SAPUI5 flexibility to adapt standard SAP apps

SAPUI5 is SAP’s strategic Web framework, core part of the SAP Fiori user experience, SAP Build Code and the SAP BTP Developer’s Guide. While SAP delivers many standard SAPUI5 apps, e.g. in SAP S/4HANA, often partners and customers need to tailor the standard to their individual needs. SAPUI5 flexibility offers capabilities to adapt standard apps, not only for developers but also for key users and end users using simple WYSIWYG drag and drop tools. Learn about all the capabilities in SAPUI5 Flexibility – All You Need to Know.

Creating adaptation projects in SAP Business Application Studio

SAP Business Application Studio (BAS) is SAP’s tool for professional developers. It provides a turnkey environment, based on industry standards, and is tailored for efficient development in the SAP ecosystem.
Developers can leverage the concepts of SAPUI5 flexibility by creating adaptation projects for freestyle SAPUI5 or SAP Fiori elements apps in BAS. Those projects contain all custom adaptations, which are created in visual or code-based editors of BAS. At the same time, the standard SAP app remains untouched, no modifications are needed, and even predefined extension points are unnecessary. Once tested successfully, the adaptation project is deployed and can be integrated into an SAP Fiori launchpad or other homepages, just like a normal app. See details in SAP Help: SAP Business Application Studio – Extending SAP Fiori Applications. 

NEW 👉 Create SAPUI5 adaptation projects in VS Code

Most developers leverage BAS on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) as a managed, preconfigured environment, with its tight integration to SAP BTP services and SAP systems. Some developers need an offline IDE to have full control of their local installation, e.g. when there is no internet connection. SAP Fiori tools are available in both, in BAS as well as in VS Code, delivering regular updates and continuous innovations. In the same way, now also adaptation projects of SAPUI5 flexibility can be created in VS Code.

Please note that we are releasing adaptation projects in VS Code in December 2023 as experimental. This means the functionality is not complete, may evolve, and might not have complete documentation. The SAPUI5 team provides this version to receive early feedback from our developer community about creating new adaptation projects in VS Code. 

Also note a few restrictions, compared to using adaptation projects in BAS:

• Legacy standard apps not supporting adaptation projects have no fallback to extension projects.
• Safe mode is not supported
• The minimum SAPUI5 version is 1.72. It is planned to soon use a minimum version of 1.71, just like in BAS.
• The Preview of an adaptation project opens in a separate browser tab.
• There is no automatic update of npm modules for the project.

Nevertheless, adaptation projects created with the new tool in VS Code can be used in productive scenarios. 

How to use adaptation projects in VS Code?

See the SAP Help documentation on Adapting an Application. The high-level steps are:

1. Download Microsoft Visual Studio Code and install SAP Fiori tools (see tutorial).
2. Launch the command ‘Fiori: Open Adaptation Project Generator’.

Adaptation Project Editor

We have also introduced the Application Information page for adaptation projects so you can easily find all the relevant commands and links on one page:

Application Information for Adaptation Projects

Next steps  

Independent of this new capability, SAP Business Application Studio remains the strategic direction for professional developers. As soon as this new implementation for VS Code has full functionality (planned for 2024), it will replace the current implementation in BAS. 

Stay tuned, the UI5 team is adding full capabilities to the new implementation and plans to deliver a next version soon. For this, the team encourages you to use it and to provide feedback in the comments section below.