SAP Portal, SAP Launchpad Service and SAP Work Zone: Product and Community News in Q3 2021

I would like to point you to the latest news around digital experience services on SAP Business Technology platform – with focus on SAP Launchpad service and SAP Work Zone.
For SAP Enterprise Portal on-premise customers there is also a great blog describing the configuration steps for using Enterprise Portal as a content provider on SAP Business Technology Platform (see below for more information).

SAP Launchpad Service: One Year Anniversary and Latest Enhancements

One year after the initial release to customers, SAP Launchpad service is globally well adopted by customers and partners. The service is evolving continuously and various functional enhancements and extended use cases for integration have been delivered:

• Content federation for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Business Suite and SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain (SAP IBP)
• Notifications from SAP S/4HANA (cloud and on-premise)
• Integration of the web assistant for help content from SAP S/4HANA
• Enterprise Search integration
• Transport of SAP Launchpad Sites
• Free tier model of SAP BTP to explore and start developing with the SAP Launchpad service
• SAP Mobile Start application available for users of SAP Launchpad service

This image shows the notification feature:

For more information about the new features, see these two blogs:

• One Year Anniversary of SAP Launchpad Service by Sibylle Brehm
• Transport Launchpad sites on SAP BTP using SAP Cloud Transport Management service by Murali Shanmugham

Visit also the What’s New section providing an overview of the new and changed features.

For more information about SAP Launchpad service, see the Community page.

If you want to see all SAP Community blog posts written about SAP Launchpad service, then follow this tag. To activate the notifications for new blogs, go to your profile and choose Account & Settings -> Communications.

Top Five Reasons for Using SAP Launchpad Service

SAP Business Technology expert Murali Shanmugham (with a focus on digital experience services) describes in his blog the 5 key aspects of the SAP Launchpad service, which are important for customers and partners wanting to extend their SAP solutions. Subscribing to this service on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) offers several benefits for your organization or company, such as: a cloud-based launchpad service providing a central access point for SAP applications, building and enhancing SAP Fiori apps as extensions, mobilizing your processes leveraging SAP Mobile Start, using Identity Authentication service free of charge as part of your SAP BTP subscription.

For more information: check out the blog post SAP BTP Launchpad service: Top 5 reasons to consider using it to extend SAP solutions.

What is SAP Work Zone service?

SAP Work Zone is a service on SAP Business Technology Platform enabling customers to build digital workplace solutions to increase user productivity and engagement.

SAP Work Zone offers rich capabilities to build modern intranets with content pages, widgets and UI integration cards. SAP Work Zone includes the capability from SAP Launchpad service, but also offers additional capabilities such as team workspaces, document access, knowledge base, and more.

See here an example (screenshot was made from our demo systems):

You can follow the SAP Work Zone certification path in this learning journey and learn why and how SAP is building the next evolution of an employee experience-focused digital workplace by offering SAP Work Zone.

For more detailed information, you can also have a look at the SAP documentation.

You might have more questions around SAP Work Zone and SAP Launchpad service?  We will provide more information for SAP TechEd 2021. Stay tuned and follow the SAP Work Zone tag and check out our Community page for more information.

SAP Extension Suite Digital Experience Video

This new video shows how SAP Extension Suite digital experience services increase people productivity and engagement through a harmonized digital experience. It features SAP Conversational AI, SAP Mobile Services, and SAP Work Zone.

SAP TechEd User Experience Sessions

Once again SAP TechEd is virtual in 2021, and is taking place from November 16-18. As always, we will have sessions that cover the latest innovations in the user experience (UX) solutions of SAP. The schedule includes lectures, hands-on workshops, and a new engaging format called Channel 1.

Get more information about the planned UX sessions in this SAP TechEd blog by Peter Spielvogel.

I would like to recommend our SAP TechEd lecture DEV202 Boost employee productivity with a modern central access to your Business Apps and Processes. Once we are closer to SAP TechEd, I will provide you also the link to the session catalog with some more session recommendations.

Configure SAP Enterprise Portal as a Content Provider for SAP Business Technology Platform

Many SAP customers have rich implementations of on-premise SAP Enterprise Portal that include many classic UIs such as Web Dynpro ABAP, SAP GUI, BSP, and other applications. As a System Administrator, you can configure the SAP Enterprise Portal as a remote content provider for the Launchpad service and 2 other services on SAP BTP. This enables you to expose your existing Enterprise Portal content (such as BEx, SAP GUI Applications, Web Dynpro ABAP, and Java) side by side with new content (such as SAP SuccessFactors and SAP S/4HANA) in one single entry point.

You can configure Enterprise Portal as a content provider for the following services on SAP BTP: SAP Work Zone, SAP Launchpad service and SAP Cloud Portal service.

The feature is available starting with SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal 7.50 SP19.

If you would like to learn step-by-step how to do the configuration, I highly recommend to read the new blog SAP Enterprise Portal as a Content Provider to SAP BTP by Michal Zilcha-Lang.