This is a post I’ve been “writing” for a long time, but without “time” to publish it. Finally it’s here.
Main Focus: Fiori LaunchPad Plugins (extensibility) – conceptual
What you need to know?
Fiori Launchpad plugins allows you to add new functionalities to your launchpad. Nothing new here. There are several online examples of features achieved using plugins and a nice blog post here on how it works.
Some simple examples:
- welcome message
- language changer
- system information
But the focus here is what you can do “out-of-box” using plugins. So lets present some examples:
Excel Enabler (detailed example)
For sure many of you had requests to activate the “standard” excel export button on standard Fiori elements apps (that is inactive for whatever reason SAP had).
The “normal” solution is to extend the standard app, activate the export to excel option, deploy the extended app and add it to the needed catalogs (or use the mapping override explained here)
Well, it works, but now lets say that you have 10 requests like this… 10 new extensions, 10 new deploys, etc. soooo… why not to do some “hammering” using plugins?
Doing some “simple” coding, you can create a plugin that activates (all, only some, the configured ones, etc) the excel export button whenever the apps has that option:
On our proof-of-concept scenario, we wanted to have a configuration (based on APP ID) and, on the cases not configured a global button that activates the standard button for export – of course this can be made directly without need of any action, but for test purposes it was better.
Configuration by ID:
1 custom app + 2 standard apps
Custom APP without export to excel option (before configuration)
Custom APP with export to excel option (after configuration – no actions needed)
Non configured APPs
global activation buttons is shown
After click:
smarttable export option is active
As you can see, using a simple plugin (that searchs for specific coding on the html/js, you can activate Excel export. As so, you can change almost everything: colors, sizes, positioning, etc.
AI Chat Bot
Nowadays it’s normal that organizations need to improve their problem solving mechanisms, FAQ’s, etc. SAP has the powerful CoPilot that does all of that and much more, but let’s say that you need a simple thing, just to help your users find some answers, make some decisions using conversational AI. There are several AI opensource/free solutions out there, and you can use a launchpad plugin in order to integrate them in your launchpad.
Google’s DialogFlow example
in this simple example we used a launchpad button, but it’s also possible to create a floating button or whatever you can imagine is possible using Js.
Google Analytics Plugin
There is already a very good blog about this here.
Other examples:
- social media integration
- internal news popup
- internal chat
- Header color changing for specific situations
- group list sorting (A-Z)
- catalog apps sorting
- snow flakes on Christmas ?
Ending Words:
This blog post is not about how to do something (if you need any coding from the above examples, please PM), but rather to explain what you can do using Launchpad plugins. in here I think the limit is your skills (and imagination) in JS programming.
Further Reading:
Wouter Lemaire wrote a very nice post about Fiori Plugin Showcase, where ” everyone is able to try out every plugin on a Sandbox Fiori Launchpad”.
https://blogs.sap.com/2018/11/08/the-easy-way-to-customise-your-fiori-launchpad/
Best Regards,
Carlos Castro
@ODKAS
