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JoEng
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
1,898

SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 is used by different customers in different industries. While there are many features available as part of the standard software, there are still topics, which are very specific and won't be included. To ensure customers can tailor their tenants to their processes SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 offers many customization and extensibility capabilities. While customization can be done by experienced business users, extensibility offers extension points for experienced developers.

Extensibility Pattern

As we can't predict the different use-cases our customers are building, we focus on a set of six extension patterns. Those patterns are offering extension points, which can be used by developers to include their specific scenario.

Screenshot 2024-12-18 at 12.59.44.png

With SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 there is no PDI development available any more. For that reason it is important to prepare for potential side-by-side development scenarios. To ensure a effective project, it is recommended to sort out the specific requirements of the different extension patterns already in the architecture phase of the project. That way it is possible to do strategic decisions and align the side-by-side architecture with the application development strategy of the company.

Technical Foundation

With SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 we decided to rely on open web standards only. All described extension pattern are based on three interfaces.

Screenshot 2024-12-18 at 13.13.12.png

  •  Event Notifcation / API Hooks: In specific situations, SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 is calling http services (webhooks). This can be either synchron or asynchron.
  • REST-API: SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 is developed API first. That way all objects in the system can be read / modified via API. The officially supported API is documented on api.sap.com.
  • Mashups are based on iFrames to ensure a true separation of concerns. Using standard HTML and JavaScript it is possible to extend SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 technology independent.

 

Server Side Pattern

Server Side Patterns are Pattern (No. 1, 2, 5 and 6) without a UI integration. They are events, webhooks and external jobs. Synchronous Webhooks are used to intercept write request to SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 and modify them before they are persisted. They give a lot of flexibility to automate and validate the user input. At the same time, they are adding to the response time as the call can't return before the webhook is finished. Asynchronous Webhooks are executed after the request is finished. They don't have a performance or stability impact on the system as they are not directly involved in the processing of a request. 

Further reading:

UI Extensions

UI Extensions are Mashups. We support two types of Mashups. Simple IFrames and Web Components. UI Extensions can be build using pro-code tools like SAP CAP or Low-Code / No-Code tools like SAP Build Apps. Especially SAP Build is a interesting offer for people used to do PDI Development, who don't like to pick up classic cloud native development, as it simplifies the start.

The communication with SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 is handled in general via APIs. To ensure a seamless integration, SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 listens to UI Events for client side communication. To match the look and feel of SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2, we use the Fiori Horizon Theme.

Further Reading:

Summary

Since the release of SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 we can see many custom extensions. The Extension pattern are helping during the project setup and development. In discussions with different partners and customers, we receive the feedback that side-by-side extensions are a valuable concept, which offers a lot flexibility. Some customers reported, they are using the same UI extension in different contexts. E.g. in SAP S/4 and SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2 at the same time. This adds a lot value and safes cost, as the tool needs to be implemented once. Others see the benefit in side-by-side development, as they can assign their development experts more flexible as the technical foundation is the same, for standard microservice development and side-by-side extensibility in SAP Sales and Service Cloud V2.

2 Comments
Saurabh_Kabra
Participant

@JoEng Thanks for this wonderful series on C4C V2 extensibility possibilities. 

I have again few questions. You wrote on this blog post, "We support two types of Mashups. Simple IFrames and Web Components.". Do you already have an example about what is really a web component in C4C v2? How different web-component mashups are from the usual iframe mashups? When to use which type mash-up and what is SAP's recommendation.

I already checked help documentation, but couldnt the answer to these things.

Best Regards

Saurabh

JoEng
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
0 Kudos

Web Component Mashups can be enabled on your tenant. Please check https://help.sap.com/docs/CX_NG_SALES/348d3cace0eb4146a4af6e018cbbb88c/dd49b24d4f144375b3e92f7454b84... for details. 

Technically Web Components are rendered as iFrames too to enforce a certain level of security and separation between V2 and the extension. So at the end I am not sure, if this feature is giving any benefit over classic iFrames except of slightly simpler code. 

So would be interesting your thoughts on the topic.