application code can be leveraged with a focused re-engineering on cloud-relevant areas. This comes along with another great advantage: Thorough testing is not required anymore at all customer installations.

In the upcoming months, we will share further videos showing specific capabilities — stay tuned!

Find out more 

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      25 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Syambabu Allu
      Syambabu Allu

      Hi Sasika,

      Glad to know that first transactional application based on RAP 👍.

      Thanks for sharing in detailed information.

      Thank you,

      Syam

      Author's profile photo Saskia Guckenburg
      Saskia Guckenburg
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Syambabu,

      Thank you for your feedback - glad you like it!

      Best,

      Saskia

      Author's profile photo Anandh Kannusamy
      Anandh Kannusamy

      Hi

      Thanks for coming up with this informative blog.

      Have couple of elementary questions.

      You mentioned first Transactional app built using RAP. What was earlier model for Transactional app? Do you have comparison?

      Does this app available in S/4HANA On premise. Does this require SCP for accessing this app?

      Please provide details

      Thanks

      Author's profile photo Gururaj Raman
      Gururaj Raman

       

      Dear Anandh,

      Please refer to the blog for programming model details

      https://blogs.sap.com/2019/02/08/evolution-of-the-abap-programming-model/

      The sales order Fiori application is not yet available in S/4HANA On-Prem edition.

      The app does not require SCP. The app is available in S/4HANA Cloud Edition.

      Best regards,

      Gururaj Raman

      Author's profile photo Jelena Perfiljeva
      Jelena Perfiljeva

      Hi Saskia! Thank you for sharing!

      I’m very familiar with VA01 from over a decade of SAP experience. The header with additional customer information in one place will definitely be helpful to the users. And document flow with better graphics is easier for the users to understand.

      However, a large part of this app looks a lot like “VA01 lift and shift” and I see many missed opportunities where the design could’ve been improved.

      The list of items is where the users usually spend a lot of time and design there is rather underwhelming, to be honest:

      For example, why are there no graphical elements to show which item is free? The users have to look at “Higher-Level Item” column or item category to understand this. This could’ve been presented much better as a “child” of another item. Also the video reported cheerfully that “everything is confirmed” but you can see that the confirmation date is later than the requested date. Yet there is no visual prompt that hey, this item will be late.

      On the same screen, why there is so little space for the material description yet so much for quantity and line item numbers? Sorry, this looks like a prototype that a developer would quickly put together to show the potential users. Not delightful at all.

      And in the document flow (screenshot in the blog), the order has a red status because it’s partially delivered. But “red” would be something critical, there could be simply another delivery pending. Also, I have to say that not a single customer I worked at used the same status interpretation as in standard SAP. The real statuses used by customers are: order confirmed (all items have a confirmed date), order shipped (delivery PGIed, with exception of export scenarios), order billed (invoice posted to accounting).

      Also, maybe the status of the order (confirmed / shipped / billed) could be shown as a simple icon in the header? The users could go into the document flow for additional info but there should be a simpler overview. (I didn’t notice this in a demo.)

      Overall, I was surprised to learn that this is not even an app for S/4HANA on premise but a Cloud app. That’s a big missed redesign opportunity IMHO. I’d have hard time convincing the avid VA01 fans to switch to this app. There are definitely improvements but not nearly enough. Hardly a “journey”, merely a quick walk, sorry!

      Author's profile photo Gururaj Raman
      Gururaj Raman

      Thanks for your feedback. Here some comments to your points

      1. Parent-child visualization is not always beneficial in “heavy data entry transactions” as sales order could also have lots of items. We would consider an alternate visualization as a presentation variant and leave to the user to decide if here wants to see as a flat list of items or see in the parent-child hierarchy structure.
      2. We would improve the visualization of the confirmed date with colors incase it is not the same as the requested date. Even there are plans to show quick info on the delivery dates (incase multiple deliveries are involved)
      3. We would improve here that the table column width are optimized
      4. With respect to document flow, in general delivery pending is not “red”. But if the delivery cannot be made because the item is blocked for delivery ( in the schedule) then this is interpreted as “red”. We believe the main motivation for the sales order as business object is fulfilment. As the blocked delivery item cannot be completely fulfilled this is interpreted as “red”.
      5. The status fields are shown in the “Status and Block” facet. The user need not go the document flow for simple status information. We would consider usage of icons, provided we also fulfill the accessibility requirements.

      Please be informed we are working to deliver the app also in S/4 On-Prem deployment model too.

      Thanks again, for your valid feedback. The “journey” has started. It is a Long one! The app would mature both from look and feel and features along the journey. Wish we can all explore together..

      Author's profile photo Shai Sinai
      Shai Sinai

      To be honest, at least for me, it looks more like an implementation of VA01 in SAPUI5 and less like a real sales order Fiori app adapted according to the Fiori design principles.

      Author's profile photo Gururaj Raman
      Gururaj Raman

      The application is built based on Fiori Elements which ensures we adher to the Fiori design principles. Could you cite the areas where you think we miss?

      Author's profile photo Shai Sinai
      Shai Sinai

      Fiori Elements are just a technical tool.

      I was referring to Design principles.

      Author's profile photo Gururaj Raman
      Gururaj Raman

      Well, Fiori Elements is a technical tool. A tool to create a UI that automatically adhere to the Fiori design Guideline. This application is following the role-based concepts too.

      Could you cite the exact design principles where you an violation in this app? This would help us to improve.

      Author's profile photo Shai Sinai
      Shai Sinai

      The application doesn't look simple.

      For example, there seems to be way too much unstructured data under General info.

      I'm not sure how it would look in a mobile view, neither.

       

      In addition, for a role-based design, I might expect multiple apps for different roles and not one app to rule them all.

      Author's profile photo Gururaj Raman
      Gururaj Raman

      Please be informed that the application supports "runtime adaptation" that the key user at the customer could adjust the UI to customer specific fields.

      Further blogs are planned to be published to explain the features.

      Also we would offer even more capabilities in future.

       

       

       

       

      Author's profile photo Jelena Perfiljeva
      Jelena Perfiljeva

      My thoughts exactly.

      Author's profile photo F. Bozbiyik
      F. Bozbiyik

      Hi Saskia,

       

      What is the plan and when will SAP launch this app available for S/4 HANA On Premise edition ?

       

      Kind Regards,

       

      Fahrettin

      Author's profile photo Gururaj Raman
      Gururaj Raman

      Hello Fahrettin,

      We are working towards to offer the app also in S/4HANA On-Prem deployment model.

      At this moment, we cannot commit on the release version. This is work in progress with highest priority.

      Thanks for understanding!

      Best regards,

      Gururaj Raman

      Author's profile photo Rafael Pinheiro
      Rafael Pinheiro

      Hi Gururaj, do you guys have more news about release date for  S/4HANA On-Prem ?

      Author's profile photo Gururaj Raman
      Gururaj Raman

      Dear Rafael Pinheiro,

      We plan to deliver in S/4HANA 2020 On-Prem version.

       

      Best regards,

      Guru

       

      Author's profile photo Gururaj Raman
      Gururaj Raman

      See Blog on S/4 On-Prem 2021 highlights in Sales well compiled by Xiaohua Wang.

      https://blogs.sap.com/2021/10/12/sap-s-4hana-2021-release-highlights-in-sales/

      Best regards,

      Guru

      Author's profile photo Harish Bhatt
      Harish Bhatt

      Hi,

       

      Thanks for the nice blog.

       

      I am new to RAP and fiori elements and I have a question regarding the process flow facet.

      • My understanding is when we use RAP programing model we do not require SEGW OData.
      • But I see mention of ODATA SD_SO_PROCFLOW_SRV which is used for process flow.
      • So my question is how is this ODATA is used in this application ?

       

      Thanks a lot for your feedback !

       

      Regards,

      Harish

      Author's profile photo Gururaj Raman
      Gururaj Raman

      Dear Harish Bhatt,

       

      1. For Fiori apps build based on the RAP programming model there is no need for SEGW project. More details can be found in the detailed blog by our ABAP Platform colleagues. https://blogs.sap.com/2021/10/18/modernization-with-rap/
      2. In the Fiori app mentioned here, we also offer process flow, which is build based on ODATA V2 and has a SEGW. But this is not have any transactional relation to the sales order. So the editable parts of the application run through the RAP logic, process flow is integration is done in the UI layer.
      3. Process flow is integrated as a re-use component in the UI layer.

      Hope this clarifies.

      Best regards,

      Gururaj Raman

      Author's profile photo Harish Bhatt
      Harish Bhatt

      Hi Gururaj,

      Thanks a lot for quick response.

      yes this clarifies my doubt as you confirmed Process flow is directly integrated at UI layer.

      One more question I have though  - so this integration is done with fiori elements in Business application studio ?

      Thanks,

      Harish Bhatt

       

      Author's profile photo Gururaj Raman
      Gururaj Raman

      Dear Harish,

       

      Business application studio is a IDE for development (recommended). We also have the WebIDE (which is an alternative).

      Yes, the integration is a UI artifact are is done in the UI related IDE.

       

      Best regards,

      Gururaj Raman

       

       

       

      Author's profile photo Harish Bhatt
      Harish Bhatt

      HI,

      Thanks a lot Mr. Gururaj for your responses on this.

      was really helpful.

      Best Regards,

      Harish Bhatt

      Author's profile photo Lisa Merrill
      Lisa Merrill

      I have some simple questions - in the new Sales Order Fiori App, how can a user determine if it has printed like they could in VA01.  Is there an issue output to option in the new app?  Also, can users add an attachment to the sales order using the new Sales Order Fiori App?

      Author's profile photo Gururaj Raman
      Gururaj Raman

      Dear There,

       

      In S/4HANA Public cloud edition we do support output items and attachments in the Fiori UI.

      In On-Prem version we do not support output items, however attachments ( S/4HANA 2022) is supported.

       

      Hope this helps.

      Best regards,

      Gururaj Raman