Spaces and Page are the UI experience introduced with Fiori 3.0 and they are available in the S/4HANA Cloud since the release 2005 and in the S/4HANA since version 2020.

Now, with the new Horizon theme available in the S/4HANA Cloud, Spaces and Pages have a important role in these new Fiori UI visualization. Mainly in the “My Home” view in the Horizon Theme:

Together with Horizon Theme, Spaces and Pages increase the performance in the Fiori Screens and user navigability between the functions available for the user based on the roles assigned to him/her.

If you want to know more about Spaces and Pages, I suggest you to see this interesting blog wrote by Sylvya Strack : https://blogs.sap.com/2020/07/ 29/structure-the-sap-fiori-launchpad-layout-with-spaces/

In this blog, she explain very well, how the Fiori applications is segregated in Spaces, Pages and Sections:

The Fiori Applications are grouped in Sections, that are grouped in Pages that finally are grouped in  Spaces. The Spaces are assigned to Business Roles.

The Fiori applications are included in the Catalogs that usually are delivered in the Scope Items available in the Best Practices.

In the case of S/4HANA Cloud, these Catalogs are maintained and delivered by SAP and installed during the Scope definition phase through the CBC (Central Business Configuration).

In S/4HANA on-premise or S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, beside the Standard Catalogs delivered by SAP through Best Practice Implementation (in a Greenfield Scenario), is possible to create and customize Fiori Catalog. See this blog about that : https://blogs.sap.com/2020/09/11/sap-fiori-for-sap-s-4hana-overview-of-tools-for-maintaining-custom-launchpad-content-and-layout/

In S/4HANA Cloud, remember that no Role and Catalog will be available until the Scope and Organizational Structure are activated in the Deployment Tenant in the CBC :

Once the CBC Workspace Project is deployed in the S/4HANA Cloud Tenant, the next Step is create Role for the users in the Tenant System.

Before to create the Roles, one important step is configure the Space and Page feature in the Tenant.

To do that, you need to verify if the Administrator role is assigned to Administrator user created for you by the SAP operation team. Also verify if the Administrator Role already have the Catalog “SAP_CORE_BC_UI_FLD”.

This catalog will allow you to use the Fiori apps called “Manage Launchpad Pages” and “Manage Launchpad Spaces” to create Custom Space and Pages, as well as configure Spaces for the Roles. 

To verify if this Catalog is configured for the Administrator Role, use the Fiori app “Maintain Business Role”:

In this Fiori app, search for the “Administrator” role and verify if the catalog “SAP_CORE_BC_UI_FLD” is assigned to it. If it is not assigned, edit the Role and assign the catalog to it.

After that, configure the system allowing the users works with Space and Pages. You do that using  the app “Manage Launchpad Settings”. In this App, enter in the “Edit” mode clicking in the “Edit” Button. Turn on the flags for Space options :

Once done, press save.

As next step, log in the system as Administrator and create the Roles for this Tenant.

Remember that the S/4HANA Cloud Tenant, after CBC Scope activation, only Administrator role will be available in the System. Is part of the S/4HANA Cloud on boarding process to create the remaining roles and assign them to the users.

To do that, you need to enter in the Fiori app “Business Role Template”. This app will show you all SAP Standard Roles delivered and assigned to this Tenant based on the Activation done through CBC. Click in all Roles and click in the button “Create Business Role” :

Next, the system will show you a popup with options to create the Roles massively  :

This popup bring us some important options :

• Create and Assign Spaces Based on SAP-Delivered Spaces : this flag will create in the Tenant all the Spaces delivered by SAP assign them to the Standard Roles Roles also delivered by SAP.  Note that you can create Customized Roles using the Fiori App “Maintain Business Roles” and Customized Spaces and Pages with the respective Fiori Apps. But using this option, you will economize time to Manage Roles, Space and Pages, mainly during preparation of the Starter System for the Fit-to-Standard workshops.

• Access Restrictions : Here you can choose what kind of restriction you want to create these roles :
  • No Access : users with the Roles with this restriction won’t get to access the Fiori apps related to these roles.
  • Restrict : the users will get to access the Fiori application but they will have  authorization issue to use them.
  • Unrestricted : the users will get to access the Fiori application without any restriction.

When this process is finished, you can create the users through IAS, IPS and Import Employee Fiori App. This process we will explain in another Blog in the future.

Important Note : To use Central Business Configuration (CBC), is necessary that you have the users that will work in the Implementation project created in the Target Deploy S/4HANA Cloud Tenant with the Roles assigned to them. Otherwise, the Configuration Activities in the CBC won’t work due missed authorization.

To allow the use Horizon and Spaces and Pages, after the process above, the users can configure their Fiori Launchpad to use it. It can be done accessing Settings in the User icon in the Fiori Screen :

The result of this configuration is the Horizon Theme with SAP Delivered Spaces and Pages assigned to the user based on the Roles assigned to him/her.

I hope this Blog can help some Partners and Customer about how activate the SAP Standard Roles with the Space and Page features.

With the innovation that S/4HANA Cloud introduce in each Release, take that into account that new SAP Standard Roles with its respective SAP Delivered Spaces can be created for new Scope Items. So, using the Fiori “Business Role Template” also can be used to create these new Roles.

Also, keep in mind, that in S/4HANA Cloud, you can create Customized Business Roles and Customized Spaces and Pages and transport them to each Tenant : Test and Production tenants.

Further information you can find in the Help.sap.com, in the S/4HANA Cloud Community or in the SAP Learning Hub.