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PeterSpielvogel
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
3,427
After our monthly SAP Screen Personas practitioner forum call, a customer emailed me some questions about our broader user experience (UX) strategy and where SAP Screen Personas fits. What was most interesting to me is that he framed the questions as “OR” statements. The reality is that most of his observations were correct, making them more of an “AND” construct.

The original, unedited email appears below in bold, with my answers in plain text following each question. His intent was to determine the SAP Screen Personas roadmap and how much he should implement it in his organization.

Customer email: Am I interpreting it correctly that perhaps the alignment of the release schedules and more seamless Adapt UI and Screen Personas menu, maybe, solidifies Screen Personas into the longer-term strategy as part of the UX toolset? 

Answer: Yes. SAP Screen Personas capabilities are a key part of our UX strategy going forward. The ability to adapt screens is important so people can make SAP fit their unique business needs. Making SAP Screen Personas a standard feature in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition was a big step in this direction.


SAP Screen Personas is a standard part of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, accessible through the Adapt UI option in the user action menu.


Or am I way off base?  Are there any implications here to the long-term existence of “classic apps” or any strategy of replacing “classic apps” with FIORI apps on a large scale? 

The number of SAP Fiori apps has been increasing for the past decade. We started with 25 apps and now have over 2800 SAP Fiori apps for SAP S/4HANA. This number will continue to increase. I would expect classic apps to be around for a while, especially for on-prem and private cloud customers.

As long as classic apps and SAP Fiori apps coexist, SAP Screen Personas remains part of the SAP Fiori strategy. It is one of several tools that help customers and partners achieve a great web-based user experience, regardless of the underlying technology.


SAP Screen Personas adapts classic apps to provide people a more intuitive user experience, focused on their role.


Or is it more like Screen Personas is being absorbed into Adapt UI and an even larger effort is being put to replace “classic apps” with FIORI apps?

Our focus is to give customers a way to adapt classic apps in a parallel way to the capabilities of SAPUI5 flexibility for SAP Fiori apps. Now, we offer a single way to access all Adapt UI functionality so the users don’t need to consider the underlying technology.

Or am I just missing everything and there is nothing more than the Screen Personas team continuing to work as always?

The SAP Screen Personas product and team continues to evolve. We have always been focused on making our customers successful with the product; that mission remains unchanged. Since we are now part of Cloud ERP UX Engineering, which is in the SAP S/4HANA organization, we are more closely aligned with the core ERP system than ever before.

UX Engineering is responsible for many UX tools, including SAP Fiori elements, SAP Fiori tools, SAP My Home, the Microsoft Teams integration with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and some stealth AI topics. Thus, you can expect much cross-pollination of ideas, reuse of common technologies, and standardizing on UX standards. One example you have seen is how we incorporate the latest SAPUI5 versions into Slipstream Engine. Also, we integrate the latest Horizon themes as soon as the specification becomes available.

The availability of different solutions to solve different use cases means that most customers will use a combination of standard and adapted apps to meet business needs while keeping a clean core. Thus, SAP Screen Personas AND SAP Fiori apps AND possibly native mobile or other customer apps will be part of your landscape.

Our goal is to make it easy for SAP S/4HANA customers to get their work done on their terms, using the latest tools and technologies that follow company standards.

 

Thank you to the customer (U.S.-based global manufacturing company) for asking these insightful strategic questions. If other customers want to go deeper into any topics, let’s have the conversation in the chat so everyone can benefit from the answers.

On behalf of the SAP Screen Personas product team, peter.spielvogel.