ESP-IJACT

ESP International Journal of Advancements in Computational Technology

ISSN: 2583-8628 / Volume 2 Issue 1 March 2024 / Page No: 43-48
Paper Id: IJACT-V2I1P106 / Doi: 10.56472/25838628/IJACT-V2I1P106
Original Article
Futuristic SAP Fiori Dominance
Sridhar Selvaraj
Sr. Software Developer, Cogent integrated business solution, 30700 Telegraph Road, Bingham Farms MI, USA.
Received Date: 03 February 2024 Revised Date: 18 February 2024 Accepted Date: 06 March 2024

Abstract: SAP Fiori, the business user experience redefined, offers a simpler, more user-friendly approach for your
company to use SAP applications. SAP Fiori, with its emphasis on an intelligent, consistent, and integrated user
experience, can assist you in taking a fresh look at how you operate in the digital age. The overview of SAP Fiori and
the key technologies for contemporary user interfaces in the upcoming years will be covered in this article. In addition,
it explains how to secure information, support business processes, innovate solutions, create faster apps, and prevent
unauthorised access to crucial data. This includes implementing the Fiori Launchpad, providing authentication and
authorization services, establishing backend connectivity, and facilitating data flow.

Keywords: SAP Fiori, Logistics, SAP S/4 HANA, Fiori Cloud, UI5.

I. INTRODUCTION
With its user-friendly, consumer-grade business apps, SAP Fiori transforms inexperienced users into SAP experts
with its intuitive, device-neutral interfaces. You may quickly create and modify your own apps that are compatible with what
we ship with SAP S/4HANA and our other enterprise software solutions by using the SAP Fiori design standards and tools
that we use at SAP. A new user experience (UX) for SAP apps and software is called SAP Fiori. It offers a range of
applications, including work approvals, finance apps, calculation apps, and self-service apps, that are utilised in everyday
corporate operations.

More than 300 role-based apps, including those for finance, manufacturing, and HR, are available with SAP Fiori. A
photo of the flowers appears when you launch the SAP Fiori home page application. It's because the Italian word fiori means
"flowers”. All business responsibilities are available in real time on suitable handheld devices with SAP Fiori. It provides
business roles with user-friendly features and unparalleled responsiveness on desktop, mobile, and tablet devices.

Figure 1: SAP Fiori

With the help of SAP Fiori, users may launch and continue processes on their desktops and laptops as well as their
smartphones and tablets. SAP created Fiori Apps using the UI5 user interface. The power of SAP Fiori paired with SAP
HANA's processing speed results in unparalleled application response and query execution times. The SAP Fiori user
experience (UX) offers a role-based, personalised user experience for enterprise-wide interaction across business lines.

II. SAP FIORI DESIGN PRINCIPLES

For SAP Fiori UI5, there are five design principles. These ideas simplify SAP Fiori by breaking down the many
transactions into easy-to-use task-based user interface apps.

Figure 2: SAP Fiori Design Principles

This is an open access article under the CCBY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/)

 Sridhar Selvaraj / ESP IJACT 2(1), 43-48, 2024

 Role-Based: SAP has broken down different SAP transactions into stunning, interactive user interfaces that only
provide the most pertinent data to users.
 Responsiveness: When SAP Fiori and SAP HANA's power are coupled, the application response and query execution
times are unmatched.
 Easy: SAP designed Fiori as a 1-1-3 scenario in order to make it easy to use and meet user demand. That's one
person, one use case, and three screens.
 Streamlined Experience: SAP has developed all Fiori applications using the same language, regardless of platform
or deployment type.
 Delightful: SAP Fiori was created to integrate with ECC 6.0 to streamline user experience and enable deployment on
the current SAP system.

III. HOW SAP FIORI CAN HELP

A. Achieve Your Business Goals
SAP Fiori apps facilitate faster onboarding and shorter training times. Users can do jobs more quickly, accurately, and
satisfactorily with simple and intuitive interfaces because they make sense to people's working methods.

B. Innovate New Solutions

With the templates, tools, and principles that the SAP Fiori design system offers, you can make enterprise apps that
are visually appealing and that users will love. By using SAP Fiori, you can ensure that the designs of your apps are uniform
across all devices.

C. Build Better and Faster Apps

Using your preferred development framework, SAP Fiori tools, technologies, and templates help expedite the process
of developing, testing, and deploying enterprise applications. You can offer a unified user experience across all of your apps
using SAP Fiori.

IV. SAP FIORI APPS

Three categories comprise the SAP Fiori apps. They are differentiated according to their purpose and infrastructural
needs.
 Transactional Apps
 Fact sheets
 Analytical Apps

a) Transactional Apps
The most important features of Transactional Apps are:
 SAP Fiori's initial edition came with 25 transactional apps.
 SAP transactional applications Fiori are used for transactional tasks like travel and leave requests made by
managers to their staff members, among other things.
 Although they may be installed on any database with reasonable performance, transactional applications operate
optimally on SAP HANA databases. These applications enable users to conduct basic SAP transactions on desktop or
laptop computers in addition to mobile devices.

Example: Leave Request, Travel Request, Purchase Order.

B. 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 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.

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C. Analytical Apps
Role-based real-time information on business activities is provided by analytical apps. SAP HANA's power is
integrated with the SAP business suite through analytical apps. It offers real-time data from a substantial amount of front-
end web browser data.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be closely monitored with Analytical applications. You are able to carry out
intricate calculations and aggregates of your company's activities and respond quickly to shifts in the market environment.
SAP Fiori Analytical apps use virtual data models and are powered by the SAP HANA database.

There are two types of Analytical Apps:

 SMART Business
 Virtual Data Models

a) SMART Business
Your most crucial KPIs can be tracked in real time with SAP Fiori smart business apps, allowing you to quickly adjust
them based on changing market conditions.

Note: Under this category, there are around 84 analytical applications; of these, 69 are intelligent business apps, and the
remaining 15 are analytical apps.

Figure 3: Architecture of Analytical and SMART Business Apps

Unlike transactional apps, which can run on any database, analytical apps can only run on SAP HANA databases.
Virtual data models are used by SAP Fiori to utilise XS engine, and XS engine consists of two parts.
 HANA Live Apps content for respective business suite
 SMART business content

SAP HANA Live offers industry-standard access to SAP data through data models, offering remarkable capability
analytics for all business suites.

Views in the HANA database are used to analyse the data models. The views combine to create a virtual data model
that partners and customers can utilise.

b) Virtual Data Models

With the use of virtual data models, large amounts of high-quality data can be processed in HANA databases. These
views can be accessed by a UI-rich client without the need for extra software.

Three different perspectives exist:

 Private View: Private views are SAP views and you cannot modify these views.
 Reuse View: Reuse views are heart of SAP HANA model, and they expose the data in structural way and they are
designed to be reused by other views.

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 Query View: Query views are top views in hierarchy and designed for direct consumption by Analytical apps and
cannot be altered.

Figure 4: SAP Fiori Apps

User Experience (UX) essentially refers to the total impression that a user gets from a product, website, or
application. The application could be running on a desktop or laptop, tablet, or mobile device. In order for users to interact
with the SAP system and accomplish their goals with ease, the user experience should be straightforward. The proper
balancing of technology, business requirements, and desirability constitutes the user experience.

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 gives a customer the power to enhance any SAP software's user experience and determine which
business scenario is most important to them.

VI. FIORI LAUNCHPAD

The most identifiable shared service outlined in the Fiori design principles is the Fiori Launchpad, which is what most
people identify with a Fiori user interface.

In the current Fiori 2.0 design idea, the Fiori Launchpad is made up of a number of groups and tiles that are used to
launch apps and provide pertinent information. A number of auxiliary services that include notifications, search,
personalisation, authorization, and personalisation are also included. Customers using SAP Cloud Platform, SAP NetWeaver
ABAP and HANA platforms, and SAP Cloud Platform can use any of the several SAP Fiori Launchpad implementations that
SAP offers for their own applications. Additionally, SAP offers its own apps, such SAP Ariba and SAP Analytics Cloud, using
user interfaces that mostly adhere to the Fiori Launchpad design standards.

Figure 5: The SAP Fiori Launchpad

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VII. SAP FIORI DATA FLOW

SAP Fiori Data Flow addresses the data flow procedure in the Fiori system landscape when a user submits a request
using Launchpad. This covers the flow of data during runtime in both front-end and back-end servers.

Front-end server−Web server and OData Proxy.

Back End server−OData provider.

 The protocol HTTP/HTTPS is used by SAP Fiori. The architecture is a request-response runtime.
 The front-end server houses Launchpad data and UI objects. The application reads the Launchpad definition using
an OData service call when Launchpad is called.
 /UI2/PAGE_BUILDER_PERS is one of the OData services for Launchpad.

Figure 6: Data Flow

VIII. SAP FIORI SECURITY

You may be certain that the information and protocols supporting the requirements of your business are protected
from unauthorised access to sensitive data by keeping the SAP Fiori system secure. You must ensure that human mistake,
negligence, or attempted system manipulation is not the reason for data loss or processing time. Every part of a Fiori system
must to adhere to each of these security regulations.

Managing users in SAP Fiori:

 To manage SAP Fiori transactional apps, you should have below users
 Users in SAP NetWeaver Gateway and ABAP front-end server
 User in the ABAP back-end server

Role-based design and personalisation are highly valued concepts in the SAP Fiori design guidelines. This means that
Fiori interfaces should, by default, be made to give users the tools they need to carry out their roles inside the company—
neither more nor less. This is a goal-oriented ideal: Encouragement to take the time to properly evaluate the responsibilities
of users and eliminate unnecessary apps and application features from designs is the goal.

Furthermore, users can customise the Launchpad and applications to meet their unique needs using personalisation
services offered by the Fiori SDKs and Launchpad. These services range from letting users design or conceal new tiles to
letting them configure default table layouts and filters in applications to letting them dynamically hide unnecessary UI
elements.
Personalisation and role-based design are distinct from security, which is still used in back-end systems like the
S/4HANA enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform. The design guidelines advise Fiori UI developers to consider security
and modify their user interfaces according on the user's degree of access. But the security itself is too complex to manage at
the user interface layer.

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IX. SAP FIORI CLOUD

A cloud-based subscription service called SAP Fiori Cloud offers the majority of the services and technology needed to
put the SAP Fiori design into practice. The Fiori Launchpad will be implemented, together with back-end connectivity,
authentication, and authorization services, as well as hosting for both SAP standard and bespoke apps. It is among the
suggested methods for providing a SAP Fiori experience.

Figure 7: SAP Fiori Cloud

X. CONCLUSION
The times ahead New business relationships with major corporations such as Google and Apple are enhancing and
advancing SAP Fiori by allowing native business apps to fully utilise the data in their enterprise applications. By using
natural language in a digital assistant, SAP CoPilot offers a humanised user experience for SAP applications. SAP is
considering increasing productivity and streamlining the user interface. This provides assurance that SAP Fiori is the way of
the future. In the upcoming years, Fiori will be the most significant technology for contemporary SAP user interfaces. It
provides more than just attractive surface features; it also has an advanced design process and cross-application capabilities.
As a result, Fiori apps increase user efficiency when using SAP applications.

XI. REFERENCES
[1] SAP Fiori app [Online]. Available: https://fioriappslibrary.hana.ondemand.com/sap/fix/externalViewer/
[2] SAP Product help. [Online]. Available: https://www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/fiori.html
[3] Fiori Design Guidelines. [Online]. Available: https://experience.sap.com/fiori-design-web/a-beginners-guide-to-the-design-
guidelines/
[4] SAP Help Portal, SAP. [Online]. Available
https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_FIORI_OVERVIEW/a1482918da994432859015bf1a083d9b/d453eb5adf1449408bd9873ab2e40687.h
tml?q=fiori

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