Issue

This document discusses the primary mechanism for end users to access and interact with the user interfaces of the core enterprise systems in scope of the ERP Rebuild program, while taking into account usability, security and broad coverage to as many applications as possible. This document will focus on Desktop-based experiences as this is the primary access mechanism for most users. Other KDDs will cover more targeted mobile user experiences. 

Recommendation

Stick with "traditional" Fiori Launchpad for the moment. 

Background & Context

Assumptions

• The core components of Syensqo’s enterprise landscape are not separated by GBU. Each instance of S/4HANA, Ariba, SuccessFactors, etc. will cover multiple GBUs.
• Separate instances may be required based on strategic or regulatory requirements. If this is required then separation will occur along geopolitical lines (e.g. by country), and thus each instance would likely still contain data and processes for multiple GBUs.
• Users will be aligned to one instance rather than multiple instances, and thus will have one primary entry point into the landscape.
• Chromebooks are deprecated end user devices and will be replaced with a Windows PC when they reach end of life. They are thus not explicitly considered in this document.
• Although the ERP Rebuild scope encompasses applications besides S/4HANA, the vast majority of user-exposed transactions will be hosted by S/4HANA rather than the more focused SaaS products integrated to S/4HANA. 

Constraints

• SAP Start is a relatively immature product early in its development lifecycle: integration to S/4HANA Private Cloud was only released with S/4HANA 2023 FPS01 (released in early 2024). Thus many restrictions exist in the integration of these products when compared with the relatively mature Fiori Launchpad available since 2016.
• Integration of SAP Build Work Zone Standard with S/4HANA Private Cloud has been available since the 1809 release of S/4HANA, when the product was called SAP Launchpad Service or SAP Fiori Cloud. SAP are transitioning the integration mechanism to “exposure mode version 2” which introduces new and different constraints over this original integration. As this integration matures, it could be worth revisiting the recommendation in this document. 

Impacts

Business Rules

• Every system deployed by ERP Rebuild must have its user interfaces integrated into the common launchpad to provide a single entry point for end users. 
• As far as technically possible, functions, applications, or reports must be accessed via deep-linking. The application’s main UI must only be linked directly from the launchpad if deep-linking is not technically possible. 
• The browser is the primary UI client. Additional clients may be required for specialised use cases by exception only.
• SAP GUI is not considered to be a primary user interface and will not be generally available to end users. 

Options considered

Desktop computers are considered the primary access mechanism for most of the users in most situations, and therefore must support all except highly specialised, role-specific functions. In modern SAP deployments there are four main starting points for a user’s interaction with SAP applications: the Fiori Launchpad embedded into S/4HANA, SAP Start, and SAP Build Work Zone, the latter being available in both Standard and Advanced versions. Of these, Fiori Launchpad is recommended to be embedded into S/4HANA while the other options are hosted on BTP. 

“Build Work Zone” is a brand name applied to two different products that are both running on SAP BTP, but have quite different heritages: Work Zone Standard is a re-branding of BTP Fiori Launchpad Service, while Work Zone Advanced shares a name but little technology heritage with the Standard edition and thus offers different features and limitations. 

Note: SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone is another product sharing the "Work Zone" brand name, but technically differs in some regards from the Build Work Zone products. SAP are in the process of transitioning this to the same stack as the Build Work Zone products. 

Option A: SAP Fiori Launchpad in S/4HANA

Since the launch of Fiori-based user interfaces, the Fiori Launchpad has served as the common starting point for users of S/4HANA with a role-based menu structure, integration of Enterprise Search, a common workflow inbox, notification handling, and management of user preferences and defaults. Since the release of S/4HANA 1809, SAP have recommended an Embedded deployment running inside S/4HANA, rather than a separate stand-alone “hub and spoke” deployment using a dedicated Fiori Front-End Server. 

A Fiori Launchpad based on Fiori 3 broadly offers the following capabilities: 

• Role-based content including app launchers, tiles, pages, etc.
• Ability to integrate Web Dynpro and SAP GUI for HTML applications side-by-side with native UI5-based Fiori apps, including the use of semantic object navigation. 
• Integration of Enterprise Search provided by the underlying business systems
• Integration of notifications and workflow tasks from connected business systems.
• Integration of Fiori-like interfaces provided by SAP SaaS applications such as SuccessFactors.
• Ability to publish tiles with arbitrary URL targets to support any other application, as well as static content hosted elsewhere.

Option B: SAP Start

SAP Start is a simple “launching point” designed as an “out of the box” solution for customers whose end users access more than one SAP cloud-based application (e.g. SuccessFactors and S/4HANA Public Cloud). It prioritises speedy implementation and simplicity over functional richness and thus offers only relatively simple features such as: 

• Support for S/4HANA Cloud (both Public and Private editions), SuccessFactors, Fieldglass. Support for SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud is on the roadmap for late 2024.
• Search for and launch apps and functions across the connected applications.
• Limited search integration for content inside the connected applications. 
• Integration of workflow tasks from SAP Task Center, the BTP-hosted central workflow inbox. 
• Integration with Joule, the SAP AI chatbot and co-pilot. 

SAP Start is a relatively new product launched in late 2023. It is hosted on BTP and built using the same technology stack as Build Work Zone Standard. SAP offers an upgrade path from SAP Start to Build Work Zone Standard, although some technical migration work is required in addition to a licensing change. 

Option C: SAP Build Work Zone Standard

SAP Build Work Zone Standard was formerly known as Launchpad Service - a BTP-hosted Fiori Launchpad able to surface Fiori apps from several underlying application providers such as S/4HANA, other ABAP-based systems, but also SuccessFactors, and selected other SaaS applications. It offers capabilities comparable to the Fiori Launchpad, such as: 

• Role-based content including app launchers, tiles, pages, etc.  
• Integration of Enterprise Search provided by the underlying business systems
• Support for Integration Cards which surface simple tasks from the underlying business systems into the Work Zone UI. 
• Integration of notifications and workflow tasks from connected business systems.

It is built on the same technology stack as SAP Start, but not using the same stack as Build Work Zone Advanced. Migration from one to the other requires not only a licensing change, but also work to align the content models. SAP plans to deliver a migration tool, but this is not featured in the roadmap yet. 

Several significant technical limitations remain, meaning Work Zone is not a full replacement for Fiori Launchpad, including restrictions on the use of Fiori 3 Spaces and Pages, merging of content from several underlying S/4HANA systems, and limitations on the use of SAP Analytics Cloud, CoPilot/Joule. Some of these limitations are resolved using “exposure mode version 2” which effectively causes S/4HANA applications to be launched in a separate browser tab; however this causes the Fiori Launchpad from the underlying S/4HANA system to then be loaded in that separate tab. SAP Note 3042853 contains further details on these limitations.

Option D: SAP Build Work Zone Advanced

SAP Build Work Zone Advanced layers additional functionalities on top of Build Work Zone Standard, adding: 

• “Citizen-developer” features that allow end users to build and share personalised, collaborative workspaces which can include external non-SAP content and collaboration features. 
• Integrate intranet-like, unstructured content such as Forums, ToDo lists, Knowledge Base articles, documents from a document management system, or static content.
• Create task-oriented workspaces which can be shared with external collaborators or made public. 
• Content packages delivered by SAP to integrate functionality from some SaaS applications. As of July 2024, this is only available for SuccessFactors. 
• Integration with Microsoft Teams and low-code applications built using SAP Build tools
• APIs and webhooks published for other applications to consume. 

As of July 2024, the underlying technology stack for the Standard and Advanced options of Build Work Zone are different. Migration from one to the other requires not only a licensing change, but also work to align the content models. SAP plans to deliver a migration tool, but this is not featured in the roadmap yet. Due to the differing technology stacks, some features of Standard are not available in Advanced; for example SAP Mobile Start is not yet supported for the Advanced version.

Evaluation

The BTP options aren't useful because:

• They do not, and cannot, replace the need to maintain and run a Fiori Launchpad
• They seem aimed at customers who have relatively few "ERP" Fiori apps in the portfolio; Syensqo will have 90+% of them coming from S/4HANA

The evaluation below tries to focus only on significant differences between the various options. Where each option has the same Pros and Cons, these have been omitted to more clearly show the differences between them. 

	Weighting	Option A Fiori Launchpad	Option B SAP Start	Option C SAP Build Work Zone Standard	Option D SAP Build Work Zone Advanced
Alignment with SAP Roadmap	Low	Given the centrality of Fiori to SAP's long-term UX strategy, it's virtually guaranteed that SAP will continue to invest in expanding the capabilities of the embedded Fiori Launchpad, as evidenced by a full roadmap.	SAP Start is positioned by SAP as a free and simple "out of the box" offering which customers using one or more SaaS applications can quickly deploy without additional licensing requirements, and with only relatively simple configuration. Typically SAP do not consistently invest development effort into products not linked to earning revenue.	Historically SAP have prioritised investment into the 'Advanced' (i.e. "more expensive") versions of products where both it and a lower-revenue Basic/Standard version was available. Few of SAP's product demos and presentations focus on Standard.  Although this product has been around for some years under different names, the shift to the exposure version 2 API with S/4HANA 2023 FPS01 has in some way degraded the functionality previously available in BTP Launchpad Service.	SAP appears to focus development and customer enablement efforts on the Advanced version of Build Work Zone, as evidenced by much of the customer-facing collaterals, online demos, Sapphire presentations, etc. showing the feature set of the Advanced edition.
Solution Maturity	High	Fiori Launchpad has been available since 2016. SAP have continued to invest since in both the server-side (moving from a dedicated Front-End Server software component to integrating it into S/4HANA), and client side (evolving the UI5 libraries, adding features and evolving the information architecture with Fiori 3, etc.).	Very new product. SAP Start was launched in July 2023 for S/4HANA Public Cloud, and support for S/4HANA Private Cloud was added only in Q1 2024.	Significant functionality gaps and restrictions which do not make this a replacement for Fiori Launchpad, including lack of user preferences and default integration, lack of CORS support (impacting SAC Live connectivity), no AI chatbot integration apart from the obsolete Conversational AI product.
Functional Fit	Very High	The full gamut of Fiori applications and functionality is available in the Fiori Launchpad, including Enterprise Search, the Joule AI Chatbot, Spaces and Pages, system-wide preferences and user defaults, Live Business apps ("KPI tiles"), etc.  Ability to link to other systems and functions, including with deep links where available from the target application, including non-SAP systems.	Primarily a "jumping-off point" for users to launch into separate applications to do their work, rather than front-end in which they can perform work and execute business transactions.  Integration Cards (where supported, e.g. SuccessFactors) allow functionality from an underlying system to be directly exposed into the home page of Work Zone so that users can interact with the underlying system without leaving the Work Zone UI.  Very limited number of Integration Cards are available; as of July 2024 only some modules of SuccessFactors provide this content, and the roadmap is not well populated.	Integration Cards (where supported, e.g. SuccessFactors) allow functionality from an underlying system to be directly exposed into the home page of Work Zone so that users can interact with the underlying system without leaving the Work Zone UI.  Very limited number of Integration Cards are available; as of July 2024 only some modules of SuccessFactors provide this content, and the roadmap is not well populated.  Appears to be primarily designed for brownfield customers who have relatively few Fiori apps that are exposed one-by-one from S/4HANA and other SAP systems, as well as SaaS applications and SAP Built "low-code/no-code" apps.  Of the applications in scope for ERP Rebuild, content federation is supported only for S/4HANA and (in a limited way) SuccessFactors. All other applications require manual configuration, i.e. are no different than “traditional” Fiori Launchpad.
				In-place opening of manually-configured URLs requires the target app to support being loaded inside an iFrame. For security reasons, many web apps block being loaded inside an iFrame as a safeguard against clickjacking, severely limiting the usefulness of this integration.	Provides a lot of functionality which is not relevant to the scope of ERP Rebuild (e.g. publishing of Intranet-like content, collaboration, forums, Knowledge Base), and for which Syensqo have existing applications. It is highly unlikely that SAP Build Work Zone Advanced would be chosen by Syensqo IT to host and intranet and team collaboration spaces. This functionality would need to be turned off and disabled.
Simplicity	High	Simplest-possible technology architecture with Fiori Launchpad running inside the S/4HANA system which also hosts 90+% of all functions in scope of ERP Rebuild.	Simplest BTP-hosted option available.  More complex than Fiori Launchpad, which must still be maintained anyways as all access to S/4HANA-hosted apps from SAP Start causes these apps to be opened in a new tab that loads the Fiori “shell” from  S/4HANA.	Doesn’t remove the need to have a Fiori Launchpad configured and accessible in S/4HANA because navigation from Work Zone to any S/4HANA app occurs ex-place by opening a new browser tab which loads the app directly from S/4HANA. This will require the Fiori “shell” to be loaded by the browser.  Limitations in navigation between apps published by different systems (e.g. navigating from an S/4HANA-hosted Fiori app to Ariba) due to the ex-place navigation. Cross-app navigation using semantic objects or traditional links will occur inside this new tab, and therefore be limited to apps known to the S/4HANA instance serving this tab, rather than to all apps known to Work Zone.
Security	High	Strong technical security controls (e.g. encryption, mandatory authentication, SSO support).  Very tight integration with the authorisation roles inside S/4HANA Greatly simplified user provisioning as the same user and role store is used for both S/4HANA transactional authorisations and the role-based access controls to the Spaces, Pages, and Apps of the Fiori Launchpad All users of Fiori Launchpad must have a user master record inside S/4HANA and must authenticate to the system.	Strong technical security controls (e.g. encryption, SSO support). Pre-delivered integration with BTP Identity management products (BTP Identity Provisioning Service and BTP Identity Authentication Service). Hard limits on the number of items of all types which can exist inside a tenant (30,000).
					Ability for Syensqo users to invite external collaborators into selected work spaces without those users needing to exist inside S/4HANA. Access is limited to functions provided by Build Work Zone itself (e.g. forums, collaboration content). Access to underlying business applications continues to require the user to hold an account.
Cost	Med	License included with underlying business applications (e.g. S/4HANA, EWM, TM) All users of Fiori Launchpad must have a user master record inside S/4HANA, thus triggering the need to have at least a minimal license assigned (e.g. Employee license).	License included with many SaaS offerings by SAP	Generate BTP consumption and requires an extra subscription license.	Generate BTP consumption and requires an extra subscription license which is more expensive than the license for the Standard edition.  Simple interaction-based licensing model for external collaborators without a Syensqo user account in S/4HANA.

See also

SAP Learning Journey for Build Work Zone Advanced

Blog post by SAP Product Manager for Work Zone with more details and links

SAP Help pages listing the various restrictions of Build Work Zone Standard and Build Work Zone Advanced

SAP Roadmap Explorer for SAP Fiori, SAP Start, Build Work Zone Standard, Build Work Zone Advanced

SAP Note 3345119 - Expose Fiori Launchpad content to BTP using Exposure Version 2

SAP Note 3429848 - Restrictions for the integration of SAP Start with S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition

SAP Note 3042853 - Restrictions for the integration of SAP Build Work Zone Standard with S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition

SAP Note 3450958 - Launchpad Content Exposure with Exposure Version 2

Change log

Workflow history