Extend SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 with SAP Build Apps

[Quablab]

SAP Build Apps is providing a simple way to create business applications without coding (No-Code / Lo-Code). Applications developed with SAP Build Apps can be embedded in SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 as a mashup. This provides a easy to use capability to extend SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 without cloud native coding skills.

In this blog-post, we will create and integrate a SAP Build Apps application into SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2.

Technical Foundation

Technically SAP Build Apps are HTML / JavaScript Webpages, which can be simply integrated as a Mashup. For Details on Mashups, please checkout my blog-post about pro-code extensions of SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2.

SAP Build Apps Extension Architecture

Like in the pro-code example, we are using the same Identity Provider for the end-user authentication in SAP Build Apps as for SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2. That way, we can provide a seamless user-experience without an additional login step. For calls to the backend, we will use the Destination service, which is taking care of authentication and authorization towards SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2.

Voucher Use-Case

We are running a cinema company, which is running a service hotline, which is not only responding to service requests coming via phone, but also to requests coming via mail or social media. If customers are facing challenges, we are providing vouchers for their next visit. Recently we figured out, that there is a group of customers who are reaching out, just to receive free vouchers without experiencing any trouble. To separate those customers from customers with real problems, we like to memorize all vouchers provided to the customers.

In the further sections, we will create a basic app, to store vouchers and add more functionality as we go.

Persistence and Forms

In the first step we will create the basic functionality. We will create a data backend to store the voucher and a SAP Build Apps UI to interact with the data storage. 

For the Backend we are using the SAP Build Apps Application Backend. It allows us to store simple objects on a server. For many use-cases, this storage option is easy to setup and sufficient.

The Frontend is build with SAP Build Apps and deployed to Cloud Foundry.

After the App is created we will deploy it to SAP BTP Cloud Foundry Runtime and integrate it via mashup in SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2. 

UI Events

Our users shared positive feedback about the voucher creation app. To improve the workflow, they asked for an option to directly open the account details from within the voucher app. They are frequently facing the situation, where they would like to retrieve some context information about the account before generating the voucher.

This can be achieved using UI Events via the JavaScript window.postMessage() functionality. For the extension, we add a button at the bottom of the screen. On the button tab event, we execute the following JavaScript code.

var account = {
  operation:"navigation", 
  params: {
    objectKey: inputs.accountID, 
    routingKey: "account", 
    viewType:"details"
  }
};
self.window.parent.postMessage(account, '*');
return;

The navigation event contains the ObjectKey (in this case the Account ID), the routing key (refers to the app, which should be opened) and the view type (in this case "details", other options are "list" or "quick create").

By sending the event to the parent window, SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 can pick up the event and open the according window in the same browser window.

Summary

SAP Build Apps is a very powerful extension mechanism for SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2. With the integrated backend logic, it is possible to build simple business extensions without dedicated cloud native development knowledge. Nevertheless, for SAP Build is a basic understanding of software development required. This makes it a good tool for e.g. former PDI developers who are not yet experienced in pro-code cloud development. For more complex use-cases there is still the possibility to build extensions using e.g. the SAP Cloud Application Programing Framework or a combination of both.

Resources

• Mashup Documentation
• SAP Build Apps learning
• Pro-Code UI Extensions