Introduction

What is SAP Mobile Start

SAP Mobile Start is the native entry point for mobile users to the Intelligent Enterprise Suite. It leverages the following:

• core SAP Business Technology Platform services like SAP Launchpad service, Notifications, and Mobile Services to launch native applications, web responsive applications, news feeds, or web links. The business content can come SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Concur, SAP Analytics Cloud etc. or from applications developed by customers or partners.
• native capabilities such as notifications, widgets, search etc to offer a deep integration with the User Experience provided by mobile devices

You can learn more about SAP Mobile Start in this blog post.

Setting up the required services

A guided role-based workflow to quickly integrate SAP Launchpad service and SAP S/4HANA on-prem is possible with Cloud Integration Automation Service (CIAS).  It is available for customers at no additional fee or license cost if they have an SAP Business Technology Platform Cloud Foundry subaccount in one of the CIAS supported data centers or have an SAP Integration Suite entitlement to subscribe to it, as couple of main prerequisites. Manual steps for integration with SAP S/4HANA Cloud is also available as described below.

You can additionally refer to a set of blog posts that we’ve created to help you understand the steps and to do the integration manually. We have also covered additional topics like notifications which is not covered in CIAS workflow at the time of writing. We have also explained how SAP Mobile Start can be included in your setup once SAP Launchpad service is up and running; either by using CIAS or manual set up. It will also give you some insights from our experience.

Here are the logical steps involved in setting up SAP Launchpad service and SAP Mobile Start in a productive landscape with business content:

• Configuring SAP Cloud Identity Service for authentication is recommended even if customer is using own corporate identity provider. See this link for details.
• Connect your content provider to SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP)
  • SAP S/4HANA On-prem
    • option 1 – use guided role-based workflow provided by CIAS (blog post link)
    • option 2 – use the following blog posts that describe the manual steps with some additional lessons learned
      • Step 1 – Setup SAP Cloud Connector to connect SAP S/4HANA with SAP BTP (blog post link)
      • Step 2 – Setup principal propagation to allow users who are authenticated by SAP BTP to access SAP S/4HANA content (blog post link)
      • Step 3 – Setup SAP Launchpad site and SAP Mobile Start with Federated content (roles, apps etc.) from SAP S/4HANA (blog post link)
      • Step 4 – Setup cloud notifications for SAP S/4HANA (blog post link)
  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud – follow the CIAS guide for manual integration with SAP Launchpad service (help.sap.com link)
• Add native content from other SAP solutions and non-SAP solutions
  • Step 5 – Add native apps content on launchpad (blog post link)
  • Step 6 – Add widgets (blog post link)
  • Step 7 – Add news tiles (blog post link)
• Step 7 – An example of how an app that access a native feature (barcode scanning) can be launched from SAP Mobile Start (blog post link)

Conclusion

The CIAS and the blog posts mentioned here should help with completing all the steps and in setting up SAP Launchpad service and SAP Mobile Start. Please also check the SAP consulting offerings that are available if you need assistance with any of these steps.

We look forward to hearing your experience with setting up the solution in your landscape; please do share your thoughts and comments below.

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