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Update on Fiori for SAP Student Lifecycle Management

RobJonkers
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎01-12-2015 10:00 PM

Introduction

Dear (Higher) Education Community;

Last summer we posted a blog to introduce Fiori for SAP (Higher) Education & Research. In this blog, we introduced what Fiori is, what flavors you have and how to start using it. The Fiori apps for SAP (Higher) Education & Research that we introduced during that time were focused around our Student Information System offering called SAP Student Lifecycle Management.
By now the apps described in that blog, My Courses & My Results, are made available for SAP Student Lifecycle Management via the SAP Service Market Place for (free) download (logon required).


In this follow-up blog we would like to share more information and details on which apps we currently have available, why you would need them, which apps are on the near horizon and what it takes to get them up-and-running.


Fiori for SAP Student Lifecycle Management

Since October last year, we delivered three new Fiori apps for SAP Student Lifecycle Management. All of the apps were designed and developed with the support from our customers.
Via Design Thinking sessions at the customer site as well as regular online meetings we gathered the necessary information from the ‘customers of our customers’: students, professors and faculty/staff employees to ensure we got on the right track when it comes to UX design and functionality.

The following Fiori three apps are now made available to be downloaded via the Service Market Place:


  • My Courses – Fiori app for students to manage their course bookings. Features in a nutshell:
    • Registration and management of courses directly from mobile devices (tablet and phone).
    • View all details of scheduled and available classes.
    • Create a wish list of courses that students wish to take.
    • Join wait lists for courses that are fully booked.
    • Register for rule based courses according to basic & extended booking rules.

 

Screenshot taken from Course Registration (desktop mode)

           

 

Screenshot taken from the Course Registration app from a mobile phone (IOS)



Screenshot taken from the Course Registration app from a tablet (IOS)


  • My Results – Fiori app for students to check their grades and GPA. Features in a nutshell:
    • View the overall results of courses
    • Option to create a PDF, print a list of grades
    • View the results for individual academic years & sessions.
    • View credits earned and grade weighting information
    • Navigate to My Courses for booking courses related to graded course

 

Screenshot taken from the My Grades app (in desktop mode but also available in mobile and tablet view)


  • My Time Table – Fiori app for student to check their personal timetable. Features in a nutshell:
    • A student can view his schedule by day, week, or month.
    • Navigate directly to the course or event displayed in his schedule and view its details.
    • View the names of other course participants
    • Navigate to My Courses for change or cancellation of classes or navigate to My Results once a course is graded.

Screenshot taken from the My Timetable app (in desktop mode but also available in mobile and tablet view)


More details on the above apps can be found via the SAP Fiori Apps Reference Library. This library offers a single-access-point to discover all available SAP Fiori apps and provides key information for each app, especially the technical data required for installation, configuration, extensibility, and support. Via the following HELP.SAP.COM links, you can also find more details:


Screenshot taken from the SAP Fiori Apps Library.


Why would you need them?

With a new generation of students with extremely high expectations (or even ‘demands’) when it comes to UX, personalized and mobilized services it is vital for a (higher) education institutions to deal with these needs from their ‘customers’. This is especially key important in the light of the fierce competition in getting those students bonding to your institution with offering these kind of services. You could even state it is related to student retention: enforcing the relationship between your institution and the student with providing personalized services and mobilized UX will increase retention…


Especially on the topic of mobilized personalized UX is where Fiori can support your institution: delivering personalized SAP services for different stakeholders in your institution; from Fiori apps for your financial department towards apps for HR, faculty, professor and apps for your students.


As you can see below the students we asked for feedback were very positive (plus points for improvement) on our apps and were wondering why their universities did not yet made such apps available for them :smile: .


Screenshot: interesting and encouraging quotes from students after a collective feedback session.
The students who took part came from different (SAP and non-SAP customers) universities from different regions.


Which apps are on the near horizon?

Beside the earlier mentioned apps for students we have two more apps coming up for Student Lifecycle Management that recently got through a Design Thinking process (together with our customers) and are currently; or about to be delivered (My Students) or in the middle of the built process (Enter Grades):


  • My Students - Features in a nutshell:
    • Display details of students' current registrations and statuses
    • Display students' personal information
    • Display students' educational history and examination transcripts
    • Display students' activity audit and hold information
    • Option to create PDF document and print an individual student file


The planned delivery of this app is for Wave 7. Wave 7 is planned for Q1 2015.


Screenshot taken from the UX design of the Student File app


Short ‘sneak preview’ on the Fiori app ‘My Students’ for faculty/staff:


  • Enter Grades - Features in a nutshell:
    • Overview on all appraisals and courses where a professor is responsible for
    • Enter grades and subgrades
    • Register appraisal status and remark
    • Adding notes per student and grade
    • Calculate final grade and attendance.


The planned delivery of this app is for Wave 8. Wave 8 is planned for Q2 2015 RTC. 


Screenshot taken from the UX design of the My Grades app.


What is needed to get them up-and-running

To get the apps up-and-running effort is required on both the side of SAP Student Lifecycle Management and on the UI/Frontend. The first thing you need to know/decide is which architecture you want to use or have in place;


With deploying Fiori apps in your SAP landscape, you basically have two options:

  1. With the SAP Mobile Platform & SAP Netweaver Gateway connected to the backend
  2. With SAP Netweaver Gateway connected to the backend


The situation showed below is focusing on the simplest option: nr2, with SAP Netweaver Gateway pinpointing directly to SAP Student Lifecycle Management (ECC 6.0).


Screenshot: Fiori architecture option 2.


Once you have your key components of the architecture made available you need to run though the following steps to get the apps up-and-running:


1. Installation/update/configuration of backend components:

    1. Create RFC to Gateway
    2. Installation of components (NW Gateway services, app components)
    3. Apply support packages and notes
    4. Registration of (OData) services
    5. User Authorizations


2. Installation/update/configuration of SAP Netweaver Gateway components:

    1. Create RFC to backend
    2. Installation of components (central UI components, app UI components)
    3. Apply support packages and notes
    4. Registration & activation of services (search for PIQ*)
    5. Configuration of Launch pad settings
    6. User Authorizations


Please note that certain components mentioned above need to be on a certain level. Below a summary of the required ‘levels’ per component (minimal stack configuration😞


  • Backend & Frontend Components (can be different per app!*😞
    • SAP Business Suite available with SAP Student Lifecycle Management activated
    • SAP Enhancements Package 7** for SAP ERP 6.0 SPS 06 or 07
    • SAP Fiori for SAP ERP 1.0 SPS 04 or 05.
    • Netweaver 7.31 SP04 or 7.40 SP04
    • SAP Netweaver Gateway 2.0
    • Add-on: Business Suite UI5
    • Frontend component of apps: UIISPSCA 100


*Please check the latest help.sap.com pages for the exact details per app.

** We are currently working on making the apps available on EhP6. The Intention is perform the down port activities within the Wave 8 time frame (so delivery Q2-2015 RTC).


End-user consumption of the Fiori services can go either directly via the browser of the device or via a client. Here below an overview of the available clients (more info via http://help.sap.com/fiori-client):

When it comes to the expertise required to start using the Fiori apps you would at least need the following skills;

  • Gateway Service
  • ABAP
  • NW Technical
  • Basis Technical
  • SLcM


Further reading

Here below you can find some interesting web links, which you can explore to learn more on what SAP has to offer on the topic of Fiori (plus one blog from a customer on their Fiori experiences):



Are you interested?

Are you interested to get the SAP Student Lifecycle Management Fiori apps available for your students and staff? Let us know if you have any questions, we are eager to get our customers adopting Fiori for SAP Student Lifecycle Management!

Thanks!


Kind regards

SAP (Higher) Education & Research team

e-mail

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