- SAP Managed Tags:
In my conversations with customers, I keep hearing that extensibility is extremely important to them. It allows their systems to adapt and grow with their businesses and enables customization to fit specific needs and easy integration with other tools, enhancing overall efficiency and user experience. With SAP BTP, we are providing a stable and reliable way to keep innovating and expanding your SAP solution beyond its standard capabilities. This year at SAP TechEd, we announced the general availability of the new SAP Build Extensibility Wizard for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
The Extensibility Wizard is a tool that helps you quickly and easily add new features or customize the standard capabilities of your SAP software to better fit your business needs, without requiring extensive technical expertise.
In this blog, I’ll recap what we shared at SAP TechEd 2024 around the Extensibility Wizard, its main business value for customers, and provide some key resources to help you get started. I’ll also share my thoughts about how this release fits into SAP’s vision for extensibility and reveal a sneak peek at what lies ahead.
SAP Build Extensibility Wizard at TechEd 2024
The Extensibility Wizard was among this year’s key announcements at SAP TechEd. During the keynote, we also shared the news that ABAP environments are now part of SAP Build, and that customers can develop ERP extensions within a single suite of AI-driven tools. The Extensibility Wizard takes this a step further by bringing the ABAP and non-ABAP worlds together directly within the ERP, making SAP Build the default solution to modernize your core system. See all of this year’s main announcements in the TechEd keynote replay: SAP TechEd 2024 Keynote - Where ideas get real.
In case you missed it, I highly recommend checking out these on-demand sessions featuring the Extensibility Wizard, including strategy, common scenarios, demos and more:
What’s the main business value of the Extensibility Wizard?
From SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2408 onwards, the wizard is now available in every business application that is enabled for key user adaptation. Both key users and developers can launch the wizard directly from their SAP S/4HANA system to start creating on-stack extensions, as well as side-by-side extensions with BTP and SAP Build. In the future, we’ll plan to enable it in SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud and on-prem.
See these blogs to catch up on what’s available and how to get started:
So with the Extensibility Wizard readily available, what’s the business value customers can now achieve? Here are the main benefits to know:
- All extensibility options brought together in one place: The Extensibility Wizard consolidates on-stack extensions that are already possible like custom field and logic, together with side-by-side – bringing BTP and S/4HANA Cloud together in a single extensibility space.
- Contextualized experience for extension development: One of the wizard’s main capabilities is that it automatically understands the business context of the application you are using and filters the corresponding extension points, such as APIs and events. For on-stack extensions, it navigates you to the respective business application or key user extensibility apps.
- Leverages generative AI and other BTP innovations: By providing seamless navigation into SAP Build, now customers and partners can take advantage of the latest BTP capabilities, such as AI agents and prebuilt content, to truly accelerate their ERP modernization.
SAP Build as part of SAP’s overall vision for extensibility
With the release of Extensibility Wizard and the addition of ABAP environments to SAP Build, we are realizing our vision for more accessible extensibility and clean core development.
As the graphic below illustrates, SAP Build provides an entire suite of extensibility options to meet every type of developer persona or business need. From low- to pro-code, backend to frontend development – all of them are under the umbrella of SAP Build.
Just as SAP Build has made app development accessible to citizen developers, the Extensibility Wizard now makes extension creation a smoother and more streamlined experience that is clean core by default.
It guides key users through the first steps, making it easier to start and know which tools to use. Professional developers no longer need to start from scratch, as they can leverage features like gen AI and maintained, prebuilt content. SAP Build continues to enable fusion development from multiple angles, making it a truly holistic portfolio for extensibility.
Want to learn more about our vision for extensibility?
- See five use cases of SAP Build extending SAP S/4HANA for finance, supply chain and other lines of business in the eBook.
- Explore our overall strategy for clean core and extensibility model in this whitepaper.
Looking ahead to a new Extensibility era
With the Extensibility Wizard and our other TechEd milestones, we’re thrilled to take extensibility into a new era, where the worlds of BTP, S/4HANA, and ABAP come closer together! Developers and business users alike will be able to extend and innovate their core systems based on their specific skill sets and custom needs. And it’s only the beginning.
This visual illustrates how SAP Build encompasses the development of enterprise-ready extensions. You’ll note that generative AI is a centerpiece of the portfolio, with many new capabilities announced at TechEd to further accelerate the development process. AI is already changing how we interact with technology and develop software, and it’s a trend that will continue to shape the entire industry.
So, what’s next for the SAP Build Extensibility Wizard?
Currently, it’s possible to create custom fields, logic, and process extensions in SAP Build Process Automation. The option to create custom apps with SAP Build Code is on the roadmap.
We’re also pleased to announce that the Extensibility Wizard is targeted for SAP SuccessFactors in the future, offering a more robust and standardized way to enhance core HR systems. The Extensibility Wizard will operate with the same behavior and framework as it does in SAP S/4HANA, integrating SAP Build within Employee Center with numerous event hooks available.
For a sneak peek at how this will look, check out the announcement from this year’s SAP SuccessConnect event in Lisbon by Siva Sundaresan, SVP of Applications Engineering at SAP SuccessFactors. He also shares a demo of the Extensibility Wizard in the Onboarding application: Road Map and Vision Session (starts around 15:45).
***
Hopefully this got you inspired and ready to kick off your transformation journey with the SAP Build Extensibility Wizard. There are plenty more capabilities to come, so stay tuned!
For additional learning, see these Devtoberfest sessions and demos:
1 Comment
