Recent Changes in SAP Fiori Launchpad Shell Plugin Functionality with SAP Screen Personas using Slipstream Engine for rendering

[kmagons]

Introduction

Following several customer requests, we have simplified and improved the functionality of the SAP Fiori launchpad shell plugin with the Slipstream Engine component that ships with SAP Screen Personas 3.0 Service Pack 10 release. We introduced the Slipstream Engine component with service pack 6 to enable rendering of SAP GUI transactions on mobile phones and tablets. In this blog, when I refer to Slipstream Engine or an application running in Slipstream Engine, I am talking about an ERP transaction in SAP S/4HANA or ECC that is using Slipstream Engine for rendering, rather than SAP GUI for Windows or SAP GUI for HTML.

The new SAP Fiori launchpad plugin behavior for in service pack 10 includes:

• A confirmation prompt that is displayed when users navigate away from Slipstream Engine in SAP Fiori launchpad


• The standard SAP Fiori launchpad shell back button in Slipstream Engine can now be made to function exactly as the back button present in the loaded classic SAP GUI transaction


• Option to switch off SAP Fiori launchpad content letterboxing for Slipstream Engine tiles

This blog serves to provide more information about these features, as well as how the features can be disabled/enabled according to users’ needs.

Confirmation prompt when navigating away from Slipstream Engine

Fig. 1 Confirmation prompt when navigating away from Slipstream Engine

 

The confirmation prompt that opens when users close a Slipstream Engine application is a measure intended to prevent potential data loss when users accidentally navigate away from transactions by pressing the back button in the SAP Fiori launchpad shell.  This feature is enabled by default for all Slipstream Engine tiles, but it can be switched off globally or individually for specific tiles.

To suppress the navigation confirmation prompt, use the

sap-se-navigation-warning-disable=x

parameter in the SAP Fiori launchpad Designer.

• To disable the confirmation message for a given tile: Apply the parameter to the Slipstream Engine Tile Configuration.


• To disable the confirmation message globally: Apply the parameter to the Slipstream Engine Target Mapping. This will block the message for all tiles that point to this target mapping

Fig. 2 Disabling navigation confirmation prompt for a specific Slipstream Engine tile

Using the SAP Fiori Launchpad Shell Back Button in Slipstream Engine

The functionality of the standard SAP Fiori launchpad shell back button in Slipstream Engine has now been simplified to ensure it functions similarly to the back button present in the given transaction. This includes transaction screen specific features, such as triggering various confirmations and data validation checks to ensure integrity when users navigate back to previous screens in their process. This means that the SAP Fiori launchpad shell back button assigned to a transaction rendered with Slipstream Engine will work in the same way that the  back button on a classic SAP GUI transaction rendered outside of SAP Fiori launchpad would.

Fig. 3 Input Validation is performed when pressing the Launchpad shell back button in IW51 screen

 

In situations where the back button is not present or disabled for a given screen – the SMEN transaction, for example – pressing the SAP Fiori launchpad shell button will trigger navigation to the previous intent, which is usually the SAP Fiori launchpad home page.

You can create similar functionality with other transactions accessed through SAP Fiori launchpad by disabling the screen back button in the SAP Screen Personas flavor.

To do so:

1. Navigate to the screen that is the landing page for the Slipstream Engine SAP Fiori launchpad tile in the Slipstream Engine standalone service.


2. Open the SAP Screen Personas Flavor manager.


3. Select the desired flavor and open the Flavor editor.


4. Select the Dynpro back button (“wnd[0]/tbar[0]/btn[3]“).


5. From the Home tab, select: More Options > Read Only.


6. Save the changes.

Now, when the screen is loaded in Slipstream Engine and users press the SAP Fiori launchpad shell back button, they will be taken to the home page instead of the previous step in the transaction's workflow.

Fig. 4 Disable Back Button in Flavour Editor 

Leveraging the SAP Fiori Launchpad Content Letterboxing

By default, SAP Fiori launchpad applies content letterboxing for Slipstream Engine applications. However, in some situations it is required to switch off letterboxing to use all the available screen real estate to better display application screens with lot of information.

To switch off  the SAP Fiori launchpad content letterboxing, use the

sap-se-flp-fullWidth=X

parameter in the SAP Fiori launchpad Designer.

• To switch off letterboxing a given tile: Apply the parameter to the Slipstream Engine tile configuration.


• To switch off letterboxing globally: Apply the parameter to the Slipstream Engine Target Mapping. This will switch off letterboxing for all tiles that point to this target mapping

Fig. 5 Letterboxing enabled for Slipstream Engine 

Fig. 6 Letterboxing disabled for Slipstream Engine

Conclusion

The recent changes for the Slipstream Engine Shell plugin introduce additional measures and simplifications to ensure consistency and data integrity, as well as prevent accidental data loss when working with classic SAP GUI transactions rendered using Slipstream Engine in an SAP Fiori launchpad environment.

Additional Resources

Setting Up the Slipstream Launchpad Plug-In for On-Premise SAP Fiori Launchpad:

https://help.sap.com/viewer/1024f4ede569495cb350a479fff49ad0/Current/en-US/fe49a69987524c6883c66c639...

Setting Up the Slipstream Launchpad Plug-In for Cloud Portal Launchpad:

https://help.sap.com/viewer/1024f4ede569495cb350a479fff49ad0/Current/en-US/32a17988147140dbbc07a7be0...

Letterboxing:

https://experience.sap.com/fiori-design-web/letter-boxing/

[wolfgang_lindner2]

Hi,

Many thanks, works perfect. The back navigation issue works also with SP09.

This month we plan to go live with the fist embedded transaction via SE.

Regards Wolfgang

[rtdrake]

Great additions, thank you for the post clarifying. I had one question on possible future features based on the full screen option.

We have noticed a lot of requests for full screen to make Personas apps function and look more like Fiori apps. In those cases we can use Adaptive Flavors to accomplish this, but with no control over screen sizes, this becomes difficult to manage (we would have to make 20 or more adaptive flavors per app).

We had previously chosen then to use letterboxing as we could strictly control headers and container positioning in a reliable manner.

Will there ever be an opportunity to express container widths (or even relative positioning) as a percentage in place of fixed PT values like you can do with standard HTML and CSS? That would enable us to do scaling more simply to fully take advantage of the new full width features.

For example:

We have a Personas flavor designed to look like a Fiori object page, that displays perfectly in Full Screen at 1366 width:

 

However if the monitor is enlarged the header container is cut off. This does not impact functionality, but is visually jarring

 

Ideally we could express this container control width as 100% of screen and it would expand. Perhaps even other control elements in similar way.

[nicolasjaku]

Hello,

Is there any authorization isssue / cache issue related to letterboxing :

sap-se-flp-fullWidth=X

For some users letterboxing can be switched off and for others it can't.

Thanks !

[kmagons]

Hello,

sap-se-flp-fullWidth=X parameter requires SAP Screen Personas Slipstream Engine Shell Plugin to be configured for all users. Please double check that the plugin is loaded for the affected users - the technical catalog containing the plugin configuration is assigned to the PFCG role for all users.

How do you switch off the letterboxing - tile or target mapping level? If it's tile level - try applying the parameter to the target mapping. If it is at the target mapping level, make sure the same Slipstream Engine target mapping is used across all the users.

If you still experience the issue, please raise a BC-PER ticket and the team will have a look.

Thank you!

Krists Magons
SAP Screen Personas Dev Team