Most of you must have already heard about or are already using “My Inbox Fiori App”. For the uninitiated here is the brief introduction.
My Inbox Fiori app is a single go to Inbox for dealing with SAP and non-SAP workflows in an enterprise. It follows Fiori design language for user experience. With My Inbox you can,
My Inbox app consists of front-end component for the user interfaces, Task Gateway for OData services. You can use the app with any SAP or non-SAP back-end component that contains tasks/workflows. SAP delivers connectivity to SAP Business Workflow and SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration out of the box, for others custom task providers need to be built.
When users are dealing with workflows they need to access information and/or edit/enter data to execute any workflow. Although My Inbox provides workflow contextual data and actions to execute workflow, there are use cases where a user needs tailor made user interface to deal with a workflow. In such cases users would like to access applications associated with workflow from My Inbox. These applications could vary from being legacy to state of the art Fiori application (SAP shipped or custom built)
From above it is clear that there is a need for My Inbox to provide mechanisms to integrate external (to My Inbox) applications. In the remainder of this blog we will look at different integration options available and suitability of each of these options compared to others.
My Inbox provides following integration options
Let’s us examine each of these options in detail to understand suitability of each of these options. (Note: I will not be explaining technical details of how to setup/configure these options in this blog. You can already find these details in official documentation/SAP Notes)
This is the simplest form of integration. It only needs configuration in the back-end. My Inbox gets a URL from the back-end for each task in the Inbox. When user clicks “Open Task” action it launches a new tab/window with corresponding URL. See Image 1 below. (Note: There is no communication between application launched in new tab/window and My Inbox. They work independent of each other)
Image 1.
This option is most suitable for,
This is the most seamless integration option available from end user perspective. Navigation to the embedded app is completely transparent to the end user and happens by default when user selects a task. The detail section of the My Inbox is replaced by the workflow related application. See Image 2 below
Image 2.
User always stays within My Inbox application while working on workflow related applications. This integration can be achieved through configuration in back-end as well as Fiori Front end server (Refer to SAP Note 2305401 - Integration of SAPUI5 Fiori Applications into My Inbox 2.0 for configuration details)
This option is most suitable for,
This integration option also provides seamless user experience as above, but only user has to explicitly choose to navigate to workflow related application. With this integration option the detail section of the My Inbox is replaced by the workflow related application. User can use existing “Open Task” action for the navigation or new action can be added for triggering the navigation. This integration can be achieved through configuration in back-end as well as Fiori Front end server (Refer to SAP Note 2305401 - Integration of SAPUI5 Fiori Applications into My Inbox 2.0 for configuration details). See Image 3 below.
Image 3.
This option is most suitable for,
This integration option needs custom development and/or configurations to extend My Inbox using the extension points/hooks exposed to add or remove UI elements/functionality to My Inbox. You can find more information at App Extensibility: My Inbox - SAP Fiori for Request Approvals 1.0 - SAP Library and My Inbox Extensibility Cookbook
There are following customizable UI fields in My Inbox. See Image 4 below.
Image 4.
Apart from customizable fields, there are also extensible fields which can be used to enhance My Inbox. See Figure 5 below.
Image 5.
This option is most suitable for,
Following images are an example of what you can achieve using above customization and extension options.
Image 6 below is before extending My Inbox.
Image 6.
Image 7 below is after extending My Inbox
Image 7.
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