SAP Fiori - Introduction
SAP Fiori is a new user experience (UX) for SAP software and applications. It provides a set of applications that are used in regular business functions like work approvals, financial apps, calculation apps and various self-service apps.
SAP Fiori provides 300+ role-based applications like HR, Manufacturing, finance, etc. When you open the SAP Fiori home page application, you will see a picture of the flowers. It is because Fiori means ‘flowers’ in Italian.
SAP Fiori provides all business roles in real time on compatible hand devices. It offers business roles on easy to use functions, simple with unmatched responsiveness on desktop, smartphones and Tablets.
SAP Fiori enables multiple device applications that allow users to start a process on their desktop/laptops and to continue that process on a smartphone or on a tablet. SAP has developed Fiori Apps based on User interface UI5.
When SAP Fiori is combined with the power of the SAP HANA, it provides an unmatched application response and query-execution time. SAP Fiori user experience (UX) is used to provide a personalized and role-based user experience for enterprise-wide engagement across lines of business.
How SAP Fiori was born?
When a research was conducted, it was found that most of the SAP users use SAP User Interface to access the applications. These included common applications related to Manager-employee interactions such as leave request, travel request, etc. These GUI had more than 300,000 screens with various functions in it. SAP checked the most frequently used application and then decided to renew these applications. This is how SAP Fiori was born.
SAP Fiori Design Principles
There are five design principles for SAP Fiori UI5. These principles make SAP Fiori simple and decompose the different transactions into simple task based UI applications.
Role-Based − SAP has decomposed various SAP transactions and changed them into beautiful user interactive applications that show only most relevant information to the users.
Responsiveness − When SAP Fiori is combined with the power of SAP HANA, it provides an unmatched application response and query executions time.
Simple − To make SAP Fiori simple to match the user demand, SAP has designed it as a 1-1-3 scenario. This means 1 user, 1 use case and 3 screens.
Seamless Experience − SAP has provided all the Fiori apps based on the same language and it does not matter on the deployment and platform.
Delightful − SAP Fiori was designed to work with ECC 6.0 to make it easy for the users and to deploy on the existing SAP system.
SAP Fiori Apps
SAP Fiori apps are divided into three categories. They are distinguished on the basis of their function and infrastructure requirement.
- Transactional Apps
- Fact sheets
- Analytical Apps
Transactional Apps
The most important features of Transactional Apps are −
The first release of SAP Fiori included 25 transactional apps.
Transactional apps in SAP Fiori are used to perform transactional tasks like a manager-employee transactions such as leave request, travel requests, etc.
Transactional Apps run best on SAP HANA database but can be deployed with any database with acceptable performance. These apps allow a user to run simple SAP transactions on the mobile devices as well as desktop or laptops.
Example − Leave Request, Travel Request, Purchase Order.
Fact sheets
The important features of a Fact sheet are given below.
Fact sheets are used to drill the key information and contextual information in business operations. In SAP Fiori tiles, you can drill down to further details.
It also allows you to navigate one-fact sheet to all its related fact sheets.
Fact sheets also allow you to navigate to Transactional apps to run SAP transactions. A few Fact sheets also provide an integration option of geographical maps.
You can call Fact sheets from Fiori Launchpad search results, from other fact sheets or from Transactional or Analytical apps.
Fact sheets only run on SAP HANA database and also require an ABAP stack and they cannot be ported to SAP HANA Live tier-2 architecture.
Example − There is a fact sheet app with the center objects having details about vendor contract. You can drill down to further details like vendor details, contract terms, item details, etc.
Analytical Apps
Analytical apps are used to provide role-based real time information about the business operations. Analytical apps integrate the power of SAP HANA with SAP business suite. It provides real time information from large volume of data in front-end web browser.
Using Analytical apps, you can closely monitor Key Performance indicators KPIs. You can perform complex aggregations and calculations of your business operations and react immediately as per the changes in the market condition.
SAP Fiori Analytical apps run on SAP HANA database and use Virtual data models.
Example
SAP UX Strategy
User Experience (UX) is basically, about an overall experience that a person has while using any product, a website or an application. The application may be on either a mobile device, tablet or a desktop or laptop. User Experience should be simple to use so that the users can achieve their goals easily and interact with SAP system.
User Experience comprises of right balance of technology, business needs and desirability.
UX strategy is basically about the following three design principles −
- Technology
- Business
- Human Values
SAP UX strategy consists of three components −
New − New provides a consumer grid user experience for the new applications i.e. all the applications, which are yet to be built.
Renew − Renew is applied to the existing applications.
Enable − Enable is to provide a customer an ability to improve user experience of any SAP software to allow them to decide which business scenario is critical for them.
Prerequisites to Learn SAP Fiori
The following are the requirements for learning SAP Fiori −
- ABAP program and objects
- HTML5
- JavaScript
- SAP UI5
- ERP Implementation experience
- OData and SAP NetWeaver Gateway
- SAP HANA
