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When it comes to configuring, adapting, and extending your SAP S/4HANA solution, key user extensibility provides powerful low-code/no-code features to manage customer-specific changes for your solution. These changes can be made during your implementation project, during an upgrade project, and at any time you need.
Even better, key user extensibility changes can be made by your business experts, a central process governance group, your functional consultants, or used by your technical team. Who makes the changes is really up to you!
Key Users are authorized to make changes to apps on behalf of other users. Source: SAP stock images
In many cases, key user extensibility is the first option you should consider when you need to make a change to a user interface or to a business process, because compared to other extensions key user extensions are:
For example, you can use key user extensibility to add, remove or reorganize fields in many SAP Fiori apps, as shown in this example of SAP Fiori app F1511A Create Maintenance Request with UI Adaptation mode being used to add, remove or reorganize fields on the user interface.
Adapt UI can be used to add, remove, relabel, and reorganize fields and features. Example of UI Adaptation mode as it appears in the SAP Fiori app F1511A Create Maintenance Request
You can find videos showing you the Adapt UI process in the SAP Help Portal in the SAP Fiori Launchpad User Guide section Personalizing and Adapting Apps, for example: Adapting SAP Fiori UIs can be this simple.
Adapt UI is just one type of key user extensibility.
So keep reading to understand:
Key user extensibility is a cloud-centric approach to making the most common changes needed to User Interfaces (UIs) and to business processes. This same cloud-centric approach is applicable even in on-premise. Key user extensibility is available when using:
For example, in SAP S/4HANA cloud, private edition and on-premise, key user extensions:
You can even use key user extensions in your own custom Fiori apps. For example:
Key user extensibility is designed to cover the most common changes that customers typically need to make. For example, in SAP S/4HANA cloud, private edition and on-premise, key user extensibility enables you to:
These types of changes can be made on behalf of all users of your solution.
Many of these changes can be made role-specific to a business role.
Most of these changes are made via SAP Fiori apps or features.
You can find a summary of many of the extension apps in blog post SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA – Yes you need SAP Fiori to Configure, Adapt and Extend SAP S/4HANA
To put it simply, key users are whomever you authorize to make changes on behalf of other users.
For example, only authorized key users can access the Adapt UI feature in the launchpad.
When in a SAP Fiori app, authorized key users can access the Adapt UI feature in the User Actions (Profile) menu. In this example you can see Adapt UI just above the Sign Out option.
Who you designate as your key users can change over time or differ for different types of key user extensions.
You choose how you want to govern key user extensions. You can change your governance approach over time, as your team and your business users build their skills and get comfortable with Key User Extensions. Some governance options are:
You might give some key user capabilities to your IT team or even selected developers – as key user functions can be the most effective way to extend your apps and the essential way to add custom fields.
Because key user extensibility uses a no-code/low-code approach, by making selected business users responsible for the changes themselves you can minimize lost-in-translation errors and communication overhead between business and IT.
Remember that at all times, your technical team still maintains control over who is authorized to make changes, and when and where those changes are applied to your system landscape.
While some changes can be made in production, for the most part key users usually make their changes in your development environment. You can understand how this works with a couple of example use cases.
It's a common need to restrict the features of an app to create a simpler version for a different set of users. Consider the needs of casual users versus experts. Your casual users may need an app to review and check data, but don't have time to build the skills or policy knowledge to make changes. So you want to restrict the actions available.
For example, you decide you want to give some casual users who create and track purchase requisitions from time to time, a restricted feature "copy" of SAP Fiori app F2229 Manage Purchase Requisition Professional. You still want to retain the original full-featured app for your more experienced purchasing officers who will use the app every day.
Restricting features of an app is something you can do using Adapt UI.
To save your restricted version for your casual users, in Adapt UI you save your changes as an App Variant.
An App Variant is effectively a copy of the app with your UI adaptations applied. By creating an app variant you can meet the needs of your casual users, while retaining the original full-featured app for your purchasing officers.
Of course, before your casual users can use the app variant:
So this type of key user change is usually performed in a development environment and then the app variant and the role assignments are transported to production.
To see how this works refer to openSAP microlearning Adapting the UI of List Report Apps - SAP S/4HANA User Experience
Many SAP Fiori apps have smart filter bars, smart tables and smart charts that you can use to preset default settings such as filters/columns/measures shown, sort, chart type, etc.
For example, for SAP Fiori apps such as F4332 Emission Forecast or F2375 Supervise Collections Worklist or F2358 Monitor Purchase Order Items or F5105 Maintenance Backlog Overview
These settings are personalization options that can be set by each individual user for themselves.
But what if you are the most experienced person on your team?
Rather than teach everyone in your team how to make these settings to get the most out of the app, you want to share the best possible combination of filters, table and chart settings for your team. You might even want to create several different combinations of settings for different use cases - such as one for every day business-as-usual and another for end of fiscal period tasks.
Sharing optimal personalization settings with your team is something you can do as a key user by creating public views (for everyone) or role-specific views (for people in one or more business roles).
There is no need to change permissions - all of the users you are impacting already have access to the app.
So this type of key user change can be made directly in a production environment, if you wish.
Hint: Remember that if you create the view in production environment it will only be available in your production environment. This means you cannot use it for testing or training scenarios in your testing/training environments. However, if you create the view in your development environment, you can transport the view to your testing/training environments as well as your production environment. So then your view is available in all environments.
To find out what's possible for views, read SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA – New options for managing Views for filters tables and charts
Essentially many key user extensions are analogous to configuration changes.
Applying the change impacts multiple people depending on their participation in your business processes.
Where changes only impact the designated team and do not require further coordination with your administrators, you can consider making the changes in production. For example: public or role-specific views; creating new flexible workflows from exisiting templates; adjusting the notification text of a situation.
It's worth keeping in mind, that you may also want to create changes in the development environment to make user testing easier. That is, you want the changes available in your quality assurance / testing system as well as your production environment.
Some changes require coordination between you and your administrators, especially where authorizations need to be adjusted to match your changes. That coordination almost always needs to happen in the development environment. You will need everything to be correctly aligned and tested before it impacts your business users. For example: app variants; changes to launchpad layouts; custom fields; and custom logic.
With most key user changes you will follow a process:
This means you will capture the changes against a transportable request in your development environment. Not something your business users are comfortable doing? Don’t worry!
Key user extensibility includes the Adaptation Transport Organizer, which is a mechanism that ensures:
There are even companion SAP Fiori apps provided for your IT team to help them manage key user transports such as F1590 Configure Software Packages, F1589 Register Extensions for Transport, and F2587 Extensibility Inventory.
Sometimes customers come to the SAP S/4HANA RIG team and say "Key users are new to us. We are taking a Technical Upgrade approach to our move to SAP S/4HANA. Can we just ignore key user extensibility for now?"
This is how we usually respond:
Sometimes when we talk to customers about key users the first reaction is... oh we can’t do that because we’ve never done that before. We’ve never given business users access to the development environment. That’s ok... !
You can always make your IT team and your project team – e.g. your functional team leads – your pilot key users. That gives you a chance to build your skills.
Just don’t forget that changes can come at any time... so make sure you nominate someone to take on this role post your first SAP S/4HANA go-live.
The most common key user extensions are:
The important first steps are:
For Business Users:
For Solution Architects, Administrators, and your Technical Team:
You will find a slide deck summary of the concept at Key User Extensibility Overview for the ABAP Platform.
Further references:
For Developers looking to include SAPUI5 Flexibility Services in custom apps refer to the following blog posts:
Customer blogs about key user extensibility:
Key user extensibility is sometimes referred to as in-app extensibility.
Key user extensibility is part of SAP’s Clean Core paradigm as explained in Custom Extensions in SAP S/4HANA Implementations - A Practical Guide for Senior IT Leadership.
You can also find a one level deeper overview in the new guide Extend SAP S/4HANA in the cloud and on premise with ABAP based extensions as explained in New Extensibility Guide for S/4HANA is available. This new guide explains some of the technical background and considerations and is recommended for your solution architects and technical team.
Tip: Some more complex extension approaches that support the Clean Core principle are also considered upgrade-stable, such as those included in the on-stack developer extensibility model. So, if you find that key user extensions are not sufficient for your particular use case, you should consider using an upgrade-stable alternative.
For your developers: If you are creating custom apps, or using 3rd party apps from a partner, you can apply key user extensibility in your own custom apps via SAPUI5 Flexibility Services.
You’ll find much more on the community topic page for SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA
Other helpful links in the SAP Community:
Brought to you by the SAP S/4HANA Customer Care and RIG.
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