Introducing the Key-User In-App Extensibility Tools

In-app key user extensibility allows you to adapt standard functionality to specific business requirements without using external tools. You can apply minor changes, such as hiding standard fields for specific user groups, or implement complex business logic to trigger automated actions. The SAP Fiori Launchpad provides several apps designed for these diverse needs. These tools are intended for administrators and functional specialists who possess deep product or line-of-business knowledge but do not have technical coding expertise.

Key capabilities of in-app key user extensibility include:

• Adapting SAP Fiori UIs by rearranging fields or adding available hidden fields to the screen.
• Creating custom fields for use in existing or custom SAP Fiori interfaces.
• Developing custom templates or extending standard forms and email templates for various business processes.
• Enhancing business processes by implementing custom logic to trigger specific changes.
• Building new custom user interfaces based on custom business objects or embedding URLs to external websites.
• Creating custom business objects for analytical scenarios or simplified applications. For example, a "Bank" business object can store attributes like name, address, and SWIFT code.
• Generating customer-specific CDS Views for analytics or creating APIs to expose data to external applications.

Before using extensibility apps, you must determine if an SAP Fiori app supports custom fields, track who makes changes, and verify if extensions have been transported across systems.

Using the Create Customer Projects and Plan Customer Projects apps as examples, follow these steps:

1. Search for the app by name in the SAP Fiori Apps Reference Library. If you are using a test script, search by the App ID for more accurate results. For instance, while these two apps appear separately on the launchpad, they share the same ID, and only Plan Customer Projects is listed in the library.
2. On the Product Features tab, scroll to the bottom and click Read more in App Documentation to open the SAP Help Portal.
   Note

   If the app supports multiple deployments, ensure you select SAP S/4HANA Cloud from the version dropdown to access the correct public cloud documentation.
3. In the SAP Help Portal navigation menu, look for the App Extensibility section. If this section is missing, the app does not support custom fields. If present, select it to view the supported extensibility types.
4. Review the available business contexts. Custom fields are detailed in the UI Elements table, while custom logic is listed in the BAdI (Business Add-In) table.

Once you confirm that an app supports extensions, use the Extensibility Cockpit in SAP S/4HANA Cloud to identify the relevant business context. Each context has a defined capacity. Different extension types consume varying amounts of this capacity; for example, a 300-character free-text field uses significantly more space than a 30-character field.

Existing extensions created by other users reduce the remaining capacity. It is important to review these existing extensions to identify opportunities for reuse and avoid duplication.

Extensions created within a business context can be shared across related apps using that same context. The Extensibility Cockpit allows you to filter by extension type, solution scope, scope item, or business context, making it an essential tool for planning and preparing your extensions.

Learn how to navigate the Extensibility Cockpit app in this tutorial:

After creating an extension, you must export it from the customizing tenant of the development system and import it into the test and production systems. The Extensibility Inventory app tracks who last modified an extension and monitors its export/import status. This app serves as the central repository for all extensions, allowing you to view dependencies and associations between different objects.