Impact of Notifications on Business Users

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TL;DR – Know where SAP Fiori notifications are visible to business users.

A very common business requirement is to notify someone that something has happened and, if possible, get them started on responding to it.

In this blog post - Part 2 - you will learn where you - as a business user - will find notifications depending on the notification type, expected response, and which apps/frameworks have been made available to you.

You can find more information in the SAP Help – ABAP Platform - SAP Fiori launchpad - User Guide – Using the Launchpad - Working with Notifications.

You will learn where business users see notifications from:

Workflows - including flexible workflows and classic workflows
Situations - standard situations and extended situations
Smart Business KPIs - threshold exceeded alerts
Business process-specific notifications - notifying of completion or a status change

Notifications in SAP S/4HANA 2023 FPS02

Impact of Notifications on Business Users

As you would expect, notifications are difficult to miss! Depending on the type of notification and the expected response, users will find notifications highlighted to them in a range of places.

Where users find notifications

All notifications can be found in the Notification Center – i.e. via the bell icon in the shell bar of their launchpad. The shell bar is always visible wherever you are in the launchpad. The bell icon is usually towards the right-hand side of the shell bar - as seen in the example below.

The Notification Center is used for all notifications:

In the local SAP Fiori launchpad of SAP S/4HANA
On desktop, in the unified SAP Fiori launchpad of SAP Build Work Zone
On a mobile device, in the unified SAP Fiori launchpad via the app SAP Mobile Start

Important: To view notifications in SAP Build Work Zone and SAP Mobile Start, your administrator must have federated the notifications from SAP S/4HANA to SAP Build Work Zone. Worth knowing: other notifications from other SAP Cloud solutions can also be federated to SAP Build Work Zone.

How do you know new notifications have been added

The badge on the notification center highlights how many new notifications have been added since you last viewed the notification center. Selecting the bell icon to expand the notification center clears the badge.

What can you do with notifications

When you select the bell icon you can see all your notifications. You can see them listed by date, group them by notification type, or list them by notification priority.

Grouping by notification type collapses the list so you can get an overview of how many notifications exist per type.

Expanding a type shows the notifications below

Below is an example of notifications listed by priority. You can see there is a different icon assigned for High versus Medium priority notifications.

Selecting a notification navigates to the relevant target app. Which app depends on what has been configured for the notification type. For example:

Workflow notifications navigate by default to SAP Fiori app F0862 My Inbox
Situations navigate to the relevant app for the use case. You can find a list of all the use cases and the relevant apps at SAP Help - SAP S/4HANA - Situation Handling - Use Cases for Situation Handling
Smart Business KPI alerts navigate to the matching KPI app
Process-specific alerts usually navigate to a related app.

Important: You will need access to the target app. When you select the notification, if nothing happens or you see an error, ask your UX Architect or Security Administrator to review your authorizations.

Some notifications can have configured Quick Actions that you can use instead of navigating to the relevant app. For example, you might want to quickly approve a low-value purchase requisition without having to navigate to the approval task in app My Inbox. In the screenshot below, you can see quick actions to Accept, Reject, or Close ("do nothing") have been included on the Purchase Order approval notification.

You can remove notifications you are not interested in by selecting the x on a notification or group of notifications.

Which notifications appear in My Home for SAP S/4HANA

The most urgent and most visible notifications are those that require a response, which includes:

Workflow tasks which require a strict response defined in the workflow. For example, an approver must approve or reject.
Situations which require a flexible response as defined in the situation type. For example, a business expert must decide whether to resolve the situation, or dismiss it.

For these urgent notifications SAP Fiori launchpad helps you promptly respond by showing them in even more places.

From SAP S/4HANA 2023 FPS01, you will find your workflow tasks and situations are also visible in:

My Home for SAP S/4HANA page - To Dos section

Your most recent To Dos appear in your launchpad as soon as you log in. You can see an example in the screenshot below from a SAP S/4HANA 2023 FPS02 solution.

In To-Dos you will see:

Tasks if you have been assigned the SAP Fiori app F0862 My Inbox.
Situations if you have been assigned the SAP Fiori app F4154 My Situations

Below is an example of To-Dos for Situations:

If there is nothing for you to do you will see a reassuring "nothing to do" message as in the examples below.

And you will see a similar message for situations as in the example below.

Important: My Home “To Dos” was introduced with SAP S/4HANA 2023 FPS01. In SAP S/4HANA 2023 it supports: workflow notifications from both flexible workflows and classic workflows, and standard situation notifications. Extended situation notifications are not yet supported as To-Dos in SAP S/4HANA 2023, and are expected to be supported as To-Dos from SAP S/4HANA 2025.

Notifications that have a required response are also visible in dedicated apps to see a full list of notifications of that type:

Workflow tasks from SAP S/4HANA can be seen in the app F0862 My Inbox
Workflow tasks can also be federated via SAP Task Center. This lets you bring the multiple cloud solutions and Joule (SAP Business AI) together into the unified SAP Fiori launchpad of SAP Build Work Zone on desktop. You can also access the native mobile SAP Fiori launchpad on your mobile device via SAP Mobile Start
Standard situations can be seen in the app F4154 My Situations
Extended situations can be seen in the app F4536 My Situations - Extended

Worth knowing:

SAP Mobile Start enables push notifications on your mobile device. For more information refer to the SAP Community page Mobile Experience
SAP Build Work Zone, SAP Mobile Start, and SAP Task Center require some additional configuration by your Administrator.

For example:

You can see your workflow tasks in SAP Fiori app F0862 My Inbox as tile My Inbox – All Items

Or your workflow tasks in SAP Fiori app F0862 My Inbox as tile My Inbox – Expert mode

Below is an example of Situations in the SAP Fiori app F4154 My Situations

Personalizing your Notifications

Sometimes notifications can be more important or less important than the person who configured it realised. So you do have some options to adjust your notifications - and manage your mental health! - in the SAP Fiori launchpad. In the shell bar select User Actions - Settings - Notifications.

You can:

Raise the priority of notification types to high (flag as High priority)
Mute selected notifications (toggle Enabled to off)
Mark which notifications you want echoed to email

Important: Only notification types which you have received at least once will be shown.

Why am I seeing strange texts in User Actions > Settings > Notifications?

If the notification provider did not define a descriptive text for the notification type itself, then the raw notification type id is shown.

Hint: If this occurs for a notification provider defined by SAP, please raise an SAP Incident to ask for this to be corrected. If at all possible, please reference the application component of the related business process.

Self-service notifications and restrictions

Smart Business KPI Alerts are self-service notifications. They only appear if you - as a business user - have requested them by subscribing to the alert. If the KPI supports alerts you will see the Subscribe link in the title bar of the KPI as per the example below.

Hint: Once subscribed the Subscribe link toggles to become an Unsubscribe link.

The alert includes the details of the KPI and the threshold that was exceeded, as per the example below.

KPI Alerts also have some special considerations that you should explain to your business users.

Not every KPI supports subscriptions. You will know if a KPI supports a subscription because the Subscribe hyperlink will appear towards the top-right of the KPI. Hint: There are some underlying technical restrictions explained in part 4.
As a business user, you can subscribe to a maximum of 5 alerts using the Subscribe link. When you subscribe the hyperlink changes from Subscribe to Unsubscribe. If you subscribe to a 6th KPI, it will ask you if you want this alert to replace one of your existing alerts.
When you first subscribe a daily batch job is scheduled to check if the threshold has been exceeded, and if so it triggers the alert notification. Hint: The batch job is personal to the user and will have the name SAP_SSB _<userid>_<client>. It runs the program /SSB/ALERT_NOTIFICATION to trigger the alert. You need to be authorized to schedule/run this program.
You can unsubscribe to alerts at any time by returning to the KPI and pressing the Unsubscribe hyperlink. When you unsubscribe the hyperlink changes from Unsubscribe to Subscribe.

For more information refer your Administrator or Analytics Specialist to: SAP Help - SAP S/4HANA - Analytics - Manage KPIs and Reports - Runtime Analysis - Smart Business Runtime Environment and Authorization for Smart Business KPI Tile in the Business Catalog role

Becoming a SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA guru

You’ll find much more on our SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA topic page

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SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA – Which notification to use when – Impact on Business Users

Impact of Notifications on Business Users

Where users find notifications

How do you know new notifications have been added

What can you do with notifications

Which notifications appear in My Home for SAP S/4HANA

Personalizing your Notifications

Why am I seeing strange texts in User Actions > Settings > Notifications?

Self-service notifications and restrictions

Becoming a SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA guru