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The Sign-Off Table

Lesson 1 of 6

Launchpad layout

8 min

The SAP Fiori launchpad is the home screen of SAP S/4HANA. You open it in a web browser, log on, and land on a page of tiles and links that lead to the apps your job needs. In this course you will follow two Contoso Motor Co. users: Dana, an internal sales representative who handles orders for sales organization 1710, and Luis, a buyer in purchasing organization 1710 who buys for the Detroit and Chicago plants.

The shell bar

Across the top of every launchpad screen runs the shell bar. It stays in place while you work in apps, so you always have the same tools at hand. From left to right you typically find:

  • Company logo and home: selecting it takes you back to the launchpad from any app.
  • Navigation bar: the names of your spaces (and My Home, if your system uses it). Select one to open its pages.
  • Search: find apps and, if enterprise search is set up, business objects such as a sales order number.
  • Notifications: a bell icon showing messages and tasks sent to you.
  • Help: a question mark that opens in-app help when your company provides it.
  • User actions menu: your initials or photo. It holds App Finder, Settings, Edit Current Page, About and Sign Out.

Exactly which icons appear depends on your release and on what your administrators switched on, so do not worry if your shell bar has one more or one fewer item.

Spaces, pages, sections and tiles

Launchpad content is arranged in four levels. A space is a top-level area, usually matching a business role, shown in the navigation bar. A space contains one or more pages. Each page is divided into sections, and each section holds tiles or links that start apps.

Business roleAssigned to the user by security administrators, for example Internal Sales Representative. It decides which spaces and apps the user receives.
SpaceAppears in the navigation bar, for example "Sales." Groups the pages for that role.
PageOpens when you select a space, for example "Sales Order Processing."
SectionA labeled block on a page, for example "Orders" or "Billing."
Tile or linkStarts an app such as Manage Sales Orders. Some tiles show a live number, such as open orders.
How the launchpad is structured, from business role down to tile.

Spaces and pages are designed centrally and assigned through roles, so the people on the same team see the same structure. That is useful for training and for testing: when a test step says "open the Sales space, Sales Order Processing page," every tester with that role sees the same thing.

My Home

Many systems also show My Home as the first entry in the navigation bar. My Home is a personal starting page with sections such as To-Dos (tasks and situations), Pages (shortcuts to pages without opening the space first), Apps (recent, frequent and favorite apps) and Insights (analytical tiles and cards). Each user can rearrange or hide these sections through My Home Settings in the user actions menu. In Public Edition, My Home is the standard entry page.

Older layouts you may still meet

Before spaces and pages, the launchpad used a single home page made of groups of tiles. SAP deprecated that group-based home page starting with SAP S/4HANA 2021 FPS01, and current releases use spaces and pages. If a colleague’s screenshots or training materials talk about "groups," they come from an older release or an older configuration.

Key points
  • The shell bar holds home, the navigation bar, search, notifications, help and the user actions menu.
  • Content is arranged as spaces, pages, sections and tiles, assigned through business roles.
  • My Home is a personal page with to-dos, pages, apps and insights.
  • The old group-based home page is deprecated; current releases use spaces and pages.

Check your understanding · not graded

Lesson check

  1. 1. Where do you find App Finder, Settings and Sign Out?

  2. 2. What is the correct order from largest to smallest?

  3. 3. What decides which spaces a user sees?

  4. 4. Which launchpad layout was deprecated starting with SAP S/4HANA 2021 FPS01?