Understanding the Structure Behind the SAP Fiori Launchpad

A (business) catalog is a set of SAP Fiori apps that is made available to a user when that user is assigned a certain role. Depending on the role and the catalog(s) assigned to the role, the user can browse through the catalog, choose apps from the catalog, add these apps to the home page of the SAP Fiori launchpad.

In addition to one or more catalogs, a role also contains (tile) groups. A group is a subset of a catalog that contains the apps visible on the SAP Fiori launchpad home page under a certain group header. Which tiles are displayed on a user’s home page and how these tiles are grouped depends on the group(s) assigned to the user’s role. In addition, the user can personalize the home page by adding apps to (or removing apps from) pre-delivered groups or self-defined groups (on the slide: User Group). General settings such as language can also be changed.

The standard entities (i.e. groups and catalogs) delivered by SAP are divided into technical entities and business entities:

• Technical catalogs and technical roles:

  These contain apps per component, for example Billing.

• Business catalogs, business catalog groups, and business roles:

  These contain apps for a specific role, for example Internal Sales Representative.

Within the scope of the SAP Fiori 3 innovations, an important innovation for the SAP Fiori launchpad was introduced: the Spaces and Pages concept. Spaces introduced the possibility to define the layout of certain pages within the SAP Fiori launchpad for entire groups of users. Use of spaces enables the content of the launchpad to be consumed in an easier and more structured way than before. This means, for example, the elimination of overloaded home pages (i.e. too many tiles).

• Space: defines the navigation structure and provides the overall context for the displayed content.
• Page: contains apps for a business role, grouped in sections to guide users through work contexts.

Spaces can be found in the menu bar at the top of the launchpad. Tiles in pages can be grouped into sections

The following demonstration will first show you where in your user settings you can check whether spaces and pages have been activated. You will then see some examples of spaces and pages for SAP S/4HANA Sales:

Below you can find a few examples of standard business roles and the catalogs assigned to these roles:

• Role: Internal Sales Representative:
• Role: Billing Clerk:
• Role: Sales Manager:
• Role: Order to Cash Process Manager:

  Order-to-Cash Performance Monitoring (Business Catalog ID: SAP_SD_BC_SALES_PROC_PERF):

  You can view different process performance KPIs of the Order-to-Cash process. You can analyze fulfillment issues of sales orders.

• Role: Pricing Specialist:

  Master Data – Prices (Business Catalog ID: SAP_SD_BC_PRICE_MANAGE):

  You can create, maintain, and display prices, price conditions, and free goods agreements.

• Role: Master Data Specialist – Product Data: (Sales relevant Applications and Transactions only):

  Master Data – Product (Business Catalog ID: SAP_CMD_BC_PR_MAINT):

  You can search for material master records according to specific search criteria, and you can create, change and display material master records. You can perform mass maintenance for material master records. The Manage Product Master app allows you additionally to search for materials according to different selection criteria.

• Role: Master Data Specialist – Business Partner Data: (Sales-relevant applications and transactions only):

  Central Master Data – Business Partner (Business Catalog Group ID: SAP_CMD_BCG_BP):

  You can create, maintain and display central business partner master data.

  Master Data – Customer Master (Business Catalog ID: SAP_CMD_BC_CUSTOMER_MAINT):

  You can create, maintain and display customer master data. You can process critical customers (confirm customer list). You can process customer master mass maintenance. You can maintain account groups for customers.

These are just a few example roles. There are of course many more that are relevant in the context of the order-to-cash process.

In the above slide you can see a summary of some example work lists and reports that are available to an end user if the role Internal Sales Representative has been assigned to this user.

Sales Object Pages are a summary screen for a single item: for example, a single order, single customer or single invoice. They are also used as the default way to display a single row of a list report, and they can be called from the Fiori search results or provided as the target of a hyperlink or a button from another app.

The SAP Fiori launchpad offers an enterprise search function that can search for a certain object or keyword across all apps and business objects, such as materials and customers.

Using the global search (such as the above billing example), a user in SAP S/4HANA Sales can either search for an object or keyword across all (sales) objects or search exactly within a specific area (such as material master records) by selecting the search scope.

The following demonstration will show you an example of using the search function in the SAP Fiori launchpad to access a certain material and possibly change it:

A user can search quickly and easily for certain business documents and display, for example, the following fact sheets:

• Sales Order
• Sales Quotation
• Sales Contract
• Customer Return
• Manufacturing Order