Hi all,
This time I would like to share with you some more information about one of the core SAP NetWeaver Portal capabilities, but at the same time one which seems not to be known good enough - Object Based Navigation.
What is Object Based Navigation? OBN is a run-time SAP Portal capability for navigating and passing business parameters between applications in the scope of the user's roles.
Let's start with an example. Assume that you develop your custom developed application showing a list of all your company's customers. Now assume that each customer name is a link to a new pop-up window which shows the customer details with more sensitive information such as license information and expected payment information. (Here comes the catch) Assume that you would like this link to behave differently for different users according to their Portal roles. For example: sales managers will get a detailed view of the (pop-up) application, while sales personals (non managers) will get a "lean" view of the customer's details (pop-up) application.
Sales Person View - since the Sales Person is assigned to the sales Poral role, the 1st target iView will be launched
Sales Manager View - since the Sales Manger is assigned to the managers Poral role, the 2nd target iView will be launched, which is the more detailed one with the sensitive information
This scenario can be achieved relatively easy with the SAP NetWeaver Portal Object Based Navigation technology. The OBN navigation engine "calculates" the navigation target according to three main parameters: Business Object, Operation and user's role. According to these three objects, the target application is launched.
In our example, the Business Object will be: Customers; Operation will be: Details; and role: depending on the user who is actually performing the navigation.
I hope that till now you managed to understand the overview and use case of Object Based Navigation. In order to get some more detailed information how to implement OBN in your Portal, have a look at the following link which will explain in full details all you need to know about OBN. In addition, questions can be discussed in our dedicated /community [original link is broken] for OBN topics.
Regards,
Aviad Rivlin
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