New Site Experience with Spaces and Pages is avail...

Vera_Gutbrod · ‎07-27-2023

We are pleased to announce that SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition (formerly known as "SAP Launchpad service"), is available as of today with a set of new features related to a new site experience with spaces and pages based on the Horizon visual theme for SAP Fiori. See also the release information from July 27, 2023: "What is new for SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition".

Many customers and partners have been waiting for this functionality, now they are enabled to leverage pages with a flexible grid-based layout and populating them with UI Integration cards, app tiles, and out-of-the-box business content from SAP solutions on-premise and cloud.

Already in 2022, SAP released a set of beta features related to the new site experience as part of a beta program with selected customers and partners to collect early feedback on the new UX design, concepts and tools. Going forward in 2023 SAP is making these beta features available gradually for general adoption by customers - with July 27 as the official starting point.

As an appetizer we would like to give you some statements and quotes from customers and partners, who participated in the beta program:

“We are urgently waiting for the GA of pages & spaces! Without this we will not be able to present a new "Central Entry Point" (more than 60.000 users!) to stakeholders from our business."
"UI integration cards are a big improvement in the user experience".
"Pages and Spaces gives us a much better and more user friendly layout than our previous groups. And the option to incorporate cards is awesome. We will definitely include more cards in our product in the future. The new capabilities is stuff we will directly add to our product as soon as this is GA."
"We are inspired from the planned UI Integration Cards to plan new features of our solution to be compliant with the SAP WZ roadmap."

Main Use Cases for SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition

SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition offers capabilities for customers asking:

for a central access point to multiple SAP cloud & on-premise systems, for example SAP S/4HANA cloud and on-premise (plus custom-built, and third party applications)

to extend & customize the product (e.g. branding, translation, shell plug-ins, domains URL)

Capabilities of the new Site Experience

SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition offers new design time capabilities targeted to the content administrator. When the Spaces and Pages - New Experience view mode is activated in the site settings, administrators can now create spaces and pages manually, and they can add UI integration cards or tiles. The end or business user can consume the pages and the content on the pages in the runtime. The new site experience displays spaces and pages that are federated from remote content providers side by side to spaces and pages that are created locally as well as pages that originate from a content package. For more information, read this section on the Help Portal.

Below you can get familiar with some highlights of the new capabilities (screenshots were taken from our demo systems).

The Administrator View

In addition to the content items you might already know (apps, catalogs, groups and roles), the administrator can now also create and edit spaces and pages locally in the content manager by using the new editors (click on image for a better view):

Editing a page in the content manager:

It is possible to create and edit pages using a flexible grid-based page layout. This brings us also to a closer alignment with the page/workspace editing experience of SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition:

UI Integration cards can be added to pages (UI integration cards are a powerful option to display the most-concise pieces of business data and enable straightforward and decisive user action in a limited-space container, helping users to structure their work in an intuitive and dynamic way across different devices):

Tiles are added to pages:

End User View

Here you see a site created for a business user (a delivery director in our example) with pages and spaces that were created by an administrator for this user - based on his business needs and tasks. The tiles and UI integration cards show data from different SAP backend systems relevant for his role as a delivery director. The Welcome Page shows a mixture of UI integration cards and tiles:

On the menu our business user can select the spaces and pages. On the pages he can find the relevant applications, he needs to fulfill his tasks:

Watch the Demo

What are the Key Differences to SAP Build Work Zone, Advanced Edition ?

You might ask yourself about the main differences between SAP Build Work Zone standard and advanced edition? The advanced edition offers the following additional capabilities:

It empowers the business users to create and manage their own content (in the standard edition the page creation is a pure "admin task").

The list of widgets is expanded to offer a more flexible page building.

Business data and unstructured content can be placed side by side with images/videos or audios on the same page.

Creation of interactive communities (so called "workspaces") with document access and repositories.

There are also templates for pages and workspaces.

A flexible menu builder is available.

Learn more about SAP Build Work Zone standard and advanced edition

SAP Build Work Zone on: sap.com / SAP Community
Discovery Center missions: standard / advanced edition
SAP Build Work Zone on SAP PartnerEdge
Roadmap with the updated features: SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition

Try out SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition: Tutorial "Set Up SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition Using a Trial Account"

Learning Journeys

Getting Started Learning Journey for SAP Build: providing you the fundamentals of SAP Build and first hands-on experience with SAP Build Apps, SAP Build Process Automation & SAP Build Work Zone.

Check out the dedicated unit for SAP Build Work Zone in the learning journey “Utilize SAP Build for Low-Code/No-Code Applications and Automations for Citizen Developers“. The unit guides you through the main concepts and features of SAP Build Work Zone standard and advanced edition. After completing the complete learning journey, learners have the chance to take a 3-hr proctored exam to earn a certificate and become a certified Citizen Developer Associate.

For more deep dive technical information, we recommend our new learning journey “Implement and Administer SAP Build Work Zone“, targeted to partners, consultants and administrators. This learning journey will guide you through the process and considerations of implementing SAP Build Work Zone, from initial deployment and system administration to integration setups and extensibility options. A certification is also included

MichaelBeining · ‎07-27-2023

Great! We have been waiting a long time for this release 🙂

Till now the feature / release seems to be not activated/available in our SAP BTP accounts yet... I will check again tomorrow.

Looking forward to test drive the new features!

Murali_Shanmu · ‎07-27-2023

Great to see the new site experience in Work Zone Standard Edition. Thanks for sharing

timo_renner · ‎07-28-2023

Waited for it for a long time.

Thnx for the good news. 🙂

timo_renner · ‎07-28-2023

try it now, it's now also available in EU10

MichaelBeining · ‎07-28-2023

Thanks for the pointer! I can confirm that the feature is now also available in our eu10 accounts...

yaswanth16 · ‎07-28-2023

This is indeed great news. So far in the Work zone, advanced edition we can create a destination with the service key url and then use that to deploy integration cards from BAS. Is there such mechanism for Work Zone, Standard edition?? Because when I tried to import the a standard sample content package in the Content Explorer it is always failing. I don't know any other way to deploy the UI integration cards.

FabioPagoti · ‎07-28-2023

I could test the new functionality and the usability is way easier now. It was very confusing to remove and add apps inside catalogs, groups and roles. The switches make the content admin life way better.

Does the usage of spaces and pages have any impact in SAP Mobile Start?

Thanks for the update!

pjcools · ‎07-29-2023

Thanks for sharing. Really good to see the new functionalities included in SAP Build Work Zone, Standard Edition. Awesome news!

dan_fft · ‎07-29-2023

Is it also available for SAP Build Work Zone, Advanced Edition ?

Vera_Gutbrod · ‎07-31-2023

Thanks Fabio!

Reg. Mobile Start: SAP Mobile Start is not yet supported with the new experience sites/pages and spaces. It is planned for a later date, which is not yet finally defined.

Best regards

Vera

Vera_Gutbrod · ‎07-31-2023

Hi Daniel!

For the built-in Launchpad (application tab) in SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition, the new site experience is not yet available, but planned to be available (I cannot give you an exact date at this time). However the experience to create pages with a flexible grid-based page layout, is available on the advanced edition already since longer time.

Best regards

Vera

Vera_Gutbrod · ‎07-31-2023

Hi,

no unfortunately the BAS content package is not yet available for the standard edition. It is on the roadmap for further releases, but I cannot give you an exact date at this time.

Best regards

Vera

yaswanth16 · ‎07-31-2023

Thanks for the reply Vera. What is the preferred way to deploy Integration cards to Work Zone, Standard edition ?? Somehow I was not successful in import of Content packages from Channel manager ?? Please elaborate on the deployment methodology.

S0019300750 · ‎07-31-2023

Hello Vera,

This is good news after looong time 🙂 This feature of creating Spaces, pages was available with S/4HANA on premise solution for long time. Hopefully Work Zone standard edition (cloud = innovations) will keep it up.

Do we need to build our own UI integration cards as I see the list is empty in our tenant? Is SAP planning to roll out any common set of UI integration cards?

Here is my wish list:

We should have versioning information on BTP Work Zone standard edition. This would help administrators like me to validate when our tenants get upgraded with new features.
Even though I am registered for notifications for BTP Work Zone standard tenants, i didnt get any notification about this major updates. I expect notifications for any changes on our tenants.
Allow developers/administrators to setup Sort priority of Spaces. This is basic requirement in any site to have control on sorting tabs. It is already available in on-prem solutions. BTP Work Zone content manager should allow setting up sort priority. Legacy Enterprise Portal system had this feature 15-20 years back 🙂
Allow creating news tile in BTP Work Zone. It helps communicate simple things like backend federated system outages with BTP Work Zone users- employees, or other partners. SAP should also push notifications.
Work closely with custom domain team and allow using custom domain for mobile application.
Work closely with Task Center product team and allow using similar subject patterns for principal propagation as BTP Work Zone standard instead of forcing for user_uuid
We also need good support team. I have noticed that most of our OSS messages are open over 1 month now without any resolution in sight.

Hope you take this in right spirit and consider my suggestions.

Regards,

Vinod Patil

Vera_Gutbrod · ‎08-01-2023

Thanks Vinod, I will forward your feedback to the relevant persons.

Best regards

Vera

S0019300750 · ‎08-01-2023

Hello Vera,

Thank you. Can you please answer below question:

Do we need to build our own UI integration cards as I see the list is empty in our tenant? Is SAP planning to roll out any common set of UI integration cards?

Regards,

Vinod Patil

Vera_Gutbrod · ‎08-02-2023

Hi Vinod!

It is in the planning, but no exact date yet. We are currently evaluating with SAP solutions use cases for utilizing UI integration cards to show relevant business data in a new, appealing experience using cards.

Best regards

Vera

dan_fft · ‎08-05-2023

Hi Vera,

Is it SAP's strategy that these products grow together ? Or should the more expensive version always lag behind the standard version?
It is always very difficult or impossible to find information about what is now available for which Workzone Edition and what is not.
Actually, the Advanced Edition is presented as a standard edition with additional functionalities.
But in fact it is not.

In this Case we are using Space/Pages on our On-Premise S/4 Hana and also in Workzone via Content Federation.

But we have to use to sites and groups concept for our other Applications(Non-SAP/SuccessFactors/SAC etc.). We need a consistent user experience here.

Best regards

Daniel

StefanoB · ‎08-07-2023

Hi Vera
Can you let us know when custom UI Card Integration will be possible also in SAP Build Workzone Standard Edition?

Thank you

Vera_Gutbrod · ‎08-07-2023

Hi Stefano!

This is already available now. See also some information in the Developer Guide for the standard edition: Developing UI Integration Cards | SAP Help Portal.

Best regards

Vera

StefanoB · ‎08-07-2023

I developed my Card inside a Content Package and then I uploaded the Content Package inside the Content Channel of SAP Build Workzone Standard Edition.
Inside my Page, if I add a widget, my Card doesn't appear in the list.

Alternatively I could directly add the zip of my Card but I can't find the "Administration Console" section as I find in SAP Workzone Advance Edition. I added all the roles but there is no such section.

Can you tell me more details to find the solution, please?

Vera_Gutbrod · ‎08-07-2023

Hi Daniel!

Yes, it is the strategy to bring both products closer together regarding user experience, page editors, mobile strategy, pages and spaces etc. As they were originally separated products (the former Launchpad service and Work Zone), this cannot happen from today to tomorrow. But this kind of "consolidation" is what we are also mainly working on.
You can find some high level differences between the standard and the advanced edition in this Learning Journey. See the section "Main Categories of SAP Build Work Zone Capabilities per Edition".

Best regards
Vera

florian_buech · ‎08-07-2023

The administration console on the site-level (to upload individual cards) is not supported for standard edition; you must upload the cards via a content package as per the link shared by Vera above.

You need to ensure your content package has the cards but also the other required aspects (like role) included; otherwise you won't be able to see / use them. Please see the example template shared here: Developing Content Packages | SAP Help Portal >> GitHub - SAP-samples/workzone-content-package-templates at cdm

StefanoB · ‎08-11-2023

Thank you Florian!

I manually added a role as an artifact in the content.json file of my content package and it worked.

However, the role is not among the objects allowed through the "Add artifact" wizard inside the content.json file as for the card, space, workspace. It's normal?

Juliuspereira · ‎08-14-2023

Hello Vera,

I have tried this new experience and its slick. Very flexible. However, I've noticed one issue and maybe I'm missing something.

Ive done the configuration and the space, page, section and app displays. However, the title of the app does not show. It just shows the icon.

In page editor, it displays correctly.

Am I missing something for this?

Thank you

Julius

P.S: I've created a case for this with SAP.

IrisSasson · ‎08-15-2023

Hi Julius,

This should be handled in the ticket, not sure why this is happening for your app, but obviously it is not as it should

Thanks

Iris.

Stefano · ‎08-23-2023

Thanks Vera for the overview about the new site experience! We have tested it on our showcase system, everything works fine and it looks really good:

--> https://youtu.be/lWnVU7rh3es

former_member596519 · ‎08-25-2023

Dear Vera,

thank you for the blog and to the whole Workzone-Std. Edition team for finaly releasing this feature.

Though, we discovered some "room" for improvements:

Content Manager (Design time):

the creation of Spaces and respective pages goes not hand in hand as for the On-Premise case, e.g. in On-Premise, you can create a Page in the same run as the Space. Here in Workzone, you have to go back, and create the page, and then go to the Space and assign it etc. a bit tedious compared to the creation flow in On-Premise.

Also, it is not possible to just click on the Page(s) listed underneath the Space and navigate to them. Again, one has to navigate back to the Pages and select the Page of interest.

Workzone Site (Runtime):

whereas "Edit Current Page" is possible for Spaces/Pages exposed from On-Premise, it is not possible to do it for those created locally within the Workzone itself. Why is that, and when do you plan to make it more consistent?

Can we control the personalization options of Spaces & Pages in general (both Workzone and On-Prem)?

maybe aviad.rivlin could also support.

Thank you!

BR Aleks

Vera_Gutbrod · ‎08-28-2023

Thanks Stefan, great example of what you can do with the new features.

Vera_Gutbrod · ‎08-28-2023

Hi Aleks!

Thanks for your feedback, I will forward to the relevant people.

Best regards

Vera

S0019300750 · ‎09-01-2023

Hello Vera,

I had activated this new view mode: Spaces and Pages - New Experience

However, it does not respect the sorting of pages within Spaces from content provider. It does sort randomly. This is not acceptable from UX design perspective as Pages order is defined after lot of deliberations.

So I had to go back to Spaces and Pages mode again 😞

Is SAP planning to fix this soon?

Regards,

Vinod Patil

Juliuspereira · ‎09-01-2023

Hi Iris,

SAP development suggested that I maintain translation texts as a workaround while they are investigating the root cause. The workaround looks good.

Thank you

Julius

tibor · ‎09-03-2023

Very nice. After deployed SAPUI5 app on BTP repository we share it with cloud tenant user and the underlying call of OData. With using of IP, user can access SAP Build Work Zone site login with their credentials. After successful login user can see all tiles. But. When clicks on any of tile, the login process starts again and again multiple times for this site (when user is logged in). Destination is basic authentication.

How can it be disabled? asking for login more than 1 time is very annoying....

Juliuspereira · ‎09-06-2023

Hi Tibor,

What credentials are the users using to login to build work zone site? Is the SAP UI5 app trying to access an on premise system or something else?

There are a few possibilities one of which is to have SSO enabled for build workzone with your corporate IDP. And then you could propagate that to the app so that the user doesn't have to login again.

Another approach is to have build work zone talk to an Identity Authentication tenant which in turn talks to the Corporate IdP for the SSO to build work zone. Then you propagate that to the app so that the user doesn't have to login again.

Julius

neumi · ‎09-06-2023

Thanks for the update. Is there a plan if and when translations of local pages and spaces will be available. It is not really understandable for the user that apps are shown in the user-preferred language but apps abd spaces only in English.

Christian

adrian-ngo · ‎09-06-2023

Hello Vera,

I have tried the "Spaces and Pages - New Experience" view mode. It's a nice idea. Is it possible to localize the space / page / section titles?

I cannot find any appropriate fields in the corresponding editors:

Best regards,

Adrian

Juliuspereira · ‎09-06-2023

Hello Adrian,

I was just curious to know what you mean by localize?

Julius

adrian-ngo · ‎09-06-2023

By "localize" I mean "translate".

prasanna_darda · ‎09-09-2023

Thanks a lot for great blog and information. I have 2 below question related to Work Zone and design.

We are creating Space at business role level (e.g AP Accountant , GL Accountant ).

1) Do we need to sill create space, page and section layout in S4 and then expose to workzone or can we just create catalogs in S4 and then expose it so that space , page layout can be created in BTP - Work Zone as that can help to have all apps from various system added under same menu of Business role ( example : GL accountant ). As a user , they don’t need to know if App is from S4 or BTP or some other cloud solution hence trying to understand if we can have app access in same 1 space menu ?

2) If we still need to create space and page layout for S4 Apps in S4 system and then expose for usage. Is it possible to modify S4 space and page layout in BTP for including Apps from other systems ( example : BTP Apps , Sucessfactor , Ariba , etc ) as that can help for having all Apps in same menu of space ?

Vera_Gutbrod · ‎09-11-2023

Hi Prasanna!

Thanks for your feedback. Regarding your qeustions: Please create a question in the SAP Community forums.

Best regards and thanks

Vera

ThomasHensel · ‎09-12-2023

Hello Adrian,

translation support for the new entities such as spaces & pages is planned for Q4-2023.

I am going to add a dedicated road map item for the extended translation functionality in SAP Road Map Explorer soon.

Best regards
Thomas

ThomasHensel · ‎09-12-2023

Hello Christian,

translation support for the new spaces/pages entities is planned for Q4-2023.

Regards

Thomas

jkollar · ‎09-27-2023

Hi Prasanna,

please share the link to the Community Forum page, when you will create these questions there. I am interested in the answers, as I'm solving the same issue for my customer.

Thanks.

Juraj

SebastianSeiler · ‎09-29-2023

Hi vera.gutbrod,

will this feature also be published for SAP Cloud Portal Service?

In addition, I'm wondering how this is supposed to work togehter with content that get's federated from the Backends. Do you have any insights/documentation, how a harmonization of spaces/pages will look like?

From a user experience perspective where different types of applications from various content providers (BTP, ERP, CAR, TM, etc.) need to be published to a user in a structured (e.g. LoB and doman based) format, this is crucial for having a clean governance on this. Otherwhise, we have limited control of the semantic provisioning.

Cheers,
Sebastian

Vera_Gutbrod · ‎10-12-2023

Hallo Sebastian

Sorry for the late reply: I was still on vacation.

No, these features will not be available for Cloud Portal, it is only available for SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition.
Regarding the user experience harmonization topic: we are working to improve this and it will be published on the roadmap when we know the exact date of the release. At the moment the date is not yet available.

Best regards

Vera

Amandeep · ‎12-21-2023

Hi Vera,

We created a custom tile and deployed it on BTP. Following instructions were followed from SAP. Somehow the custom Tile does not appear in the widget catalogue for "New Site Experience" but appears for the old one. Is there a different setting or trick for it ?

Thanks

-Aman

Amandeep · ‎01-04-2024

Hi Folks,

Looks like SAP Build Work Zone std New Site Experience with Spaces and Pages, doesn't support Custom Tiles. Is there a way this can be achieved ?

Custom Tiles are supported in Groups, but not with the New Site Experience with Spaces and Pages. There have been numerous requests from Customer where they want to apply different colors/styles to the tile based on condition driven by the data. Customers ask for custom visualization in the tile content, which can only be achieved via custom tiles.

vera.gutbrod

Restrictions

Improvement Request on CIC

Thanks

-Aman