Once the project reaches a milestone that indicates it’s worth viewing the app in its intended environment, it’s time to publish the project. In this context, publishing does not mean that the app will automatically be made publicly available; rather, it allows you to view the app outside of SAP Build Apps in Preview mode. Even if the app hasn’t reached its final development stage, publishing can be beneficial for testing purposes.
Additionally, publishing the app is a prerequisite for embedding it into SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2. Due to technical and security reasons, it is not possible to embed the app in Preview mode. The publishing process takes place in the Build Service, which can be accessed by clicking the Publish button located in the upper right corner under Publish Your App.
The publishing process in SAP Build Apps consists of two steps which are explained in the following sections:
- Building the app.
- Deploying the app.
The publishing menu also allows you to Create a Release Version. While this is an optional step for the publishing process, it creates a new entry in the version history and can be helpful if you need to look into specific details of this version later.
Build the App
The build process prepares the app for deployment on a particular target platform. It usually consists of steps like transforming, optimizing, and bundling all required source files into a single file.
In SAP Build Apps, you need to create a Configuration that gathers all required details for the build process, such as a name, target platform, and target platform-specific parameters.
To create a new configuration and start the build process, do the following:
- Select the Create Configuration (as highlighted in the previous screen capture) and choose your desired target platform. In this course, SAP Build Work Zone is used, which can be seen as an alternative name for web deployment. This will lead to an MTAR-file, which can be deployed to both SAP Build Work Zone and the Cloud Foundry run-time of SAP BTP. Choose Web for the configuration name (for this course example).
- After creating the new configuration, start the build process by selecting it and entering the details of this build. Begin with the version number. You can either select an existing release version or enter a version number directly in the dialog. Then, choose a run-time version, which is by default set to Latest and can usually be kept as is. It's common for small IT tests to create builds without a release version. However, it’s recommended to create release versions for official builds, which shall be used for business user tests or released to production.
- The build process takes a while and runs in the background. The progress is visible in the Build Service overview. You can select the row to see more details of the build process.
- Once the build process is finished, the Deploy button will become visible on the details screen. From there, you can start the deployment process or download the build as an MTAR-file.
Deploy the App
The deployment process covers all steps that are required to make the app available in the target environment. The process differs depending on the target platform. In this course, the sample app is deployed to the web platform SAP Build Work Zone. You can find more information in the SAP Help Portal.
During the deployment, you'll need the API Endpoint of your SAP BTP sub-account. You can find it on the Overview screen of the BTP Cockpit, under Cloud Foundry Environment.
Follow these steps to deploy the app to SAP Build Work Zone:
- On the Build Details screen of your build, choose Deploy. A dialog appears that asks you for an API Endpoint, the organization, and the space where the app will be deployed. After choosing the endpoint, you’ll need to log in to BTP.
- Your log-in at SAP BTP is necessary to grant SAP Build Apps permissions to deploy the app directly. The following dialog will be shown.
- Once you’ve given SAP Build Apps permission to access SAP BTP, you can choose the Organization, which is the sub-account where you’ll deploy the app and desired space. Choose Continue to begin the deployment.
- The deployment process takes some time, and you can track the process on the progress bar. You can view the detailed commands running in the background by choosing the Details button. Keep this dialog open until the deployment is finished as it will give you further details.
- After the deployment has finished, the dialog will display the URL where the app can be accessed. If you’ve connected SAP Build Apps with SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2, you will also see a button Publish Mashup. Using this feature, you can create the mashup in SAP Sales and Service Cloud Version 2 with the right URL. However, you’ll still need to adapt the parameters and take care of displaying it on the desired screen in the cloud solution. You’ll learn about this in the next unit.
Finding Deployed Apps in the SAP BTP Cockpit
You can find deployed apps in your SAP BTP sub-account in the HTML5 Applications section. This can be useful if you’ve closed the deployment dialog in SAP Build Apps without noting your app’s access URL.
Lesson Summary:
This lesson demonstrated and discussed how to deploy the extension app. You have now completed units 1 and 2 of this course. In the next and final unit, you'll learn how to embed and test the extension app created in this course.