The first half of 2024 has been an exciting time to be able to share the latest AI innovations coming out of the SAP UX Engineering team. Since the SAP Fiori Innovation Day we hosted in Dublin in February (you can ready Ian Quigley’s recap here), our team has been focused on connecting and collaborating with customers, partners, and colleagues at events around the globe and online to make a number of AI innovations available to you, whether you are developing SAP Fiori apps or consuming them. In this blog, I’ll share some updates on AI solutions for SAP S/4HANA Public Edition; as well as where you can learn more if you are interested in trying them out.
Please note that some of the content in this blog is about unreleased solutions from SAP. SAP reserves the right to change its development priorities at any time, so please do not make any purchase decisions based on what you read here.
Using generative AI to create apps based on business requirement documents and sketches: SAP Fiori tools AI
The 2403 release of SAP Fiori tools introduced the ability to create CAP projects and SAP Fiori elements applications by feeding a business requirement document into Joule, which uses generative AI to understand and build the desired application. This streamlines the application development process, allowing developers to skip the initial configuration of the application and allows them to focus on the additional value-added features that give their end users the tools they need to get their work done. This helps developers be more productive by allowing them to focus on the features that matter.
This initial release is available in SAP Business Application Studio as part of SAP Build Code. In order to use this AI feature, you will need an SAP Build Code license. You can check out our help portal documentation for more information on how to get started.
In some cases, you may not have a fully worked-out business requirement document ready to go but still need to get a demo app running quickly. In that case, we are currently working on another enhancement to this gen AI tool: using Joule to generate an application based on a sketch or mockup. The idea being that you can take a sketch of an application – for example, something you might have from a whiteboarding session – and upload it into Joule to generate the application. SAP Fiori tools AI understands what you intend to build and then generates an application based on an SAP Fiori elements floorplan that best matches your sketch (or high-fidelity mockup). This was born out of collaboration with partners that were looking for a quick way to get started with applications. This will help jump start your SAP Fiori application projects as well, allowing you to develop more apps in less time and freeing you up to focus on the features that make your applications unique.
An enhancement to SAP Fiori tools AI will allow users to create a basic SAP Fiori elements application from a sketch or mockup.
We have had a ton of fun showing a demo of this sketch-based app generation to customers and partners at the above-mentioned SAP Fiori Innovation Day, the brand-new developer community-driven FioriConf, and ASUG Chapter Meetings in the United States. Regardless of whether the audience is online, in Dublin, or in Seattle; we’re very grateful to get the same feedback: “When can I try it?!” SAP Fiori tools app generation from a sketch is still in development, but if you want to see the latest updates, I highly encourage you to check out our team’s session upcoming session at UI5con in St. Leon-Rot on June 5th, 2024. A lab preview of the latest version will be part of the session Adding AI to SAP Fiori elements apps at both design time and runtime.
If you can’t make it to UI5con, stay tuned! We’ll have updates on SAP Fiori tools AI as soon as they are available.
Finding business data in SAP Fiori apps using natural language: Easy Filter
The SAP Fiori user experience is all about building and delivering applications that are role-based, coherent, adaptive, simple, and delightful. This makes the applications easier to learn and use. Still, learning new business processes and filtering applications to get the exact business data you need can take time. In order to further streamline the SAP user experience, simplify onboarding, and enhance how users filter and find information; we are currently working on a solution we call Easy Filter. This planned feature for SAP Fiori apps will allow you to filter the information in the app using natural language. Instead of setting the traditional selection fields, users can simply describe the business information they would like to see in the Easy Filter field.
Easy filter will allow users to filter and find information using natural language.
Additionally, this new AI-assisted way of filtering is planned to allow for more complex, conditional queries – something that is not currently possible with traditional selection fields.
Easy Filter will streamline how you find the information you need, make it easier for users to onboard on new processes, and allow you to make more complex queries if needed, making you more productive overall.
Easy Filter is planned to be part of an upcoming release but if you want to try it out early, be on the look out for an announcement on beta registration coming soon.
Let AI summarize complex business data: Smart Summarization of SAP Fiori apps
SAP Fiori elements object pages display the details of a single business object, for example all of the relevant information for a single sales order for a particular role. Due to the complexity of various business processes, there is the possibility of object pages containing large amounts of information that could make it difficult to find the data you need to move business decisions along. Our Smart Summarization feature, planned to be available in an upcoming release, is an AI-based tool that will summarize the highest priority information for you. This ensures that you have access to all the information you need to drive your work forward and be more productive. If needed, you can also copy the summary for easy sharing in the collaboration tool of your choice.
Smart Summarization will create quick summaries of essential business information on SAP Fiori elements object pages. These summaries can be shared in the collaboration tool of your choice.
If you’re interested in trying this out, stay tuned for a beta registration announcement coming in the near-term future.
Creating insight cards for My Home with Joule
Insight cards for My Home in SAP S/4HANA allow you to display key facts and figures from SAP Fiori elements applications on your My Home page. Traditionally these cards are created from the respective application screens, but we are currently working on a solution to enable you to ask Joule using natural language to create cards with the desired information, without needing to navigate to the app. This will make end-users more productive by ensuring that they have access to all the information they need at a glance, without requiring them to have in-depth technical knowledge typically associated with creating list, table, and analytical cards. This also makes interactions with SAP systems more intuitive for new users, who may know what they need to know but not necessarily know what application they need to find the business data.
Creating Insight cards using natural language will make it easier for end users to get the business data they need without requiring advanced technical knowledge.
This is currently in active development and we can’t give away too much information yet, but keep your eyes open for future updates.
Staying up to date with AI innovations
If you’re excited to learn more about AI innovations coming out of SAP and want to hear them directly from the experts themselves, there are a number of events I can recommend depending on where you are.
For SAP AI enthusiasts in the United States attending SAP Sapphire June 3 -5, 2024; there are a number of great sessions available. My colleague Peter Spielvogel will be personally hosting the session Building better applications for business users with SAP Fiori – this will include AI innovations in SAP Fiori development. He has also put together a blog of further recommendations if you are interested in UX, development, and AI sessions: Sapphire 2024 user experience and application development sessions.
For those of you in Germany, I would highly recommend attending UI5con on June 5, 2024. As mentioned earlier in this blog, my colleagues Katrin Polloczek and Klaus Keller will be hosting the session Adding AI to SAP Fiori elements apps at both design time and runtime. There you will be able to learn how we are working to bring the productivity gains and usability improvements from our AI solutions into SAP Fiori elements.
If these in-person events are not an option for you, continue to watch this space. A number of virtual sessions and informational videos will become available as we prepare to release these solutions. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think!
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