SAP Community - User Experience

Designing for the Humans Behind Internal Tools: My Experience in a B2B Product Environment

2025-12-05T05:21:08.160000+01:00

When people think about product design, they often picture sleek consumer apps, playful micro-interactions, and interfaces built to impress. But designing internal tools in a B2B setup is a completely different world, more quieter, deeper, and far more complex world. In my time working on internal enterprise tools at SAP, I learned that clarity is not just a design principle; it’s a lifeline. And behind every “internal user” is a human trying to do their job without friction.

Internal tools may never appear on marketing websites, but their impact is profound. They influence efficiency, accuracy, and the emotional experience of employees who rely on them day after day. That realization shifted not just how I designed, but how I listened, observed, and empathized.

Seeing the Humans Behind the Screens

It’s easy to assume that internal users are experts who already know every acronym, every workflow, and every hidden rule. But the reality is different. Internal tools are often dense, legacy-driven, and layered with years of business logic. Even experienced users can feel lost.

The biggest shift in my approach was treating internal users with the same empathy we give external customers. They deserve legibility, emotional ease, and moments of clarity just as much , if not more. Internal users don’t get guided onboarding videos or marketing-style product tours. They jump straight into complex systems, often juggling multiple responsibilities at once. Designing with this in mind meant prioritizing legibility, reducing mental effort, and ensuring every step felt intentional and supportive. It also meant acknowledging emotional factors : the frustration caused by unclear pathways, the hesitation before clicking a critical button, or the relief when a workflow simply “makes sense.”

Why always design for a First-Time User ?

One of the most impactful parts of my work was dissecting user flows not from the perspective of a product expert, but from that of a normal user behind the screen. This meant breaking down each step, identifying friction areas, and asking:

Would this make sense on the first try?
Where might someone hesitate?
Is the next step predictable?

This approach helped uncover pain points that would otherwise be overlooked. Redesigning flows with the same energy and curiosity that we bring to complex edge cases ensured a more holistic experience for everyone , not just the power users. Explanations should never be a one-time thing. Interfaces evolve, workflows change, and users switch contexts constantly, which means even product experts can feel like first-time users on any given day. Clear guidance, consistent cues, and small but intentional pieces of always-available information prevent friction before it appears. Designing for first-time users doesn’t mean oversimplifying; it means making the experience understandable without assumptions. A little more clarity is never unhelpful. It builds confidence, reduces cognitive load, and ensures that whether someone is new or highly experienced, the UI supports them with the same level of care every time they return.

Designing for Understanding, Not Just Completion

Clarity became a central part of the user experience. Often, this meant advocating for simple but powerful additions:

Tooltips to explain complex business terms
Message strips that guide users on what to do next
Inline cues to reduce ambiguity

Even closure points became important. Adding a gentle toast message confirming the end of a workflow gave users a sense of completion and confidence. In internal tools, these small reinforcements make tasks more predictable and emotionally easier. These were not ornamental additions : they were essential interactions that reduced ambiguity in critical workflows. Even something as small as a well-placed tooltip could prevent misinterpretation and save users from repeated trial-and-error. Designing for internal systems reminded me that user attention is valuable; it should not be spent deciphering jargon or guessing next steps.

Making Business Language Human-Friendly

Internal tools are filled with terminology that can overwhelm even experienced users. Improving the legibility of business terms becomes a core part of designing for internal tools. Content design is as much needed as the user experience of the workflows. Good internal design is a culmination of creating easy simplified workflows and making them understandable without extra training. Hence, improving business term legibility became a central part of my design work. Simplifying labels, rephrasing instructions, and breaking down complex concepts helped users focus on their tasks rather than decoding language.

Bringing Stakeholders Into the Process

Another crucial element was transparency with stakeholders — product managers, engineering managers, and other decision-makers. For every major initiative, I created structured process documents that offered:

A clear overview of the problem
The user journey and its pain points
Research findings and insights
Iteration timelines
Rationale behind each design decision

This level of clarity helped build alignment, earned trust, and ensured everyone understood why a design change mattered. It also strengthened the collaboration between design, product, and engineering. Stakeholders could see the depth of research, empathize with user pain points, and understand why certain design choices were necessary. It transformed conversations from subjective opinions into grounded, user-informed discussions. In many cases, it became a shared reference point that made decision-making faster and more evidence-driven.

The Quiet Impact of Good Internal Design

Working on internal tools taught me that design’s impact is often invisible but deeply felt. When internal workflows are smooth:

Work becomes faster, with fewer interruptions.
Errors decrease because the system is easier to understand.
Confidence rises as users feel supported instead of overwhelmed.
And most importantly, work becomes less stressful.

These are the small, quiet victories of internal product design. They don’t show up on landing pages, but they shape the everyday work life of employees across the organisation. Designing internal tools reminded me that design is ultimately about understanding people and even when the tools are not customer-facing. Especially then.

AI-Assisted User Learning and Change Management is ready

2025-12-08T11:38:08.642000+01:00

Sometimes in SAP projects, I meet people who look at the long list of tools we have today and ask a completely reasonable question: “We already use Joule. We already use SAP Enable Now. We already use WalkMe. Do we really need something else for user learning?”

If you are not an L&D specialist, this question makes perfect sense. At first glance, everything seems to overlap. And this is usually the moment where curiosity starts, because something feels unclear, even for experienced project leaders.

What most people don’t see is everything that happens long before training materials appear on the screen. We all know the visible part: videos, simulations, in-app guidance, Joule answering questions.

But behind the scenes, there is a much harder challenge that quietly decides whether a project succeeds or fails. It’s the work of figuring out what users actually need to learn. Not in theory, but in their company, with their processes, their roles, their variations, with their data and their way of working. This part is slow, manual, and often messy. And people only realize how heavy it is once they sit down and try to build a training plan from scratch.

This is the gap the AI-assisted user learning and change management app is designed to fill. It doesn’t try to replace Joule or WalkMe or SAP Enable Now. It solves a completely different problem; one that these tools don’t address.

While Joule helps users on the spot when they have a question, and WalkMe and SAP Enable Now help deliver learning and guidance, none of them tells you what the learning should look like in the first place unless you spend considerable amount of effort to achieve that golden goal.

User adoption often becomes harder than expected because the real challenge is not creating training materials; it is understanding what people actually need to learn. And this understanding must come from the organization’s trusted sources of truth: the business processes designed in SAP Signavio, the user stories written during the project, the test cases stored in SAP Cloud ALM, and all the other documents teams create along the way. Bringing these pieces together, making sense of them, and turning them into clear learning steps for every role is slow, if manual, and easy to get wrong. This hidden work is the real reason training becomes complicated and why projects struggle to keep learning aligned, accurate, and up to date.

This is exactly where the AI-assisted user learning and change management app steps in; it connects all these sources, analyzes them, and helps transform complex project information into a structured, role-based learning path that users can follow.

The simplest way I can describe it is this: the app gives direction. Joule supports users in the moment. WalkMe and SAP Enable Now bring the training to life. Each one has its own job. When they’re used together, they make the learning experience smoother, clearer, and far easier to manage—both for learners and for the teams delivering the project.

If you’re not from the learning world, skepticism is normal. But once you see the hidden work behind user adoption, the value becomes obvious. Most of the pain in training doesn’t come from producing content. It comes from figuring out what the content should be.

For the first time, this can be automated. And that is why the AI-assisted user learning and change management app is not “another tool.” It's the complementary link that ties everything together and turns learning into something that finally fits the real world of SAP projects.

The AI-assisted user learning and change management app is commercially available (in limited delivery through the Early Adopter Care program) starting December 8th, 2025, making this capability accessible to SAP customers.

Key resources

My highlights of the SAP Cloud ERP 2602 release

2026-01-14T13:18:30.045000+01:00

Welcome to 2026 and welcome to my SAP Cloud ERP 2602 product release highlights! This blog post guides you through the key improvements of the 2602 release of SAP Cloud ERP, focusing on how they support customers in running and evolving their core business processes. And it was again not easy to decide what to declare as highlights amongst the large number of innovations delivered. It's our 34th major release over the years, and I have collected an interesting range across functional, foundational and user experience capabilities. And of course, the AI journey continues to boost both well-known and new ERP processes to a new levels. We're all in on AI.

I wish the team would have granted me more space to talk you through all innovation shipped with the 2602 release , take this blog post as an appetizer for our team’s deep dive blogs per line of business. Prefer video over text? Take a look at my product update video, where my digital twin guides you through the key highlights.

A new operating model for integrated business processes

With the first release of 2026, we walk the talk of our SAP Business Suite and introduce a range of SAP-managed Integrated Business Processes, removing the complexity of integrating and monitoring multiple cloud solutions from our customer's and partner's activity list. We have carefully listened to your wishes and SAP delivers co-provisioning, functional and technical integration, including lifecycle management, allowing these activities to move in the background while customers focus on their core business. By shifting responsibility for aligned system provisioning, functional and technical integration, and lifecycle management from customers to SAP, we reduce complexity behind the scenes and enables a more seamless suite experience.

* Click here to access the links mentioned in the slide above

As an initial step, release 2602 delivers SAP-managed integration for two critical end-to-end processes as part of an Early Adopter Care (EAC) program. In Workforce Management, SAP provides SAP-managed provisioning and integration between SAP Cloud ERP and SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, supporting a streamlined Recruit-to-Retire process with consistent employee and financial data from day one. For Operational Procurement, integrated processes across SAP Cloud ERP, SAP Ariba Buying, and SAP Ariba Central Invoice Management simplify Procure-to-Pay activities and support a more unified procurement landscape.

These capabilities are enabled by blueprint-based provisioning, which changes how solution instances are deployed, integrated, and managed across the run phase. Instead of manual setup, customers can activate selective solutions or in the future complete suites that are provisioned and come already fully integrated together. Guided by a new suite experience in SAP for Me and based on SAP landscape modeling best practices, SAP applies a desired-state-based reconciliation to ensure transparency, consistency, and long-term stability across the application landscape.

AI innovations

SAP Joule for Consultants: Practical enhancements for your everyday project work

With this first release of year 2026, SAP Joule for Consultants continues to mature as a day-to-day companion for project focused workers, offering efficient access to trusted content, better transparency, and smoother workflows – on demand. A new SAP Joule for Consultants console brings ‘What’s New’ release notes, an integrated prompt library, and, where relevant, administrative insights such as usage metrics and system settings into one central entry point, helping teams stay aligned with current innovations.

Joule now also surfaces SAP Notes and SAP Knowledge Base Articles (KBAs) directly within conversations, based on existing customer entitlements. This allows consultants to reference validated SAP guidance without leaving their context, while administrators retain control through standard s-user assignments. Usability improvements further support efficient work: Quick links simplify navigation across Joule features, the conversation character limit has been increased to 10,000 characters to accommodate larger inputs such as code or detailed scenarios, and public SAP content sources have been refreshed and expanded.

Enhanced citation visibility improves transparency by clearly indicating the origin of information, including public web sources when applicable.

Finally, the initial ingestion of SAP Signavio Process Navigator reference content lays the groundwork for more architecture-aware guidance in future releases.

Finance

Accounting Accruals Agent (beta)

In the dynamic landscape of financial management, the introduction of the beta version of Accounting Accruals Agent marks a thoughtful stride towards empowering finance professionals with innovative tools tailored for efficiency. This intelligent agent draws from AI-driven capabilities to meticulously craft accrual proposals, transforming the traditionally labor-intensive process into a streamlined operation. By analyzing accounting policy documents, sifting through historical data, and executing precise calculations, this agent reduces the substantial time accountants typically spend during period-end accruals. The newfound simplicity in the ‘Manage Accrual Proposals’ app not only enhances the speed of reviewing and posting proposals but also offers detailed, AI-backed explanations for each calculated entry. This ensures that general ledger accountants gain not just time but also trust in AI’s role in augmenting their decision-making processes, thereby enabling a smoother and more efficient period-end close. This feature is going to be made generally available in SAP Cloud ERP 2602.

SAP User Experience

AI-assisted task automation (beta)

In everyday work, many tasks in SAP Cloud ERP follow the same patterns: Reviewing data, triggering follow-up steps, or keeping processes moving. With AI-assisted task automation, SAP introduces smart helpers that support users exactly in these moments. Built with generative AI and embedded directly in My Home, these helpers can take over routine steps within SAP applications while keeping users in control whenever decisions or data changes are required. Instead of replacing human judgement, the focus is on reducing manual effort and helping users progress through their tasks more smoothly. Over time, this creates a more natural way of working with automation, one that adapts to real user needs and daily workflows. Customers interested in shaping this capability early can join the beta program to explore the feature and provide feedback that will influence future AI-driven experiences in SAP Cloud ERP.

Check out this link to sign up for the beta testing and shape the future of AI innovations: https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#campaign/4086

Retail

Assortment module management

Many non-retail industries integrate retail capabilities into their ERP systems to enhance customer services and collaboration, even in B2B. Most organizations today are expected to react faster to changing customer expectations while keeping operations efficient and scalable. This requires tools that simplify everyday work for planners and merchandisers, reduce operational friction, and make it easier to translate data and insights into action. In this context, intelligent assistance within core retail processes becomes increasingly important, especially where decisions around assortments directly influence customer experience and business outcomes.

In the area of Retail, Joule’s integration into assortment module management supports planners by making common tasks more accessible and less time-consuming. Instead of navigating multiple screens, users can rely on natural language interactions to create, update, or terminate assortments directly within the application. This reduces dependency on deep technical knowledge and helps teams complete routine tasks with greater confidence and efficiency. As a result, merchandising and category managers can spend less time on operational steps and more time focusing on assortment strategy and customer-centric planning.

For more information, please consult SAP Help Portal.

Asset Management

Maintenance notification creation and screening with Joule

In Asset Management, keeping maintenance processes running smoothly depends on timely and accurate notifications, often created under time pressure and by users outside of specialized maintenance roles. With Joule integrated into the maintenance notification process in SAP Cloud ERP, creating and screening notifications becomes more straightforward and accessible. Users can describe an issue in natural language and capture key details such as the technical object, priority, and description without navigating complex transaction flows. Moreover, users can access notifications in the ‘Manage Maintenance Notification’ SAP Fiori app (F5777), enabling quick acceptance and conversion into maintenance orders within a single conversational context. As a result, operators spend less time on documentation, while maintenance teams and managers benefit from clearer, more consistent information to plan and execute maintenance activities effectively.

SAP Activate innovations

SAP Activate introduces several innovations for the 2602 release, starting with a dedicated activation and implementation guidance for customers adopting SAP-managed integrations in the Early Adopter Care program, mentioned earlier.

Customers implementing SAP Cloud ERP will continue to benefit from easier access to implementation information with Joule, which is embedded in the ’Roadmap Viewer’ application on SAP for Me. Additionally, implementation teams can access up-to-date implementation guidance in nine languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. Change your language preferences in SAP for Me to view content in another language.

Customers conducting the upgrade to the 2602 release can leverage the lean upgrade roadmap in the ‘Roadmap Viewer’ app or in SAP Cloud ALM to guide their team through the upgrade and post-upgrade activities.

SAP Cloud ALM updates

In transformation projects, teams often invest a lot of time turning workshop outcomes, documents, and process discussions into structured requirements and test assets. With the latest updates in SAP Cloud ALM, this work becomes more streamlined across the project lifecycle. AI-assisted requirements generation helps teams create initial requirements automatically based on Fit-to-Standard workshop transcripts, solution processes, and other project documentation, giving project members a solid starting point that can be reviewed and refined instead of built from scratch.

As project scopes evolve, requirements can now be moved easily between projects, supporting reuse and reducing duplication.

Further enhancements focus on governance and test preparation.

New APIs for manual test cases, process hierarchies, and features make it easier to integrate SAP Cloud ALM into existing tool landscapes and automate project reporting or oversight. All SAP Cloud ALM APIs can be found on the SAP Business Accelerator Hub.

During test preparation, teams can now define where screenshots are required as test evidence, improving transparency and auditability during execution.

Updates to release assessment and scope dependency

Smarter upgrades in SAP Cloud ERP require a clear understanding of customer´s individually relevant applications and scope items. The release assessment and scope dependency (RASD) tool continues to evolve, incorporating customer feedback to make impact analysis more transparent and easier to work with. Recent updates simplify how assessment results are shared, allowing users to download content across all tiles, or selected ones, into a single ZIP file with structured Excel outputs that can be reviewed, filtered, and discussed across distributed project teams.

Beyond usability improvements, RASD now provides more precise guidance for upgrade decisions. The introduction of a successor view helps identify recommended follow-on apps, supporting smoother transition planning.

In addition, enhanced views in the personalized 'What’s New Viewer' clearly differentiate between activated, used, and impacted scope items, helping teams focus on what truly matters in their system.

Together, these enhancements support more informed discussions, reduce uncertainty during release preparation, and help teams approach upgrades with greater clarity and confidence.

Other innovations across various LoBs

Supply Chain Management – Warehouse management

Interface to warehouse automation systems for efficiently processing warehouse orders

In the evolving landscape of warehouse management, the integration of warehouse automation systems is set to significantly enhance operational efficiency. By seamlessly distributing warehouse orders to automated subsystems, businesses can ensure smooth and coordinated task execution. This interface not only sends out orders but also receives confirmations of warehouse tasks, creating a continuous feedback loop that ensures transparency and efficiency. Such integration significantly cuts down manual intervention, allowing for a more streamlined process that minimizes errors and enhances productivity. The main advantage lies in the ability to process warehouse orders more efficiently, capitalizing on automation to handle tasks that were once labor-intensive. This means warehouse operations can maintain a high level of accuracy while handling greater volumes, ultimately enhancing the overall supply chain performance and reliability.

Manufacturing

Production order combination enablement

In the Manufacturing line of business, we are happy to introduce production order combination enablement, which offers a practical solution to streamline operations and enhance efficiency. By merging identical operations from different production orders into a single consolidated order, manufacturers can optimize their processes right from the ‘Manage Production Orders’ app. This functionality allows for the creation, maintenance, and confirmation of combined orders, which in turn supports effective cost distribution and settlement through new event-based costing. By reducing setup times and overhead charges, this approach not only increases production throughput but also achieves considerable cost savings. This feature empowers manufacturers to focus their efforts on boosting output while maintaining a keen eye on cost efficiency, creating a more agile and responsive production environment.

Professional Services

Intercompany cost allocations reconciliation review booklet

In the Professional Services domain, the enhancement of the ‘Intercompany Review Booklet’ app offers a significant boost in transparency and traceability for intercompany cost allocations. By displaying the complete end-to-end document flow, this app helps reconcile management accounting postings with billing and accounts receivable documents. This comprehensive view is invaluable during closing procedures, as it allows businesses to ensure their data's completeness by clearly identifying services and expenses that have been billed, are partially billed, or remain unbilled. Furthermore, the app provides audit-relevant information on billed intercompany services, offering businesses the assurance and documentation needed for clear internal and external audits. This capability aids organizations in maintaining robust financial processes while enhancing their ability to track and manage intercompany transactions efficiently. Starting with release 2602, the report will include an enhanced breakdown of billed entries, tracing them all the way to the receiver FI journal entry/affiliated expenses.

Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management

Enhanced integration of project plan information with SAP Cloud ERP

In the domain of Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management, enhancing the integration of project plan information with SAP Cloud ERP was one of the items discussed and designed in our customer product councils. This innovation facilitates seamless synchronization of project plan data between SAP Cloud ERP and SAP Project and Resource Management, enabling a more cohesive project management experience. Users can manually trigger updates to project dates in SAP Cloud ERP, ensuring that information remains current and accurate. Furthermore, the automated bi-directional synchronization of project plan data significantly reduces the manual effort involved in data maintenance, allowing teams to focus on strategic initiatives. With greater scope control and improved integration, organizations can enjoy comprehensive visibility of critical information across different solutions, thus enhancing data quality and operational efficiency. This development empowers project managers with the tools needed to effectively monitor and control project progress, fostering better decision-making and resource allocation throughout the project lifecycle.

Summary

I hope this overview of the SAP Cloud ERP 2602 release highlights has provided helpful insights into the latest updates and enhancements as well as excitement for the upgrade. As SAP Cloud ERP continues to evolve, these innovations aim to support more efficient processes, clearer guidance, and a smoother experience across implementations and upgrades.

Let me know which innovation stands out most to you and what your personal highlights from this release are: Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

In the coming weeks, we’ll take a closer look at additional business- and industry-specific innovations in follow-up blogs. Be sure to visit our community page to connect with SAP experts, ask questions, and exchange feedback. To stay up to date with future content, follow the PSCC_Enablement tag and keep an eye out for upcoming posts.

Feel free to follow me at BeSchulze in the community and on LinkedIn to not miss any updates.

Let’s keep advancing together—towards a smarter, more connected cloud ERP future.

Yours,

Bert

📽️ Register for our SAP Cloud ERP 2602 Early Release Series!

Between January 12-16, we are hosting a series of 22 expert-led live sessions to highlight the exciting innovations shipped with the SAP Cloud ERP 2602 release. On our landing page you can register for the entire series or pick the sessions most relevant to you.

🔎Find all our assets

The release 2602 showcases more 130 innovation highlights across the portfolio. Check out our release document for all the details!

We at Cloud ERP and SCM Product Success offer a service as versatile as our product itself. Click on the enablement wheel below and check out the numerous offerings our team has created for you:

AI innovations highlights in SAP Cloud ERP 2602

2026-01-15T09:18:13.813000+01:00

The release of SAP Cloud ERP 2602 continues SAP’s focus on embedding intelligence directly into business processes, quietly, purposefully, and where it matters most. In this blog, you’ll find a guided look at the key AI innovations introduced with the 2602 release, as highlighted in the product blog post by Bert Schulze. Rather than showcasing AI as a standalone capability, the focus is on how these innovations support customers in running, adapting, and evolving their core business processes across finance, sales, manufacturing, procurement, and beyond.

With the 2602 release, SAP Cloud ERP builds on its existing foundation by supporting everyday work with intelligence that is more contextual, connected, and task focused. At the heart of this evolution is an agentic AI framework, where specialized, task-specific agents take on clearly defined responsibilities based on real business context, data, and rules. These agents work together behind the scenes, while Joule serves as the orchestration layer that brings insights, recommendations, and next steps together in a natural, conversational way. Whether supporting a finance expert with complex classifications or helping teams respond faster to operational issues, intelligence is applied exactly where decisions are made. Take a moment to explore the accompanying video for a closer look at how these AI-driven capabilities quietly support everyday work and point toward a more adaptive way of running enterprise processes.

Take a look at the short video below to see how these AI-driven capabilities quietly support everyday work and are shaping a more adaptive way of running enterprise processes.

Agentic AI use case highlights

Finance

International Trade Classification Agent (beta)

When a single misclassified product can delay a shipment or trigger compliance questions, international trade classification quickly becomes a task where precision matters as much as speed. Inthe 2602 release, the International Trade Classification Agent supports product classification specialists in this sensitive part of the process by reasoning over product characteristics and applicable trade regulations. It proposes customs tariff numbers and commodity codes and explains how each recommendation was derived, making review and approval straightforward. This shifts the expert’s role from manual lookup to informed validation, while keeping full transparency and auditability. In practice, teams can expect significantly less effort spent on repetitive classification tasks, up to a 50% reduction, while lowering the risk of non-compliance.

Accounting Accruals Agent

Period-end accruals are a familiar pressure point in finance: important, repetitive, and often constrained by tight timelines. The beta version of the Accounting Accruals Agent tackles this challenge by supporting teams with proposing accruals based on accounting policy documents, historical data, and calculated values, helping shift the work from manual preparation to focused review. Accrual proposals are presented directly in the ‘Manage Accrual Proposals’ app, along with clear explanations that show how each figure was derived. This transparency makes it easier for general ledger accountants to validate and post accruals with confidence, without losing control over the process. As a result, teams can reduce the time spent on period-end activities while maintaining consistency and auditability, supporting a smoother close cycle.

For more information, see Accounting Accruals Agent.

Embedded AI highlights

Sales

Automatic creation of sales orders from unstructured data (premium) - AnyDOX adoption

Sales teams often receive purchase orders in formats that don’t fit neatly into systems, PDFs attached to emails, scanned documents, or images that still require careful manual entry. With the current release, internal sales representatives can upload these unstructured files and let the system extract the relevant information into a sales order request, proposing values such as the sold-to party based on the document content. What used to be a repetitive transcription task becomes a short review step, allowing sales teams to focus more on customer interactions and less on administrative work. Multilanguage support and the ability to train the extraction logic through SAP Document AI help ensure the process works reliably across regions and document types. The result is a smoother order intake process that reduces manual effort while keeping sales operations responsive and consistent.

Check out this dedicated page on SAP Help Portal to learn more.

Finance

Period comparisons and AI insights for product profitability review booklet

Looking at product profitability often starts with a simple question: What changed and why? The latest enhancements to the product profitability review booklet help sales accountants explore this question more systematically by introducing period comparisons for margins and cost of goods sold. Built-in views for margin overview and COGS breakdown are complemented by AI-generated insights that highlight notable developments between periods, offering guidance on where a closer look may be worthwhile. Additional dimensions, functional currency display, and an extensible CDS view support more flexible market segment analysis without losing consistency. Together with the new commenting feature, this creates a clearer, more connected view of product performance that supports informed discussions and decisions.

For more information, discover enhancements in the product profitability review booklet.

Manufacturing

AI-assisted production routing proposal and copy routing

Creating a new production routing often starts by searching for something that already exists and adapting it to fit, an approach that works, but takes time and careful attention. The newly introduced innovation, AI-assisted production routing proposal and copy routing, supports production engineers, planners, and master data specialists by identifying similar routings based on material names, descriptions, and bills of material. Instead of rebuilding routings from the ground up, users receive suggestions they can copy and adjust, turning setup work into a focused refinement step. This helps reduce repetitive data entry and lowers the risk of inconsistencies across routings. Over time, teams benefit from faster setup, more consistent master data, and a smoother path from planning to production.

Eager to learn more? Check out our dedicated pages on intelligent scenario to find similar materials for routing proposal and creating a routing using the AI-assisted material search.

Cross topic: Situation handling

AI-assisted situation handling (beta)

When critical issues surface in day-to-day operations, the real challenge is often not awareness but knowing what to do next. This is where AI-assisted situation handling comes into play, supporting business users by complementing automated alerts with context-aware guidance tailored to their roles and responsibilities. By capturing situation data together with its business context, the system can generate targeted recommendations that help users assess options and act more quickly. Customizable prompts and the ability to incorporate data from SAP, third-party, and external sources ensure that advice reflects real operational conditions. In practice, this leads to faster resolution of situations, cutting response times by up to 70%, and helps teams stay focused on decisions rather than diagnostics.

Joule innovations highlights

Procurement

Conversational search for local and central purchase requisition status

Tracking the status of a purchase requisition often means switching between apps, systems, and document numbers just to answer a simple question. With the latest updates, conversational search in Joule allows procurement users to ask directly about the status of local or central purchase requisitions and their follow-on documents, without navigating into multiple SAP Fiori apps. Users can reference familiar identifiers, such as requisition numbers, connected-system document IDs, or SAP Ariba cart numbers and receive the relevant status in one place. This shortens the path from question to answer and reduces interruptions in daily work. Over time, procurement teams gain faster visibility into requisition progress and can respond to inquiries with greater confidence and less effort.

Conversational search for centrally managed purchase requisition status

Similarly to the innovation described above, conversational search in Joule allows users to check the approval and follow-on document status of centrally managed purchase requisitions without switching between SAP Fiori apps. A simple query is enough to see whether a requisition has progressed to a purchase order, acknowledgment, goods receipt, or invoice receipt. This removes friction from everyday follow-ups and helps teams stay informed without interrupting their workflow. As a result, procurement professionals can respond faster to internal requests and keep processes moving smoothly.

Conversational search for central procurement business documents

In central procurement , finding the right document often means knowing exactly where to look and having the time to navigate there. With this release conversational search in Joule allows users to search and filter central procurement business documents simply by asking, whether they are looking for contracts nearing expiration, rejected supplier confirmations, or purchase orders tied to a specific supplier or system. Results are presented together with direct navigation links to the relevant SAP Fiori apps, turning search into a natural entry point rather than a separate task. This makes it easier to move from question to action without breaking focus. Over time, procurement teams gain faster access to the information they need and more confidence in managing centrally governed processes.

Don’t miss: The GenAI extensibility assistant

As we roll out the new 2602 features, we also want to highlight a game-changer from the previous cycle that is rapidly becoming a standard for key users. If you haven't yet explored the GenAI-based extensibility assistant, now is the time. This tool allows key users to generate custom fields and logic simply by describing their requirements in natural language. It’s not just about speed; it ensures your logic is consistent and "clean core" compliant by design. To see this assistant in action and learn how to enable it, check out this deep dive on extensibility assistant for key users.

Summary

📽 Register for our SAP Cloud ERP 2602 Early Release Series!

🔎 Find all our assets

The release 2602 showcases more than 130 innovation highlights across the portfolio. Check out our release document for all the details!

We at Cloud ERP and SCM Product Success offer a service as versatile as our product itself. Check out the numerous offerings our team has created for you below:

My First Situation with the Extended Framework

2026-01-19T16:31:21.936000+01:00

Situation Handling notifies users about issues requiring their attention. With the extended framework for Situation Handling, you can define situations for your business needs.

This blog post illustrates how you can create a situation quickly and with minimal configuration. It outlines the core concept of the extended framework for Situation Handling and guides you in defining your own situation use case.

The configuration relates to the extended framework for Situation Handling which has been available since SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2202 and SAP S/4HANA 2021 FPS2.

Introductory Words

The extended framework for Situation Handling is very powerful. In turn, it’s not always easy to get started. To provide you with a straightforward path, this blog post focuses on the minimal viable configuration to create a situation instance.

The Apps

The configuration of Situation Handling is set up across three apps to maximize reuse. While it may seem complex at first, the advantages become clear as you create multiple use cases. The configuration effort decreases substantially with each new use case. The apps also align with different business roles supporting technical and business-oriented responsibilities.

Manage Situation Objects – reuse the artifacts from the applications, such as CDS views, events, and navigation targets, for defining a situation object.
Manage Situation Scenarios – map the affected object (anchor object) with trigger objects and trigger behaviors create, update, and remove.
Manage Situation Types – add logic to the anchor and trigger objects to define the use case

To inform the right users we additionally use the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app.

The Use Case

The extended framework for Situation Handling also comes with a demo app that serves as exploratory sandbox. We use the Situation Handling Demo app and its artifacts for the minimal configuration.

The demo app represents a fictional flight booking system. Your first situation will inform about flights that are scheduled within the next three days.

Minimal Configuration

Let’s define the minimal set-up to create a situation.

Manage Situation Objects

The situation object represents a business object. It reuses existing application artifacts that are relevant to your business scope. The core of a situation object is the structure, a CDS view. The CDS view needs to be allowlisted and needs a unique key.

Log-in as Extensibility Specialist to your system and open the app Manage Situation Objects.

Create a new object and enter the object ID, the name, description, and select the SAP object type.

General information of situation object

Then you add the CDS view that contains the data you want to monitor. The CDS view is part of the object’s structure. Create a new structure and enter a description. Select the structure type, the structure name (the reference to the CDS view), and the SAP object node type. For personal data simply select no fields.

CDS structure of situation object

Additionally, you add the semantic key that represents the situation object on the UI. For the flight object we choose the carrier ID, the connection ID and the flight date from the object’s CDS view. It will show, for example, as LH/403/20251224.

Then choose Apply and Create. Your first situation object is set.

Manage Situation Scenarios

The situation scenario relates to the object that is affected by a situation (anchor object). Additionally, it contains the objects that can trigger a situation.

Background: The trigger object can be the same as the anchor object - for example, if you want to monitor the data of the anchor object’s CDS view. The trigger object can also be another situation object. In our flight example, the trigger object could be the booking object, and the anchor object is the flight.

The trigger object also comes with a trigger behavior. The trigger object can be created or updated; it can also be removed.

In our example, we use the Flight object, both as anchor and as trigger object with the behavior add / update.

Open the app Manage Situation Scenarios.

Create a new scenario with ID, name, and description. Provide the scenario type and the object structure type. You also select the responsibility context ID which links Responsibility Management to Situation Handling to be able to identify the right users who need to be informed about the situation.

General information of situation scenario

Then you add the reference to the object that is affected by the situation, the anchor object. Select the object ID. Chose the object structure ID (an object can have multiple structures) and a key field that uniquely identifies your anchor object. The key field is part of the structure’s CDS view.

Reference to anchor object

Next you define the situation trigger with name and description. As we want to check the CDS fields regularly we create a batch-based trigger.

Batch-based situation trigger

Finally, you need to add the reference to the trigger object like you did for the anchor object. Select the object ID, the object structure ID, and the object key field. Additionally select the relevant object behavior. In our example, it’s add/update because we want to monitor flight data that is new or changed.

Reference to trigger object

Choose Apply and Create. Your scenario is done.

Log-off as Extensibility Specialist and log-in as Business Process Configuration Expert.

Manage Situation Types – Extended

In the Manage Situation Types – Extended app you define the logic when a situation is detected and who should be informed about it.

Background: The app supports the idea of reuse as well. You can create a situation template that serves as blueprint. And you can derive multiple situation types from it. The blueprint, for example, defines the monitoring of flights. Flight monitoring may require different conditions for different regions. For this purpose, you can derive multiple situation types from the template that contain all settings from the blueprint. You only need to adjust the conditions for the specific regions.

In our use case we want to identify flights that are scheduled within the next three days. Therefore, we want to check the flight data daily and use the batch-based situation trigger from the scenario. In the condition section we define the relevant period of next 3 days.

Open the app Manage Situation Types – Extended.

Create a new template from the scenario My First Scenario. Enter general data that describes the template: the scenario ID, the template ID, the name, and description.

General information of situation template

Then you add the batch-based trigger from the scenario and refine it with conditions. For our use case we simply add a date filter for the next three days.

Condition for situation detection

Now we add the texts that describe the situation for the end user. The situation title and description are used in various places, for example, in My Situations – Extended app, in cards on Fiori launchpad home, and in notifications. We define the title and only use variables to the flight for describing the situation. If we choose to send one notification per situation instance, the same texts are used. The public text My first situation. is added for email notifications (not visible in screenshot).

Situation description for end users

Select Apply.

In the next step we define when the periodical check is scheduled. We define a time zone, a repeat type and interval, and add a start time when the batch is supposed to be scheduled. In the example below, the batch is scheduled every day at 1 am.

Batch-job scheduling

Then we need to define who will be informed about situations. We want to alert users that belong to one or more teams that are responsible for a certain business scope which is expressed by the team category. We use the demo category SITDEMO. Without setting any further filters, all members of the teams belonging to the category would be informed about flights being scheduled within the next three days.

Inform team members about situations

Select Create and your template is complete.

Manage Teams and Responsibilities

Responsibility Management defines who is informed about the situation. Let’s create a simple team and add yourself as a team member.

Open the app Manage Teams and Responsibilities.

Create a new team and enter general data that describes the team: the name (that is also used as global ID), the description, and the type. The type is a sub-group of the team category. Also ensure that you set the status to enabled.

Define a responsible team

Then you add the team members that will be informed about the situations. For the minimal configuration you just add yourself as member.

Members of responsible team

Create the team and log-off as Business Process Configuration Expert.

Log-in as Business Configuration Specialist.

Situation Handling Demo

You can use the data of the Situation Handling Demo app to create a situation. Just open the app and check if the table is already populated with flight data. If not, choose Generate New Data.

Situation Handling Demo app

Manage Situation Types – Extended

Now you create a situation type from the template that will trigger the situation. Usually, types would be further refined or would be a bundle of variants to reflect specific usage. For example, the logic of a template refers to multiple types which address specific sales regions and therefore need specific adjustments in the condition section. In our sample case we simply use the logic of the template as is.

Open the Manage Situation Types – Extended app.

Create a new situation type from the template My First Template. Set the status to enabled and save it.

General information of situation type

On top of the page choose Trigger Batch.

Trigger the batch-job schedule for a situation type

Batch-job feedback

In the dialog select Manage Instances. You might need to wait a moment until the batch-job is finalized and refresh the page. Then you see the list of detected situations, that is all flights that are scheduled within the next three days. As a reference you see the semantic keys that you defined within the situation object structure.

List of situation instances in the Manage Situation Types – Extended app

Log-off as Business Process Specialist.

My Situations – Extended

In the My Situation – Extended app the users see all situations in their area of responsibility.

Log-in with the user you added as team member in the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app.

Open the My Situation – Extended app.

In the left navigation pane select the scenario My First Situation Scenario. The list shows all situations that were detected by the type My First Situation Type. The title My First Situation is the same for all instances. In the description you see the reference to the detected flight, for example, SQ 0160 13.12.2025.

Additionally, you see the new situations indicated next to the notification bell.

List of situations in the My Situations – Extended app

When you select a situation, for example in the list page of the My Situation – Extended app or from the notifications, you go to the situation details page. As the situation description is all we defined, there is no further information to see.

Situation details page in the My Situations – Extended app

You have created your first situations with the minimal configuration. And you have learned which minimal ingredients you need and how they work together.

Next Steps

For further guidance, I recommend reading the following blog posts:

Define the optimal information for the end user: Configure the layout of My Situations – Extended.
Deep dive into the concept of reusability: The Power of Reuse - Custom Situation Configuration.
Explore enhanced configuration options: Custom Situation Cases: Configure Your Own Use Cases.

You find many more blog posts in the Best Practices section of Intelligent Situation Handling in the SAP Community. And you can visit SAP Help for further guidance on Situation Handling.

SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition) 2602亮点前瞻：跨技术话题（Cross Technology Topic）

2026-01-20T02:00:00.043000+01:00

又到了半年一度版本升级的日子。在这篇文章里，我会介绍一些在2602版本中跨技术话题中值得分享的一些亮点：

一、数据迁移

新应用：Explore Migration Objects
2602版本中迁移对象的变化

二、用户体验

/n /o重出江湖
下载和上载空间
Launchpad的新布局

三、其他亮点

视图浏览器：图形化展示CDS之间的关系
权限的更大灵活性：直接给业务角色分配IAM应用

一、数据迁移

1. 新应用：Explore Migration Objects

在Cloud ERP数据迁移领域，现在已经有超过200个迁移对象。虽然我们能够在每个迁移对象的说明文档中查到该迁移对象是否有前序依赖的对象，但在如此多的迁移对象的情况下，我们一直缺少一个可视化的界面，能够让我们在项目实施过程中更快速地看到迁移对象之间的依赖关系。

现在我们推出了一个全新的应用：Explore Migration Objects。通过该应用，我们通过图形化的方式显示某个特定的迁移对象有哪些前序依赖的迁移对象。如下图所示，如果我们想要导入“产品-按新组织级别扩展现有记录”，它的必要的前序对象会用橙色的实线显示，我们必须先导入迁移对象“产品”。它的可选的前序对象会用灰色的虚线显示，“利润中心”和“生产供应区”是它的两个非必要的前序对象。

这个应用可以帮助我们在项目阶段更方便和准确地确定迁移范围。同时，在图形界面上，你也可以点击依赖的迁移对象，扩展显示与它相关的迁移对象。图形界面可以随意扩展。

除了按照迁移对象查找，这个应用也支持按照范围项目（Scope Item）查找。可以查找某个范围项目下有哪些相关的迁移对象。比如下图举例，我想查找范围项目BMD（采购合同）牵涉到哪些迁移对象，我也可以找出这个信息，用图形化的方式显示：

最后，说明一下体验该应用需要分配业务目录Data Migration – Cockpit（SAP_CA_BC_MIG_PC）。

2. 2602版本中迁移对象的变化

关于2602版本中迁移对象的变化，比如新增的对象、更改的对象、删除的对象等，该信息已经发布在SAP Help Portal，具体可通过以下链接查看：

版本 2602 的更改概览 | SAP Help Portal

二、用户体验

1. /n /o重出江湖

几乎所有使用过SAP传统GUI界面的用户都非常熟悉/n和/o这两个指令，/n+tcode就能在当前界面快速打开新的应用。当我需要保留当前界面的同时打开新界面时，输入/o+tcode就能在新界面中打开应用。每一个SAP用户都会熟练操作/n和/o的指令。如今，从2602版本开始，这两个指令又回来了。

只不过Fiori应用不再是以前的tcode，取而代之的是Fiori ID。比如应用“IAM信息系统”的Fiori ID是F2450。我可以在任何界面的右上角查找框里输入“/nf2450”，就会在当前网页打开应用“IAM信息系统”：

输入/nf2450后，按回车键：

同样，上面的这个例子，如果我输入的是/of2450，然后回车，会在一个新的页面打开“IAM信息系统”这个应用。

另外，如果你只输入/n，然后回车，会快速回到主页。

如果你只输入/o，然后回车，会在一个新的页面打开主页的界面。

这些操作也是和以前SAP GUI的习惯保持一致的。

2. 下载和上载空间

从这个版本开始，我们可以批量下载和上载空间（Space）了。下载和上载操作也会包含所选空间下面的页面（Page）。这个功能，对于跨系统间的操作，系统之间不能传输的，可以快速地复用我们所设计的空间。

在“管理快速启动板空间”App上，之前的界面是这样的：

这个版本升级之后，会新增“下载”和“上载”两个操作链接：

操作的基本流程如下：

在源系统中，选中一至多个想要下载的空间，点击“下载”。
会下载一个JSON文件，文件名为Spaces_系统名_日期时间.json。
打开目标系统，打开管理快速启动板空间。
点击“上载”，选中之前下载的JSON文件，然后上传。

3. Launchpad的新布局

在上个版本中，我们推出了Launchpad的新布局：增强的导航菜单，在SAP徽标旁边显示产品名称。同时，用户菜单也做了显示优化和顺序调整。

新界面下左上角的导航菜单：

新界面下右上角的用户菜单：

从这个版本开始，新布局将成为默认现实。因此，强烈建议在“激活功能”中，激活下面的选项以开启Launchpad的新布局：

/UI2/SHELL_BAR_TOGGLE

三、其他亮点

1. 视图浏览器：图形化展示CDS之间的关系

应用“视图浏览器”（View Browser）一直是我们客户最常用的应用之一，所有与CDS视图相关的操作如自定义接口、报表等操作都绕不开使用这个应用。在2602版本中，视图浏览器首次新增了图形化展示CDS视图依赖关系的功能。图形的方式能更直观、更方便地给我们的客户展示CDS视图（包括表）之间的关系，相信这个功能能提升大家对这个应用的使用体验。

例如，在视图浏览器中，当我输入I_SalesOrder并选中，页签中增加了“相关性图表”这一项：

然后，在主界面中，你会看到与I_SalesOrder有直接关系的其他CDS视图以及相关的表：

比如，绿色的代表已经发布的CDS视图，灰色的代表尚未发布的CDS视图，蓝色的代表数据库表。对于CDS视图，你还能看到关键用户扩展和云开发扩展各自的发布状态。

你还可以点击右上角的“转置”链接，图形界面可以从垂直展示的方式变成水平展示，如下所示：

2. 权限的更大灵活性：直接给业务角色分配IAM应用

在之前的版本中，我们推出了IAM应用程序这个概念，在权限设计上以应用而不是业务目录作为最小单元，给了权限分配极大的灵活性。但是，我们还是需要首先给业务角色分配相应的业务目录，然后在已分配的权限里做调整。

从这个版本开始，我们甚至可以直接给业务角色分配IAM应用程序，可以不需要分配业务目录。简单来说，之前如果需要分配某个应用的权限，你需要首先找到这个应用相关的业务目录并分配，然后再做调整，把不需要的应用去除。现在，你可以直接给你的业务角色分配想要的应用访问权限。下面，我将通过一个例子来做解释：

假设我设计了一个数据迁移的业务角色MIGRATION_USER，我给它分配了一个数据迁移的业务目录，你能看到它能访问数据迁移工具相关的应用，如下所示：

在IAM应用程序页签下，点击右上角的编辑按钮，你可以看到有一个“添加”按钮：

假设我需要我的这个角色的用户在导入数据之后，可以查看销售订单和采购订单的数据，以验证导入的数据是否正确。我可以点击添加按钮，查找相关的IAM应用并添加如下：

你能看到，我直接添加了“显示销售订单”和“显示采购订单”的权限，分配类型为“直接”，也就是我直接添加的权限，而不是通过业务目录分配而得。有了这种方式，对于我们需要配置非常个性化的业务角色将会更加方便。

以上是关于SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602版本跨技术话题的一些重要分享，希望对你的日常使用有所帮助。如果你有任何问题，欢迎留言或者私信联系！

Artificial Intelligence in SAP Cloud ERP 2602

2026-01-20T09:00:00.034000+01:00

Welcome to your one-stop shop to learn and share knowledge about SAP's ready-to-run public cloud ERP software solution.

SAP Cloud ERP is part of SAP Business Suite that brings AI, data, and applications together into a fully integrated system. This community is open for anyone in the cloud ERP ecosystem–customers, partners, and SAP experts.

In this blog, I’m thrilled to guide you through the latest AI innovations in our SAP Cloud ERP release 2602. This release marks a significant leap forward in our journey to embed reliable, relevant, and responsible AI directly into the core of your ERP. Our goal is simple: to make your work smarter, your decisions faster, and your daily tasks more intuitive.

With our AI co-pilot Joule and a host of new embedded AI capabilities, we're transforming the user experience and delivering tangible business value across every line of business. Let's dive into the highlights!

A Smarter Foundation: Cross-Topic AI Innovations

We're embedding AI into the very fabric of the user experience, making the system more proactive, helpful, and personalized for every user.

1. Situation handling

1.1. AI-assisted situation handling

Solve business challenges faster and smarter with AI-powered recommendations:

Instant, Personalized Guidance: Get tailored advice right when you need it, helping you resolve business issues quickly and confidently.
Flexible and Customizable: Adapt the solution to your unique business logic—make changes easily and keep your processes up to date.
Effortless Access to Knowledge: Find the information you need, even beyond SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, with simplified, contextual support.

Key Features:

Generate actionable recommendations based on your specific business context.
Create and manage prompts to ensure solutions are relevant and effective.
Enrich recommendations with data from multiple sources for deeper insights.

With AI-Assisted Situation Handling, you empower your team to work smarter, make better decisions, and stay agile in a fast-changing business environment.

For more information, see: Situation Handling

Disclaimer: The feature described above is planned for a future release and is not yet generally available. A dedicated blog post will be published once it becomes available

2. User experience

2.1. AI-assisted error explanation for SAP Fiori elements-based Applications

With AI-assisted error explanations for SAP Fiori elements-based applications, you’ll save valuable time, boost reliability, and make maintenance easier than ever. Faster resolution of errors with the support of generative AI:

Speed Up Maintenance: Let generative AI quickly explain errors and recommend solutions, so you spend less time fixing issues and more time driving your business forward.
Reduce Future Errors: Understand the root causes behind problems, helping you prevent similar issues from happening again.

For more information, see: Discovery Center

**2.2. AI-assisted smart personalization of My Home for applications**

Tailor My Home experience using natural language and transform your workspace with just a few words:

Natural Language Personalization: Simply tell SAP what you need—AI understands your requests and instantly suggests the most relevant apps for your daily tasks.
Quick and Easy Setup: Add new applications to your “My Home” in seconds. Preview AI-generated suggestions before confirming, so you always get what fits best.
Save Time, Boost Productivity: No more searching through menus. AI streamlines your workflow, making it ideal for both new and occasional users.
Trustworthy Recommendations: Rely on intelligent, data-driven suggestions that ensure accuracy and build confidence in your setup.
Seamless Experience: Enjoy a smooth, click-minimizing process with a preview-based confirmation—making personalization simple and enjoyable.

Unlock the full potential of SAP Cloud ERP by letting AI tailor your “My Home” to your needs—so you can focus on what matters most

For more information, see: Discovery Center

2.3. AI-assisted easy fill of SAP Fiori elements-based applications

Let AI handle the details—just describe what you need, and watch your forms fill themselves:

Save Time Instantly: Maintain all the fields on your object pages in seconds, thanks to seamless AI-powered automation.
No More Guesswork: Simply use natural language, and the system intelligently matches your words to the right fields—no more hunting through forms.

With AI-assisted easy fill, you’ll breeze through data entry, reduce manual effort, and focus on what matters most in your business.

For more information, see: Discovery Center

2.4. AI-assisted task automation (beta)

AI-assisted task automation is the next embedded AI feature in the SAP Fiori user experience of SAP Cloud ERP. It builds on the previously delivered features such as easy filter, easy fill and smart solutions for situations in My Home.

It allows key users and end users to automate their daily activities in SAP’s Fiori apps by using generative AI to create so called “smart helpers”. Those ”smart helpers” execute the repetitive activities on behalf of the end user either from the SAP Fiori launchpad or from individual SAP Fiori apps while always keeping the user in the loop for decisions on data changes.

Benefits:

Easy to use SAP Fiori application to create “smart helpers”
Full control of what the “smart helper” proposes to do
Intuitive way of running the “smart helper” while being always in control in case of changes
Supports all SAP Fiori elements-based applications

Key features:

Creation of “smart helpers” based on all available SAP Fiori elements-based applications in SAP Cloud ERP
Generation and validation of execution plan for “smart helpers”
Run time for “smart helpers” is integrated into My Home the product homepage of SAP Cloud ERP

Please register to be part of the SAP Beta Testing of the Newest AI Innovations in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

2.5. AI-assisted smart solution for situations (beta)

AI-assisted smart solution for situations in My Home simplifies workflows by dynamically adapting the user interface to guide business users through resolution steps using the power of generative AI

Directly on the SAP Cloud ERP homepage, users can resolve operational situations in just a few clicks. AI-driven recommendations accelerate decision-making and streamline user actions for improved efficiency

Benefits:

Drives time efficiency by eliminating navigation through intelligent UI design
Enhances decision-making with timely, context-aware AI recommendations
Delivers trustworthy AI-generated results, built on enterprise-grade intelligence
Offers an intuitive, click-efficient experience, empowering users to act confidently with minimal effort.

Key features:

Key information and actions are surfaced through dynamic cards reducing the need for in-depth navigation
Enables one-click resolution of situations directly from the homepage thereby enhancing operational efficiency within SAP Cloud ERP
Situation types supported:
End date for project reached but stage not completed
Alert for bank messages
Expiring Sales Quotations

Please register to be part of the SAP Beta Testing of the Newest AI Innovations in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

AI Innovations Across Lines of Business:

3. Finance

3.1. Accounting Accruals agent (beta)

Close Your Books Faster with the AI-Powered Accounting Accruals Agent

The agent helps accountants to automate journal entry preparation for accruals by analyzing historical data and leveraging accounting policy documents. It calculates accurate amounts and provides a pre-populated list of journal entries for review and confirmation. Your accounts will increase their productivity, ensure timely month-end close, and get more time for high-value activities.

Automate Journal Entries: Let AI handle the heavy lifting by preparing accrual journal entries for you—twice as fast as before.
Boost Accuracy: The agent analyzes your historical data and accounting policies to calculate precise accrual amounts, reducing errors and manual work.
Ready-to-Review Entries: Receive a pre-populated list of journal entries, so your team can quickly review and confirm, saving valuable time.
Focus on What Matters: Free up your accountants to concentrate on high-value activities, ensuring a timely and efficient month-end close.

Business Impact:

Cut time spent on accrual calculations and deferrals by up to 80%
Reduce review and posting time by 50%
Achieve a faster, smoother period-end close

For more information, see: Discovery Center

3.2. International trade classification agent (beta)

Classify your products for international shipping in seconds—no expertise required

This agent helps product classification specialists to classify goods for shipping. The agent reasons over product characteristics and trade regulations and acts to classify goods for international shipping. The agent recommends customs tariff numbers and commodity codes, providing rationale for easy review and approval.

This agent will help ensure compliance with global trade regulations and reduce the risk of manual errors with robust governance and a clear, audit-ready decision

Automatic Classification: Let AI analyze your product details and trade regulations to instantly recommend the right customs tariff numbers and commodity codes.
Ensure Compliance: Rely on recommendations that are reasoned from both product characteristics and up-to-date trade rules, helping you meet global regulations with confidence.
Reduce Risk: Eliminate manual errors with a robust, auditable decision process—every classification comes with clear rationale for easy review and approval.

Business Impact:

50% reduction in effort to classify international trade products

For more information, see: Discovery Center

3.3. Sales accounting: period comparisons and business insights for Product Profitability Review Booklet

The Product Profitability Review Booklet enables you, as a Sales Accountant, to analyze the profitability for products sold using built-in business pages for the Margin Overview and the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) Breakdown.

Benefits:

Gain deeper insights into margins and cost of goods sold (COGS) with period comparisons
Enable informed decision-making with AI-enabled financial business insights
Support flexible market segment analysis with an extensible CDS view
Improve visibility with additional currency types and dimensions

Key features:

Enhancements to the Product Profitability Review Booklet app that:

Provide new period comparisons for product profitability
Use AI to generate financial business insights into period comparisons for product profitability
Add a commenting feature
Display results in functional currency
Enable CDS view to support extensibility for market segment
Incorporate additional dimensions and navigation targets

For more information, see: Enhancements in the Product Profitability Review Booklet.

3.4. SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity: Using Joule to access solution-related content

Have a question about SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity? Whether you’re curious about features, setup steps, or integration scenarios, Joule is here to help! With Joule, you can simply ask your question in natural language—no technical jargon needed. Joule instantly searches the SAP Help Portal, analyzes the latest resources, and delivers clear, context-aware answers tailored to your needs.

Benefits:

Ask Naturally, Get Answers Instantly: Express your business needs in your own words and receive quick, relevant guidance.
Faster Self-Service: Get crisp, summarized content so you can resolve issues or learn new features without digging through documentation.
Save Time: Joule streamlines your search, helping you find the right information faster so you can focus on your work.

Key features:

Smart Search & Summaries: Joule scans SAP Help Portal documentation and summarizes the most important details about SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity processes and features.
Easy Deep Dives: Need more detail? Joule provides direct links to the original documentation for further exploration.

For more information, see: Joule with SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity | SAP Help Portal

3.5. SAP Green Ledger: Joule for reporting: AI-assisted carbon emission analysis (09/2025)

Instantly Visualize and Understand Your Carbon Data with Joule in SAP Green Ledger

Joule in Green Ledger can generate charts from carbon data through conversational prompts, providing automatic visualizations for reporting purposes. This tool is useful for efficiently analyzing and presenting carbon data in a clear and intuitive format.

Benefits:

Actionable Insights for Sustainability: Instantly see trends and breakdowns in your greenhouse gas emissions, empowering you to make smarter decisions for carbon reduction and long-term success.
Save Time, Focus on Strategy: Automated reporting means less manual work and more time for impactful analysis and decision-making.
Effortless for Everyone: The intuitive interface makes advanced carbon reporting accessible to all users, regardless of technical background.

Key features:

Tailored Visualizations: Generate column, donut, and line charts from carbon data, customized to your business needs and reporting requirements.
Support for Multiple Dimensions: Analyze data by GHG category, GHG scope, fiscal year, and more, with carbon emissions as the primary measure.
Smart Context Handling: Joule understands follow-up questions, so you can keep exploring your data without starting over

For more information, see SAP Green Ledger, carbon emission analysis in SAP Discovery Center.

3.6. SAP Document and Reporting Compliance: AI-assisted trend analysis and summary for reports (beta)

The Trend Analysis feature in Joule provides natural language interaction to help you analyze VAT returns. You can ask Joule to generate comparative trend reports and detect outliers. Joule delivers insights that make VAT reporting faster, more accurate, and easier to understand.

Joule can also summarize the generated reports, helping you review key trends and results quickly. This makes it easier to identify anomalies and support faster approvals.

Benefits:

Accelerates VAT review and approval cycles: Natural-language trend analysis and auto-summarized insights reduce the time required to interpret VAT data across periods, enabling faster reviews, quicker approvals, and shorter reporting cycles.
Improves accuracy and reduces compliance risk: Automated detection of trends, fluctuations, and outliers helps identify anomalies early, minimizing manual errors and lowering the risk of incorrect filings or regulatory non-compliance.
Enables informed, data-driven decision-making: Clear, comparable trend reports and concise summaries transform complex VAT data into actionable insights, helping finance and compliance teams make confident decisions with less effort.

Key features:

Use Joule to generate a trend analysis for a VAT return across multiple reporting periods. The analysis highlights key trends, fluctuations, and irregularities, and flags values that deviate from expected norms to help you identify potential errors or compliance risks.
Joule generates a concise summary of key VAT insights to support faster reviews, approvals, and decision-making.

3.7. SAP Enterprise Threat Detection, Cloud Edition: intelligent alert handling and investigation recommendations

Investigations are the central entities to examine security incidents in SAP Enterprise Threat Detection, cloud edition. Intelligent recommendations automatically add case-specific response and mitigation recommendations to investigations based on predefined value lists and machine learning functionality.

Benefits:

Decrease manual effort and increase efficiency for SAP monitoring agents

Key features:

Automated Recommendations: The system uses predefined value lists and machine learning to generate tailored recommendations for each investigation.
Guided Investigation Preparation: SAP monitoring agents are supported with automatic recommendations when compiling investigation results and suggestions for customers.
Standardized Response Generation: Recommendations are based on standard operating procedures for the detected alert patterns, ensuring consistency and reliability in incident response

For more information, see: Generating Investigation Recommendations

Sales

4.1. Automatic creation of sales orders from unstructured data (premium)

Internal sales representatives can create sales orders from purchase order files in PDF or image formats (unstructured data). After a file is uploaded, the system automatically extracts file information into a sales order request and proposes values for sales order request fields (for example, by determining the sold-to party based on extracted data). The sales order request can later be converted into a sales order.

Benefits:

Increase sales force efficiency through the automatic creation of sales orders from unstructured data
Reduce manual effort

Key features:

Automatic Data Extraction: Instantly extract and populate sales order details from unstructured files like PDFs and images
Intelligent Field Suggestions: The system proposes values for sales order fields, such as the sold-to party, based on the extracted data.
Multilanguage Support: SAP Document AI enables extraction and training in multiple languages, making the solution accessible for global teams.

For more information, see: Create sales orders from unstructured data

Procurement

5.1. Conversational search for local and central purchase requisition status (Release 2510)

Designed for casual users, who easily and quickly want to inform themselves about the status of their purchase requisition, the intelligent Joule assistant can be queried to fetch the follow-on document status of a requestor’s self-service purchase requisition

Benefits:

Provide quicker and easier access to the purchase requisition and follow-on document status

Key features:

Query Joule for the approval and follow-on document status of a given local or central purchase requisition without the need to navigate into the details of another SAP Fiori app
Enter any of the related document numbers—for example, local or central requisition number, purchase requisition number in the connected system, or cart number in SAP Ariba—when asking for the document status

Asset Management

6.1. Maintenance notification creation and screening with Joule (release 2602)

SAP Cloud ERP 2602 makes asset management easier for everyone.

Now, you can quickly create maintenance notifications just by telling Joule—using simple, everyday language—what the issue is, which equipment it affects, and how urgent it is. All your notifications are managed in the new SAP Fiori app, where you can easily follow up and turn them into maintenance orders with just a few clicks. This update makes reporting problems faster, reduces downtime, and takes the hassle out of routine maintenance tasks.

Benefits:

Simplified Maintenance Processes: Create maintenance notifications quickly and easily using natural language, reducing the complexity of traditional workflows
Faster Fault and Incident Response: Accelerate the reporting and handling of maintenance issues, enabling quicker resolution and less downtime.
Increased Efficiency: Streamline operations and boost productivity by leveraging AI-driven automation for routine asset management tasks.

Key features:

AI-Assisted Notification Creation: Use Joule to generate maintenance notifications by simply providing key details (description, technical object, priority) in natural language.
Integration with SAP Fiori App: Access and manage created notifications directly in the new SAP Fiori app “Manage Maintenance Notification (F5777)”
Conversational Order Creation: Accept requests and convert notifications into maintenance orders within a single conversational context.
Natural Language Processing: Perform operations and interact with the system using everyday language, making the process faster and more accessible.

For more information, see: What’s new for Joule – SAP Help Portal

Manufacturing

7.1. AI-assisted production routing proposal and copy routing (release 2602)

Save time and reduce errors by letting AI do the heavy lifting! Now, you can quickly generate new production routings by reusing existing ones—no more repetitive data entry.

Benefits:

Streamlined Process: Production engineers, planners, and master data specialists can easily create and edit routings, ensuring consistency and accuracy every time.

Key features:

Use AI to find similar routing based on material name, description, and bill of material to propose close matches
Get recommendations of routing that you can copy or reuse, based on similarity
Copy and edit the proposed routing to arrive at the new routing

As a prerequisite, you need to enable the related ISLM scenario. For information on setting up the ISLM scenario, see this blog post. For general information on ISLM, see: Intelligent Scenario Management.

For more information, see:

7.2. Manage production orders - Production Planning and Operations agent (beta)

With this feature, you can start the Production Planning and Operations agent from the worklist of the Manage Production Orders app. The app now includes the Joule Release button that enables you to release your production orders assisted by agentic AI technology.

Benefits:

Reduce manual work with automated validation of material, capacity, and scheduling availability
Keep production moving with recommended workarounds for material and scheduling conflicts
Boost production throughput by cutting order-processing delays and minimizing downtime between order releases

Key features:

Assisting the production planners and supervisors in releasing up to 20 production orders at a time.
The agent automates prerequisite checks necessary for releasing production orders, including component availability and alternatives as well as work center capacity checks.
The agent also proposes rescheduling when the prerequisites for release are not met.
Once all criteria are met, the planner can confirm the proposed order changes, and the agent will complete the production order release.

For more information, see: Manage Production Orders - Production Planning and Operations Agent

Discovery Center

Joule For Consultants

Clearer Source Citations
SAP Joule for Consultants now makes it easier to see where information comes from. Citations are more visible and, when relevant, include results from public web searches. This gives you a transparent view of the sources behind every answer, helping you trust and verify the information you receive.

Expanded Reference Data
The SAP Enterprise Architecture Reference Library (EARL) is now partially available in Joule conversations. As more EARL content is added, you’ll see even richer and more accurate answers, with relevant references included right in your responses.

SAP Joule for Consultants Console

The SAP Joule for Consultants Console now offers new tools for both standard users and administrators. You can access the latest SAP release notes, usage statistics (for admins), a built-in Prompt Library, and system settings—all in one place

Access to Knowledge Base Articles and SAP Notes
Joule for Consultants now includes Knowledge Based Articles (KBA) and SAP Notes. If your company’s service agreement covers these, you’ll have access automatically—no extra steps needed for end-users. Administrators just need to make sure the right email addresses are assigned.

New Private Content

Simplification List: Stay up to date with changes in SAP S/4HANA. The Simplification List shows which features have changed, been removed, or replaced, so you can plan and adapt smoothly.
IMG (Implementation Guide): Easily find documentation and step-by-step activities to configure SAP functions for your organization, using a clear, structured navigation.

Quick Links for Faster Access
The “Show Prompt Guide” button is now “Quick Links.” This gives you instant access to the Console, Prompt Guide, and Prompt Library—all with a single click.

Longer Conversations Supported
You can now enter up to 10,000 characters in a single conversation—five times more than before. This is especially helpful for sharing longer code snippets or detailed questions.

Richer, Refreshed SAP Public Content
Joule for Consultants has updated and expanded its public SAP content. You’ll now find more detailed information and a wider range of insights from SAP Learning, SAP Help, SAP News, the AI Feature Catalogue, and more

For more information, see: What’s New for SAP Joule for Consultants

Discovery Center

The Future is Intelligent

The 2602 release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud demonstrates our commitment to building an ERP that is not just a system of record, but a true partner in your success. By embedding AI across the suite, we are helping you unlock new levels of productivity, enhance decision-making, and create a more intuitive and enjoyable user experience for everyone.

This is just the beginning, and I can't wait to see how you leverage these new capabilities to drive your business forward.

📽️ Watch the replays of our SAP Cloud ERP 2602 Early Release Series!

From January 12-16, we hosted a series of 22 expert-led live sessions to highlight the exciting innovations shipped with the SAP Cloud ERP 2602 release. Missed the live sessions? We've got you covered! Take advantage of the entire series or pick and choose the sessions most relevant to you. You will find the recording and presentation for Artificial Intelligence as well as 21 other topics of interest. Don't miss this chance and watch them on demand–anywhere, anytime.

🔎 Find all our assets

We at Cloud ERP and SCM Product Success offer a service as versatile as our product itself. Check out the numerous offerings our team has created for you below:

Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management in SAP Cloud ERP 2602

2026-01-23T10:42:47.970000+01:00

Welcome to your one-stop shop to learn and share knowledge about SAP's ready-to-run public cloud ERP software solution.

SAP Cloud ERP is part of SAP Business Suite that brings AI, data, and applications together into a fully integrated system. This community is open for anyone in the Cloud ERP ecosystem–customers, partners, and SAP experts.

In this blog post I’d like to outline the innovations for SAP Cloud ERP 2602 in the area of Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management. These are the topics that are covered:

Enhanced integration of project plan information with SAP Cloud ERP (6JN)
Project staffing view for resource managers (6JO)
Allowing contingent workers (cost center procured) to record time on enterprise projects (1NT, 1Q4)
Automatic removal of billing block for sales order billing plans (1NT)
Joule as project assistant (beta), planned to be available mid-March
Further innovations

Check out my video to get a glimpse of the new features:

In today's fast-paced business environment, running projects efficiently, on time, and on budget is more critical than ever. This release is packed with features designed to bring more intelligence, automation, and transparency to your projects, ultimately driving significant business value. We’ve focused on streamlining processes, enhancing integration, and even giving you a glimpse into the future with AI-powered assistance.

Let's dive into the highlights that will help you unlock new levels of project success.

Enhancements in SAP Project and Resource Management

Enhanced integration of project plan information with SAP Cloud ERP

In complex projects spanning engineering, manufacturing, and services, a major challenge is keeping project execution plans in sync with core financial and logistical data. A delay in a design phase, for example, has a direct impact on procurement timelines and billing dates. If this information isn't shared instantly between the project planning tool and the core ERP, decisions are made based on outdated information. To solve this, our 2602 release supercharges the integration between SAP Project and Resource Management, our solution on the SAP Business Technology Platform, and SAP Cloud ERP. Now, when a project manager adjusts a project plan – such as extending a phase – the system automatically synchronizes these date changes with the core ERP in real time.

This direct synchronization ensures that your financial, commercial, and logistical data within SAP Cloud ERP always reflects the most current project reality, empowering you to make reliable decisions based on a single source of truth. By automating the update process, you eliminate the need for project teams to manually replicate date changes across systems, which significantly reduces administrative effort and minimizes the risk of human error. This tight integration also lays the groundwork for faster billing cycles, as milestone completions in the project plan can now directly trigger commercial processes in the core system.

Figure 1: Improved integration of project plan information between SAP Cloud ERP and SAP Project and Resource Management, enables better decision-making in projects through reliable, up-to-date project plan information.

Project staffing view for resource managers

Resource managers are constantly juggling demands from multiple projects, and gaining a clear, consolidated overview of the staffing situation for a specific project can be a fragmented and time-consuming process. To address this pain point, we are introducing a brand-new SAP Fiori app called “Manage Request Assignments”. This powerful application is designed specifically for resource managers, providing a single, project-centric view of all resource requests. It shows at a glance which roles have been fully staffed, which are partially staffed, and which are still open, eliminating the need to dig through multiple screens and reports.

This new application provides resource managers with unprecedented transparency into the staffing health of any project, allowing them to instantly identify bottlenecks and open demands without extensive research. Having all the necessary information in one place, with direct navigation to take action, streamlines the workflow and dramatically reduces the time it takes to staff open requests and get the right people on the right tasks. Ultimately, a clear, holistic overview empowers resource managers to more effectively optimize staffing within a single project or re-allocate experts across multiple projects, ensuring your most valuable resources are deployed with maximum impact.

Figure 2: The “Manage Request Assignments” application allows users to efficiently view the resource request and assignment details at a project level.

Other Innovations in SAP Project and Resource Management

Additional enhancements introduced in SAP Project and Resource Management. For example:

Technical user flow coverage (client credential flow) for some APIs
Use of actual dates in scheduling
Consideration of working and none working days in scheduling
Ability to block certain file types during file upload
Additional details for tasks and collaboration project

For a complete list and more details please take a look into the What's new document for SAP Project and Resource Management

Enhancements in Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management

Allowing contingent workers (cost center procured) to record time on enterprise projects

Modern project teams are a dynamic blend of internal employees and external contingent workers. A significant process gap existed for contingent workers who were procured via a cost center, as they couldn't use the standard “My Timesheet” application to record time against enterprise projects. This made it difficult to get a complete and timely picture of all labor hours and costs. With the 2602 release, we have closed this gap. Now, these contingent workers can use the very same “My Timesheet” application as internal employees to record their time against the projects they are staffed on, creating a unified experience for the entire team.

This enhancement delivers a unified and simplified process where all project resources, regardless of their employment type, use a single application for time recording, which improves the user experience. You can now capture every hour worked against your project demands in one central place, providing a more accurate and timely view of total project costs and progress. Furthermore, the system automates the creation of the corresponding service entry sheet and goods receipt upon timesheet approval, significantly reducing administrative overhead and ensuring your suppliers are paid accurately and on time.

Figure 3: Project-based and cost center-based contingent workers can record time seamlessly in the “Manage My Timesheet” application, ensuring consistent tracking and better visibility across all engagement types.

Automatic removal of billing block for sales order billing plans

Milestone billing is a fantastic way to align payments with project progress, but it has often been hampered by a manual step. Once a milestone was achieved, someone had to go into the sales order and manually remove the billing block to make that item available for invoicing, a delay that directly impacts cash flow. We have now fully automated this process. Building on a feature from our last release, the system now automatically removes the billing block from the corresponding billing plan item in the related sales order the moment a project manager confirms the completion of that milestone in the project.

By completely automating this process, you eliminate the manual hand-off and inherent delays, allowing you to invoice your customers the very moment a milestone is contractually met. This directly accelerates your order-to-cash cycle and improves cash flow. This automation also removes a tedious and error-prone manual task, freeing up your project controllers and sales administrators to focus their expertise on more strategic, value-added activities. The risk of human error is entirely eliminated, leading to a smoother, more reliable, and more accurate billing process from end to end.

Figure 4: For sales order billing plan items which are created based on enterprise project or WBS element milestones, the billing block is automatically removed when the related milestone is completed.

Joule as project assistant (beta), planned to be available mid-March

Setting up a new project can be a complex and time-consuming task, often requiring project managers to navigate between three or four different applications to define the scope, staff resources, and release the project for time recording. We are incredibly excited to give you a preview of how we are solving this with the future of project management: the Joule Project Assistant. This is our generative AI copilot, and we are starting with a beta agent designed to radically simplify the creation of internal projects. Instead of clicking through multiple screens, a project manager can simply ask Joule in natural language, e.g. "Create a new pre-sales project for the 'Rising Star' initiative, starting next week and lasting for one month.". Joule can then propose a template, adjust dates, staff the project, and release it – all within a single, conversational session.

This AI-powered assistant promises dramatic efficiency gains, condensing a multi-application process into a single, swift conversation that saves significant time and effort for your project managers. The intuitive, conversational nature of Joule makes project creation accessible to everyone, drastically reducing the learning curve and empowering users to initiate projects quickly and correctly. By leveraging templates from successful past projects, the Joule agent also helps ensure that new projects are set up consistently and in compliance with your company's standards right from the start. We are currently running a beta program for this and encourage you to get involved! Register for the Customer Engagement Initiative via this landing page as of March 15, 2026.

Figure 5: The AI-powered solution assists users in rapidly setting up projects by leveraging similar past projects when the volume is high, and projects are repetitive in nature.

Other innovations in Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management

We know how critical it is to have a clear, unified view of project financials. That's why we’ve introduced the company code currency into the Project Cost report. Now, you can see a consolidated view of all your key cost figures including planned costs, actuals, commitments, and even project stock costs – all in a single, consistent currency. This provides a much clearer picture of your project's overall financial health and variance.

There is one important prerequisite to keep in mind: for the report to display in the company code currency, all the projects and WBS elements you select for that report must share the same company code. This ensures data integrity and accurate reporting. For a more detailed guide on this feature, I encourage you to check out the documentation on the SAP Help Portal.

Second, we’ve Improved system usability by segregating the profitability segment from settlement rules for clearer allocation and analysis. What does this mean for you? In the past, assigning profitability might have required you to set up a settlement rule. Now, for projects with revenue, you can assign the profitability segment directly to a billing WBS element using the "Assign" function. This is a much more direct and intuitive workflow. It saves you steps, simplifies the allocation process, and makes your analysis clearer and more efficient. As with all our features, you can find comprehensive details on this enhancement in the SAP Help Portal.

Finally, and this is something I’m personally very excited about, we are going beyond system features to build a stronger community. We are officially introducing the new CIP community – a collaborative space designed for our customers, partners, and SAP experts to connect. The goal is to build a powerful network where we can all share ideas, discuss best practices, and co-innovate on the future of enterprise and collaborative project scenarios. This is your platform to influence the direction of our products and learn from your peers.

If you are interested in joining this community and helping shape the future of project management at SAP, please reach out to my colleagues, Anke Junker anke.junker@sap.com or Varsha Chetan Manu varsha.chetan.manu@sap.com, to get involved.

The SAP Cloud ERP 2602 release for EPPM is all about making your project management more connected, automated, and intelligent. From ensuring a single source of truth to simplifying daily tasks for every project role, these innovations are designed to deliver tangible business value and set you up for success.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to seeing how you leverage these new capabilities.

📽️ Watch the replays of our SAP Cloud ERP 2602 Early Release Series!

From January 12-16, we hosted a series of 22 expert-led live sessions to highlight the exciting innovations shipped with the SAP Cloud ERP 2602 release. Missed the live sessions? We've got you covered! Take advantage of the entire series or pick and choose the sessions most relevant to you. You will find the recording and presentation for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management as well as 21 other topics of interest. Don't miss this chance and watch them on demand – anywhere, anytime.

🔎Find all our assets

We at Cloud ERP and SCM Product Success offer a service as versatile as our product itself. Check out the numerous offerings our team has created for you below:

Introducing the SAP Analytics Cloud Dashboard Hi-Fi UI Kit

2026-01-23T18:07:46.884000+01:00

Focus of this blog:

Introduction
How the UI Kit is set up
How to get the UI Kit
How to use the UI Kit
Essential Ressources

Introduction

The new SAP Analytics Cloud Dashboard Hi-Fi UI Kit is a high-fidelity Figma kit specifically designed for creating dashboards in SAP Analytics Cloud Stories. It closely reflects Stories UI elements and is based on the SAP Fiori Morning Horizon theme.

The UI Kit includes ready-to-use dashboard templates with placeholder or example data, charts, and other UI controls. Designers can easily switch between templates, swap visualization types, and adapt dashboards as requirements evolve. This accelerates the design process while supporting a seamless transition from mock-ups to implementation and ensuring consistent results across projects.

👉 Download the UI Kit from GitHub

Why Use the SAC Dashboard Hi-Fi UI Kit?

Efficiency: Reduce repetitive design efforts with pre-built components, saving time and resources.
High-Fidelity Mockups: Design detailed and realistic dashboards that closely reflect the SAP Analytics Cloud capabilities.
Consistency: Adhere to established design standards to produce a cohesive look across various dashboards, enhancing overall user experience.

How the UI Kit is set up

The UI Kit consists of three pages for easy navigation and use.

The first page, “📓 Cover“, is a UI Kit overview that includes a cover, and a slide explaining the purpose and usage of the UI Kit, as well as semantic versioning.

"Cover" Page of the SAP Analytics Cloud Dashboard Hi-Fi UI Kit

The second page, “✏️ Analytical Pages”, provides dashboard templates. Depending on the purpose of your dashboard, you can choose to use different BI page types, or start with an empty page to design your dashboard from scratch.

"Analytical Pages" page of the SAP Analytics Cloud Dashboard Hi-Fi UI Kit

The third page, “✏️ Components”, contains all other assets: UI elements and controls, containers and different chart types available in SAP Analytics Cloud Stories.

"Components" page of the SAP Analytics Cloud Dashboard Hi-Fi UI Kit

How to get the UI Kit

Navigate to the "SAC Fiori Horizon Theme" folder on GitHub.
Open the file "SAC_Hi-Fi_Dashboard_UI_Kit.fig".
Open the "SAC Dashboard Hi-Fi UI Kit" Figma File from GitHub
Click on the Download button.
Download the "SAC Dashboard Hi-Fi UI Kit" Figma File from GitHub
Open the downloaded file in Figma. Choose a destination folder, and you're ready to go.

How to use the UI Kit

After importing the file, we suggest making the UI Kit available within your company's Figma space. This allows you to utilize Figma’s Library feature effectively. Depending on your settings, this setup enables either just your immediate team or your entire organization to access the UI Kit via the asset panel, fostering seamless collaboration and ensuring consistent design practices across your teams.
To share a UI Kit, head to the File Settings, and click on “Publish Library...”. Choose the components you wish to include and decide who should have access to the UI Kit. Then click on "Publish" to complete the process.

Note: This feature is not available if the file has been moved to your Drafts.

"Publish library..." menu option in Figma

You can now incorporate the SAP Analytics Cloud Dashboard Hi-Fi UI Kit into your files via the libraries dialog, making all components conveniently accessible from the assets panel.

If you prefer not to publish the UI Kit internally, you can easily copy and paste the components into your own design files or use them as local assets.

Are you ready to transform your dashboard design process?

Then download the SAC Dashboard Hi-Fi UI Kit from GitHub and get started today!

Essential Ressources

SAC Fiori Horizon Theme folder on GitHub

Dashboard Design Best-Practices

How to Design Low-Fidelity Dashboards with the SAP Analytics Cloud Dashboard Schematics UI Kit

SAP UX Q1/2026 Update – Part 2: SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 and SAP Fiori Launchpad

2026-01-28T09:57:22.998000+01:00

This second post in my series gives an overview of user experience innovations that become generally available with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 release. Highlights are further AI-assisted features: for personalizing My Home, getting explanations for error messages, and Situation Handling recommendations. We also provide the often-requested capability to launch apps via transaction code or SAP Fiori ID, the new “required reading” feature for news in My Home, and mobile phone optimization – to name a few.

Users in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition can use Joule to access their data: via web browser on desktop, or mobile, via SAP Mobile Start, which also provides access to applications directly. Read about innovations for Joule and SAP Mobile Start in the first blog post introducing the series, and providing information about SAP Build Work Zone:

SAP UX Q1/2026 Update – Part 1: AI, Joule, SAP Build Work Zone, SAP Mobile Start.

Below, you will get an overview of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition UX innovations in these areas:

SAP Fiori launchpad
o. New shell bar now the default
o. Launch apps directly via Transaction Code / Fiori-ID
o. Making New Apps Available to Users
- Activating new apps, since now delivered inactive
- New Experience Switch
o. Further improvements for the launchpad
My Home
o. Manage News app now with “must be read” feature
o. Enhanced Personalization
o. AI-Assisted UX Features:
- AI-Assisted Smart Personalization of My Home for Applications
- AI-Assisted Error Explanation
- AI-Assisted Situation Handling
SAP Fiori elements mobile phone optimization
UI Adaptation
Improvements in details

Beyond these, we have a number of interesting new UX innovations for beta testing and early adopters with the 2602 release. I plan to cover these in my next blog post in the next few days.

Many of the UX improvements in details are enabled by our UI framework (SAPUI5 and SAP Fiori elements) and hence also available to customers and partners developing their own applications. Note however that the enabled AI-assisted features are only available for extensions built directly on the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system.

Below you’ll see AI innovations from our UX framework as well as some selected application highlights. You can get a more comprehensive overview of the latest AI innovations in these blog posts, which also include application specific examples:

SAP Fiori Launchpad

Let’s look closer at these UX updates:

New shell bar now the default, with updated design of notifications and user menu.
Launch apps directly via Transaction Code / Fiori-ID.
Further improvements.

New shell bar now the default

We have made design improvements which are relevant for a consistent user experience across the entire SAP Business Suite. The new shell bar first became available as an opt-in choice for customers with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2508 as described in my blog post covering 2508. With the 2602 release, it is now activated by default.

Benefits of the New Shell Bar

The new shell bar has these benefits:

The product name is displayed prominently now to the right of the SAP logo. In this case the name is “S/4HANA Cloud”.
Updated notifications design.
Updated user menu design.

Product Name Displayed

The immediately visible difference with the new shell bar is that the product name is displayed to the right of the SAP Logo, in this case “S/4HANA Cloud” as you can see at the top of Figure 1. The logo and the name are all contained within a clickable area, which brings the user to the start page (i.e. My Home).

Figure 1: New shell bar, now activated by default. Alt Text: A screenshot of Manage Sales Orders app, with the shell header highlighted, looking as described in the text.

Updated User Menu

The new user menu design shown in Figure 2 provides more space for the avatar of the user, and provides more space between items for easier selection. The settings are always at the top as the first entry, and the “Sign Out” option is separated from the actual navigation options in the list, to make it easier to find.

Figure 2: Updated design of user menu and notifications. Alt Text: On the left an image of the previous user menu and the updated user menu. On the right an image of the updated notifications list, showing four notifications in the group “Last Month”, each with a title, two lines of description and a line with the data and a “more” link.

Updated Notifications Design

The new simplified design of notifications shown on the right in Figure 2 fits better with the overall design of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, and provides simplier interactions. By default notifications are sorted by date, with grouping by “Today”, “Yesterday”, “Last Week”, “Last Month”, as you can see in Figure 3 below. Users can also choose to sort by importance.

Figure 3: Updated design of notifications. Alt Text: A short video showing the user selecting to display the list of notifications in the groups “Today”, “Yesterday” and “This Week”.

Recommendation: Check Test Automation and RPA

We advise that you check any test automation and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) you may have, since you may need to make some adjustments – in particular if you access the user menu, for example to log off at the end of a test.

In case you need more time to do this, you can opt-out of the new shell bar for this release.You can switch it off via “Activate New Features”, Feature “/UI2/SHELL_BAR_TOGGLE”.

Important: do switch it back on before next upgrade! There is no opt-out planned from 2608 onwards.

Launch apps directly via Transaction Code

Customers have been requesting this for quite a while now, so I am happy to announce that with the 2602 release, users can launch applications directly via the transaction code (t-code).

This is particularly helpful for those users who have experience with older SAP ERP systems, such as SAP ECC (ERP Central Component), and are used to launching transactions by entering the “t-code” (transaction code) in the SAP GUI for Windows shell bar. To launch a transaction VA01 (Create sales order) in SAP GUI for Windows, users enter “/nVA01” if they want it to open in the same window, and “/oVA01” if they want it to open in a new window. Lower case “/nva01” or “/ova01” also works. Furthermore, users could go to the start page by entering “/n” or “/o”, opening it either in the same window or in a new window respectively.

We have implemented the same logic in the search field in the launchpad shell bar, but with “/o” now creating a new browser tab rather than opening a new window.

We have also extended it, so that users can also enter the t-code after “/n” or “/o”. Figure 4 shows what it looks like, and Figure 5 shows a short video of it in action for an example using /nmm03 (Display Material) to open the classic UI and /nF217A (Customer – 360 View) to open a Fiori app.

Figure 4: Launching a classic UI via the transaction code “va01”. Alt Text: The shell header is shown, with the search field showing “All” and the search term /nva01 entered.

Figure 5: Launching applications directly via transaction code. Alt Text: A short video showing the user entering /nmm03 and /nF217A as described in the text.

You can determine an application’s t-code via the About entry in the launchpad user menu. We have also assigned transaction codes to Fiori apps, they are often identical to the Fiori ID, but not always.

Making New Apps Available to Users

New apps for business users can help them work more effectively, and get their work done more easily – but only if they actually use them! That means that they need to be activated and hence made available to users in the first place.

When one or more new applications are delivered that replace an existing application, users of the existing application need to be informed that a replacement is available to them. This is handled by the New Experience Switch. This is especially important if the existing application is about to be deprecated.

The next two sections cover these two topics in more detail: activating new apps, and the New Experience Switch.

Activating new apps, since now delivered inactive

With the 2602 release we no longer activate new apps automatically, so as not to disrupt existing users, as well as to ensure that users are not automatically granted authorizations that they should not have.

In order to activate an application, i.e. a Fiori app or a classic UI, the underlying IAM (Identity and Application Management) apps of type “App Authorization Variant” need to be activated. These particular IAM apps were introduced a while ago in order to allow finer-grained authorizations for applications.

For example, the My Inbox app has a standard view and an expert view. You will only be able to access the expert view if the corresponding IAM app for the expert view has been activated by your administrator. If your administrator has only activated the IAM app for the standard view, then you will be able to access the My Inbox app, but only its standard view.

Since new apps provided by SAP are no longer activated automatically, administrators need to activate the underlying IAM apps of type “App Authorization Variant”. Only then will users be able to find the apps via the launchpad search or in the App Finder, see the corresponding tiles on pages in the launchpad, and assign them as favorites in My Home.

Find out more in the documentation:

New Experience Switch

The New Experience Switch informs users that a replacement of the application that they have opened is available to them, and offers a toggle in the shell bar to directly switch to the new application. You can see what this looks like in the top left image in Figure 6.

If the existing, old version of the app is planned to be deprecated and removed in a future release beyond the next one, then the information icon in the shell bar next to the New Version toggle is replaced by a warning icon, as shown in the top right image in Figure 6.

Finally, if the existing, old version will be removed with the upgrade to the next release, an alert is shown instead of a warning, as shown in the bottom image in Figure 6.

Figure 6: New Experience Switch. Clockwise from top left: Information, Warning and Alert pop-overs. Alt Text: Three screenshots showing the respective popovers, each with a button “Switch to New Version”. The first two include a carousel giving information about the benefits of the new version. The last one include in red “August 2025” as the month when the app is planned to be removed.

The three phases described above were introduced already with the 2508 release.

With the 2602 release, we also support cases where one application has multiple successors. Figure 7 shows an example.

Figure 7: New Experience Switch warning for an application with multiple successors. Alt Text: Screenshot showing the popover containing two cards, one for each of the specialized versions available as successors.

Also new with 2602 is the option for users to provide feedback when the open up the new version of an application (Figure 8). When they select this, a survey is opened with one page of questions about the new version of the app.

Figure 8: New Experience Switch welcome pop-over for new app, now with “Provide Feedback” button. Alt Text: Screenshot showing the pop-over, with a carousel giving information about the benefits of the new version.

To find out more, have a look at the documentation, or at the SAP note for the list of apps that currently have successors making use of the New Experience Switch:

Documentation: Switching to a New App Version
SAP Note 3545277 - New Experience Switch in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: Overview of Apps

Further Improvements for the Launchpad

Enterprise Search Shows All Smart Business Tiles

Business users can now find all their Smart Business tiles (typically insight tiles with KPIs and/or mini charts) using enterprise search in the launchpad shellbar. Since users can define their own tiles via Smart Business, with specific filter values, this means that they can also find these personal tiles using search.

Did you know that enterprise search supports a number of search operators that you can use when searching for apps, or indeed when searching for business objects? Operators such as OR, *, - and “”.

You can also further filter search results, export them, share them or save the search as a tile. Find out more in the documentation:

Searching and Launching Apps or Business Objects.

Administrators can Upload and Download Spaces

In the Manage Launchpad Spaces app of the SAP Fiori launchpad, administrators can download existing spaces together with their assigned pages and upload them again to another system.

This enables you to transfer spaces and their assigned pages to other systems, for example, when you can't use transports, meaning that you can improve productivity and consistency across systems. Find out more:

Documentation: Downloading and Uploading Spaces

My Home

We continue to enhance My Home to make it even more popular with users. In this release, we have:

Manage News app now with “must be read” feature
Enhanced Personalization
AI-assisted smart personalization of My Home for applications
(this is covered in the next section AI-Assisted UX Innovations)

We are also providing the feature AI-Assisted Smart Solution for Situations in My Home for beta-testing, which I will showcase in part 3 in this series of blog posts.

Manage News App now with “Must be Read” Feature

News articles containing essential company information can now be designated as required reading. All users must acknowledge that they have read and understood the content.

The main benefits of this feature are:

Strengthens accountability: When reading is mandatory, employees can be held accountable for understanding essential information. This practice helps ensure compliance with legal, safety, and policy-related requirements.
Ensures consistent knowledge across the organization: All employees receive the same information, minimizing knowledge gaps and miscommunication.
Enhances change management : During periods of transition—such as the introduction of new policies or process changes—required reading ensures that all employees understand the reasons behind and the impacts of those changes.

Figure 9 shows what this looks like for a user: a required reading pop-over appears on their screen. The article has also been flagged as “Containing Critical News”.

Figure 9: An example of a news article that is required reading. Alt Text: A screenshot of My Home with a pop-over “Required Reading” that is also highlighted with “Contains Critical News”. The news article has an image at the top, followed by text showing the first part of the article. The “Done” button is greyed out, the “Remind me later” button is visible.

Figure 10 below shows the Manage News app, with the toggles Critical and the new Required Reading one.

Figure 10: The Manage News app has a toggle to mark articles as “Required Reading”. Alt Text: Screenshot of the Manage News app with the toggles set to “Yes”, and some news text in the Description field.

Enhanced Personalization

A great strength of My Home is the degree to which users can personalize it to suit their needs. We have now enhanced personalization further by letting users control the visibility of News and Pages separately within the News and Pages section of My Home.

If they are not so interested in news, they can choose to hide it, with the additional benefit of having all the pages only take up one row of vertical space rather than two, as shown in Figure 11. Figure 12shows how users can do the personalization.

Note that even with the news hidden, they will still receive required reading: when they log on, the required reading appears as a pop-over that can only be closed by confirming that one has read and understood the content.

Alternatively, users can decide to only show news and not pages. They can of course also decide to show both news and pages, as before, or hide both.

Figure 11: My Home with enhanced personalization, showing News deselected and Pages selected. Alt Text: A screenshot of My Home, with eight cards in one row in the Pages section, below the ToDos section showing one situation and the Apps section.

Figure 12: My Home Settings pop-over with the new selectors for News and Pages within the News and Pages section. Alt Text: A screenshot showing the Layout part of My Home Settings, where users can select or deselect sections. For the News and Pages section, News is deselected, Pages are selected.

AI-Assisted User Experience

When AI is embedded directly into the application UI to give users a better user experience, as opposed to being accessed via the Joule window, we talk about “AI-Assisted User Experience”.

In SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2508, we distinguish between AI base features and premium features:

Base features are free of charge, and only require that the customer signs the SAP AI Terms, which can be done via this link.
Premium features require SAP AI Units to be in place. Those listed here also require Joule Premium for Financial Management. Customers can activate this via SAP for Me -> Portfolio & Products -> Business AI.

The following are now generally available as premium features (they were both in beta testing with the 2508 release) and are described in more detail below:

AI-assisted smart personalization of My Home for applications.
AI-assisted error explanation.

This feature is still in beta, but planned to become generally available with the 2602 release on March 12th:

AI-assisted situation handling.
See below for more details.

AI-Assisted Smart Personalization of My Home for Applications

You could already use natural language and AI to personalize your My Home by adding Insights Cards, since the 2508 release. Now, with 2602, you can use natural language to find and add applications and insights tiles.

To do this, use the AI button “Add Content” in the salutation bar at the top of My Home, as shown at the top of Figure X. Clicking on this brings a pop-over with the option to add Insights Cards or, as shown, Apps & Insights Tiles. By describing what you want to do, the system will propose suitable applications and Insights Tiles. If you select them and click “Add”, they will be added, either as an entry in your Apps Favorites section, or in the Insights Tiles section. Figure 13 shows these main steps.

Figure 13: AI-Assisted Smart Personalization of My Home for Applications. Alt Text: The image shows three screenshots: at the top an extract of My Home showing the blue salutation bar, with an AI button “Add Content” on the right. An arrow has been added linking it to the second screenshot, where a popover “Add Content” is shown, where the user has entered “I want to monitor sales orders what app should I use to do this”, and two of four results are listed and visualized: “Track Sales Orders” and “Manage Sales Orders” (shown as an insight tile). Below that a screenshot of the outcome in My Home: the former is added to Apps Favorites, the latter to Insights Tiles.

Watch a demo and read more:

Video: AI-Assisted Smart Personalization of My Home for Applications in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition (1:07 min.)
SAP Discovery Center: Smart Personalization of My Home.

AI-Assisted Error Explanation

New users who are unfamiliar with the system may find that the short error messages give too little information for them to fully understand the issue, and what to do about it. This is where the Summarizing and Guiding and Recommending AI-patterns can help: the AI-Assisted Error Explanation in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition uses these to summarize information which explains the error and provide a recommendation for how to resolve it. Figure 14 shows an example where a user has entered a Sold-to-Party ID which does not exist in the system.

Note that this feature is also only available for applications based on SAP Fiori elements.

Figure 14: AI-Assisted Error Explanation in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502. Alt Text: On the left part of a data entry screen is shown, with the field “Sold-to Party containing “ABC” marked red and below that a popover with an error message “No customer master record exists for sold-to-party ABC”, and in the text line below that the AI icon followed by “Generate Explanation”. A fat arrow leads from this text to the image on the right, which indicates what happens when you click on this text: you get a popover with an short Explanation section and a longer Resolution section with numbered actions.

Have a look:

Video: AI-Assisted Error Explanation (45 seconds)
SAP Discovery Center: SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, error explanation.

AI-Assisted Situation Handling

The Intelligent Situation Handling framework helps users deal with not-so-frequent business situations, by notifying them of the situation, giving them an overview of the situation and providing contextual information to help resolve it. Ideally, the system also offers recommendations on how to go about resolving it.

Currently still in beta testing, we plan to make AI-assisted situation handling generally available with the 2602.1 release on March 12th.

Figure 15 shows what this looks like for a situation where a purchase contract is going to expire soon. The system is able to evaluate the company policy, in this case provided in the form of a decision matrix, and informs the user that a Request for Proposals is not needed for this contract, since its contract value is below the threshold.

Figure 15: AI-Assisted Situation Handling in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602, showing how the user is notified in My Home and can navigate to the situation page and there generate a recommended solution. ALT Text: The To-Do card “The purchase contract will expire soon” is shown at the top, with an arrow leading to the image below of the situation page, showing a “General Info” section and a “Recommended Solution” section, which only contains the text “You haven’t generated a solution yet. Would you like to do that now”, along with a “Generate” button with the AI icon. From there an arrow leads to the bottom image which shows the recommended solution text, along with thumbs-up and thumbs-down feedback buttons.

To see it in action, watch this:

Video: AI-Assisted Situation Handling in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition (1:00 minutes).
SAP Discover Center: AI-assisted Situation Handling.

The extended framework for Situation Handling allows customers to define their own situations. It is very powerful, but we have received feedback that it can be challenging for first time customers and partners to get it up and running. Hence Angelika Salmen has published this blog post to help you get started:

My First Situation with the Extended Framework.

For further information about Situation Handling, have a look at the links at the end of the above blog post.

SAP Fiori elements mobile phone optimization

We have made significant improvements in the overall user experience for accessing selected applications from your mobile phone, with layouts and interactions tailored specifically for smartphones.

The recommended way to access SAP Fiori web applications from your mobile phone is via SAP Mobile Start, which treats web applications the same way as native mobile applications: users can define favorites, and see all their apps, both web and native mobile, in the Apps view.

The currently supported SAP Fiori elements based applications are now rendered in a more user-friendly way, reducing complexity for users on the go by removing non-essential features, patterns and services that are not suited for mobile use.

This results in improved productivity and speed with simplified navigation, faster access to actions and optimized information density.

The new layout is provided by the mobile mode. Users can switch on the previous desktop mode in case they need access to any of the non-essential features hidden in the mobile mode. Figure 16 shows an example of a list report in the desktop mode (on the left) and what it now looks like rendered in the mobile mode (on the right).

Figure 16: SAP Fiori elements mobile phone optimization. On the left a list report rendered using the previous desktop mode, on the right using the new mobile mode. Alt Text: screenshots of a list report as it would appear on a mobile phone. On the left with filter bar and filters visible, so that only one line of the list is shown; on the right they are hidden, so that three lines of content are shown.

Currently these five apps are supported:

My Home
Customer 360 View (F2187A)
Manage Direct Activity Allocation (F3697A)
Manage Material Serial Numbers (F6879)
Manage Production Supply Areas (F6935)
Serial Number History (F7368)

We are eager to learn from our customers to see how well the current functionality meets users real-life needs, and where we could improve the experience. If you are interested in trying this out and providing feedback, please sign up for our Early Adopter Care program.

UI Adaptation

Adapt UI is a key user extensibility tool for making no-code / low-code, upgrade-safe adaptations and extensions to SAP Fiori apps. We have continuously enhanced its scope, so that it now supports most of the common changes.

A key user is a business expert who is authorized to make changes on behalf of other users – for example a team member who is interested in technology. The goal of key user extensibility is to empower business users to be able to adapt their working environment to suit their needs, without having to rely on system administrators.

Adapt UI is easy and safe to use: you can undo/redo changes, revert to a previously activated version or even revert to the original app.

Many Fiori apps contain object pages, that summarize information on a business object such as a sales order or a product. Adapt UI offers a large amount of options for adapting and extending object pages:

Hide/show SAP-defined fields
Add custom fields created with the SAP Fiori app Custom Fields (ID F1481)
Combine/split/rearrange/group/ungroup fields
Hide/show SAP-defined tabs, sections, tables, or action buttons
Change the configuration of tables (view settings, initial load, scrolling thresholds etc. – as featured in my previous blog post)
Change text arrangement (ID only, Text first, Text las) – also featured in my previous blog post.
Rename labels
Hide/show object header content
Embed web-based content in the object header or a section.

Key users who are authorized to use adapt UI can open it directly from their user menu in the launchpad. Once in started, Adapt UI shows you directly on the screen what changes you can make.

To find out more about this and watch a demo showing how it works and how easy it is, I thoroughly recommend this 13-minute video:

Video 1: Extending SAP Fiori Object Pages with Adapt UI. Click on the image to go to the video.The video shows you:

How to recognize an object page
What is Adapt UI
Prerequisites for Adapt UI
Demo
Tips for Working with Adapt UI
Key Takeaways
Resources worth knowing. These are:
- SAP Design System - SAP Fiori: Object Page Floorplan
- SAP Help - SAP Fiori Launchpad User Guide: Adapting SAP Fiori UIs at Runtime – Key User Adaptation.
- SAP Learning - Tutorials: Key User Adaptation for SAPUI5 Applications.

Note that the video was created for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, so the transport step at the end is different in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition – all the rest is relevant also for public edition, which is why I included it here.

The Adapt UI functionality is powered by SAPUI5 Flexibility technology.

Improvements in Details

User research has shown that it is easier to work with tables that contain hundreds of entries when the tables are implemented as a grid table rather than a responsive table.

Hence, with the 2602 release, we have looked at apps containing tables that typically have hundreds of entries and have changed the type of table used from a responsive table to a grid table.

For the full list of enhancements, have a look at the What’s New Viewer:

UX in What’s New Viewer for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602.

Continue reading

I hope you enjoyed this second part, covering what is now generally available with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 and SAP Fiori launchpad. Here's a link to part 3, covering exciting new UX innovations available for beta testing with the S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 release:

SAP UX Q1/2026 Update – Part 3: AI (Beta) Innovations in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602.

Do keep posting your experiences and recommendations yourself in the SAP Community, with the SAP Fiori and/or the User Experience tag! In case you are wondering how to get a list of the most recent blog posts on SAP Fiori and User Experience in our new SAP Community, use these links:

My Home in SAP BTP ABAP Environment

2026-01-28T10:41:54.700000+01:00

Good news – My Home is finally available with SAP BTP ABAP environment!

My Home is your personalized entry page that provides you with easy access to the business insights and applications you need to do your job with greater speed and agility. My Home for SAP BTP ABAP Environment lets you access and manage your favorite pages, your favorite apps, and your insights on any device. It follows a modular approach to meet the needs of different roles and builds on the functionality of the SAP Fiori launchpad using spaces and pages.

New Look and Feel

My Home will be set as default for newly provisioned and existing systems as of SAP BTP ABAP Environment 2602. Accordingly, this soon changes the appearance of the SAP Fiori launchpad for every user. So, look forward to the new look and feel!

However, the setting to disable My Home will still be available for administrators until the release upgrade SAP BTP ABAP environment 2608. Then, My Home will be the one and only entry page within SAP BTP ABAP environment.

My Home in SAP BTP ABAP environment

My Home Sections

My Home is divided into different sections. You can view your News, Pages, Apps, Insights Tiles, and Insights Cards on this page.

News

The News section keeps you updated on your company's latest news, or SAP BTP ABAP environment system news.

News section on My Home entry page

Pages

The Pages section provides you with quick access to your favorite or most used pages. You can manage the visibility of your pages and order them in a way that enhances your productivity.

Pages section on My Home entry page

Apps

The Apps section provides easy access to your favorite, most used, recently used, and recommended applications. The Apps section improves the discoverability of your applications. The Recommended tab offers app suggestions using SAP Business AI, based on your user-specific role assignment. You can add apps to the Favorites tab from your most used, recently used, and recommended applications. You can organize and categorize your favorite applications by using the grouping, ordering and color-coding functionality so you can access them even more efficiently.

Apps section on My Home entry page

Insights Tiles and Insights Cards

The Insights section allows you to manage and monitor your company’s activities. It shows critical business information through KPIs and micro charts. This section is broken into two sections: Insights Tiles and Insights Cards. Insights cards and tiles display dynamic content at a glance. They provide quick and easy access to the applications that can provide more detailed information.

Insights tiles offer analytical information, such as charts or KPIs. Insights cards are similar to Insights tiles but provide more detailed analytical information in the form of charts, tables or lists from supporting overview page-, list report-, and analytical list page-based applications. Thanks to this information, you can assess what is happening at any time and take action when needed. You can customize the Insights section to display information that enables you to do your job with speed and agility.

Insights section on My Home entry page

Make it Mine – Personalize My Home to Your Needs

Following the “Make it Mine” approach, you can personalize the entry page to hide or display specific sections as well as the content maintained within these sections. Another key feature is the ability to customize the layout of these sections. This personalization capability allows you to prioritize the information that is most important to you.

To personalize the entry page to your needs, choose My Home Settings from the dropdown menu of the respective sections. Here, you can customize the layout and configure the respective sections.

My Home Settings

We hope you enjoy working with My Home in SAP BTP ABAP environment and reap its benefits. You can look forward to more enhancements that will improve your My Home experience even further in future releases. Stay tuned for more updates!

Removal of Business Groups in SAP BTP ABAP Environment: Switching to Spaces and Pages

2026-01-28T11:58:43.178000+01:00

Recently, we announced My Home in SAP BTP ABAP environment.
My Home is your personalized entry page that provides you with easy access to the business insights and applications you need to do your job with greater speed and agility.

As a prerequisite for My Home, SAP Fiori launchpad spaces and pages need to be enabled.
The spaces mode was developed to offer more flexibility to influence the launchpad layout for specific user groups. Pages are assigned to users via spaces that are assigned to business roles. The business role defines which users see a specific space. By defining pages with meaningful sections, you can define in which order the apps are sorted on the page.

Switching to Spaces and Pages

Spaces and pages have been announced as the standard layout approach for structuring content in the SAP Fiori launchpad with SAP BTP ABAP environment 2302.
Consequently, the classic Fiori launchpad home page with business groups will be removed gradually until 2608 in favor of SAP Fiori launchpad spaces and pages.

Luckily, this is no news: The transition is going on for quite some time now, as spaces and pages are already the default in newly provisioned systems for several years.
The removal of groups will affect newly provisioned systems at first with 2602. Later, with 2605, the switch will take place for existing systems as well.

This means in detail:

With 2602, it is no longer possible to switch between spaces and pages and the classic Fiori launchpad home page with groups in newly provisioned systems.
With 2605, spaces and pages will be the default in existing systems as well. The option to switch to the classic home page with groups will still be available for end users if the administrator has enabled it in the Manage Launchpad Settings app.
With 2608, the option to switch to the classic FLP home page will be removed completely in production systems.

How to Prepare for the Transition

Good news: The transition is straightforward, but there are a few important points to note. Until now, users couldn’t create their own groups in the SAP BTP ABAP environment. They relied on SAP-delivered groups and personalized them by adding, removing, or renaming tiles.

SAP provides predefined spaces and pages with similarly structured content. SAP-delivered groups will be switched to these predefined spaces and pages. Important: user-level personalizations made to the previous groups will not be carried over and will be lost due to the switch. You will need to recreate personal adjustments after the transition.

To be as well prepared as possible, we recommend administrator to enable the switch to spaces and pages now to remain productive after the transition.

Here are our best practices for end users:

Plan the switch carefully and identify which adjustments are important to you.
Document your existing personalizations so you can rebuild them in spaces and pages.
Use SAP’s predefined spaces and pages as a starting point and tailor them to your workflow.

For Administrators: Summary of the Upcoming Changes

As part of the mentioned transition to spaces and pages, SAP will change the SAP Fiori launchpad settings in the Manage Launchpad Settings app for administrators accordingly over the next release upgrades:

With SAP BTP ABAP environment 2602:

The parameter SPACES is removed in newly provisioned systems.
The parameter SPACES_ENABLE_USER is removed in newly provisioned systems.
The parameter SPACES_CUSTOM_HOME is true (ON) as default for all existing and newly provisioned systems. The setting to disable My Home is still available. Since spaces and pages need to be enabled as a prerequisite for My Home, this needs to be manually activated for existing systems.

With SAP BTP ABAP environment 2605:

The parameter SPACES is true (ON) as default in existing systems.
The parameter SPACES_ENABLE_USER is false (OFF) as default in existing systems. The settings to enable switching between the classic FLP homepage and the spaces and pages layout is still available.

With SAP BTP ABAP environment 2608:

The parameter SPACES is removed.
The parameter SPACES_ENABLE_USER is removed.
The parameter SPACES_CUSTOM_HOME is removed.

Ultimately, there will be no option to switch back to groups or to enable toggling between spaces and pages and groups after the SAP BTP ABAP environment 2608 release upgrade. You must complete the transition to spaces and pages before the final, irreversible switch in production systems with the 2608 release upgrade.

We therefore invite all customers to begin transitioning now and proactively embrace this change.

Customer Self-Service Maintenance via SAP for Me of Accounts Payable/Dunning and E-bill Contact

2026-01-30T09:13:54.720000+01:00

Following the successful rollout of Customer Self-Service Maintenance for finance-related contacts earlier last year via SAP for Me, we are pleased to inform you of a further extension of this capability, which went live on December 18th 2025. We are delighted to announce the Go Live of our latest phase of updating the Accounts Payable/Dunning and E-bill Contact(s) within SAP for Me.

From the “Home” page in SAP for Me, you need to go to the “Finance and Legal” page, “Overview” tab.

You will only see, under the “Your Finance Contacts” card, the contacts for your company that currently hold one or more of the following roles:

Purchase Order Responsible – Maintenance (PO Resp. MT)
Purchase Order Responsible – Cloud (PO Resp. Cloud)
Maintenance Responsible (MT Resp.) the person who should receive the Consumer Price Index (CPI) notification
Accounts Payable/Dunning Contact
E-Bill Contact, including:

E-Billing (all Lines of Business (LoB))
E-Billing Software and Maintenance
E-Billing Cloud

You might notice that there are three dots showing at the top right-hand side of the card.

If you click on this, you will be able to see a more detailed explanation of “What the card is about?” and information of “Required Authorizations”.

You can filter on each roles, applicable countries and status.

Add Role

Click on the pencil-shaped icon as the edit icon located on the right-hand side of the contact you would like to update. The “Edit Contact” screen will open, where you can view the selected contact’s core information such as first name, last name, and job position, as well as the roles currently assigned.

In the lower section of this screen, Accounts Payable/Dunning Contact and E-Bill Contact roles can be added by selecting the applicable country from the Applicable Countries options. (E-Billing (all LOB), E-Billing Software & Maintenance, E-Billing Cloud).

After making the selection, click “Save.” There will be three blue dots that circle whilst the update is in progress. You will now be able to see the contact in the card with the new role assigned. This will also be assigned real time in our back-end systems.

Create Contact

If you want to create a contact, click on the “Create” button at the right-hand side of the “Your Finance Contacts”. This brings up a screen where you need to input the mandatory fields – First Name, Last Name, Email, and Job Position, then click “Create Contact”. Mandatory fields are marked with a red asterisk.

A confirmation message will appear indicating that your request is being processed and may take a few minutes. You can continue working during this time. To check the latest status, refresh the card.

If you enter an e-mail that already exists against a contact in our database, you will receive a warning message that you need to use the existing contact, by adding a role and choosing the e-mail address of the existing contact, rather than creating a duplicate contact.

Transfer

Click on the “Transfer” button to the right-hand side of the “Your Finance Contacts”.

This brings up a screen where you can see the roles you want to transfer. By clicking the downward arrows on the right side, you can view the available options for different LOBs.

After making your selection, you can search for the contact you want to transfer the role to at the bottom of the screen. Select the contact and then click “Submit”.

If you would like to transfer a role to a new contact, you must first create the contact. Then, on the role transfer screen, search for the contact using the search field and select it to proceed with the transfer.

Edit

This is used for removing or adding a role. You can also edit a contact’s name or e-mail address as long as they are not S-user in which case Super Admin will have to edit.

Click on the pencil-shaped icon as the edit icon. On the screen that opens, you can make the required changes. Click the downward arrow to select the role you want to add or remove, then click “Save”.

Note that you cannot remove a role, unless there is someone else in the company that has the same role.

Delete

This is used to delete a contact and break the relationship between the company and the contact. This will not only remove the contact from “Your Finance Contacts” card but will also remove the contact from the back-end systems.

There are two caveats to this. There must be someone else with the role assigned, and most importantly, the user must not be an S-User.

Click on the pencil-shaped icon as the edit icon and then “Delete Contact” button. You will first be asked to ensure that there is another person with that role. If not, you will need to assign that role to someone else first. Once you have confirmed “Delete”. If the user you want to delete is a S-User, then you will only be able to remove the role, but the contact will not be deleted in the back-end systems.

In short, customers can update their own "Purchase Order Responsible Maintenance, Purchase Order Responsible Cloud and Maintenance Responsible, the person who should receive the CPI notification.

Following the go-live, Accounts Payable/Dunning and E-Bill contacts can also be maintained by customers via self-service.

Should you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our customer service for assistance.   

Thank you for using “SAP for Me”.   

Understanding the New Tags in the SAF-T Poland VAT Report (JPK_V7M(3) and JPK_V7K(3))

2026-02-04T09:47:39.960000+01:00

Poland's tax reporting landscape is evolving, and SAP has introduced new tags in the Standard Audit File for Tax (SAF-T) structures JPK_V7M(3) and JPK_V7K(3) to help businesses stay compliant with the country's electronic invoicingrequirements.

Understanding the Four New Tags

In this blog article, we' ll explain what the new tags mean and how to use them, along with examples to make things clearer.

The new structures JPK_V7M(3) and JPK_V7K(3) of the Polish SAF-T VAT report now include the following tags designed to simplify the reporting process:

"NrKSeF": This tag is the KSeF Reference Number, which serves as an identifier for invoices in the National e-Invoice System (KSeF).

"OFF": Use this tag for invoices referred to in Article 106nf(1) of the act that don't have a KSeF identification number and haven't been submitted to KSeF.

"BFK": This applies to either electronic or paper invoices not categorized as e-invoices by KSeF, for example in cases where it’s not mandatory to issue invoices using the National e-Invoice System.
"DI": Represents any proof of transaction other than an invoice issued through the KSeF. This applies to all other cases of documents that will not have a KSeF number, have not been sent to KSeF and can’t be categorized as ‘BFK’ or ‘OFF’.

Examples

To help companies meet the new standards, let's look at examples of where these tags are applicable.

The ‘NrKSeF’ Tag

Use the "NrKSeF" tag when there's a KSeF Reference Number for an invoice. This number identifies the invoice within the National e-Invoice System. For example, if you're processing an invoice registered in KSeF, you should tag it with the appropriate "NrKSeF" number.

Complete this field if, as of the date of submission of JPK_VAT, the invoice has been assigned a KSeF number.

The ‘OFF’ Tag

Apply the "OFF" tag to invoices referred to in Article 106nf(1) of the act that don’t have a KSeF number as of the date of submission of the records.

This designation applies to invoices issued during the period of malfunction of the National e-Invoice System, according to Art.106nf(1). This designation indicates that, due to the inactivity of this system, the invoice does not have a KSeF identifying number as of the date of submission of the JPK_VAT.

If an invoice exists in e-Document processing but still lacks a KSeF Reference Number, mark it as "OFF".

The ‘BFK’ Tag

The "BFK" tag is for invoices not handled by KSeF, such as paper invoices, vendor invoices for foreign transactions or invoices with document types that are excluded from KSeF. This category also includes invoices from cash registers, invoices from consumers in B2C relations issued outside of KSeF, invoices for financial services using KSeF exemption, etc.

This tag allows you to indicate transactions that for various legal reasons fall outside of the KSeF.

If the document is not marked with DI, OFF or KSeF th en it is reported by JPK_V7K(3) and JPK_V7M(3) with status BFK.

The ‘DI’ Tag

Use the "DI" tag for all other documents that serve as transaction proofs but are not an invoice and do not qualify as ‘OFF’ or ‘BFK’.

For example, daily reports from cash registers, internal documents, customs documents, or other accounting documents.

Invoices issued in the offline24 mode must also be tagged with the ‘DI’ tag.

DI should be also assigned to invoices, which should be registered in KSeF, but due to different reasons cannot be registered. This may happen in the initial period applicable with KSeF, when for various reasons, mainly technological and configuration ones, the taxpayer is unable to register the invoice in KSeF, but will have to forward it to the business partner.

With SAP Document and Reporting Compliance you can select for which type of transaction DI is relevant. See the example below.

Why This Matters

These tags help you accurately categorize your transactions, ensuring compliance with Polish tax regulations while reducing reporting errors.

You can also find detailed information about the changes in the JPK_V7M(3) and JPK_V7K(3) structures in the Regulatory Change Manager.

For detailed guidance on implementing KSeF requirements in your SAP system, check out the related blog articles.

How Official Document Numbering helps to fulfill the Polish KSeF Requirements in S4HANA Public Cloud

How you can manage Polish KSeF Requirement in SAP S/⁠4HANA Cloud Private Edition & SAP S/⁠4HANA

How to store long Supplier Invoice Reference Numbers in SAP S/4HANA ERP Products

Staying updated with the latest legal changes is essential for navigating the ever-evolving taxation landscape. By understanding how to use these tags, you can ensure compliance with national regulations, reduce errors, and streamline your tax processes.

SAP UX Q1/2026 Update – Part 3: AI (Beta) Innovations in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602

2026-02-04T13:58:42.831000+01:00

This third post in my series gives an overview of the very latest AI-related user experience innovations in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602, which are so new that they are only released for customers to try them out via beta testing. Particular highlights are the planned AI-assisted Task Automation via “smart helpers” and the AI-assisted Easy Fill for SAP Fiori elements-based applications. Plus many exciting application-specific UX innovations, where AI helps users get their work done more easily.

In case you missed them, Part 2 of my series covers the generally available UX innovations in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602, and Part 1 provides general updates about Joule, SAP Work Zone and SAP Mobile Start.

I’ve grouped the AI innovations currently in beta testing into four main sections.

Cross-area UX innovations.
Application-specific Joule agents.
Application-specific AI for helping users deal with errors.
Application-specific embedded AI use cases.

The third section features some Joule agents as well as some embedded AI use cases, all related to helping users deal with errors.

Cross-Area UX Innovations

AI-assisted task automation is an exciting brand new innovation for the 2602 release, planned to become available for beta testing in May with 2602.3, but you can sign up for the beta program already today. The other two innovations, AI-assisted smart solution for situations in My Home and AI-assisted easy fill of SAP Fiori elements-based applications are already available for you to try out. You can try out any of them by signing up here.

Beta: AI-Assisted Task Automation

The planned AI-assisted task automation (beta) allows your key users and end users to automate repetitive activities based on SAP Fiori apps with so-called ”smart helpers”. They are created in a design time and accessed through My Home. What makes this approach so powerful is that you simply need to describe your desired business outcome in natural language, related to a specific SAP Fiori elements-based application, and the smart helper will take care of it for you.

Let us take the example shown in Figure 1: for the application Create Sales Orders – Automatic Extraction, the user has invoked the task automation application Manage Smart Helpers and entered “Select sales order requests with status complete. Simulate the sales order and where the simulation is successful, create the sales order”.

Based on this instruction, SAP Business AI creates an execution plan and shows it to the user, as you can see in Figure 1 too, where the application is listed as well as the proposed actions to execute.

Figure 1: Beta: Manage Smart Helpers application for defining instructions for the planned AI-assisted task automation. Alt Text: Screenshot showing the instruction text at the top, an empty section for attachments, and the execution plan with four steps: read order requests, analyze request data, simulate pending requests, create sales orders.

Figure 2 shows how we currently envisage that users will get an overview of the smart helpers that they have created.

Figure 2: Beta: The planned way of giving users an overview of the AI-assisted task automation smart helpers in My Home. Alt Text: Screenshot of My Home with a section “Smart Helpers” above the “Apps” section, with two tabs “Smart Helpers (4)” and “Active Runs (3)”. The latter is selected, showing three cards with title, description and executed step shown: one is completed, two are running.

Have a look at this video to get a better idea of how this will work:

Video: AI-Assisted Task Automation (2:00 minutes).

Beta: AI-Assisted Smart Solution for Situations in My Home

With this feature, you can now get details of a Business Situation shown directly in place on My Home, and even initiate quick actions or make changes to business data there. This is achieved by expanding the Situation card on My Home when you click on it, as you can see in Figure 3, or in action in this video:

Video: AI-Assisted Smart Solution for Situations in My Home in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition (0:50 min.)

Figure 3: Beta: AI-Assisted Smart Solution for Situations in My Home. Alt Text: An image with two screenshots: the upper one show the top part of My Home showing five Situation cards in the To-Dos section. One titled “End Date for Project Digital Media Assessment for Media Corp…” is linked with an arrow to an expanded card shown in the second screenshot – the card is taller and wider, contains a summary on the left with two action buttons “Assign To Me” and “Close Situation”, and more details on the right.

Beta: AI-Assisted Easy Fill

Users often receive requests via e-mails or chats to change data in the system. This new feature makes it much easier to update the fields in the various sections of an object page based on SAP Fiori elements, such as a sales order. Instead of manually scanning the e-mail and navigating to the relevant sections and fields in the object page, you can just paste the text into Easy Fill and it will automatically identify the correct fields to update, with proposals for the correct entries.

The power of AI means that the new values do not have to be exactly contained in the text. Figure 4 shows an example, where the new address is given without actually mentioning the name of the city, only the street and post code, along with an abbreviation for the state and country (“BW DE”). As you can see, the proposed new values are correct, despite this missing or abbreviated information.

Figure 4: Beta: AI-Assisted Easy Fill for SAP Fiori elements based applications. Alt-Text: A screenshot showing an Easy Fill pop-over, with a text entry field on the left with text from a customer e-mail informing about a change of name and address for their store, and on the left showing the “Filled Fields”, a list of seven fields for which new values are proposed.

Watch a demo:

Video: AI-Assisted Easy Fill of SAP Fiori Elements-Based Applications in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition (1:15 min.)

Note that this feature is only available for applications based on SAP Fiori elements.

Application-Specific Joule Agents

Agents that are specialized on specific application use cases can be particularly effective at helping users get their work done more easily. As you can see with these examples, good use of AI has considerable benefits for user experience.

The first two agents that I have highlighted below are brand new in the beta program with the 2602 release.

Beta: Project Setup Agent

This is new with the 2602 release, available now for beta testing by signing up here. This agent helps project managers create a new project based on a reference project. It also allows them to staff key resources directly and release the project for time booking. By guiding the user step by step, Joule helps to streamline the process and ensure that it is free of errors, so that project managers can spend more time on their projects rather than on administration.

Figure 5: Beta: Project Setup Agent. Alt Text: Four screenshots of Joule. 1) the user prompts “Create Project”; Joule asks for detail like the name. 2) Joule found a similar project. 3) Project successfully created, user prompts “Staff Users”, Joule asks who to staff. 4) User lists names, Joule says Nancy is already booked, user says keep the position open, and ask Joule to notify the staff.

Figure 5 above shows an example, you can dig deeper by watching this video:

Project Setup Agent in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition (1:33 minutes).

Beta: Dispute Resolution Agent

This is also new with the 2602 release, available now for beta testing by signing up here.

In an ideal world, customers pay all your invoices on time, no questions asked. In the real world, customers sometimes dispute payments, claiming that the invoices are incorrect. The new dispute resolution agent helps contract accountants identify and resolve disputes by analyzing both the invoice details and the contractual terms and identifying discrepancies, errors, or mismatches. Based on this analysis, it then suggests how to proceed to resolve the dispute.

Figure 6 shows an example, where the customer has complained that the invoiced amount is too high. Analysis by the dispute resolution agent reveals that the invoice is indeed too high, more than the 2% annual rise in service basis fee stipulated in the contract. It then recommends creating a credit memo.

Figure 6: Beta: Dispute Resolution Agent. Alt Text: Screenshot showing a dispute case full screen application, with Joule opened. User prompted “Help me with dispute 40000000171”, Joule replied with sections Overview, Discrepency Identified, Finding, I recommend, each containing detailed text.

Watch it in action and find out more:

Video: Joule Agents: Dispute Resolution Agent (1:38 minutes).
SAP Discovery Center: Dispute Resolution Agent

Beta: Accounts Receivable Agent (soon GA)

This agent helps accounts receivable (AR) accountants to reduce Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) by prioritizing the closure of open items and highlighting high-value follow-up actions. It analyses receivables data across customer balances, dunning history, and dispute items and makes recommendations based on these data-backed insights.

Overall, the agent reduces the amount of time AR accountants need to spend reconciling and managing receivables. Figure 7 shows an example of an analysis of a specified customer account along with the recommended actions.

The beta-testing program is closed for this agent, we expect it to become generally available in the next month or two.

Figure 7: Beta: Accounts Receivable Agent. Alt Text: Two images of Joule. On the left the user has asked “Analyze overdue balances for GreenWheel Inc….”, Joule shows a card “Analysis” with a list including totals, disputed amount, non-disputed overdue. On the right the Dispute Case Status is shown, and the user asked “Show Recommended Actions”.

Watch the video and read more:

Video: Accounts Receivable Agent (3:19 minutes)
SAP Discovery Center: Accounts Receivable Agent.

Beta: Accounting Accruals Agent

An accrual is an accounting entry which represents revenue which has been earned or expenses which have incurred but for which no payment has yet been made. That way, when looking at a particular period such as a quarter or a month, accountants get a more accurate picture of a company’s financial position. For example, if a service was delivered, but not paid for within the period, having the accrual means that the cost of delivering the service and the revenue associated with it both appear in the summary for the period.

Calculating accruals and deferrals is often time very time consuming. It can also require estimates based on historical data, if for example invoices have not yet been created, or payment amounts can be reduced if payments are made quickly in the future.

The new accounting accruals agent can significantly speed this up, potentially reducing the time spent on these activities by 80%! This frees up accountants to work on more value-adding activities, such as analysis. As you can see in Figure 8, the agent creates a list of accrual proposals. For each proposal, you can see details on the recommendation, including an explanation for the basis of the recommendation.

Figure 8: Beta: Accrual Proposals made by the accounting accruals agent. Alt Text: A screenshot of the Accrual Proposals applications, showing a list of six accrual proposals on the left. The details of the one selected are shown on the right, showing the recommended accrual amount, the proposed line items and a section “Basis of AI Recommendation” with a natural language explanation along with a bar chart and a forecast line for the trend per month.

Watch this video to find out more:

Video: Accounting Accruals Agent (1:36 min.)
SAP Discovery Center: Accounting Accruals Agent.

Beta: Cash Management Agent

Cash managers need to manage the company’s liquidity, by transferring money to accounts that are in the red and making informed decisions on investment or borrowing opportunities. With the Cash Management Agent, Joule gives the cash manager an overview of the current cash position by collecting opening balances and expected cash flows, and then calculating expected closing balances. Joule automatically identifies potential cash shortages and surpluses according the customer’s treasury policy, and proposes appropriate bank transfers. This reduces the time needed to retrieve the relevant data and make informed decisions significantly.

Figure 9 shows an example where the cash manager asks “Show me my priorities today”, Joule provides the daily cash position summary with the main negative and positive accounts, and makes proposals for bank transfers.

Figure 9: Beta: Cash Management Agent. Alt Text: Six images of Joule, on the very left the start screen with options as buttons. 1) The user chooses “Show me my priorities today”. 2) shows a Daily Cash Position Summary card, with tables for positive and negative balance accounts; 3) shows the user has scrolled horizontally in the table to show the opening balances. 4) Joule shows bank transfer proposals, each with a “Select” button. 5) Details of the one the user chose. 6) User entered “Confirm and Create”, Joule informs successfully created.

Find out more here:

Video: Cash Management Agent
SAP Discovery Center: Cash Management Agent

Beta: Production Planning and Operations Agent

This agent helps production planners save time releasing production orders. It checks material, capacity and scheduling availability. If there are no issues, the orders can be released immediately. Where it helps most is in cases where there are material shortages: it suggests workarounds such as alternative components or materials or adjusting schedules. Once all the criteria are satisfied, the planner can release the order directly within Joule, and the agent will complete the production order release.

Figure 10: Beta: Production Planning and Operations Agent. Alt Text: Screenshot of the “Manage Product Orders” app, with Joule opened, stating that a production order has been released, but a component is not available, and suggests to reschedule to a later date. The user entered “Reschedule and release”, and Joule confirmed success.

See it in action and read about it:

Video: Production Planning and Operations Agent
SAP Discovery Center: Production Planning and Operations Agent.

If you are interested in trying this out, you can sign up here.

Beta: International Trade Classifications Agent

I am highlighting this because it can save users 50% of their time, in some cases up to 80%! (as verified by user research with our first customers). The job to be done here by product classification specialists is to classify products that are to be shipped abroad. They need to assign the correct customs tariff numbers and commodity codes according to trade regulations, and provide a rationale for their decision so that the whole process is compliant and will hold up in an audit.

The process is labor intensive and error prone, since a few trade compliance specialists typically need to handle a high number of complex products (goods, software, services).

The International Trade Classifications Agent helps enormously here, since it looks at a product’s characteristics as maintained in the system, and then recommends the appropriate classification, with an easy to understand rationale for the recommendation. Even better: if there are potentially many classifications, it will rank them and provide a rationale for each one. Figure 11 shows an example for a fitness watch that needs to be classified.

Figure 11: Beta: International Trade Classifications Agent. Alt Text: A screenshot of Classify Products, with a list of four AI-generated proposals for product classification, each with a “Select Proposal” button.

Watch this video to get the full picture, using the fitness watch as an example:

Video: International Trade Classification Agent (3:50 minutes).
SAP Discovery Center: International Trade Classification Agent.

If you are interested in trying this out, you can sign up here.

Beta: Maintenance Planner Agent (Soon GA)

This agent helps maintenance planners manage and prioritize maintenance tasks, thus ensuring equipment reliability and minimizing downtime.

Video: SAP S/4HANA Asset Management – Maintenance Planner Agent (2:41 minutes).
SAP Discovery Center: Maintenance Planner Agent.

The beta-testing program is closed for this agent, we expect it to become generally available in the next month or two.

Application-Specific AI for Helping Users Deal with Errors

Dealing with errors takes a lot of time and effort, and can also be frustrating. Hence we have identified areas where AI can help. In my previous blog post I featured the AI-Assisted Error Explanation which is generally available now. This feature uses AI to explain error messages from the system when incorrect data is entered into the application.

Application-specific errors are more complex to deal with, since they turn up when a process has started and subsequently runs into issues. This example of AI-assisted error resolution using Joule is already generally available:

AI-assisted posting issue handling for billing documents
supports tasks related to resolving such issues and managing billing documents, including providing resolutions for posting errors caused by an unopened posting period, enabling the posting of valid billing documents, and allowing users to modify the billing date of existing billing documents as needed.
- Video: Process Billing Documents with Posting Issues (2:47 minutes).
- Blog post: How to Handle Posting Issues for Billing Documents Using Joule.

AI-Assisted Error Resolution for Product Cost Accounting

This is new for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602, planned to be available with the Joule 2603 release in March.

Errors are brought to a user’s attention via Intelligent Situation Handling notifications and To-Dos on My Home, but users can also directly ask Joule to “show my errors in company code XXX” to get an overview. Joule will display the errors , help you discover the root cause and guide you through the resolution with clear, step‑by‑step instructions, as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12: AI-Assisted Error Resolution for Cost Accounting (planned availability with Joule 2603 release). Alt Text: Five Joule images, starting with the list of situations, then showing the Explanation and Resolution content, which spans the other four images, with three detailed steps for the user, and at the end links to apps to use. Find out more here:

Video: AI-Assisted Error Resolution for Cost Accounting (2:00 minutes).
Documentation: AI-Assisted Error Resolution.

Beta: AI-Assisted Payment Exception Analysis

Most payments to vendors are automated, the first step being the payment proposal run which checks for payments that are ready to be made. Errors that surface after such a run need to be checked and resolved manually, which can be time consuming. This is where the new payment exception analysis comes in handy: it helps accounts payable (AP) accountants to identify the root cause of the error, giving them the context, and a step-by-step guide for resolving the issue. Figure 13 below shows an example.

Figure 13: Beta: AI-Assisted Payment Exception Analysis. Alt Text: Screenshot of the Revise Payment Proposals app with an Exception Analysis and Resolution pop-over, with sections “Analysis”, “Resolution” and “Logs”.

Watch it in action and find out more:

Video: AI-Assisted Payment Exception Analysis (1:21 minutes)
SAP Discovery Center: Payment Exception Analysis.

Application-Specific Embedded AI Use Cases

Beyond dealing with errors and exceptions, we also have a number of interesting cases available for beta testing where AI helps users get their work done directly within their application. I have chosen to feature just one of these, but after that you will find links to more examples.

Beta: EHS Permit Management

This new feature also has huge potential for saving effort and cost: we estimate 65% cost reduction in environmental permit management cost, and 80% reduction in environmental management penalties and fines. In other words: a huge improvement in user experience and user satisfaction!

Environmental, health and safety regulations can range from a few pages to hundreds of pages, depending on what it is regulating. Checking these documents and ensuring that your company is compliant, with all the necessary tasks in place to stay compliant, is a tedious and time-consuming task.

This new permit management feature automatically extracts and sets up an EHS- permit from PDF documents. It identifies all the requirements and makes proposals for the necessary tasks, ranging from simple ones to maintenance notification tasks and reporting tasks. The user can flip through the regulatory document in the left side of the screen. For each page that they look at, they see highlighted the part of the document containing a concrete requirement, and on the right side of the screen a list of proposed tasks. With one click, the user can select a proposed task and create an actual task. Figure 14 shows an example.

Figure 14: AI-Assisted Permit Management for SAP EHS Management, environment management. Alt Text: Screenshot showing one page of a PDF document on the left with a paragraph higlighted, and a list of proposed tasks on the right.

Have a look at this video to see it in action, in particular how users can select from the proposed tasks to create tasks:

Video: EHS Permit Management.
SAP Discovery Center: EHS Permit Management.

Additional Use Cases for Embedded AI in Beta

Here are three more examples for AI embedded in applications, helping users get their work done more easily.

Beta: AI-Assisted Compliance Information Processing

With this innovation, master data specialists can automatically process supplier compliance disclosures information such as regulations, status and upstream suppliers data, and map it to compliance requirements in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition for product compliance.

Video (1:28 minutes) and SAP Discovery Center entry.

Beta: AI-Assisted Safety Instruction Generation

This innovation for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, EHS workplace safety, automatically generates clear, structured and easy-to-understand safety instructions for specific equipment.

Video (1:35 minutes) and SAP Discovery Center entry.

Continue reading

I hope you enjoyed this third part, covering the new UX innovations available for beta testing with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602. Here's a link to part four, covering exciting new UX innovations available in SAP Success Factors:

SAP UX Q1/2026 Update – Part 4: SAP SuccessFactors (AI, Joule and More).

TCode也能快速启动了

2026-02-06T06:01:41.135000+01:00

在之前介绍2602版本新功能的博客里，我提到了被广大SAP用户熟知的/n和/o的快捷键指令也能在ERP公有云版本中使用了。比如我在搜索框中输入/nf2450，就会打开f2450对应的应用：IAM信息系统：

之前，通过这样的方式打开应用只支持Fiori的应用，不支持WebGui版本的应用。但被广大SAP用户所熟知的都是以前那些常用的TCode，比如VA01，VA02，VA03，MM01，MIGO等等。

现在，我们这个快速启动应用的功能做了改进，也支持WebGui的应用了，也就是那些常用的TCode也能快速启动了！

比如，我在搜索框中输入/nVA03：

系统就会在当前页面打开“显示销售凭证”的WebGUI版本的应用：

再比如，我们常用的TCode：MIGO，当我输入/nMIGO后：

系统就在当前页面打开了我们最常用的MIGO应用：

快速总结一下：

搜索框中/n和/o的快捷指令从2602版本开始支持。
除了支持Fiori ID外，以前的TCode（如果有相应的WebGUI应用）也支持了，这对于SAP ERP的老用户非常友好，进而提升工作效率。

SAP UX Q1/2026 Update – Part 4: SAP SuccessFactors (AI, Joule and More)

2026-02-09T10:23:23.505000+01:00

This fourth post in my series gives an overview of user experience innovations in SAP SuccessFactors. The major UX highlight is the new home page design. Beyond that, we’ll look at examples of good UX in applications, new Joule, AI, and analytics capabilities helping users become more effective, and enhanced integration into Microsoft Teams.

Before reading this, do read the first blog post introducing the series and providing general information about Joule, SAP Build Work Zone and SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone, and SAP Mobile Start, along with links to all the published parts of this blog post series:

SAP UX Q1/2026 Update – Part 1: AI, Joule, SAP Build Work Zone, SAP Mobile Start.

Also, if you missed it, do have a look at the many UX innovations which already came out with the SAP SuccessFactors 1H2025 release:

SAP UX Q3/2025 Update – Part 4: SAP SuccessFactors (AI, Joule and More).

Our strategy for user experience has three aspects for helping users save time and effort, and helping their business run better:

Enjoyable: providing a modern, accessible user experience, consistent and integrated, with good usability.
Better: helping users achieve better outcomes with AI and embedded analytics.
Together: helping users work together in teams.

In this post, I have picked the following highlights from the latest SAP SuccessFactors 2H2025 release showcasing each of these aspects:

Enjoyable: design and usability enhancements
o. New Home Page design (web and mobile) and WalkMe update.
o. Examples of good UX in Workforce Management.

Better outcomes with AI and Analytic
o. Career and Talent Development for employees and managers: skills, succession.
o. Performance and Goals: Joule agent, AI and analytics for managers.
o. Additional Joule support for employee self-services

Together: supporting collaboration in teams
o. Joule integration into Microsoft Teams.
o. AI-assisted quick writing available im Microsoft Teams

Enjoyable: Design and Usability Enhancements

The new home page design for the product will benefit all users. When it comes to specific applications, the 2H2025 release has a huge number of great enhancements, so it wasn’t easy to pick ones to highlight. I have chosen to include some of the innovations in Workforce Management. At the end of the blog post you’ll find links to all the news for the 2H2025 release.

New Home Page Design (Web)

The new Home Page design not only looks better, it also gives users tangible benefits, by becoming more intuitive and efficient, streamlining navigation and supporting personalization.

As you can see in Figure 1, the new design is cleaner and more attractive. The top navigation row contains Quick Actions, more compact than before. Below that the greeting section is new, with quick links and cards featuring timely and relevant information going beyond the user’s workflow actions and to-dos.

Figure 1: New Home Page for SAP SuccessFactors. Alt Text: Screenshot showing all the sections described in the text.

As you can see in Figure 1, we have separated Quick Actions and the Quick Links: the Quick Actions row at the very top allow users to quickly make updates or look at information while staying on the home screen: clicking on one of the Quick Actions opens a pop-over in which the user can do the action. Figure 2 shows two examples, where the user has chosen the Manage My Team and Give Feedback Quick Actions.

Figure 2: Quick Actions in the new home page. Alt Text: two screenshots each showing pop-overs for quick actions for (1) Manage My Team, with a list of team members on the left and two columns with links to actions, in groups “Change”, “View” and “Other actions”, (2) Give Feedback, with fields for the person, the topic and three questions (what went well, what to improve, additional comments).

Greeting Section: this section contains Quick Links on the left, that take you directly to the respective applications. On the right, the system displays cards featuring timely and relevant information that extend beyond the user’s workflow actions and to-dos.

Needs Attention: As before, tasks, to-dos, and workflow actions are available on the home page, but now with the improved design it is more intuitive and easier to use. The Needs Attention section provides a stack of cards for each type of task, to-do or action. They are displayed in just one row, within a carousel. If you have more than one card in the stack, the “View All” link opens a pop-over where you can see and interact with all the cards. Figure 3 shows an example, where the user has clicked on “View All (5)” in the leftmost card (shown in Figure 1) representing “Compensation Planning”.

Figure 3: Needs Attention “View All” example, showing all tasks of type “Remind a team member to complete pending tasks”. Alt Text: Screenshot of a pop-over showing a card for each of the five team members, each with the task type as title and a “Send Email” button.

Organizational Updates: This section is for links to organizational information, including custom cards for company initiatives or messages. As you can see, we have standardized the card pattern and display information using only the smaller-sized cards here.

Explore More: this is where customers have more freedome to place data visualization and banner cards. With the 2H2025 we provide two analytic cards that can be made available there: Time Sheet Status and Upcoming Absences. Find out more in the

Documentation: Analytical Cards on the Latest Home Page.

Personalization: at the very bottom of the home page (see Figure 1), you have a “Personalize your home page experience” button to do that, via a pop-over (Figure 4). You can personalize the selection of Quick Actions, Quick Links and also choose whether you want your name to appear in the Greeting section or not.

Figure 4: Personalization of the home page. Alt Text: A screenshot of the home page with a popover “Home Page Settings” with three tabs “Greeting”, “Quick Links” (selected), and “Quick Actions”, and a list of links to choose from (Time Sheet, Team Absence Calendar,…), all currently selected.

Watch it in action and find out more about the new home page for web and mobile here:

Video: Meet the New Homepage & Mobile Experience in SAP SuccessFactors – 2H 2025 Release (3:10 minutes)
SAP SuccessFactors HCM: Updated Home Page 2H 2025
More design backround: Exciting updates are coming to your SAP SuccessFactors home page!

New Home Page Design (Mobile)

We have also updated the SAP SuccessFactors mobile app correspondingly (Figure 5). You can see the Quick Actions along the top of the Home screen, above the Needs Attention section. To-Dos are on a separate screen, divided into two tabs Approvals and Other, with a section for each type of To-Do. Filters at the top of the screen let you quickly get to those To-Dos you are most interested in at the moment.

Figure 5: New Home and To-Do design for SAP Success Factors mobile app. Alt Text: Two mobile screens, on the left the Home screen, with Quick Actions at the top, then “Needs Attention” and “Featured” sections, each with a row of cards. On the right the To-Do screen, with Approve and Other tabs, above filters for “My Team”, “Learning Assignments”,…, and sections “My Team (7)” and “Learning Assignments (4)”, each with one row of cards.

Easy On-Boarding with WalkMe

The new home page is intuitive, so that most users should be able to adapt to it easily. To ensure that all users feel comfortable with it, we have adapted the WalkMe onboarding tour to explain how to use the new home page. The short video in Figure 6 shows what this looks like:

Figure 6: WalkMe for the new home page. Alt Text: A video showing WalkMe appearing as an overlay on the home page, starting with an “Explore updated home page” pop-over, followed by pop-overs next to each explained feature.

Examples of Good UX in Workforce Management

I’d like to highlight the new capabilities for workforce scheduing and geofencing for time tracking.

SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Scheduling

The brand-new shift scheduling solution SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Scheduling is for companies that need to plan their production workforce schedules. It enables demand-driven workforce planning, supporting both weekly and monthly shift plans that account for operational requirements, employee skills, and labor regulations.

As you can see in Figure 7, it makes it easy for users (schedulers) to get visibility into workforce availability, allowing them to minimize downtime, increase productivity, and better align labor supply with business demand.

Figure 7: Workforce scheduling. Alt Text. Screenshot of a schedule with a list of people on the left and a calendar on the right with rows corresponding to the people, showing who is allocated to which shift on which day. The screenshot shows a shift being assigned, with a date-picker popover.

Geofencing in SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking

In this release, customers can leverage a new geofencing feature that helps ensure employees clock in and out only when physically present at their designated work location. Geofences can be defined for specific groups, with real-time visibility into proximity, helping to improve compliance with location-based policies and prevent time recording outside authorized areas.

Figure 8: Geofencing. On the left: defining the geofences. On the right: what it looks like for a user clocking time on a smart phone. Alt Text: Two screenshots: on the left the app Manage Geofences with a list of locations on the left, and on the right for the selected one a map with areas marked with a circle, a triangle and a polygon. On the right a mobile screen for clocking time, showing the user’s location within the marked circle on a map, and a “clock time” button.

Read more about these in this blog post:

Second Half 2025 Release: What's new in SAP SuccessFactors solutions for Workforce Management

Better outcomes with AI and Analytics

SAP SuccessFactors continues to invest heavily AI and analytics to help users work more effectively with a better overall experience. I have chosen to highlight how employees benefit when planning their careers and their further development, how employees and managers benefit when they need to evaluate performance and goals, and how Joule is making employee self-services easier:

Career and Talent Development for employees and managers: skills, succession
Performance and Goals: Joule agent, AI and analytics for managers
Additional Joule support for employee self-services

Career and Talent Development for employees and managers: skills, succession

Automatically Create Skills from Resume

A system, or for that matter a manager, can only help people grow in the direction they would like if they know what skills a person has, and what development goals they aspire to reaching. This means you need to have people’s skills maintained in SAP SuccessFactors in order for the system to guide employees and managers.

People often have a wide variety of skills, so manually maintaining the full list of their skills is time-consuming and can mean that people don’t bother – resulting in a lack of data in the system.

Now, the 2H2025 release uses AI to make this much easier: users can simply attach their resume, and the system will extract skills from there automatically. Figure 9 shows an example.

Figure 9: Using AI to extract skills from your resume. Alt Text: Screenshot of the Growth Portfolio app with an “Add from Resume” pop-over, showing the file name Resume.pdf and a list of 16 skill groups, such as “Agile Methodology”, “Communication Skills”, each with a check box for selecting to add or not.

Once the skills have been created, you will want to be able to easily search through them or filter them – which is why we have introduced search and filtering to the skills page, as shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10: Search and filter your skills. Alt Text: Screenshot of Growth Portfolio app with a filter bar at the top with a search field and filter fields for Proficiency Level, Categories, Tags, and Time Period. The page shows three rows of six cards, each representing a skill with a horizontal chart shosing the current level of proficiency on a 1 to 5 scale.

AI-Recommended Development Goals Based On Skills

Now that you have your full set of skills maintained in the system you can start using SAP SuccessFactors to guide your growth. This is an important enabler of our goal to empower employees to take control of their professional development.

After maintaining your development goals, the 2H2025 release of SAP SuccessFactors uses AI to make recommendations for suitable learning courses and available assignments relevant to achieving your goals. Figure 11 shows an example.

Also new: development goals can now be transferred between multiple jobs held by the same person, ensuring continuity in their growth within the company.

Figure 11: AI recommendations for learning and assignments based on skills and development goals. Alt Text: Screenshot of Goal Details, showing a card for Linked Assignments above the main section Opportunities to Grow, containing two cards: one for Learning, one for an Assignment. Each card has an image, title and a few details.

AI and Analytics for Managing Career and Talent Development

People Intelligence, our new people analytics application, is now generally available. It is built on SAP Business Data Cloud, and fully integrated in SAP SuccessFactors. It offers intuitive dashboards, AI-assisted insights supported by Joule, and hundreds of HR metrics. To help customers get started, the application includes nine pre-built use cases, each for a specific HR domain.

One of these pre-built use cases is Skills Insights. It helps to identify existing skill strengths and gaps in the organization, to compare current skills to target proficiency levels, and to align workforce capabilities with your organization’s priorities. Figure 12 shows an example of the overview page, from where you can drill down into further detailed views.

Figure 12: An example overview page of Skills Insights. Alt Text: Screenshot showing various charts (line chart, horizontal bar charts, heat map) for Skills Adoption Overview, Employees with Skills, Most Adopted Skills, Proficiency Overview.

Find out more about Skills Insights in:

Documentation: Skills Insights.

Career Development Insights is another of the pre-built use cases. Figure 13 shows an example of the development goals page that offers insights into participation rates, alignment with learning and critical skills, and organizational progress.

Figure 13: An example of the development goals within Career Development Insights. Alt Text: Screenshot showing a panel on the left with filters, on the right two sections: Summary, with numerical KPIs; Details, with four horizontal bar charts and a donut chart showing number of employees with goals, goal status, most and least popular skills.

Find out more about Career Development Insights in:

Documentation: Career Development Insights.

AI Successor Recommendation Based On Skills

Another example of how SAP SuccessFactors uses AI to give people a better user experience is the new skill-based successor recommendations capability. This uses AI to identify who would be best suited to be your successor, by matching skill sets and attributes to the specific role requirements. Figure 14 shows what it looks like.

By analyzing skill proficiency levels and internal work experience in the employee growth portfolio, it recommends potential successors who might have been overlooked using traditional metrics.

Figure 14: AI successor recommendation based on skills. Alt Text: Screenshot of Succession app showing org chart view for manager John Williams with 3 successors underneath his image. There is a pop-over for John, with details of the position, and a list of three other suggested successors. For the first one, Michael Pittman, a further pop-over “Role Readiness Explanation” is shown listing five matched skills and competencies and four unmatched ones.

Performance and Goals: Joule Agent, AI and Analytics for Managers

When the time arrives for managers to review the performance of their team members, they typically need to reserve a considerable amount of time in getting an overview of each person’s activities, achievements, and feedback they have received.

Now, managers can save a lot of time by using the new Performance and Goals Agent within the SAP SuccessFactors Performance and Goals solution. Using Joule, managers get AI-guided insights – for example, into their areas of strength, areas needing improvement, goal progress summaries, key accomplishments, and development recommendations. Figure 15 shows an example.

Figure 15: Performance and Goals Agent. Alt Text: Joule in full screen mode, with a prompt “I have to meet with Christine Dolan about her performance. What should I know about her areas of strength and what she needs to improve?”. Below that the reply in two sections “Areas of Strength” and “Areas Needing Improvement”, containing bullet points.

The UI for managers to enter their assessment is intuitive, as shown in Figure 16. Now, with the 2H2025 release, HR departments can define business rules that trigger actions for users based on what they have entered. For example, a rule might stipulate that a low rating requires a comment to be entered, resulting in the comment field only being exposed when a user actually gives such a rating.

Have a look at many more examples of how the agent helps managers:

Video: Introducing the Performance & Goals AI Agent in SAP SuccessFactors (3:27 minutes).

Also helpful for managers is the enhancement of the AI-powered Writing Assistant that is now available: they can use it to help formulate comments for performance ratings, as shown in Figure 16, and in the video linked above.

Figure 16: AI Writing Assistant for formulating comments when rating performance, embedded in the intuitive performance review UI. Alt Text: Screenshot of Performance feedback app, showing a list of goals with manager and employee rating, and a panel on the right with evaluation details for the goal “Ensure production documentation complies with standards”. The comments field is in focus, with a popover “Generate Comments” listing suggested texts – “Regularly review and update documentation” is highlighted.

Performance Insights

People Intelligence also comes with pre-built use cases for the performance and goals area, giving managers insights into performance metrics across the organization. Figure 17 shows an example of an overview.

Figure 17: Performance Overview in Performance Insights provided by People Intelligence. Alt Text: Screenshot with three sections Overview (showing KPIs), and Performance Distribution and Performance Rating Changes, containing a line chart, horizontal bar charts and a donut chart.

Find out more about what’s new for Performance and Goals here:

Additional Joule support for employee self-services

Employees typically only rarely interact with the HR system, so they are casual users, who especially need an easy to understand, intuitive user experience. Joule helps here enormously, since users can just state what they want and Joule will help.

With the 2H2025 release, we have added further Joule actions. Users can now upload files directly through Joule in the flow of supported Joule scenarios, view organizational information of themselves or others, view extended time-off data, and create half-day leave requests based on scheduled working time. Figure 18 shows examples for a half day leave request and for viewing time off guidelines.

The “explain my pay” feature, that I highlighted in my previous UX blog post on SAP SuccessFactors, is now also available for employees in Mexico and in Germany – in their respective languages (Spanish and German). Figure 18 shows an example for Mexico.

Figure 18: Further Joule actions available now. Alt Text: three images of Joule: 1) with prompt “I wann apply half day leave tomorrow morning”, with Joule showing time off request; 2) “what is the time off guideline”, with Joule summarizing time off types and purposes; 3) “Explique mis deducciones”, with Joule providing a pay explanation in Spanish.

Together: Supporting Collaboration in Teams

Users working with Microsoft Teams can chat directly with Joule from within Teams, as well as benefitting from AI-assisted quick writing directly in-place.

Joule integration into Microsoft Teams

Users can now access chat with Joule while using Microsoft 365 Copilot within Microsoft Teams, as shown in Figure 19.

Figure 19: Access Joule from Microsoft Teams via Microsoft 365 Copilot. Alt Text: A screen showing Copilot open in Teams, where the user has typed in “show my leave requests”.

AI-assisted Writing Available in Microsoft Teams

Furthermore, AI-assisted writing is now built into the SAP SuccessFactors quick actions that are available to users in Microsoft Teams, such as giving feedback or creating activities. This helps users communicate more clearly and consistently, and save them time in formulation too. Figure 20 shows an example for giving feedback directly from within Teams.

Figure 20: AI-assisted writing in Microsoft Teams. Alt Text: A screenshot of Microsoft Teams showing Quick Actions for SAP SuccessFactors behind a pop-over for giving feedback, with some text entered into the “What went well?” question and a context menu pop-over listing the writing assistant menu items, with “Enhance Writing” in focus.

Further Information on 2H2025 Release Highlights

These four assets give you an overview of the overall release highlights for 2H2025, in increasing level of detail:

The following posts give details of innovations in the 2H2025 release in these areas:

Finally, for all the details, have a look at the documentation:

SAP SuccessFactors What’s New Viewer.

Continue Reading

I hope you enjoyed this fourth part, covering SAP SuccessFactors, with great new user experiences helping employees and managers work more efficiently and effectively.

Here's a link to part five, covering latest UX innovations for managing your supply chain with SAP Integrated Business Planning:

SAP UX Q1/2026 Update – Part 5: Innovations in SAP Integrated Business Planning.

Part 1 of the series lists all the parts, and links to those parts that have already been published:

SAP UX Q1/2026 Update – Part 1: AI, Joule, SAP Build Work Zone, SAP Mobile Start.

Modernizing Classic Apps in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition--Screen Personas Enhancements in CE2602

2026-02-14T14:56:29.355000+01:00

In SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, Screen Personas capabilities are embedded as part of the UI Adaptation framework, enabling key users to simplify and tailor classic applications.

With the CE2602 release, Screen Personas continues to evolve, introducing powerful enhancements that improve usability, integration capabilities, and administrative simplicity. Let’s explore the key updates.

Show Message Toast in SAP GUI for HTML

CE2602 introduces support for toast messages in SAP GUI for HTML using the showMessageToast scripting API.

You can now display success or informational messages as lightweight, non-intrusive toast notifications that:

Automatically disappear after a few seconds
Remain visible if the user hovers over or taps on them

This feedback mechanism enhances user experience without interrupting ongoing workflows.

Example: session.utils.showMessageToast("This is a toast message");

Utilize Scripting APIs to Access OData V4 Services

One of the most impactful enhancements in CE2602 is the introduction of the GuiODataClient Scripting API object.

With GuiODataClient, you can:

Create custom requests to any active standard OData V4 services
Automatically handle CSRF tokens and authorizations
Ensure secure data retrieval and processing within the application lifecycle

This significantly expands integration possibilities, allowing Screen Personas scripts to interact directly with backend services in a structured and secure way.

To explore available list of APIs, visit : Products → SAP S/4HANA → APIs → OData V4 in the SAP Business Accelerator Hub.

Example:

BDT Mode Enabled by Default

BDT (Business Data Toolset) mode is now enabled by default, simplifying configuration and reducing administrative effort.

What this means for you:

You no longer need to maintain the ENABLE_BDT_MODE parameter in the Manage Flavors >>Customizing>> Settings before building flavors for BDT-based classic applications
For legacy flavors created without theENABLE_BDT_MODE setting , set the new parameter DISABLE_BDT_MODE via “Manage Flavors” app to avoid any potential runtime issues.

For more details, refer KBA 3705431.

These enhancements in CE2602 further strengthen Screen Personas as a powerful tool for modernizing and extending classic applications — combining usability improvements with deeper integration capabilities.

Learn more about SAP Screen Personas

Online training. The best way to learn the basics about SAP Screen Personas (Adapt UI for classic applications) is to take our free training course on the learning.sap.com platform: https://learning.sap.com/courses/adapting-the-ui-in-sap-s-4hana-cloud-using-sap-screen-personas
Connect with your peers. Every other month, we have a group of customers that gather online to share best practices, demo their flavors, and answer each other’s questions. Experts from the product team also join to explain how to use the latest functionality. If you are interested in joining, you can sign up online to join the SAP Screen Personas practitioner forum. This will add you to the mailing list for the monthly meeting summaries. Please contact “Peter Spielvogel“ or me directly if you want to join the monthly calls.
Product documentation. Manage UI Adaptations with Screen Personas, provides more clear , comprehensive and the latest information about the product.
Have other concerns about the roadmap for SAP Screen Personas? See if we answer them in our latest roadmap blog post .

SAP UX Q1/2026 Update – Part 5: Innovations in SAP Integrated Business Planning

2026-02-16T08:39:30.781000+01:00

This fifth post in my series gives an overview of UX innovations that came in the last six months, with the SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP) releases 2508, 2511 and 2602. In many areas Joule and embedded AI helps users with their planning, with explanations and guidance. We have also focused on improving usability of applications, usability of the SAP Fiori launchpad, as well as features for collaboration and Microsoft Teams integration.

In case you missed it, Part 1 provides general updates about Joule, SAP Work Zone and SAP Mobile Start.

I’ve grouped the UX innovations into these main sections:

Joule
AI-assisted features (embedded)
SAP Fiori launchpad
UX enhancements in applications
Collaboration enhancements (Microsoft Teams)

Let’s first look at how Joule is using AI to help users, before continuing with the embedded AI and the AI-assisted features.

Joule

Joule: AI-Assisted Supply Optimization Analysis

Joule helps planners to quickly understand the results of supply optimizer planning, and boosts their productivity by allowing easy comparison of different planning scenarios. Not only does this make their work easier, it also leads to a reduction in lost sales and inventory costs.
Planners can ask Joule about their supply planning runs, including time series optimization. Joule analyzes the planning run logs and provides explanations for missed demand fulfillment, inventory targets, and manual adjustments, as shown in Figure 1. Joule also addresses identified issues and provides suggestions for resolving them. It can also compare different planning runs to give additional insights.

Figure 1: SAP Integrated Business Planning, AI-assisted supply optimization analysis. Alt-Text: Screenshot of Planner Workspace, with four images of Joule overlayed: first the user asked “Provide the status of the last planning run for planning area XAP4”, after seeing the status summary asked “Why the demand fulfillment rate low”, resulting in an analysis, then asked “Summarize the KPIs”, resulting in a tabular response, and then “What are the mitigation options to resolve demand fulfillment for PRODUCT02 and Customer 101?”, resulting in detailed analysis.

Watch it in action and find out more:

Video: AI-Assisted Supply Optimization Results Analysis in SAP IBP - 2511 Release Highlights & Demo.
SAP Discovery Center: SAP Integrated Business Planning, supply optimization analysis.
Documentation: AI-Assisted Supply Optimization Analysis.

Simplified Job Scheduling with Joule

You can execute jobs and monitor them without having to leave their application – simply by asking Joule. You can list your saved jobs with a simple ask and schedule jobs directly through Joule. You can also check job statuses, including your own jobs, failed jobs from today, or jobs created by colleagues. Figure 2 shows an example.

Figure 2: Job scheduling with Joule. Alt Text: Screenshot of Intelligent Visibility showing a world map, with four images of Joule overlayed. The user prompted “I would like to run my saved job”, Joule asks to select one, the user selects “Forecast to Loads”, is shown the details and says “Run the job”, finally receiving a success illustrated message.This is interactive planning, reimagined for speed and simplicity.

Video: Job Scheduling with Joule in SAP IBP - 2508 Release Highlights & Demo (1:47 minutes).

Using Joule to Run Master Data Health Checks

Users can now ask Joule to run a master data health check for any master data type they specify, as show in Figure 3. In the past, health checks could only be started from the Manage Master Data app or using the Master Data Health Check application job, but as of SAP IBP 2508, users can define their query in a conversation with Joule and read the job results in a result table displayed in the Manage Master Data app.

Figure 3: Running master data health checks with Joule. Alt Text: Two screenshots, each with Joule in foreground. 1) User prompts “In my last supply planning run, I had some errors that may originate from master data inconsistencies. I suspect the error is in ZP1LOCATION. Could you please check it?”. Joule replies that it found 16 messages, here are the first 10, listing them in a three column table. 2) “Can you please also check ZP1LOCATIONPRODUCT?”, result: illustrated message “no inconsistencies found”.

AI-Assisted Features (Embedded)

We have introduced a number of AI-assisted features, embedded in applications, that help planners save time in their daily work: AI planning assistance helps them create formulas and formatting rules, the other analysis features help planners understand the outcomes of the often complex planning algorithms, as well as making recommendations for even better outcomes.

AI Planning Assistance

AI planning assistance is now generally available with the 2602 release for SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP), add-in for Microsoft Excel, having benefitted from feedback from our customers during beta-testing these last six months.

Planners can now easily generate formulas and formatting rules for their planning views, by simply saying what they need using natural language. This makes their lives much easier, since in the past creating formulas was complex and often required an administrator.

Figure 4 shows an example for generating formulas, where the user first asks to calculate deltas, upon which new rows for the deltas are added. Next, the user asks to add totals per year, resulting in new columns being added for each year.

Figure 4: Generating formulas using natural language with AI planning assistance. Alt Text: two pairs of images showing planning sheet and bar chart, first with prompt pop-over, then with resulting update to the sheet, as described in the text.

In addition to creating formulas, planners can use natural language to highlight critical values in their plan, making it easy to identify aspects that need further attention. Figure 5 shows an example query.

Figure 5: Formatting data using natural language with AI planning assistance. Alt Text: screenshot of part of a planning sheet with 8 rows below a bar chart, with a pop-over for entering the instruction “Show a red font in case capacity supply expansion is greater than capacity supply”.

This generative AI feature streamlines the planning process, empowering planners to focus on adding value rather than spending time on technical details.

To see this in action and find out more, have a look at:

Video: AI-Assisted Generation of Formulas (4:52 minutes).
Video: AI-Assisted Generation of Formatting Rules (3:23 minutes).
Documentation: Planning Assistance and General Availability of Planning Assistance.

AI-Assisted Forecast Results Analysis

Making forecasts with advanced models is powerful, but the outcomes are not necessarily intuitive and easy to understand. This is where SAP IBP, AI-assisted forecast results analysis helps users.

You can now display detailed explanations for values of the main forecast key figures. This can help you understand how each algorithm in the forecast model calculated the forecast, how the best-fit algorithm was selected, and how you could enhance parameter settings to improve forecast accuracy. Figure 6 shows an example.

These explanations are available both in the Planner Workspaces app and in the SAP IBP, add-in for Microsoft Excel.

We continue to enhance the scope of what the analysis can explain. With the 2602 release, it can explain the impact of independent variables, offsets, and system-generated features selected in the forecast model. Also, both Statistical Forecast Details and the assisted forecast results analysis includes product lifecycle information. In addition to that, you can now navigate from Statistical Forecast Details to the application log and forecast model that are relevant for the selected forecast results.

Figure 6: SAP Integrated Business Planning, AI-assisted forecast results analysis. Alt Text: Screenshot of Planner Workspace, with a section on the right supporting vertical scrolling containing sections for Summary, Recommendation (both visible), Forecast Algorithms and Parameter Explanation.

Find out more:

Video: AI-Assisted Forecast Results Analysis (2:36 minutes)
Documentation: Check Statistical Forecast Details in Planning UIs and Enhancements to Statistical Forecast Details in Planning UIs.

AI-Assisted Inventory Optimization Analysis

Inventory optimization algorithms can also be challenging to understand, which is where our AI-assisted inventory optimization analysis comes in: with this, inventory planners can save up to 25% of their time on analyzing optimizer run results!

It summarizes key reasons for the recommended safety stock output values and adjustments made, impacting final safety stock for use in downstream processes. Demand variability, lead time fluctuations, service levels, and other relevant modeling inputs are highlighted as key influences, alongside planner deviations from recommendations. Figure 7 shows an example.

Figure 7: SAP Integrated Business Planning, AI-assisted inventory optimization analysis. Alt Text: Screenshot of Planner Workspace, with the bottom half containing AI-Assisted Inventory Analysis, containing sections for Summary, Analysis (both visible), and Diagnostic Key Figures.

With the 2602 release, it now also provides insights into how the immediate upstream and downstream nodes in your supply chain network impact the safety stock levels for the product-location you're analyzing. This means that you can better understand safety stock drivers across multiple stages of your supply chain.

Find out more:

Video: SAP Integrated Business Planning for inventory (2:11 minutes).
Documentation: AI-Assisted Inventory Analysis and What’s New in 2602: Analyzing the Network of Safety Stock Results with AI-Assisted Inventory Optimization Analysis.

AI-Assisted MRO Inventory Analysis

In addition to the AI-assisted analysis for inventory used for production and sales, with the 2602 release we now provide SAP Integrated Business Planning, maintenance, repair, and operations, AI-assisted MRO inventory analysis. With this, MRO planners can get a 30% reduction in time spent on analyzing inventory runs.

With just one click, the new AI-Assisted MRO Inventory Analysis gives the planner a concise summary and intelligent analysis of MRO inventory planning runs, accompanied by a table that highlights the inputs and settings considered, as shown in Figure 8.

It is available in both Planner Workspaces and in the SAP IBP, add-in for Microsoft Excel, and you can review operator settings and configuration on the same screen where planning occurs.

Figure 8: SAP Integrated Business Planning, maintenance, repair, and operations, AI-assisted MRO inventory analysis. Alt Text: Screenshot of Planner Workspace, with the bottom half containing AI-Assisted MRO Inventory Analysis, containing sections for Summary, Analysis, General Settings (all three visible), and Key Figures.

Watch it in action and find out more:

Video: AI-Assisted MRO Inventory Analysis in SAP IBP – 2602 Release Highlight & Demo (2:05 minutes)
Documentation: AI-Assisted MRO Inventory Analysis.

SAP Fiori Launchpad and Design Updates for Suite Consistency

We have made design improvements which are relevant for a consistent user experience across the entire SAP Business Suite, and which are now also available with SAP IBP. As I mentioned in my April blog post Upcoming Design Updates for the SAP Business Suite (SAP Fiori for Web), consistency of the user experience across the various applications used by a user is an important part of overall usability, helping users to feel confident and at ease when using a suite of products – no unexpected surprises.

In this section, we’ll look at these updates (the first two cover the design updates for consistency):

New navigation menu, with direct access to favorite apps.
Updated design of notifications and user menu.
Launch apps directly via transaction code.
Update for administrators

Navigation Menu: Side Navigation

Many SAP products already offer a navigation menu on the left of the screen, a pattern already familiar to many people. Hence we have decided to apply that approach to navigation across the SAP Business Suite in upcoming releases.

In SAP IBP the side navigation is displayed as an overlay, as you can see in Figure 9 on the left. It gives you direct access to your favorite apps, either directly or via the folders you have created. It also gives you direct access to your Spaces and Pages. The previously available menu to access all your spaces and pages along with personalization options is available via the entry “All Spaces” at the bottom of the menu.

A big benefit of this new navigation menu is that you can now access your favorite apps directly from any application. Previously, you would have to return to My Home and then click on your favorite app, now you can access it directly from the menu, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9: New navigation menu and updated design of notifications and user menu. Alt Text: 3 screen snippets showing each of the menus as a pop-over.

Updated Design of Notifications and User Menu

The new simplified design of notifications shown in Figure 9 fits better with the overall design of SAP IBP, and provides simplier interactions. By default notifications are sorted by date, with grouping by “Today”, “Yesterday”, “Last Week”, “Last Month”. Users can also choose to sort by importance.

The new user menu design shown in Figure 9 provides more space for the avatar of the user, and provides more space between items for easier selection. The settings are always at the top as the first entry, and the “Sign Out” option is separated from the actual navigation options in the list, to make it easier to find.

Launch Apps Directly via Transaction Code

I already covered this new feature in detail in part 2 of my series, since the launchpad is used by SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 too. Rather than repeating it here, I suggest that you look at the examples in the corresponding SAP Fiori launchpad subsection of my part 2 blog post:

Launch apps directly via transaction code.

Find out more:

Documentation: What’s New: Launching an App with its Transaction Code in SAP Fiori Launchpad and Searching and Launching Apps.

Administrators can Upload and Download Spaces

In the Manage Launchpad Spaces app of the SAP Fiori launchpad, administrators can download existing spaces together with their assigned pages and upload them again to another system.

Documentation: Downloading and Uploading Spaces

UX enhancements in applications

We have introduced two very significant innovations that provide a much better user experience, but without dramatically updating the actual UIs! This is because user experience is so much more than just the UI: if a user can get more done than before, with less effort, achieving better ourcomes, then that is a definite improvement in their experience with the system.

The first of these, introduced with the 2508 release, is the harmonized planning area. The second, introduced just now with the 2602 release, is harmonized scenario management. In both cases, the “harmonized” in the name signifies that these new capabilities unify and simplify how users work.

Beyond these, we have introduced a number of user experience enhancements for planning UIs and for master data management, which are covered below too.

Harmonized Planning Area

The harmonized planning area lets you use one planning area to plan both mid- to long-term supply, demand and inventory with time-series buckets and short- to mid-term supply with orders.

Even better, it integrates both live (real-time) and scheduled data flows using the same data model, i.e. attributes, master data types, key figures, planning levels, time profile etc.

With integrated, harmonized tools and processes, planners can smoothly adopt additional SAP IBP capabilities, leading to better reporting and planner efficiency. Improved flexibility in time-series supply planning helps planners quickly adapt to changing demands and market conditions. Centralized application mapping and name space management as well as a new central unit of measure and currency conversion help to streamline configuration. Additionally, planners have on-the-fly access to order key figures, enabling more informed decision-making.

Find out more and watch a demo here:

Harmonized Scenario Management

Available with the 2602 release, harmonized scenario management in SAP IBP unifies and simplifies how you work with scenarios across orders and key figures, letting you manage the full lifecycle in Planner Workspaces: create, modify, simulate, and promote both order and key figure data within one framework. It extends scenario lifetimes across orders and key figures and adds new promotion options for orders. Controlled shine-through now includes orders, giving you better control of how baseline changes propagate.

Together with the harmonized planning area, it advances integrated planning so orders and forecasts work seamlessly without separate processes. Look at an example and find out more:

Video: Harmonized Scenario Management in SAP IBP - 2602 Release Highlight & Demo.
Documentation: Harmonized Scenarios.

Planning UI Enhancements

Enhanced Filtering of Workspaces and Segmentation Variants

Introduced with the 2508 release, users can explore data sets more easily now by leveraging segmentation variants. This provides a third level of filtering flexibility for users. The first two options were available previously, the third one is new:

Manually define filter values for the data
Use filter variants to store combinations of filter values for reuse, so that you just choose the variant rather than manually maintaining all the filters.
Define segments using attributes like “Product ID” and “Customer ID” with which you can step through the filtered data from (2).

The new segmentation variants are helpful when a selected filter variant results in a large list of data. Without the segmentation variant, users would still have to do a lot of scrolling. This targeted approach significantly reduces data volume, enhances speed and focus, and delivers a smoother experience to your planning process. Have a look at how it works:

Video: Segmentation Variants in Planner Workspaces in SAP IBP - 2508 Release Highlights & Demo. (2:26 minutes)

With the 2602 release, we have further enhanced filtering in the Planner Workspaces app. You can now:

Manage planning filters directly in Planner Workspaces, including the options to share, edit, delete, and assign groups to existing filters.
Overwrite an existing planning filter when you create a new planning filter with the same name.
Use advanced operators to define attribute-based filters in many areas across Planner Workspaces, as well as in URL-based navigations to workbooks and variants.
Filter aggregated constraint key figures by the (Not Specified) attribute value.

The advanced operators improve usability significantly: you can use “starts with”, “contains”, “greater than” to quickly get to the data you are interested in. Figure 10 shows an example. You can find our more here:

Documentation: Enhancements to Filtering in Planner Workspaces.

Figure 10: Filtering with advanced operators in the Planner Workspaces application. Screenshot of Planner Workspace with filters Time Periods “Next 10 weeks”, Product Group “SMART*” and Location Desc “*DC*”. The list at the bottom shows six entries fulfilling the filter criteria.

Navigate Directly to Root Cause of Planning Obstacle

SAP IBP 2508 enhanced the Planner Workspaces application so that users can navigate directly from an identified issue to the root cause, be it a gating resource or component constraint.

Dedicated planning views provide a clear overview of supply and demand dynamics at these critical bottlenecks, empowering you to make informed adjustments. By encompassing both gating resources and components, this feature accelerates root cause analysis and resolution improving planning efficiency and decision-making. Figure 11 shows an example.

Figure 11: Navigate directly to root cause of planning obstacle within the Planner Workspaces application. Alt Text: Screenshot of Planner Workspace with an open context menu next to a cell in the Demand sheet with a red number. The entry “Show Gating Resources” is highlighted in the menu, with an arrow pointing down to a second sheet at the bottom of the screen showing Capacity.

Easy Scenario Comparison with Scorecards in Planner Workspaces

Scorecards let planners compare what-if scenarios across multiple KPIs to select the best option. Introduced in SAP IBP 2508 and enhanced in 2511, they support up to seven KPIs, each based on a key figure. For each KPI, you can set filters and define a direction: “Bigger is better”, “Smaller is better”, or “Within a range”. Figure 12 shows an example where three scenarios are being compared.

Figure 12: An example scorecard for comparing scenarios in Planner Workspaces. Screenshot of Planner Workspace with a pop-over “Compare Scenarios with Scorecard” showing columns for three scenarios Baseline, Promotions, and Promotions wo AIR, and a list of 7 KPIs for each of them. The baseline column is a different color than the others.

When a key figure appears multiple times, you can rename KPIs for distinct views (e.g., Capacity Supply for Assembly vs. Sub-Assembly). You have a lot of flexibility in how you visualize the comparisons: you can compare scenarios by absolute or percentage differences, and also swap rows and columns. You can also promote the optimal one from the scorecard.

Find out more here:

Video: Scorecards in Planner Workspaces in SAP IBP - 2511 Release Highlights & Demo (3:10 minutes).
Documentation: Working with Scorecards.

Further Usability Enhancements in Planning UIs

Have a look at the What’s New documentation for further usability enhancements with the 2602 release:

Smarter Master Data Management with New Application

The new version of the Manage Master Data app delivers enhanced functionality with focus on planning area scope and master data relationships. Users can explore comprehensive parent-child connections and drill down into dependencies for thorough impact assessment. The app enables personalized experiences through customizable columns, groupings, and sorting based on parent master data attributes.

Teams can collaborate more effectively by sharing standardized views through public variants, all while benefiting from robust, fine-grained access control through planning area-specific authorizations that ensure security across all operations.

Find out more here:

Video: New Manage Master Data App in SAP IBP - 2511 Release Highlights & Demo (1:57 minutes).
Documentation: Manage Master Data (New Version).

Collaboration Enhancements (Microsoft Teams)

In addition to the built-in collaboration enhancements mentioned above (for example, in the new master data application), we have invested in real-time collaboration with messaging into Microsoft Teams.

Real-Time Microsoft Teams Messaging for Planners

Planners can now send real-time messages to Microsoft Teams channels directly from SAP IBP when saving key figure data or scheduling application jobs, sharing reason codes, comments, and contextual details. They can select the target Microsoft Teams channel directly, either in the SAP IBP, add-in for Microsoft Excel (see Figure 13), or in the Planner Workspaces application.

This reduces communication delays and ensures transparency across planning teams, especially for those colleagues and stakeholders who aren’t regular SAP IBP users.

Planners also benefit by having less manual effort, since they don’t have to create separate nofifications or e-mails.

Figure 13: Real-time messaging for planners via Microsoft Teams. Alt Text: Two screen snippets: 1) a pop-over for “Save Key Figure Changes”, with a field at the bottom “Share With” containing the entry “Sales and Operations Team/General”. 2) a pop-over showing Microsoft Teams General channel for Sales and Operations Team, with a comment in the thread.

Integration of Microsoft Teams for Jobs

Also new with the 2602 release, you can have jobs automatically post comments to Microsoft Teams channels to indicate when a job step starts running. This ensures that everyone is kept up-to-date in real time, including those colleagues who are not regular users of SAP IBP. Read more here:

What’s new documentation: Integration of Microsoft Teams for Jobs.

Further information

For information about all the new enhancements for SAP IBP, have a look at these blog posts and the links therein:

Continued soon …

I hope you enjoyed this fifth part, covering the new UX innovations available for SAP Integrated Business Planning. I will post part six in the next few days, covering exciting new UX innovations available for spend management.

What’s New in My Home SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 Release?

2026-02-18T16:26:28.224000+01:00

My Home already serves as a centralized entry point for business users by providing immediate access to key insights, supporting the efficient management of tasks and situations, and enabling users to organize their favorite pages and apps. This helps streamline daily operations and reduces the time spent navigating across the system. The 2602 release builds on this foundation by enhancing how information is delivered, personalized, and consumed—ensuring that users can focus on what matters most.

The 2602 release of My Home in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition introduces a range of new delivered and beta features, along with meaningful UX enhancements designed to elevate the overall user experience. In this blog, we’ll explore what’s new in this release and how these updates help business users work more efficiently and stay better informed.

Mandatory News – Ensuring critical information is seen by all business users

With the 2508 release, administrators gained the ability to deliver timely and targeted updates directly to business users through the My Home centralized news feed. The 2602 release takes this a step further by introducing mandatory news articles. News articles containing essential company information can now be marked as required reading. Business users must acknowledge these articles, confirming that they have read and understood the content. This feature plays a critical role in ensuring compliance with legal, safety, and policy-related requirements. It also helps eliminate knowledge gaps by ensuring that all employees receive the same information. During periods of change—such as the rollout of new policies or process updates—mandatory reading ensures that users understand both the reasons for the change and its potential impact, improving alignment across the organization.

An example of a news article that is required reading. Alt Text: A screenshot of My Home with a pop-over “Required Reading” that is also highlighted with “Contains Critical News”. The news article has an image at the top, followed by text showing the first part of the article. The “Done” button is greyed out, the “Remind me later” button is visible.

The Manage News app has a toggle to mark articles as “Required Reading”. Alt Text: Screenshot of the Manage News app with the toggles set to “Yes”, and some news text in the Description field.

News and Pages visibility - A more focused experience

In the 2602 release we introduced enhanced customization options, allowing business users to control the visibility of news and pages within My Home. This enables users to tailor their workspace according to their role, priorities, and daily responsibilities. By showing only relevant information and tools, My Home becomes more focused and clutter-free, helping users stay productive and work more efficiently without unnecessary distractions.

My Home with enhanced personalization, showing News deselected and Pages selected. Alt Text: A screenshot of My Home, with eight cards in one row in the Pages section, below the ToDos section showing one situation and the Apps section.

My Home Settings pop-over with the new selectors for News and Pages within the News and Pages section. Alt Text: A screenshot showing the Layout part of My Home Settings, where users can select or deselect sections. For the News and Pages section, News is deselected, Pages are selected.

Improved Mobile Experience with horizontal scrolling

For business users on the move, the My Home mobile experience has been enhanced with horizontal scrolling. This update supports visual browsing and improves the discoverability of tasks, apps, and insight cards on smaller screens. As a result, mobile users can navigate content more intuitively and access important information quickly—wherever they are.

AI-assisted Content Addition - Adding apps using natural language.

My Home enables you to do your job with speed and agility. Even more so now that our 2508 Beta AI – Assisted content addition feature is now available in our 2602 release as a premium feature. Business users can now add applications using natural language in two clicks. The business user can review and verify the results generated by AI ensuring accuracy. This saves time by dramatically simplifying the process of adding new applications and tiles to My Home. Now with this new AI assisted feature, there is no longer a need for business users to discover the appropriate application or even to navigate away from their home page to the application and manually apply filters to find the information they require — thanks to Generative AI, the relevant information can be surfaced quickly and effortlessly using natural language. This significantly reduces the effort needed to discover and add Insights Cards.

AI-Assisted Smart Personalization of My Home for Applications. Alt Text: The image shows three screenshots: at the top an extract of My Home showing the blue salutation bar, with an AI button “Add Content” on the right. An arrow has been added linking it to the second screenshot, where a popover “Add Content” is shown, where the user has entered “I want to monitor sales orders what app should I use to do this”, and two of four results are listed and visualized: “Track Sales Orders” and “Manage Sales Orders” (shown as an insight tile). Below that a screenshot of the outcome in My Home: the former is added to Apps Favorites, the latter to Insights Tiles.

Smart Helpers - Automating Repetitive Tasks

Business users now have access to the Beta AI – assisted task automation in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 release. It allows key users and business users to automate their daily activities in SAP’s Fiori apps by using generative AI to create so call “smart helpers”. Those “smart helpers” execute the repetitive activities on behalf of the business user either from the SAP Fiori apps while always keeping the business user in the loop for decisions on data changes. Business users simply describe their desired business outcome in natural language, related to a specific SAP Fiori elements-based application, and the smart helper will take care of it for you.

Beta: The planned way of giving users an overview of the AI-assisted task automation smart helpers in My Home. Alt Text: Screenshot of My Home with a section “Smart Helpers” above the “Apps” section, with two tabs “Smart Helpers (4)” and “Active Runs (3)”. The latter is selected, showing three cards with title, description and executed step shown: one is completed, two are running.

Beta: Manage Smart Helpers application for defining instructions for the planned AI-assisted task automation. Alt Text: Screenshot showing the instruction text at the top, an empty section for attachments, and the execution plan with four steps: read order requests, analyze request data, simulate pending requests, create sales orders.

AI-assisted Smart Solution for situations – Simplifying workflow

The Beta AI-assisted Smart Solution for Situations in My Home simplifies workflows by dynamically adapting the user interface to guide business users through resolution steps using the power of generative AI. Key information and actions are surfaced though dynamic cards reducing the need for in-depth navigation. One click resolution of situations directly from the homepage thereby enhancing efficiency. There is support for bank messages for alerts, reaching project end dates when a project stage is not completed and sales quotation expiry situations.

Beta: AI-Assisted Smart Solution for Situations in My Home. Alt Text: An image with two screenshots: the upper one show the top part of My Home showing five Situation cards in the To-Dos section. One titled “End Date for Project Digital Media Assessment for Media Corp…” is linked with an arrow to an expanded card shown in the second screenshot – the card is taller and wider, contains a summary on the left with two action buttons “Assign To Me” and “Close Situation”, and more details on the right.

Final Thoughts

The My Home 2602 release demonstrates our continued focus on usability, personalization, and effective communication. From mandatory news articles that drive accountability to enhanced customization and mobile usability, these improvements help ensure that My Home remains a powerful and user-centric entry point to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. The SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2602 Beta AI-assisted features such as Beta AI-assisted Smart solution for situations and Smart Helpers are now available for Beta Testing with the 2602 release. At SAP, we’re committed to delivering the best experience possible, which is why we’re inviting you to join our Beta Testing Program. By participating, you’ll get early access to these features, have the chance to share your feedback, and help us fine-tune them before the official launch. Your input will play a key role in shaping the quality and usability of these new capabilities.

Also, If you are interested in hearing about the latest innovations in SAP Cloud ERP, please join our Public Cloud Practitioner Forum in which SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition customers share best practices and provide feedback to the SAP development teams about new functionality.