New experimental features in SAP Fiori tools give you a preview and chance to provide feedback

In the SAP Fiori tools 2111 release announcement, I mentioned that we are planning to add “experimental features.” In the next update for SAP Fiori tools, you will have the opportunity to test some new capabilities and provide your feedback to help us improve them.  

Toggle experimental features to test new functionality 

Agile development is centered around the idea of iterative development. Requirements after the initial version evolve with open conversations between the product team and customers. With this in mind, we want to get the latest software into your hands to start this dialogue. In the next update of SAP Fiori tools, we are planning to include a new setting “Enable Experimental Features” which we will set on by default, although you can turn it off manually. This applies to both SAP Business Application Studio and Visual Studio Code.  

This toggle controls the set of new features in the Page Editor for SAP Fiori elements OData V4 projects. Some of the structural elements in the Page Editor now offer more options. For example, you can click on the “+” icon in the section node to try out how easy it is to add different types of sections. 

Experimental features in the SAP Fiori tools page editor include the ability to quickly add different types of sections to your SAP Fiori elements OData V4 app. Try them out and let us know what you think.

Another cool example is adding a rating column to a table, where using many lines of annotations is now reduced to a few clicks. 

SAP Fiori tools makes it easy to add functionality such as a rating column

Annotations can be quite complex, depending on your use cases. They may not be fully supported by these new experimental features, without manual modifications. We designed these convenience features to reduce the amount of time you spent typing code, remembering syntax, and troubleshooting manual errors. You will find these features in the section and table elements in the Page Editor for SAP Fiori elements OData V4 list report and object pages.  

The team and I am excited to make these features available to our customers to accelerate your development. We ask you to explore these features and let us know what you think by typing a comment in this blog post or drop us an email at sapfiorielements@sap.com! 

We hope you are as excited about these features as we are. However, if you prefer to turn these features off for some reason, you can do so by toggling the setting under Preferences->Settings 

Experimental features can be toggled on or off in the settings.

On behalf of the SAP Fiori tools development team, Ashley Tung.