Activating Fiori apps in mass - all options compared!

[WouterLemaire]

There already exist several blogs on this topic; I still want to take this opportunity to compare the different options. It’s straightforward on how to activate OData services in mass. Activating SICF services in mass is also not very special. Creating references of tiles and target mappings has more stuff to discuss. SAP recently released a new tool for creating references of tiles and target mappings to your own catalogs. Too bad this tool requires as specific version of your system... and what I dislike the most is that it’s not created in Fiori!  In this blog, I am going to compare and provide you other solutions.

 

Activate OData services in mass

Let’s start with OData services. This can be done in the transaction to activate OData services: /n/iwfnd/maint_service . Instead of selecting only one, you can select several OData services. Nothing special here, sorry ?

Activate SICF services in mass

For SICF services, you can activate everything in the transaction SICF by activating on the parent level. Activating everything is the fastest way, but you probably don’t want this. In that case you need to do this one by one. Next to that, you can also use tasklist for this in the transaction STC01 to do this for a specific set of services: “SAP_BASIS_ACTIVATE_ICF_NODES”



Provide a list with all the services you want to activate:

Create tile and target mapping references in mass

There are several solutions for creating references of tiles and target mappings to custom catalogs. One of the longest existing possibilities is to copy a full catalog in the Fiori Launchpad Designer by using drag and drop:

• Pros

o   Fast to create a custom catalog based on a standard catalog and you can start making changes

o   Available in older systems

o   Works in HUB scenario

• Cons

o   It is everything or noting… In case you only want a few of them

o   Not intuitive (you need to know that it can be dragged and dropped)

o   Cannot be merged into an existing custom catalog

Since this year, SAP released a new tool “Rapid Content Activation” for S4HANA to activate Fiori apps in mass easily. You can read everything about this tool here: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/03/16/fiori-for-s4hana-new-rapid-content-activation-on-s4hana-1809-1709-p...

• Pros:

o   Does everything for you

• Cons:

o   Only for EMBEDDED setup

o   Stick to SAP Catalogs

o   Requires specific SP version of your S4 system

o   Cannot be merged into an existing custom catalog

This is great and needed for a long time. Still, many customers have a HUB setup because this was the way to go for a long time. Since S4, EMBEDDED is the best practice but not all customers have changed their setup… this means this tool is useless for many customers… On top of that, it will create new catalogs based on the business roles defined by SAP. If already have a custom setup of catalog, you need another tool to manage the catalogs…

This brings me to the “Fiori Launchpad Content Manager”. This is a transaction to manage and maintain fiori tiles and target mappings in mass. Great tool… we just needed this much earlier. More information about this tool: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/07/22/new-sap-fiori-launchpad-content-manager-tool-available-for-s4hana-1...

• Pros:

o   Works in HUB setup

o   Create references in mass

o   Create references to custom catalogs

o   Search for tiles and target mappings in all catalogs

• Cons:

o   Still need to activate sicf and odata services

o   Not a fiori app

o   Requires specific SP version of your S4 system

The Fiori Launchpad Content Manager is the tool we needed for a long time. Still, I don’t understand why it is not a Fiori app? What about “eat your own dog food”? In addition, it requires the following prerequisites:

• SAP_UI 752: SP07


• SAP_UI 753: SP04

More information here: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2772270

What about customers on older versions? They still need to do this one by one or upgrade? For this, I created the following solution, Fiori Launchpad Admin Tool: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/10/08/fiori-launchpad-admin-tool/

• Pros

o   Works in HUB setup

o   Create references in mass

o   Create references to custom catalogs

o   Fiori app

o   Does not require a specific version. Should work on any system (not all are tested)

• 
  
  
  
  • This is created on top of the same services as the Fiori Launchpad Desginer
  
  
  
  

o   Open source tool 🙂

• Cons

o   Still need to activate sicf and odata services

o   Search for tiles and target mappings in all catalogs (can be added J )

As this is an open source project, you are all free to improve and we can even implement a function to activate the SICF and OData services!

 

Hope this gives you a clear overview of all the possibilities for maintain the tiles and target mappings on the Fiori Launchpad.

 

[lingaiahvanam]

Good article.

[Andre_Fischer]

Hi Wouter,

in my opinion the mass activation of OData Services is not done via transaction /iwfnd/maint_service but using the task list SAP_GATEWAY_ACTIVATE_ODATA_SERV which can be started using transaction STC01. This task list now also allows for the transport of OData services in your system landscape.

https://blogs.sap.com/2018/04/16/updated-tasklist-available-for-sap-gateway-service-activation/

A new thing (which is available as part of the standard in 1909) is the new tasklist /IWFND/TL_SERVICE_MAINTENANCE  that allows for the mass maintenance of OData services (for example adding a system alias to 100 selected OData services).

Best Regards,

Andre

[former_member189717]

Hello Wouter,

 

good blog! Thank you.

Meanwhile there is an updated version of the FLP Content manager supporting a new role view and service activation checks (OData and SICF). These checks can be executed on application, catalog and role level.

See https://blogs.sap.com/2019/09/30/further-enhancements-of-sap-fiori-launchpad-content-manager-tool-no...

Additionally, there is also a new Task List for service activation SAP_FIORI_FCM_CONTENT_ACTIVATION for selected customer roles. See https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2813396).

 

Best regards

Marek

[WouterLemaire]

Hi Andre,

Thank you for your reply. You are right, that's also an option. We used this in the beginning but it did not always added the services to a transport... because of that, we always use /n/iwfnd/maint_service

Kr, Wouter

[WouterLemaire]

The role overview is very nice! Looking forward trying it out.

Kr, Wouter

[Andre_Fischer]

Hi Wouter,

as I wrote in my blog the services can be added to a transport if you install

SAP Note  2630153 – Fiori Setup: Enhance OData service activation task list

Best regards,

Andre

[dkle]

Unfortunately, we cannot activate the ICF-Services of the OData-Services with task list /IWFND/TL_SERVICE_MAINTENANCE. It would be very helpful if we could do so.

Requirement is: mass activate all ICF-Services part of /IWFND/MAINT_SERVICE which are inactive.

With SAP_BASIS_ACTIVATE_ICF_NODES, we have to know the exact service paths to activate, and it is an 'everything or nothing' tasklist, so if one of 100 paths is invalid, it will activate none. Workaround is to specify '/sap/opu/odata/sap', this will activate all ICF-services under this path.

With SAP_FIORI_CONTENT_ACTIVATION, we have to elaborate the business role behind an OData service.

I wrote a little SQL-command to query all active OData-Services with ICF-service and -path, maybe this will help someone (execute e.g. in transaction DB50):

SELECT object_name "Techn. service name", service_name "OData service", icf.icf_name "ICF service", '/sap/opu/odata/sap/' || ICFALTNME_ORIG "ICF service path", icfactive "ICF service is active"

FROM "/IWFND/I_MED_SRH" as odata

LEFT JOIN "ICFSERVICE" as icf

       ON odata.service_name = icf.icfaltnme

LEFT JOIN "ICFSERVLOC" as icf2

       ON icf.icf_name = icf2.icf_name

ORDER BY 2