In this post we will take a look at the configuration of a Workflow in SAP S/4 HANA with the new FIORI applications that S/4 brings us in its latest versions. We will focus as an example on the management of bank accounts, Bank Account Management.
In order not to do a very long post, we will see in this section the SAP marketing part and a bit of functional framing leaving the most technical part for the next entry.
We will get into the subject with very short videos of SAP. This company spends more and more on marketing and the truth is that the videos are very good, although of course, they remain in a very superficial layer.
This first video presents (without showing it) the FIORI application for Workflow management that we can find in S/4 HANA. You can skip it if you want because it is pure SAP marketing but I find it funny, I like these happy flowers videos.
Look how happy Maggie is with her Workflows, real as life itself.
The following video is the important one. Here we can see how to configure our approval scenario for bank accounts with the new FIORI application. The application has things to improve, such as being able to modify the scenario without having to copy the previous version, but hey, in spite of that it seems good to me. The important thing is that this application allows a person without knowledge of Workflows to configure the approval Workflow easily. After this obviously a technician will have to access the Workflow Builder and the available BADIs to make all the necessary adjustments, but that is a good starting point. The main benefits we will have using this approach would be:
- We will have an operational version of the Workflow in minutes. Following the agile philosophy that currently prevails, this allows us to quickly have the Workflow running and to make the necessary changes later.
- Integration with other BAM FIORI applications: My Inbox, My Sent Requests, etc.
- Consistent product. Although I have already commented that there are many things left to adjust outside of this Workflow application, it is true that this directly manages the creation, modification, cancellation and closing events. The control of the WorkItems among several approvers (blockages, reservations, etc.) and the whole set of small details that consume a lot of time, as usual, have to be done by hand.
Below we have a video that shows us how to define the team with the different interlocutors that will act in our Workflow. Well, in the end this Workflow use rules for assigning responsible as usually. But for the FIORI application recognizing them they have to follow a specific structure. The same goes for Workflow tasks.
Finally, in the following video they show us the complete scenario of bank account management in S / 4 HANA with the standard Workflow. It is a less than four minutes video but if you have to face this scenario for the first time it is very good as a landing point.
And finally, although this is out of Workflows theme that we are seeing in this post, we could not fail to comment on the Dual Control option that we have in BAM for collaborative work in the creation of bank accounts.
There is a lot of work to get to this scenario (Workflow + Notifications + Copilot) but I think it can bring value to companies. I already suffered seeing how the companies took what they had in their SAP 4.6 to the SAP ECC and I’m afraid that the same thing is happening with the SAP S / 4 HANA. We cannot continue working in the new decade with the new technology as we did 15 years ago. Please no!
We will continue in the next post with the most technical part of all this. We will see the SAP Workflow Scenario as an evolution of the SAP Workflow Builder.