One of the very useful features of the more recent versions of SAP NetWeaver Business Client is the availability of the side panel. And one useful scenario for leveraging the side panel is to place context sensitive help in it. Here I explore the possibilities for leveraging the side panel for context sensitive help ...
Using SAP Help Center
SAP provides its own context sensitive capability in the Help Center. This supports help linkages from both Web Dynpro and ABAP Transaction Dynpro applications.
For Web Dynpro applications, the Help Center can be launched by selecting the Help -> Help Center option at the top right of a Web Dynpro page in NWBC. It doesn't appear in the Side Panel by default ... to have it do that, you need to set the application parameter WDHELPCENTERDISPLAY from it's default of NEW_WINDOW to SIDE_PANEL. When doing that, the Help Center appears like the following ...
For ABAP Transaction dynpro applications however, the approach to launching the Help Center is via the menu options which appear in the top left of the screen (as distinct from the top right of the screen for Web Dynpros) via the path Help -> Application Help. And also, when launching the help for these transactions within NWBC, the Help Center does not appear in the NWBC side panel but instead appears in a separate pop-up window which once again is inconsistent with the behaviour for Web Dynpros. From a user experience perspective, this is not ideal ... whilst NWBC serves well to unify classic ABAP dynpro as well as Web Dynpro screens in the one user interface, the mechanisms to launch the SAP Help Center are inconsistent as is the location in which the Help Center pages appear.
So lets look an alternative option ...
Third Party Context Sensitive Help
Many organisations utilise alternative solutions to surface context sensitive help. Irrespective of the solution, if it supports launching of URL pages whereby the particular screen app code is included in the URL to launch the screen-specific help (eg. http://<helpserver>/helplink?appcode=<abc>, then the solution below may work for you.
First things first. You may not be aware, but SAP exposes information into web pages served in the Side Panel. One way to see what information is available is to hold down the CTRL key and follow the menu path below in NWBC ...
When you do this, the side panel will display contextual information related to the current screen, like the following ...
You can leverage this concept for your context sensitive help, creating a customised page which extracts the relevant contextual data and injects that into a URL for your help system, then redirecting to that URL. To do this, create a BSP application with a single HTML page with flow logic, like the following ...
In its simplest (non-robust) form, the content of your BSP application might look something like this (click on the image to display in full resolution) ...
Using transaction PFCG add the BSP to your NWBC menu role at the top-level folders under which you wish the context sensitive side panel to be available. Be sure to set the 'Node Option' to be 'Side Panel'...
Then, when opening your side panel you should have the option to see your context sensitive help in there, irrespective of whether you are viewing a ABAP dynpro transaction, or a Web Dynpro application. This provides much more consistency in the user experience. Here is an example below ...
Want to know more about NWBC? Here are two options to find out more ...
Mentor Monday - Sept 23rd 2013
If you would like to know more about NWBC, there is a public mentor call hosted by SAP Mentors matt.harding and myself sharing our experiences with it, at the following time:
Sept 23rd
Pacific Standard Time (PST) 6AM
(which for those of us in Australia, equates to AEST 11PM)
UPDATE: This session has now occurred. A link to the recording is here ...
https://sap.na.pgiconnect.com/p16wagzuo1b/
Expert Networking Session at SAP TechEd Las Vegas - Oct 23rd 2013
I will be hosting a 30 minute expert networking session on NWBC at SAP TechEd in Las Vegas this year. The date and time for this is as follows ...
Oct 23rd 10:30AM - Expert Networking Lounge 1
If you want to hear more about NWBC, or even want to share your own experiences with it, please drop by. Everyone is welcome!
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