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Setup

Cloud Connector

If you are using Gateway (rather than OData Provisioning) you may need to set the trust flag for the SAP Cloud Platform (SAP CP) dispatcher (in the Principle Propagation section).  The Fiori Mobile project might be the first time you have used app-to-app SSO. We had a 401 error when our offline app began to sync and it was resolved by checking this one checkbox.

Develop

Managing multiple environments

You’re going to need to build three variants of your app (assuming that you have dev/test/prod environments).  Each version will reference a different environment.  So, from the start, make it easy to distinguish between them.  You may be running dev, test and prod versions of your app simultaneously on your phone.  You might want to call the 3 versions D_MyApp, T_MyApp and MyApp, so you know which one is which.

To move our app changes through the environments (dev to prod), taking account of the small differences in project setup (e.g. different sub-account guids), we used GIT branches.  We had one branch for each environment.

When our latest build in dev was ready we would open the Web IDE in the test sub-account and switch to the test branch. We would then merge-in the development branch.  Next we would build the app and then testing could commence.

When testing was complete we would open the Web IDE in production, merge in from the test branch and do a build.  The master branch can be used for prod.

Feature branches can be created from the development branch.

I must say that prior to this I had never opened the Web IDE in any environment other than dev!  I don’t really like doing so but this was the best approach we could come up with.  Note that because of the way GIT works, we don’t have to repeat the entry of the sub-account GUIDs in the project settings, for example.  Once we have done this once, we can apply the new features from dev without overwriting those settings.  For this you must become proficient at conflict resolution.

You might like to choose a different Web IDE theme in each environment.  That way you will never make a change to the code in prod mistakenly thinking you are in dev, because the colours are clearly distinguishable.

Mobile Secure

Most of your app setup can be done in Mobile Secure.  You can launch this via the Fiori Mobile service in the Cloud Platform cockpit.

Mobile Secure betrays it’s heritage as a separate product (I assume) and doesn’t work quite the same as other SCP screens.  I haven’t found a way to log on to multiple sub-accounts simultaneously (e.g. to compare dev to test) as I do all the time with the Web IDE or the Mobile Service for Development and Operations for example.  If you save the URL as a bookmark always check the sub-account GUID in the account name before you log in, otherwise you might end up going back to the last environment you logged into.  Indeed it’s best to log out before trying to access a different environment.

Sometimes Mobile Secure seems to load with a blank grey screen, but an F5 refresh soon fixes it.  This happens with the Mobile Service for Development and Operations UI too.

Gateway Services for Offline

I’ll mention a couple of things that we discovered, without trying to write a comprehensive guide to offline.

Delta tokens (using a change log, similar to the agentry approach) only seem to work if the tokens are in ‘GUID_Timestamp‘ format.  We tried just using a timestamp but we got some errors.

Key fields (OData properties) must have a max. length defined in the metadata (i.e. in Gateway Builder, SEGW).

Blank screen issue

If you get a blank screen when you run your app try setting a different UI5 version on the portal site.  We currently have ours on UI5 1.46.11.

Offline

If you upload an application configuration file in Mobile Secure (to optimise the offline settings for your app) you must use the connection name not the ID.  This is covered by KB article 2525195.  The beginning of your file will look like this: [endpoint] name=Fiori Cloud Edition

You may find that if your file includes multiple defining requests only the very last defining request is uploaded successfully.  There is currently a work-around in place to use postman to upload the configuration file and this ensures that everything is uploaded correctly.

If you are using delta queries for your offline app you must use XML format for your OData responses rather than JSON.  This caused us some issues in the UI5.  For example dates and booleans were showing as strings in the JavaScript.  I’m not sure if this is a known binding issue or something specific to UI5 version 1.46.  To handle all scenarios you can write you statements like this: if (myProp && myProp !== “false”) { }

Online/offline mix

In our app we wanted to use some OData services in an offline mode and some (pre-existing services) in an online mode.  This proved to be a little tricky and I would avoid doing a mix if you can.  You can’t declare the online services in the manifest and when you do declare them you have to read the absolute path from one of the offline stores.  A mix also makes the authentication trickier because back-end calls are required more frequently.

Cloud Build

Debug-enabling

Be aware that selecting Build debug-enabled binaries can have unexpected consequences.  We had an issue with file upload (when running the app) that only occurred if the debug option was selected.  In addition, at the time of writing, iOS apps aren’t 64 bit (and therefore iOS11 compatible) if the debug option is selected.

App Download

CDN for faster downloads

Make sure you have the Content Delivery Network (CDN) option enabled.  This won’t speed up the very first download (from Mobile Place) but it should speed up subsequent downloads.  In our experience however it still seems quite slow.

Global

Account->Settings->Mobile Place

No need to authenticate

To allow users to download the app from Mobile Place without needing to authenticate you need to change settings both at the global and the app level.

Global

Account->Settings->Mobile Place

App

Applications->Manage Apps

Detail tab

Download on PC or mac

If you open Mobile Place on your PC or mac it won’t give you a download option because you aren’t on a mobile device.  You can fool it though by turning on device mode in the Chrome debugger.  This means you can download the file to your PC before attaching your mobile device to install it.  Even better, you can download the file from the build-complete dialog in Web IDE.

Debugging

It’s surprisingly easy to debug your app, if you did select Build debug-enabled binaries when you built it.  To debug an Android device connect it to a PC and enter the following URL into Chrome:

chrome://inspect/#devices

To debug an iOS device connect it to a mac and find the device via the developer menu in Safari.

With Fiori web apps I frequently turn debugging on so that I can debug the SAP-standard UI5 libraries.  I don’t believe there is a way to do this with Fiori Mobile.

Logs and Traces

For logs and traces you need to log on to the Mobile Service for Development and Operations.  A network trace captures all of the requests that go through mobile services (a.k.a. CPms).  There are often 2 matching requests, because there is a proxy component which makes the ultimate call to the OData backend.

You can download the trace as an HTTP archive (.har) file.  There are online viewers, but I found a Chrome extension viewer easier to use, especially with larger files.

To trace requests between the mobile client and SAP Cloud Platform mobile services (CPms) you can use Fiddler.  You install fiddler on your PC then configure the wi-fi settings on your phone so that your PC is used as a proxy.  Fiddler logs all of the network requests from your phone. I found this worked best when I did it at home, where there are only a handful of devices on the wi-fi network.

Support

You can raise incidents under MOB-FM (general Fiori Mobile) or MOB-FM-SEC (Mobile Secure, Mobile Place).

Back to Fiori Mobile Overview http://bit.ly/2ijOUsZ #SAP #SAPCloud #AI

With 1711, we released a new beta feature on moving different types of content from development to test to production tenants of C4C, more popularly known as the Transport Management.

A customer would typically have multiple tenants designated with a role e.g. Development, QA, Pre-Production, Production etc. There are different ways of transferring all the content that a developer or a key user creates in the development or a test tenant. You can move the key user changes like page layouts, extension fields, code list restrictions using content transfer by downloading the XML file from the test tenant and uploading it in the production tenant. Similarly, the PDI solution needs to be assembled and downloaded as a zip file from the development tenant and then uploaded to a target (test/production) tenant. Workflow rules, BRF+ rules, analytics content etc. have their own file download/upload mechanism to move the content.

We have released a new feature of transport management to have a one single and simple mechanism to collect all the content that is created during implementation or maintenance of the product, rather than having multiple ways of downloading and uploading the content.

This is a Beta release, so currently only the key user changes are supported, however with upcoming release we plan to include more types of customer content.

With this feature, you can collect all the key user changes created for different UIs in a single transport object in the source and move it to the target tenant. This will significantly reduce the manual effort of creating, organizing, managing and controlling all the customer content. Since, it’s automated process of assembly, release and deployment, it helps reduce errors and redundancy during the deployment.

The below screenshot explains process on a high level. You can also follow the video to understand the entire process.

Since it’s beta release, you can use this feature only in the test tenants and available on request. This function is not available for use in the production tenant. If you would like to activate this function in your test tenants, you will need to create an incident from within the tenant.

Enjoy !!

Gaurav Gera

Disclaimer: This feature is available as a beta version for test use only. It has not been released for productive use. If you activate this feature, you understand and agree to the following conditions: Feature is not covered by SAP support agreements or warranty obligations. Any data loss or damage that may result from use of this feature is not the responsibility of SAP or its representatives. You will not use this feature to process any personal data of end users. SAP may change or remove this function at any time, and it may never appear in the generally available version of the Service.

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