As we wrap up the year and put our finishing touches on SAP Fiori tools Guided Development for 2021, co-product owner Conny Kinateder and I would like to share three new features in the extension that can streamline your work and improve your overall SAP Fiori elements development experience. This blog builds on our
last blog post, where we gave you a brief update on what we’ve been working on in Guided Development.
Understand dependencies with new tooltips
In the past, we’ve gotten some feedback that the dependencies between parameters weren’t always clear. Some users were confused by the fact that some parameters were inactive, despite the fact that all of the mandatory fields in the guide were filled out. To help with this, we’ve introduced tooltips for dependent parameters. You’ll find them near conditionally active parameters. Simply hover over the icon to learn which parameter(s) must be set to activate the one you want to select. This should hopefully save you some troubleshooting time!
The Facets Annotation Term ID parameter is disabled due to two missing dependencies. The tooltip indicates which parameters must be selected in order to activate this one.
Move through guides quickly with keyboard navigation
As area product owner of SAP Fiori tools, Ashley Tung, mentioned in her
blog on the 2111 release of SAP Fiori tools, many of the extensions now feature keyboard navigation. While this was done to make our product more accessible, it also has the benefit of speeding up how you move throughout SAP Fiori tools.
Guided Development is no exception: you can now completely apply a guide without ever touching your mouse. Use tab to navigate through sections of the guide list, select a guide with the Enter key, and quickly make your way through your parameters with the tab and arrow keys. It’s an intuitive and (if we’re being honest) expected way to go about adding functionality to your app.
We highly encourage you to try it out! It is still a work in progress and – while we think we’ve covered most common navigation scenarios – we would love to hear if you think something is missing. You can
send us some feedback anytime.
Expert developers: Streamline guide content with the Hide Descriptions setting
For those of you who have been around Guided Development a while, you may be
pretty familiar with certain guides. If you are newer to Guided Development but a more experienced developer, you might still be quite familiar with the parameters used in the guides. In either case, you can reduce the guides to the essentials to free up screen real estate. Turning on Hide Descriptions does exactly what it says: it hides all step and parameter descriptions, leaving you with the overall guide description, parameters, and code snippet(s).
A guide with Hide Descriptions enabled displays simplified content, providing only the elements needed to implement the relevant functionality.
This is a quick setting to play around with. You can access it from the Settings icon in the guide toolbar.
Hide Descriptions as accessed from Settings in the guide toolbar. Here it is enabled.
You can also access it from the User Settings in SAP Business Application Studio or Visual Studio Code. Just search for
Hide Descriptions to find it quickly.
Hide Descriptions as accessed from User Settings.
Your feedback drives SAP Fiori tools Guided Development!
As we begin to wrap up 2021, Conny and I would like to thank you for all your feedback and guide requests. We read through everything as it comes in and we think plenty of you will be pleasantly surprised with what is coming in 2022. That said, we can always make your experience with Guided Development better: Please feel free to
send us an email if there is something you would like to see or you have some thoughts you would like to share. You are also welcome to put your thoughts in the Comments section below!
Talk to you next year. We hope you have a safe and relaxing holiday season.
For the SAP UX Engineering team,
conrad.bernal and
cornelia.nees
Co-product owners, SAP Fiori tools Guided Development