FPM Advantages (Real Time Examples)

[Former Member]

Hi All,

I just finished a SAP Training on FPM and I am not fully convinced/aware of the real-time benefits of leveraging FPM in our WDA development.

Can any of you share real-time examples of how FPM has helped you in reducing the time for development or helped you in making the development easier than developing everything from scratch?

Is FPM beneficial only when we do new WDA development? How extensively do you use FPM?

Also, any other benefits of FPM in the areas of "Enhancing Existing WDAs", "Configuring Existing WDAs".

We have a HCM implementation with ESS/MSS in Portal, any examples in this area would be highly appreciated.

Regards,

Saleem

[ChrisPaine]

Hello,

I use the FPM all the time in my developments. I really do get reuse out of the components. For example I have built an organisational structure selection UIBB that allows for selection of an organisational unit and searching on employees. I've reused it in 3 different applications. It was really easy to "plug in".

The advantage of the FPM phase model in controlling applications cannot be underestimated. I don't need to worry about writing extra controlling logic - if one UIBB fails a navigation event call the event is cancelled. (that looking at it in the most simplistic way.) The raise event, process event, check processing success model is superb for allowing small components to work together.

Another advantage is the ability to have multiple different configurations of the same components - I have for example one configuration of one application that includes additional display only UIBBs that show the internal variables etc of the app - very easy to add/remove these just using the configuration, rather than having to embed views manually.

When EhP5 comes out, I think you will see even more FPM apps, and also a slew of standard UIBBs that you can reuse, and easily create new configurations of SAP standard apps.

Moreover, with everything SAP is building coming in FPM - you'd want your custom application to look like the standard ones. Then using the FPM is a good idea.

[Former Member]

Hallo Saleem,

I also share your concerns and dilema in choosing right technology. In our case we decided to choose to go ahead with WDA-FPM based on the following

SAP advices the ISV to use WDA-FPM,

SAP itself uses FPM (any deviation should be approved by UI council)

SAP UI Guidelines are implemented in FPM (NW 7.02 has more examples like Header,Toolbar should be static and the content scrollable is).

FPM is contiously getting attension in SAP development/investment.

We are taking last months to prototype applications based on WDA-FPM. After September we are planning to develop one project.

We are also planning to redevelp some UI in this technology to keep the same UI/UX with the above said project.

Big advantage is that it is highly configurable, consistent UI /UX look and feel. Very minimum Navigation effort (i mean using Plugs in WDA).

Framework is based on the UI guidelines (Sap guild 2.0).

ps : I must say that there are numerous restrictions to go ahead with FPM (nw 7.01). For example IDR supports only Flowlayout, buttons cannot have icons,shortcut keys. You cannot change the roadmap UI properties (Alignment - left or right) in GAF.

you cannot have difficult layout in a UIBB . For example 2 UIBB's next to each other.

Good news is that most of the above said restrictions are addressed in 7.02 and much more flexibile FPM is on its way.

CHIP and wiring technologies ,PageLayout, form layouts,OVP,HGA floorplans are very promising.

In a long term perspective we see the FPM applications are easy to maintain,flexible because of highly configurable and look and feel are consistent.