An exciting SAP TechEd event is already over, it contained an in-person event in Bangalore along with a companion virtual event. This blog will give you an overview on the news and the product highlights, that were communicated for SAP Build Work Zone at SAP TechEd this year, and it also gives you a glimpse on the key investments areas in 2024.

In Bangalore we had a great selection of sessions showcasing the power of SAP Build Work Zone and SAP Start, roadmap and demo sessions, hands-on sessions and one session with customer HMEL’s migration story from SAP Cloud Portal Service to SAP Build Work Zone, and there was much more to learn and discover.

For the people who could not make it to the event in Bangalore, I can recommend watching the replay of SAP TechEd virtual session “What’s New with SAP Build Work Zone – Innovation Meets Productivity – AD102v. With this session you get a great overview on the latest innovations for SAP Start and SAP Build Work Zone – including a demo of the new site experience of SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition.

One product with multiple editions

In most of the SAP Build Work Zone TechEd sessions you could hear about our product vision of a complementing modular offering for SAP’s central entry point based on Work Zone technology, providing:

• a true single product portfolio with multiple aligned editions offering a complementing set of capabilities.
• a common experience for admins and end users such as technical foundation, horizon visual theme for SAP Fiori, mobile experience based on Mobile Start, common page builder, etc.

You can see on the image above, that there is a clearly defined path in terms of when to use each edition. We are also working on enabling an upgrade path starting with SAP Start to standard and then advanced edition. A company could kick off its journey with SAP Start, later add on-premise systems in a unified experience via SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition, and finally upgrade to SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition extending the standard edition with enhanced capabilities for content management, web content, team workspaces and integration of third-party solutions.

• At SAP TechEd last year we reached an important milestone with the unification of SAP Launchpad service and SAP Work Zone into one solution (= SAP Build Work Zone) on the same technology foundation. It is our constant focus to bring these two solutions still closer together in terms of content model, administration tools and user experience.
• In July 2023 we reached another big milestone with a major release for SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition including a new site experience for spaces and pages (see also section under Product Highlights).  It is now possible to create and edit pages using a flexible grid-based page layout. This brings us also to a closer alignment with the page/workspace editing experience of SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition.
• In July 2023 we released SAP Start, which became generally available and was added to our offering. SAP Start is SAP’s new out-of-the-box default central entry point based on SAP Build Work Zone technology. SAP Start gives users a powerful home page experience when adopting SAP’s cloud solutions.

Product Highlights 

SAP Build Work Zone, Standard Edition 

In Q3 we announced that SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition (formerly known as “SAP Launchpad service”), is available with a set of new features related to a new site experience with spaces and pages based on the Horizon visual theme for SAP Fiori. Many customers and partners have been waiting for this functionality, now they are enabled to leverage pages with a flexible grid-based layout and populating them with UI Integration cards, app tiles, and out-of-the-box business content from SAP solutions on-premise and cloud. For more information, read my announcement blog post from July 2023. 

There are still some limitations, in Q4 two limitations will be removed: translation/multi language support for pages and spaces, as well as export and import of pages and spaces will be supported, see roadmap Q4, 2023.

Support for External Facing Scenarios 

Business to Business (B2B) relationship and scenarios are a key factor to business success. Knowing this we already started in Q1 this year with providing supportive features for external facing scenarios (allowing for example the implementation of supplier use cases with SAP Build Work Zone). New commercial options were made available. Typically external stakeholders are infrequent users. For this reason, we have introduced connection based pricing (for standard and advanced edition). In this way, customers only pay for the actual logins, they don’t have to pay for each user individually. This allows thousands of users to access the system in a cost effective way. See also Commercial Models and Metering.

In addition there are new features to provide administrators and workspace owners more flexibility for defining access controls on homepages/workspaces content (see section on SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition in this blog below), more features are planned on the roadmap for Q4:

• Extending workspace access control concept to allow role-based visibility for workspaces
• Provide an option to define role-based access control for cards

By leveraging those access control features, admins can define in a more flexible way which external users can see which content on pages and workspaces and also which entries on the site menu of SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition are visible for external users.

Have a look at this image taken from one of our SAP TechEd demo systems showcasing a supplier dashboard with widgets for Invoice Status, Purchasing Trends, Unacknowledged POs and more:

SAP Build Work Zone, Advanced Edition 

Check out the following news summary for the advanced edition:

• Enhanced and flexible site menu (add apps to menu, show/hide bar, define access control: some entries only visible for a certain group of users);
• Enhanced search experience including role-assigned business apps (users can only find the apps for which they have permissions);
• Site-level preview release mechanism which allows customers to define some sub-accounts as test accounts and these will make the preview available. New features come earlier into these accounts than into the productive accounts and can be tested extensively.
• Show workspace tasks in SAP Task Center (see also section below for more details)
• Site admins can add an announcement to the top of all the screens in the site to communicate important news or events

Dynamic Visibility & Support for Workspace Types:

• The following widgets across homepages/workpages now also support private & external workspaces as content source (in addition to homepage/menu content & public workspaces): Content, Forum, Knowledge Base & Event​.
• If a user does not have permission to view the widget content because of missing access to the widget source, this will be shown in a message.
• Workpage creators can also chose to show/hide empty widgets, in which case widgets (for instance knowledge base or content) without access or content to display, will be hidden. This also applies to empty UI Integration Cards.
• The features for dynamic visibility support an improved user experience by surfacing only relevant content & hide empty sections.​ They expand the flexibility for page designers to surface information from different sources, without having to create redundant pages.

Integration with SAP Build Process Automation

With the price list update in July 2023, SAP Build Process Automation was added to SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone service bundle replacing SAP Workflow service.
Customers using the booster to onboard to SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition, or to SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone, can choose whether to include SAP Build Process Automation in their onboarding. See also Commercial Models and Metering and this blog post.

Integration with SAP Task Center

Until now it was already possible to create a Task Center tile on SAP Build Work Zone advanced and standard edition as well as as on SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone. For more information, see SAP Help Portal.

Now the integration with Task Center is working bi-directional. SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition (and SAP Successfactors Work Zone) can now serve as task providers for SAP Task Center. The integration with SAP Task Center allows users to see any task that is created in a workspace in the central SAP Task Center UI. For more information, see here.

SAP Start 

Mobile Start as mobile client for SAP Start

While SAP Start is designed for the web, there’s a native mobile counterpart to it with SAP Mobile Start, available for iOS and Android devices.

Extended availability for selected SAP Cloud solutions

SAP Start is generally available since July 2023, and its scope and reach are constantly increasing. While it already includes To Dos from all major SAP cloud business solutions, the business content in terms of Interest Cards is limited to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, and SAP SuccessFactors only. This will change over the next releases, and all remaining major SAP cloud business solutions will add relevant content for SAP Start. Check out the SAP Start roadmap for that.

For more information on SAP Start, check out the blog post from Michael Meier: 7 Things You Need to Know About SAP Start.

What is coming next? Outlook and Key Investments Areas

Build Guided Experiences Using the Wizard Layout
Coming in Q4: Enable content managers to create and configure UI card-based, interactive experiences to guide business users through a process flow (for SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition, see Q4 roadmap).

A Glimpse into Key Investments areas in 2024 (note this can be subject to change without any further notice):

Site Experience in the standard edition:

• Harmonized support for content packages as content channel incl. UI Integration cards
• Streamlined experience for locally created space and pages in the content manager

Support of SAP’s Central Entry Point Vision: Aligned native mobile entry point across all editions using SAP Mobile Start

Integration of AI Capabilities: integrating SAP Joule into SAP Build Work Zone, standard and advanced edition. SAP Joule is already integrated into SAP Start, there you can use it for example as an AI assistant, that knows your unique role and acts as your work copilot across SAP applications

LoB Integration and Content Packages: Additional content packages across LoBs and industries are planned to be made available.

Learn more

SAP Build Work Zone on: sap.com / SAP Community
Discovery Center missions: standard / advanced edition
SAP Build Work Zone on SAP PartnerEdge

Learning Journeys

• Getting Started Learning Journey for SAP Build: providing you the fundamentals of SAP Build and first hands-on experience with SAP Build Apps, SAP Build Process Automation & SAP Build Work Zone.
• Check out the dedicated unit for SAP Build Work Zone in the learning journey “Utilize SAP Build for Low-Code/No-Code Applications and Automations for Citizen Developers“. The unit guides you through the main concepts and features of SAP Build Work Zone standard and advanced edition. After completing the complete learning journey, learners have the chance to take a 3-hr proctored exam to earn a certificate and become a certified Citizen Developer Associate.
• For more deep dive technical information, we recommend our new learning journey “Implement and Administer SAP Build Work Zone“, targeted to partners, consultants and administrators. This learning journey will guide you through the process and considerations of implementing SAP Build Work Zone, from initial deployment and system administration to integration setups and extensibility options. A certification is also included

Follow SAP Build on Social Media and Join the SAP Builders Group

• Twitter (hashtag #SAPBuild)
• LinkedIn

Join also our SAP Builders group and engage with a community of peers to unleash innovation by building apps, process automations, and creating business sites.