You Think You Know SAP Build? Take Our Challenge

[Dan_Wroblewski]

The challenge is officially over, but feel free to challenge yourself and complete the 5 challenges, at your own pace.

Our Developer (Builder) Challenges are all about having fun, trying new things, and learning along the way.

So we cooked up a set of puzzles and brainteasers related to SAP Build Apps and SAP Build Process Automation. We hope you will try to solve them, share your ideas, learn about key capabilities along the way, and have a little fun.

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👉 To get notified of the latest puzzles – and to get hints – FOLLOW this blog post.

 

The Weekly Challenges

We already have the first challenge for you so you can get started today. Here is the approximate schedule:

• April 2 – SAP Build Apps: Formulas


• April 9 – SAP Build Apps: UI Design


• April 16 – SAP Build Process Automation: Automation Bots


• April 23 – SAP Build Apps: OData


• April 30 – SAP Build Process Automation: Business Process

There is no deadline for the individual challenges, but all submissions must be entered by May 7.

At the end of the challenge, if you have made at least 2 correct submissions, you will receive a cool SAP Community badge for successfully participating in this developer challenge.

If you complete all 5 – not an easy task, but very doable – you will get special recognition in the community.

Setup

If you do not have your own SAP BTP account with SAP Build tools, we recommend the following:

• For SAP Build Apps, use the sandbox system.

1. 
   
   
   
   1. Just go to the sandbox system, click Register, enter an email, and set a password.
   
   
   2. You will get an email to confirm your email address. Click on the confirmation link.
   
   
   3. Continue to the SAP Build Apps lobby.
   
   
   
   

• For SAP Build Process Automation, use the SAP BTP Free trial.
  
  
  
  1. Create an SAP BTP Free Trial account, as described in the tutorial Get a Free Account on SAP BTP Trial.
  
  
  2. Set up SAP Build Process Automation, as described in the blog post SAP Process Automation now available in your Trial Account.
  
  
  
  

The setup should take just a few minutes.

Learning

For each of the challenges we provide you with some learning material for the specific topic. But even before the challenge, you may want to get familiar with the tools. Here are some quick tutorials:

• SAP Build Apps

• 
  
  
  
  • Create an Application with SAP Build Apps (tutorial)
  
  
  • Compose and automate with SAP Build the No-Code Way (learning journey)
  
  
  • Onboarding (videos)
  
  
  
  

• SAP Build Process Automation

• 
  
  
  
  • Build Your First Business Process with SAP Build Process Automation (tutorial)
  
  
  • Learn to Build Processes with SAP Process Automation (video from Devtoberfest)
  
  
  
  

 

Have fun!!!

[RichDBlumberg]

Thanks for setting this up! This challege is timely in that I have a compelling use case I'm working on... and Formulas are key!

Having gone through the low-code/no-code (LCNC) learning journey and built an SAP Build app and other LCNC apps along the way I'm optimistic that I can do it!  I'm very interested in finding simple, direct ways to use If/Then type formulas which are powered by Visual Cloud Functions (backend data models) centered around the binding of components.

With these challenges it will be interesting to see if us business practioners (aka Citizen Developers) can pull it off!

I'm optimistic in that you have clearly provided step-by-step instructions with print screens, a download, and the inspiration of a cat to get us started!:-)

[ChristianVogler]

Challenge accepted 🤓

[Dan_Wroblewski]

Hint for Week 1

In this challenge, you have to do 3 things in the formula (aggregate/group, sort, round), so find a function that does each one. Use the wonderful editor features that document the available functions.

For example, for aggregating, go to the List area, and then find a function that aggregates (in this case, GROUP). You'll see all the documentation for it on the right, plus a little playground inside the documentation for testing it. Pretty cool!

[Dan_Wroblewski]

New Challenge for Week 2

We have just released the 2nd of 5 challenges for the SAP Build Challenge in April, this one focuses on designing the user interface. You will have to re-create the below UI (more or less).

SAP Build Challenge – Week 2 – UI Design

I won't wait to give the first clue, which is the Tree View of the components I used to create the UI. You can see what components I used, and how I organized them inside containers.

Good Luck!

[Dan_Wroblewski]

New Challenge for Week 3

We have just released the 3rd of 5 challenges for the SAP Build Challenge in April, this one focuses on creating an automation bot to open a web page, press buttons, and enter data that originates from an Excel spreadsheet.

SAP Build Challenge – Week 3 – Automation Bots

This was is a little tricky. It requires some setup and if you are new to SAP Build Process Automation you'll need to learn a little bit first. But it still should take just 2 or 3 hours, total, and we have given you tutorials for exercises that are similar to what you have to do here..

A few tips out of the gate.

Tip #1

You will make a single SAP Build Process Automation, which will have just 3 artifacts:

• The automation itself
• The definition of the web app you will be automating
• A data type based on the data in the Excel you will be given

Most of your work will be in the automation. The app you will just select it and the tool will analyze its structure – you will have to define screen elements, but this takes just a few minutes. And the data type (above "people") will be created for you while working in the automation.

 

Tip #2

Since the automation is the guts of the challenge, let's give a tip for that.

Think of the automation in 3 parts:

• You have to get the data from Excel.
• You have to loop through that data, once per row.
• You have to automate the screen of the web app – for each row, entering the data and pressing the Submit button

Take it one step at a time.

Tip #3

While doing the challenge myself, I came across a few hurdles that were frustrating and stopped me for at least a few minutes, and I wish I had known about them earlier.

So I am passing it on to you:

• When creating the Application artifact --  sometimes the Chrome plugin has an issue. If the capturing doesn't work, kill the extension or restart your machine. And make sure to capture the web app as a Web app and not a UI Automation app.

• Make sure your agent is set to your SAP BTP tenant and is in Unattended mode. 

• When importing the Excel document with the Cloud Link activity, it may not limit the range just to the 10 rows of data but make the range A1:H1000. Manually change this to A1:H11.

[Dan_Wroblewski]

New Challenge for Week 4

We have just released the latest challenge, which is quite practical because almost anyone creating an app with SAP Build Apps will want to call SAP OData services. And then you will want to be able to page, filter and sort the data dynamically.

SAP Build Challenge – Week 4 – OData Services

[Dan_Wroblewski]

New Challenge for Week 5

We have just released the latest challenge to build a very simple process with SAP Build Process Automation, where the user selects his Zodiac sign and gets in return his personality trait.

SAP Build Challenge – Week 5 – Workflows

Please kudo any and all of the challenge posts that you enjoyed.

[VinayKumawat]

eagerly waiting for SAP Community badges, when we can see it.

 

[Dan_Wroblewski]

We’ll, I have to get the report and then decide if your answers were good enough 😼

[victor-chan]

Curious, will there be another challenge like this for those of us who missed the deadline or another iteration which will feature all of SAP Build (Workzone wasn't used here)?

[Sandra_Solis]

to bad I missed thos challenge, I have been bussy this months😞😭😭

[VinayKumawat]

thanks, got the badge today 🙂

[Dan_Wroblewski]

We hope to do it again soon, or even establish a standing weekly or monthly challenge. You can still do this challenge to test yourself, just no badge.

We did not do Work Zone challenges since there is no free advanced edition and so there would be a very limited number of people who could enter.

[Dan_Wroblewski]

Please, do the challenge and post your answers. I will still be following the challenge blogs and will answer any question. Just no badge.

[Dan_Wroblewski]

But check out the new ABAP challenge:https://blogs.sap.com/2023/05/10/sap-developer-code-challenge-open-source-abap/

[Dan_Wroblewski]

And of course there is May's ABAP challenge: https://blogs.sap.com/2023/05/10/sap-developer-code-challenge-open-source-abap/

[PrashantJayaram]

Daniel, when do the people who completed all 5 challenges get the "special recognition"?

[Sandra_Solis]

Thank you !!!