Exploring Mandatory and Default Components

Note

Up-to-date information about Guided Experiences delivered with SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone can be found at SAP Help Portal.

Note

Depending on contractual relationship between SAP and the customer, the use of SAP Workflow service in SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone can be restricted to HR-related scenarios only. It should be considered when there are plans to develop custom workflows for SAP Workflow service in SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone.

Let's stop for a moment and have a look at SAP Workflow service. First and foremost, this component is mandatory for SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone but optional for SAP Build Work Zone. The service represents restricted version of the well-known SAP BTP service — SAP Workflow Management. Main difference is that SAP Workflow service provides capabilities to execute and monitor workflows: it doesn’t offer Business Rules, Process Visibility, Process Flexibility and some other advanced features and functions offered by SAP Workflow Management.

Note

At the time of publishing this course, SAP Workflow (Management) was not yet replaced with SAP Build Process Automation in the integration context of SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition / SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone.

SAP Workflow service comes with handy functionality to quickly access approval tasks — My Inbox. It’s available right in the header bar as well as from the menu "Applications" in SAP Build Work Zone. But the devil in the details: it doesn’t show approval tasks triggered by other SAP solutions outside of SAP Workflow service itself.

The approval tasks from SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Fieldglass and other SAP solutions can be aggregated and consumed centrally by another SAP BTP service — SAP Task Center.

Note

At the date of course publication, SAP Build Work Zone didn’t have an out of the box integration with SAP Task Center. SAP Workflow Management together with SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA) combined to brand new low-code/no-code offering — SAP Build Process Automation (SPA). But SAP Build Work Zone still relied on SAP Workflow service. To stay up-to-date with recent changes, we strongly advise to check SAP Road Map and What’s New at SAP Help Portal.

Going forward, SAP Workflow service in SAP Build Work Zone will be replaced by integration with SAP Process Automation and SAP Task Center.

The understanding of surrounding components, their capabilities and restrictions, and roadmap is important for successful implementation projects of SAP Build Work Zone and SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone.

Watch the following video to learn about Digital Workplace Service (DWS) component of SAP Build Work Zone and SuccessFactors Work Zone.

Coming back to Admin Console, this is the "heart" of DWS administration. The settings available (and visible) in Admin Console depend on the number of criteria:

Nowadays software products need information about users in one form or another, and SAP Build Work Zone is not an exception here. While information about currently logged on user can be obtained from SAML Assertion or JSON Web Token within authentication process, DWS needs information about all other users to properly show user profiles in blog posts, comments, feeds, search results, etc. This is where Identity Provisioning (IPS) comes to the picture. IPS helps to extract users’ information from a source system, for example, SAP SuccessFactors or Microsoft Azure Active Directory, transform the data and then create or update users’ profiles in DWS. DWS exposes a REST API based off the System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM 2.0) specification for this purpose.

Continuing the topic of API, DWS provides OData API to work with its content: home pages, workspaces, feeds, forums, knowledge articles, etc. It’s required to maintain some settings in Admin Console, implement proper authentication logic in custom application and use DWS URL to use DWS OData / SCIM APIs.

Note

The information about DWS API is available at SAP Build Work Zone OData API Documentation.

Moving forward it’s necessary to understand how DWS is embedded SAP Build Work Zone (subscription). It's may seem a bit tricky at first, but don’t worry! Let’s try to unpack this by walking through the loading and rendering of SAP Build Work Zone in the web browser:

Note

More details about HTML tag <iframe>, its purpose and behavior, can be found at MDN Web Docs.

Note

Application shell obtains access token and uses it for further communication with DWS through destination "JAM" in SAP BTP subaccount. This destination is created during onboarding procedure. Do not change or delete this destination!

The figure below shows simplified process of page loading and rendering in SAP Build Work Zone:

Getting into the nitty-gritty details of SAP Build Work Zone subscription and DWS will outline that they are hosted in different datacenters, and that they have different URLs. While subscription belongs to datacenter of SAP BTP subaccount, DWS for both SAP Build Work Zone and SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone hosted in global datacenters of SAP SuccessFactors. The right datacenter for DWS determined in one of two ways during SAP Build Work Zone onboarding procedure:

• It’s matched with datacenter of SAP BTP subaccount for completely new setups of SAP Build Work Zone or SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone.
• The datacenter of SAP Jam is re-used for DWS when onboarding procedure is executed with focus on transition from SAP Jam to SAP Build Work Zone or SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone.

Note

Information about pairing datacenters for SAP BTP subaccount and DWS can be found in prerequisites at SAP Help Portal.

The figure below shows the difference between URL of Application Shell (SAP Build Work Zone or SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone subscription in SAP BTP subaccount) and DWS:

The good thing is that users don’t need to know two different URLs to work with SAP Build Work Zone or SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone: their experience starts with one URL used for subscription in SAP BTP!

But where can one find the DWS URL then? This information can be found in Admin Console:

It’s useful for technical purposes, for example to access SCIM API for troubleshooting users and user list provisioning, setting up integration with SAP or third-party solutions, etc.

‘Applications’ Launchpad is another default component of SAP Build Work Zone and SuccessFactors Work Zone. It provides features and functions to organize central point of access to SAP and third-party business applications, both cloud and on-premise. When it’s configured, users can access all applications (where they have access to) through dedicated menu "Applications" or selectively in home pages and workspaces.

While Digital Workplace Service (DWS) represents separate application inside SAP Build Work Zone and loaded through HTML tag <iframe> (and it has its own URL!), launchpad is fully embedded in application shell.

Launchpad provides own UI to setup and manage business applications. It’s called Work Zone Manager and can be opened from menu External Integrations → Business Content in Admin Console:

Besides that, launchpad component supports integration with SAP Companion (former SAP Enable Now Web Assistant). It provides embedded in-app help at the point of need, free standard help content and guidance through difficult processes for SAP solutions! The important note is that functionality of SAP Companion and the content is delivered by target SAP solutions for the Intelligent Enterprise: launchpad component in SAP Build Work Zone just helps to consume it (meaning that content is not stored or managed by SAP Build Work Zone).

Note

SAP Companion works within the context of launchpad component (where users work with business apps and processes). DWS component doesn’t have integration with SAP Companion.

SAP Companion and SAP Enable Now belong to another big corporate domain: user learning and adoption. Typically, the implementation of SAP Enable Now and SAP Companion for company-wide user learning and adoption is done as separate implementation project (and outside of SAP Build Work Zone and digital experience project).

Watch the following video to learn about digital experience solutions.

Note

The most of administration, development and security topics for SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition at SAP Help Portal are also relevant for launchpad component of SAP Build Work Zone and SuccessFactors Work Zone.

Nowadays it's difficult to imagine our life without mobile devices: we use them for entertainment, education, and business. SAP Build Work Zone provides three options for mobile experience.

Watch the following video to learn how SAP Build Work Zone supports a mobile experience.

SAP Mobile Cards is not a unique functionality of SAP Build Work Zone: when enterprises design Mobile Strategy for the Intelligent Enterprise, the adoption of SAP Mobile Cards starts from core business systems. For example, when it’s enabled for SAP S/4HANA, users can create personalized cards from SAP Fiori Launchpad and SAP Fiori Elements pages and already consume them from SAP Mobile Cards. The mobile application is available for both iOS and Android and can be downloaded from respective stores.

SAP Build Work Zone enriches this concept allowing users to add UI Integration Cards to SAP Mobile Cards. But it’s important to mention that UI Integration Card should be developed with support of SAP Mobile Cards app in mind (typically it’s just one setting in development project).

By default, SAP Build Work Zone doesn’t deliver any UI Integration Cards supporting SAP Mobile Cards.

Watch the following video to understand the role of mobile services, one of the default components of SAP Build Work Zone.

When there is a need to tune some parameters of SAP Mobile Cards app or SAP Build Work Zone mobile app globally, it can be done from mobile services cockpit (which can be access from Administration Console of SAP Build Work Zone). The two mobile apps have different cockpits to maintain global settings. Here are some examples of settings for SAP Mobile Cards app for SAP Build Work Zone:

While there are a lot of settings to control behavior of mobile apps used with SAP Build Work Zone, the look and feel of the apps cannot be customized. For instance, it’s not possible to add company logo to mobile app using standard configuration capabilities. The good thing is that SAP provides source code for Mobile Development Kit (MDK) for SAP Mobile Services: the source code can be used to create and publish a custom mobile application. The details where to download source code and how to start development published at SAP Help Portal.

It's also worth to mention that mobile services component is just a platform for SAP Build Work Zone mobile apps: it’s not Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution. Therefore it doesn't provide MDM specific capabilities, for example, deployment of SAP Build Work Zone mobile app to all corporate mobile devices centrally.

Considering broad range of options for mobile experience for SAP Build Work Zone, the obvious question is when to use what?