Subject: SAP-Fiori-Elements
SAP Fiori Elements accelerates the development of SAP Fiori apps by providing pre-defined templates and leveraging metadata annotations. While these templates cover many standard use cases, business requirements often call for custom actions and functions beyond default behaviors—such as custom buttons, business logic triggers, or specific backend operations.
This article explores how to customize actions and functions in SAP Fiori Elements, enabling developers to tailor the user experience and integrate specialized functionality while maintaining the benefits of a metadata-driven UI framework.
SAP Fiori Elements supports adding these operations as buttons or menu items seamlessly integrated into the app’s UI.
The starting point is usually enhancing the OData service to expose the required function imports or action imports:
Properly defined actions/functions in the OData metadata allow SAP Fiori Elements to render corresponding UI controls automatically when annotated.
Annotations in the OData metadata or local annotation files declare actions and control their behavior on the UI:
@UI.LineItem to display action buttons in tables or list reports.@UI.FieldGroup or @UI.Facet to place actions in object page sections or headers.com.sap.vocabularies.UI.v1.DataFieldForAction annotation defines an action in the UI context.Common UI locations for custom actions include:
In some cases, especially for client-side logic or custom workflows, you may need to implement event handlers or extension points in the SAPUI5 controller. SAP Fiori Elements provides extension hooks to:
Imagine a purchase order approval app where you want to add an “Approve” button:
ApprovePurchaseOrder in the backend.@UI.LineItem to display it in the list report or object page.Customizing actions and functions in SAP Fiori Elements empowers developers to extend standard apps with tailored business operations while preserving rapid development and UI consistency. By combining OData service enhancements, annotations, and SAPUI5 extension points, SAP Fiori Elements supports rich, interactive, and role-specific functionality essential for enterprise applications.
Mastering these customization techniques is key to delivering SAP Fiori apps that meet complex business needs without sacrificing the benefits of the Fiori Elements framework.