10.2 Working with the SAP Fiori Launchpad: My Home, Spaces and Pages, Help, Joule, Responsibilities, Situations, and Workflows

Working with the SAP Fiori Launchpad: My Home, Spaces and Pages, Help, Joule, Responsibilities, Situations, and Workflows

The course Implementing SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition (S4C03) is part of the C_TS462 learning journey, and its unit Working with the SAP Fiori Launchpad (90 minutes) explains the tools that every sales user and consultant meets in the system: the launchpad itself, help and support, Joule, and the frameworks that alert the right people and route approvals. Section 10.1 covered the sales-specific monitoring and analytical apps; this section covers the launchpad capabilities around them.

SAP Fiori: Design Principles and Task-Focused Apps

SAP Fiori is a design language that gives a consistent look and feel across SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, SAP Cloud ALM, and other systems. Its five core principles are role-based, adaptive, simple, coherent, and delightful. The course explains why: employees change companies and roles far more often than in the past, so software must be intuitive and quick to learn.

The example is the classic transaction MIGO (Goods Movement), which handles many kinds of goods movements in one complex app. It still exists in all SAP S/4HANA deployments for experienced users, but its functions have also been split into several task-focused SAP Fiori apps. New hires or employees changing roles use the individual apps for their task instead.

The SAP Fiori Launchpad and My Home

The launchpad is the single entry point to all apps a user is permitted to use, on any device. Most apps run on desktop and mobile; for mobile, the SAP Mobile Start app must be set up through SAP Build Work Zone (on SAP BTP), which the course recommends doing jointly by partner and customer project team members.

The landing page My Home works on all devices, and users can personalize which sections appear:

• To-Dos: aggregates tasks from the My Inbox app and situations from the Situation Handling framework.
• Pages: a News tile (configured by an administrator, off by default; SAP recommends a feed based on the Release Assessment and Scope Dependency tool to inform users about release changes) and the first eight pages of the user's business roles.
• Apps and Activities: manually selected favorite apps plus system-generated recent and frequently used apps.
• Insights: tiles filled automatically from the monitoring apps of the user's roles, and cards (analytical, list, and table cards) that users add themselves.

Spaces and Pages

Spaces and Pages is the default layout of the launchpad. A business role contains business catalogs, which grant permission to apps and data. But a launchpad space must be assigned to the business role to define how the permitted apps are displayed. Without an assigned space, no apps appear on the launchpad; the user could only find them through search, which is confusing. SAP delivers space templates for each standard business role template; for an entirely custom role, you create a custom space and pages.

The Administration space has eleven pages so that an administrator does not scroll through one long list, which reflects the Fiori principle that users should intuitively know where to find an app.

The SAP Fiori Apps Reference Library

For each SAP Fiori app, the SAP Fiori Apps Reference Library shows the standard business role, the business catalog, and the space and page that contain the app; technical data (application type, supported deployments, release, app ID, desktop/mobile availability); and a link to the app documentation in the SAP Help Portal, including whether the app supports extensions with the Custom Fields and Custom Logic apps. Classic SAP GUI transactions are listed too, but their documentation lives in the system. In the launchpad, SAP GUI transactions run as SAP GUI for HTML, so they look similar to Fiori apps.

Embedded Help and Support

• Embedded help: the question mark icon at the top right turns on an overlay that explains the sections of the current screen, with content from the SAP Help Portal. In SAP GUI apps, press F1. Partner configuration experts should show this in every fit-to-standard workshop.
• Simulations: in the help topics, the graduation cap icon shows in-context simulations built with SAP Enable Now; the learning center lists all standard simulations by business role. Most simulations follow the test scripts of the business processes in SAP Signavio Process Navigator.
• What's new: the megaphone icon shows changes to the current screen's functionality from the What's New Viewer.
• Embedded support: the headphones icon opens SAP's in-context support channels and tutorial videos; full support functionality needs an SAP Universal ID.

Joule: The Generative AI Assistant

Joule is SAP's next-generation digital assistant based on generative AI, replacing the previous SAP Conversational AI. Generative AI creates new content based on the user's input and patterns in the data, whereas traditional AI recognizes patterns. Because Joule is embedded across SAP applications, it can answer plain-language questions with data from the whole SAP portfolio, for example identifying underperforming sales regions, linking them to a supply chain issue, and offering fixes for review. Joule complies with SAP product standards, AI ethics, and GDPR. It is opened from the diamond icon at the top right. It runs on SAP BTP, so the partner implementation team must subscribe to the service and set up authentication between SAP Cloud Identity Services, SAP BTP, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Responsibility Management

Responsibility Management defines the responsible people who are automatically notified about events that need their attention. You define teams, add members (agents) responsible for business processes, and assign member functions that describe their tasks. It works together with Situation Handling to alert the right person end to end, and its teams can also determine agents in custom workflows. It is business process 1NJ in SAP Signavio Process Navigator, enabled with its setup instructions and test script, and maintained in the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app. (Section 8.3 shows a sales example: approvers for credit memo requests.)

The Situation Handling Framework

Situation Handling informs the right users automatically about situations that need attention and resolution, such as an upcoming deadline, a shipping delay, billing documents that have not been posted, or expiring contracts. Users are informed through launchpad notifications, email, the My Situations app, and the app where the situation occurred. Many situation templates are enabled by default. It is business process 31N.

• Configuration experts should check, per line of business, which templates are relevant, which are enabled by default, and which must be discussed with the customer. Enabling a template can require teams, members, and functions in Responsibility Management.
• SAP strongly recommends enabling the templates relevant to the customer's enabled business processes.
• Two frameworks, Standard and Extended, can be used in parallel.
• Automatic resolution of situations requires the separately licensed Intelligent Situation Automation service on SAP BTP.

Flexible Business Workflows

SAP Business Workflow defines processes that are not covered by the standard processes, from simple release or approval steps to complex sequences with many agents, and it can react to errors and events. SAP provides many workflow scenario templates that configuration experts can use for requirements found in fit-to-standard workshops; function-specific workflow apps maintain them, for example an approval workflow for sales prices. A workflow consists of work items, tasks assigned to agents, which appear in the My Inbox app. As an alternative for low-code and cross-product workflows, customers can use SAP Build Process Automation on SAP BTP (licensed through the GROW with SAP enablement package), the evolution of SAP Workflow Management and SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation.