Mobile SSO for SAP Fiori with SAP Authenticator

Overview of SAP Fiori

SAP Fiori is a new age experience (UX) for SAP, that is revolutionizing the way applications are built, taking the user experience to new heights. It combines modern design principles providing a holistic and a consistent experience across variety of devices. With SAP Fiori, you can accomplish a variety of productive tasks including getting quick insight-to-action anytime and anywhere.

There are a variety of apps that are currently applying the SAP Fiori UX to provide enhanced user productivity and personalization for customers, who use SAP Business Suite on any database and SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA. Enterprises that have implemented a single sign on (SSO) solution for the SAP Business Suite can give the same ease of use to their Fiori users with several SSO options.

Implementing Mobile SSO for SAP Fiori with SAP authenticator

On November 3rd, 2014 SAP released a latest support package (SP04) for Single Sign-On 2.0 – a mobile SSO solution that is perceived as a straightforward authentication mechanism for favorite applications and trusted websites on mobile devices. It offers simplicity for your SAP Fiori users without compromising the security for your company.

This solution is based on Time based One-Time Password (TOTP) algorithm, which is of the open standard RFC 6238. This algorithm computes a one-time pass code from a shared secret key and current time. With the respective user name and pass code, the authentication to the Identity Provider triggers IDP initiated single sign-on mechanism. For TOTP client, SAP authenticator is the mobile application, which is available for iOS and android platforms. SAP Authenticator offers password protection. The password is defined during the installation of the application, it is used only for the encryption/decryption of the secret key, and it is not stored on the device. The password offers additional level of security, that is not available with the other similar OTP generator applications existing on the market. Mobile SSO implementation with TOTP is easier to setup and support compared to, for example, a Mobile SSO implementation based on client certificates, where a Public Key Infrastructure is necessary. Mobile SSO with TOTP could be enabled easily also for scenarios that allow a “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) policy, where the transfer and the storage of client certificates is difficult or impossible.

Once you implement this solution, you will have the flexibility to use Fiori applications, bookmarked on your device after a single click. Once you click on the respective Fiori application bookmark, the SAP authenticator creates a pass code and a URL with respective parameters. Next, the SAP authenticator sends this URL to the browser, wherein the browser opens the URL that triggers the single Sign-On. On the other hand, the Identity Provider checks the entered credentials and if the authentication is successful, issues a SAML 2.0 assertion for you and for the respective service provider (SAP Fiori). In the final step that refers to the HTTP-POST binding response, the SAP Fiori application gets securely opened on your mobile device.

Key Take aways

• Greater simplicity for end users – high level of user experience
• Enhanced security for your organization
• Save costs due to minimized number of password related IT tickets
• Increased employee productivity (only one single password and less typing)
• Built on responsive design principles
• Utilizes SAP UI5 and SAP NetWeaver Gateway to provide a consistent and a seamless end-to-end extensibility
• Leverage your current SAP investments by offering quick value for over 85% of your users.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it is obvious that Mobile SSO with SAP Authenticator has a major role to play in ensuring enhanced corporate security, while providing a consistent, simple and a holistic consumer grade experience across a variety of devices – desktop, tablet or a smart phone. Organizations worldwide are adapting to this new technology to take consumer mobile user experience to the new level with perceived business benefits – improved user productivity and substantial cost savings.

If you would like to request a demo for the “Fiori SSO with SAP Authenticator”, please click on the link below. Alternatively, if you would like to discuss with an Innovapptive associate, you can reach out to us by emailing us at sales@innovapptive.com or you can reach a sales representative at (713) 275-1804.

Seamless File Upload and Download to SAP using SAP NetWeaver Gateway

Introduction

SAP NetWeaver Gateway is a technology that offers a seamless platform to connect devices, environments and platforms. It enables creation of cutting edge solutions with world class UX providing the potential of SAP business software into new experiences including social and collaboration environments, mobile, tablet and rich internet applications. It offers the flexibility to use any programming language or model to connect with SAP applications by leveraging REST services and OData/ATOM protocols, eliminating the necessity to have the knowledge of SAP.

This blog provides step by step instructions of how you can leverage Innovapptive’s function modules to upload files for any document and later download the files to SAP server, appreciating the technology behind this approach. Before we get into the actual process of file upload/download process, let’s get a brief technical background of the function modules behind the upload/download process.

There are two function modules on the SAP server to enable the file upload/download process:

1. /INVMWL/FM_WI_ATTACH_DISPLAY (Display Attachments – file upload): In this module, you can define the input parameters (IM_OBJKEY and IM_APPID) to get the required attachments for that file.

2. /INVMWL/FM_WI_ATTACH_DOWNLOAD (Download Attachments – file download): Once you get the required attachments, the next step is to fetch the data from the attachments. This is accomplished in this module, wherein you can define 3 parameters (IM_APPID, IM_OBJKEY and IM_OBJID) to retrieve the information available in each of the attachments.

Let’s assume, there is a sales order for which you need to attach multiple files. Technically speaking, here sales order is referred by the object key and respective files that you want to attach are referred by its respective object ids. Note that each document can have a one reference id. First, let’s understand the high level steps for the file upload/download process:

File Display

STEP 1 – TASKS TO PERFORM ON SAP BACK-END SERVER

1. Pass the parameter names (IM_OBJKEY and IM_APPID) to get the attachments.

2.  Read the information in the documents and convert into binary code.

STEP 2 – TASKS TO PERFORM IN RFC (SAP NETWEAVER GATEWAY) FOR 

1. Replicate the entity structure (as defined /INVMWL/FM_WI_ATTACH_DISPLAY module) and map the services to get the list of attachments.

2. Replicate the entity structure (as defined in /INVMWL/FM_WI_ATTACH_DOWNLOAD module) and map the services to download the data. Now, let’s move on to the high level steps:

File Upload and Download

STEP 1 – TASKS TO PERFORM ON SAP BACK-END SERVER

1. Get the attachments for the file (refer figure 2) by passing the input parameters. For this, follow the below logic:

a. Based on the parameters (Object key & Appid) that you pass, select the business object.

b.  Call the functional module BDS_ALL_CONNECTIONS_GET with the following parameters:

 Input for this functional module

Classname = Business Object

Classtype = BO

Objkey = IM_OBJKEY     

Output for this functional module

Number of attachments’ component ids

c. Loop the component ids.

d. Call the functional module:SO_DOCUMENT_READ_API1

e. Enter the component id to get data from each of the attached documents.            

Note: If there are multiple attachments, multiple object ids gets retrieved for a single object key (Ex: Sales Order)

f. Endloop.

Figure 1: Import Parameters

Figure 2: Export Parameters

2. Read and convert the information in the files to binary code (Refer figure 4),

a. Call the function module SO_DOCUMENT_READ_API1.

b. Get the attached document data in string format.

c. Call the functional module SCMS_BINARY_TO_XSTRING to convert to xstring from binary.

Figure 3: Import Parameters

Figure 4: Export Parameters

STEP 2 – TASKS TO PERFORM IN RFC (SAP NETWEAVER GATEWAY) FOR 

1. Replicate the entity structure using RFC module and map the services to get the list of attachments.

a. Create the entity structure in the Properties screen. This generates a URL.  

Figure 5: Replicate Entity Structure

b. Map the services for query operation for module: /INVMWL/FM_WI_ATTACH_DISPLAY

Figure 6: Map the Services

2.  Replicate the entity structure and map the services to download the data.

a. Replicate the fields in the Properties screen.

Figure 7: Replicate the entity structure to read the data

b. Map the services (Operation GetEntity) in the /INVMWL/FM_WI_ATTACH_DOWNLOAD module, which generates a URL where you      can view/download the data of the attachments.

Figure 8: Map the services to download the data

Contact us today to learn how you can leverage our custom mobile development accelerators to reduce your app development times by over 50%. Read more here – Custom Application Development. Contact us by sending an email tosales@innovapptive.com

SAP Web IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for SAP Fiori and SAPUI5 Applications

SAP Web IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is a Web-based development environment designed to support the end-to-end application lifecycle for SAP Fiori and SAPUI5 applications

In today’s market scenario, the key to business success lies in agility in multiple dimensions. One of the key aspects of agility is to design, develop and deploy applications swiftly to address the growing expectations of the users to have amazing user experiences. Using SAP Web IDE, developers and power users alike can swiftly deploy new-age applications that leverage SAP HANA and SAP HANA cloud platform and is planned to be available as on-premise solution on SAP HANA XS in the future. The pluggable and modular architecture allows to integrate SAPUI5 tools and enables SAP development, partners and customers to add their own plugins.

This web based development environment addresses the application development processes in a comprehensive manner, right from prototype through deployment. SAP Web IDE offers highly efficient tools to easily build and extend apps applying SAP Fiori UX and generic SAPUI5 apps using wizards, templates, drag and drop tools, code editor and much more. Simply stated, SAP Web IDE is a web based environment that lets users to create incredible user experiences swiftly for browser and mobile devices. Apart from that, SAP Web IDE environment also lets users to extend SAP Fiori and UI5 apps (through visual extensibility editor) as well as build new UI5/HTML5 or custom Fiori apps.

Overview of key features

• Offers standard development tools such as code editors wizards and WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) tooling that are optimized for building responsive HTML5 apps with SAPUI5.
• Consists of certain standard templates – SAPUI5, Fiori and SAP WEB IDE plugin; and offers flexibility to create your own template (custom template).
• Supports the E2E application life cycle that covers UI design, development, testing, deployment and customer extensions for responsive SAPUI5 apps.
• Code based environment – the tool never gets in the way of the developer.
• Both SAP and non-SAP developers can design, build, test and deploy responsive SAP UI5 and Fiori like apps using SAP HANA or Gateway OData services.
• Develop once and deploy anywhere – can be run on any device including mobile and tablet.
• Instant preview feature that lets you launch the application in the browser at different resolutions and in multiple languages, using real or mock data.
• Collaborative development and project persistency that lets developers to collaborate on specific files via JAM integration (not available in the beta release in June 2014).
• Provides extensible and modular architecture that lets you add your own plug-in/template via wizards and templates.

Why SAP Web IDE

• Enhances development productivity – offers easy to consume development environment.
• Minimizes IT infrastructure and administration efforts.
• Cloud based (hosted on SAP HANA cloud platform), eliminating initial installation and configuration of local IT infrastructure.
• Access development projects anytime and anywhere.
• Holistic development environment with incredible UI.
• Drag-and-drop (WYSIWYG) editors – simple to use with less technical complexity.
• Tighter collaboration between developers, business experts and designers.

Summary

SAP Web IDE serves as a great productivity tool for developers, designers and business experts. With its cutting edge embedded tools covering end-to-end development process, it enables you to rapidly design, build and deploy web applications based on SAPUI5 and also supports you in extending SAP Fiori apps. Some of the key advantages of leveraging SAP Web IDE include enhancement of the development productivity, low infrastructure costs and ensuring tight collaboration between designers, developers and business experts. Hence, SAP Web IDE lets you develop and deploy applications with greater agility, while providing amazing end user experiences.

If you would like to request a demo for the “SAP Web IDE”, please click on the link above. Alternatively, if you would like to discuss with an Innovapptive solution expert, you can reach out to us by emailing us at sales@innovapptive.com or you can reach a sales representative at (713) 275-1804.

Enterprise Mobile App Deployment Strategies

The advent of smartphones and tablets have changed the way we interface with enterprise systems. Smartphones have redefined the way we communicate with added features like GPS, camera, scanners and much more. This is also driving changes in the way business processes are implemented within organizations. Hence, it is evident that mobile technology has a major role to play within most organizations, as remote access to enterprise systems becomes an absolute necessity with accessibility of relevant applications as and when needed. Enterprises are embracing newer technologies in this area including the best options to implement an enterprise app deployment strategy.  This blog tries to explore some the current enterprise mobile app deployment strategies.

As is generally evident, smartphone users have a shorter attention span compared to users of desktop applications and often require access, when they need most or when time is the priority. Tablets to certain extent offer more scope for data input and processing, and also has an added advantage of portability. Hence, when designing applications, one has to take into consideration certain factors like the nature of the gadget for which the application has to be designed, how data is being viewed, duration of usage and the levels of user interaction.

However, one of the greatest challenges for developing mobile applications is the myriad number of varied smartphones and tablets that need to be supported. There are several things to consider when you intend to create user interfaces for different mobile device types – designing UI for non-touch screens is quite different when compared to designing a UI for touch screens.  One interface type may not be compatible with the technical requirements of all device types.

Now, let’s understand some of the industry’s best deployment approaches.  There are currently four deployment options for mobile applications:

• Native
• Hybrid (native code with HTML and JavaScript)
• Web (HTML 5 and JavaScript)
• Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) as middleware

NATIVE DEPLOYMENT

Native deployment has certain basic advantages such as providing a more appropriate look and feel to the user and allowing usage of I/O devices within the mobile devices. This approach tends for easy adoption. However, one of the challenge is the knowledge and support for at least four client languages in order to accomplish native deployment for multiple device types (For instance, for Android devices, you need the support of J2SE, which is again incompatible with iOS and Blackberry). To make matters worse, there are different versions of these languages and newer ones are continually being released. Hence, this approach entitles possession of multiple skill sets and the ability to meet the challenge of maintaining them.

HYBRID DEPLOYMENT

This deployment integrates a native application container with an HTML5 front end. However, the user interface is displayed using an embedded HTML5 standard web browser control. This model lets developers to enjoy the benefits of using the HTML5-standard in the front-end, while retaining the power and flexibility of a native application container. However, this approach is plagued with few challenges – requires a specialized skill set and there are unresolved security related issues with the usage of HTML5.

WEB (HTML5) DEPLOYMENT

Though HTML5 provides an advantage to achieve multi-purpose web application development, however, it is just a non-enterprise grade and immature standard and not considered as a de facto standard currently. Since World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) hasn’t finalized the definition of the HTML5, it is still not valid and reliable. When it comes to the issue of securely connecting to the enterprise systems, certain vulnerabilities associated with HTML like phishing, malware and denial of service are still applicable.

MOBILE ENTERPRISE APPLICATION PLATFORM (MEAP) AS MIDDLEWARE

These platforms offers high level of flexibility in mitigating challenges of developing mobile applications by managing the diversity of devices, networks and user groups at the time of deployment and throughout the entire solution’s lifecycle.  With the provision of high level languages, it enables rapid mobile application development. MEAPs provides a comprehensive and a long term approach in deploying mobile enterprise applications, particularly when cross-platform connectivity becomes paramount. MEAPs lets you develop mobile enterprise applications once and allows you deploy it to varied mobile device types.

It consists of two components: middleware integration server and a mobile client server. The middleware component lets you integrate with the organization’s applications, taking care of cross-platform support and security. On the other hand, the mobile client server enables rapid development and deployment of the mobile presentation layer across varied device types.

In addition to the above deployment strategies, there are a few specialized packages, which provide connectivity to some or most mobile devices. These systems consist of a front-end studio that lets developers create presentation layers as required on the mobile devices, thus eliminating the requirement to create for each device type.  This is an emerging market, but looks promising.

Though there are several approaches for deploying mobile applications, developing a specific native language is a practical option for specialized workflows that involves connectivity between a specific application and a specific device type. Specialized packages can also be a good option, but requires full scale integration with specific enterprise applications.  However, for organizations which consists of cross-platform applications that access multiple device types, MEAPs can be the most effective and productive option.

From an organization’s perspective, you need to clearly understand your users’ needs, technologies and the resources (money and people) that you intend to invest, before you embark on the right deployment strategy.

Enterprises are looking at how to leverage mobile to transform their customer relationships, partner enablement and empower workforces. Just as the web became a strategic part of your business a decade ago, mobile will become strategic part of your business tomorrow. Innovapptive offers several solutions to help initiate your mobile journey -

mPower™ Mobile Kickstart Strategy Workshop

Take this deep dive into your company’s 1-3 year strategic mobility plans. Our mobile experts will walk you through a competitive assessment to help you understand your current position in mobile, then lead you through a 3-step process to create a mobile application strategy and provide actionable advice on your future mobile plans. At the end of this workshop your team will have a blueprint for successful mobile app design, development, test, and support.

• 2-days; Business unit, IT managers, chief marketing and mobility officers, and their teams
• Create a roadmap to scale and measure your mobile initiatives
• Determine the right mix of sourcing, development, and budget for your current ad future mobile requirements

mPower™ Starter Workshop

Join this high level discussion about the transformative nature of mobility and mobile applications on the business process. Included is a brief competitive assessment, opportunity discovery, and adjacent industry examples. We will discuss both internally-focused (employee) applications and externally-focused (customer) applications.

• ½ day; C-level executives and their teams
• Maximize the impact of mobile on your business
• Tap into Innovapptive’s mobile experts to plan your mobile strategy and prioritize your mobile investments
• Understand how to use mobile to transform your customer and partner relationships and mobilize your workforce

If you would like more information on how Innovapptive can assist you with the right mobile strategy, please clickhere to schedule an appointment with one of our solution engineers.

Android Lollipop for SAP: Innovapptive is Delivering Apps on the Next Era of Android

In an era of rapid communication through mobile and hand held devices, Android has forged one step further to come out with the latest version of its operating system – Android 5.0 Lollipop. This release comes with new features for users as well thousands of new APIs for developers. It offers level of extensibility – from phones, tablets and wearable to TVs and cars. Innovapptive will be releasing it’s first apps on Android Lollipop for SAP in Q1 of 2015.

This blog tries to addresses some of the core features of the Android Lollipop without getting into detailed technicalities.

Some of the core features of Android 5.0 Lollipop are:

• Material design
• Performance focus
• Notifications
• Support for TV
• Document-centric apps
• Advanced connectivity
• High-performance graphics
• Enhanced audio capabilities
• Enhanced camera & video
• Android in the workplace
• Screen capturing and sharing
• Advanced sensors

MATERIAL DESIGN

Android 5.0 offers material design to Android and provides you a comprehensive toolkit for integrating the new design patterns easily in your apps. The built-in activity transitions lets you seamlessly migrate from one state to another with beautiful animated motion. Buttons, checkboxes and other touch controls in your app have been configured to support ripple animations. With RenderThread (a new system managed processing thread), you can render smooth animations, even where there are delays in main UI thread.

PERFORMANCE FOCUS

Android 5.0 enhances computing experience (faster, smoother and powerful) greatly utilizing its new ART runtime to support a combination of ahead-of-time (AOT), just-in-time (JIT), and interpreted code. It is supported on ARM, x86, and MIPS architectures and is fully 64-bit compatible.

With assurance of smoother performance, Android 5.0 offers enhanced A/V sync, wherein the audio and graphics pipelines have been incorporated for more accurate time stamps, letting video apps and games to display smooth synchronized content.

NOTIFICATIONS

Notifications in Android 5.0 ensures high level of visibility, accessibility and configuration capabilities. You can enable varying notification details on the lock screen and also have the flexibility to allow none, some or all notification details to be displayed on a secured lock screen. Important notification alerts such as incoming calls are displayed in a heads-up notification – a small floating window to help you in responding or cancelling notifications without leaving your current app.

COMPLETE TV PLATFORM

A unique feature that is added in this version is the provision of a complete TV platform to enhance your app’s big screen experience. This lets users to discover content easily offering personalized recommendations and voice search. Simply stated, you can now recreate big and bold experiences for your app or game content and support interactions with game controllers and other input devices. Android provides a lensback UI framework in the v17 support library to help you develop 10-foot UIs for television.

DOCUMENT-CENTRIC APPS

Android 5.0 offers an all new Overview space (previously called Recents), which is more versatile and enables multitasking. Now APIs lets you display separate activities in your app as individual documents along with other recent screens.

You can leverage concurrent documents to allow users to instantly access more of your content or services. For instance, you might use concurrent documents to represent files in any productivity app or chats in a messaging app.

ADVANCED CONNECTIVITY

Android 5.0 adds new APIs that lets apps to execute concurrent operations with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). This enables both scanning (central mode) and advertising (peripheral mode).

High-performance graphics

With support for Khronos OpenGL ES 3.1, it now provides games and other apps with the highest possible performance for both 2D and 3D graphics on all compatible devices.

ENHANCED AUDIO CAPABILITIES

With a new audio-capture design, it offers low latency audio output. This new design consists of a host of features that includes fast capture thread that prevents blocking, except during a read operation, fast track capture clients at native sample rate and channel count & bit depth.

ENHANCED CAMERA & VIDEO

Android 5.0 comes with a powerful camera APIs that enables you to capture raw formats such as YUV and Bayer RAW and manage parameters such as exposure time, ISO sensitivity and frame duration on a per-frame basis. This new camera enables you to capture uncompressed full resolution YUV images at 30 FPS on all compatible devices.

ANDROID IN THE WORKPLACE

To enable bring-your-own-device (BYOD) for enterprise environments, a new managed provisioning process has been provided that creates a secure work profile on the device.
For company-owned devices, IT administrators can commence with a new device and configure it with a device owner. Employers can then offer these devices with a device owner app already installed that enables configuration of global service settings.

SCREEN CAPTURING AND SHARING

With this new version, you can add screen capturing and screen sharing functionalities to your app. Once you have the user permission, you can capture non-secure video from the display and send it over the network, based on your requirements.

ADVANCED SENSORS

In this new version, a new tilt detector sensor lets you improve activity recognition on compatible devices and a heart rate sensor helps in capturing the heart rate of the person, who accesses the device. Enhanced interaction composite sensors are now available to detect special interactions like wake up gesture, a pick up gesture and a glance gesture.

We have just now looked into the core features of this new version and how this new version would greatly enhance the overall user experience in terms of processing speed, ease of accessing applications, user productivity, enhanced audio and video capabilities, without compromising on the security aspects.

Contact us today to learn how you can leverage our custom mobile development accelerators to convert your enterprise apps to Android 5.0 Lollipop. Read more here – Custom Application Development. Contact us by sending an email to sales@innovapptive.com