Overview Pages are now widely adopted by SAP and its customers as it gives a quick and rich user interface for easy visualization of the key parameters in the data. It has almost every kind of visualization possible in SAP UI5 and the trusted Fiori framework ensures that the rendering is as rich as the user can have and as quick as the data could be retrieved.

The Problem

However, the creation of Overview Pages, let us call it OVP from here on, takes some effort. The  developer has to understand rightly the vocabularies to be used and the annotations has to be set properly. This has a slight learning curve and could take your time.

The Solution

SAP SmartBusiness as a Service has an offer which you cannot refuse. Once you have done the SAP Smart Business Service subscription, which as easy as a bunch of clicks, as described in blog,

https://blogs.sap.com/2016/04/27/how-to-subscribe-to-sap-smart-business-service/

you will be set for creating an Overview page too.

If you like to watch a video as I usually do, the link is right here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihYbM2ZiARg

How does it help??!!!

First, you need to create a KPI and a drill-down. Do not worry, it is again as easy as a bunch of clicks:

https://blogs.sap.com/2016/06/27/create-your-first-smart-business-kpi-and-tiles-in-10-minutes/

Okay, TL;DR!!! , here is the video for you from our folks from SAP HANA Academy,

Now, lets start with the creation of OVP application.

Creating an Overview Page Application

1. The Modeler Application.

Meet your new friends,

They will be present in your Fiori Portal Site along with other SAP SmartBusiness Modeler applications.

2. Now click on the tile which says ‘Create OVP’.

You will be navigated to a page like the below screenshot:

3. Now fill in the required “OVP Details”. I can show you how I filled it, screenshot is below:

This will be the name of your OVP application.

4. As all Overview Pages has a Global Filter _which provisions easy filtering of your data_ requires its own settings. You can now provide which Business System will provide the data, the type of the Service, the Odata service URL and finally, the EntitySet.

I am pretty sure, you have found the similarity in the steps you did for the creation of KPIs before.

A sample screenshot of my Global Filter parameters are shown below:

5. Now the main part, creation of the OVP Cards.

The cards are created by SmartBusiness based on the Drill-down views you had created before.

But, you must notice one simple fact that, OVP, as of date of writing this blog, does not support all the visualizations as supported by Smart Business Drilldown. That means charts like HeatMap, Geomaps are not supported.

The below list shows the currently unsupported SmartBusiness Drilldown chart types in OVP:

Table, Bar, Pie, GeoMap, HeatMap, LineStacked and all Dual type charts, like ColumnStackedDual and value types like ‘Percentage’.

6.   Card Configuration

Here we define the cards that needs to be displayed in your OVP application.

Now the SmartBusiness also allows the creation of multiple cards as well as consolidated cards.

Moreover, it also allows you to add multiple views from different evaluations and KPI.

Now that’s what I am talking about.

So, how do you do it??..here it is…

      6.1. Select a KPI.

6. 2. Select an Evaluation created based on the KPI you have chosen. In case you are            wondering, the value help is filtered already to show only those evaluations which are related to the selected KPI in step1.

6.3 Now choose the drilldown views you want to visualize as the OVP Cards. Here as well, the cards are shown based on the selected KPI and Evaluation. Further more, the SmartBusiness only shows the views which are currently supported by OVP.

Ain’t that awesome!!!

The selected views will appear as token in the Drilldown Views field and the same allows you to remove the views as and when required.

6.4. Now click on the link, ‘Configure Cards’.

6.5. This will display a pop-up as below:

6.6. If you have chosen only one view the option for ‘Consolidate in to Single Card’ cannot be selected. This option will allow you to consolidate all your chosen views into a single consolidated card.

Hence the views you have selected will be listed one after the other.

The above screenshot, however shows only one view as the selection was made only for one view.

The data limit says the number of records that will be fetched when the chart is loaded.

Remember more the records, more will be the network latency and consequently the charts will take time to load.

Card Navigation: The type of navigation for the respective card.

The cards can have two types of navigation:

1. Chart based navigation – Navigates on clicking on the chart in the card
2. Data point based navigation- Navigates on clicking on the Data point of the chart.

Drilldown Navigation: Defines where to navigate to.

1. Generic Drilldown: Navigates to the drilldown view used to create the view.
2. Other Drilldown: You are given the provision to specify where to navigate by specifying the Semantic Object and Action.

The new fields for parameters are provided so that you could provide the values to be passed to the target view on navigating.

If new parameters have to be added the ‘+’ button will help you for the same.

Now you can click on ‘OK’, which will close the popup.

6.7. Behold you mock card is ready.

The title of the section will be the combination of KPI Title and Evaluation title.

The content has the details of the card you created.

6.8 Obviously, this is not the actual OVP card, but will help you know the details of the cards you are creating or has created.

6.9. Now if you wish to add more cards, please repeat the steps as specified from step (a), above.

6.10. If you wish to modify the existing cards, you can use the pencil button, and the dustbin for deletion of the entire section.

6.11. Now on your screen’s bottom right hand corner, you will get the action buttons:

Now click on Activate and Configure Tile.

If you wish to simply save the application and/or wants to modify the existing application, you can see the same in the OVP Workspace app as noted in step1 above .

Refer to below blog for creating KPI and Tiles.

https://blogs.sap.com/2016/06/27/create-your-first-smart-business-kpi-and-tiles-in-10-minutes/

For more information please follow Smart Business Blog: https://blogs.sap.com/2016/10/25/sap-smart-business-service/

Note: In case you face any issue with Smart Business Service, you can create an Incident on SAP Support Portal with the components: CA-GTF-SB-HCP. You may also contact Smart Business team at