Web Page Composer
SAP software does not exactly have a great reputation when it comes to user-friendliness. Adding content to the Enterprise Portal is a mission to say the least: fiddle with adding content to the Knowledge Management component, then make it visible or link it in the Portal Content Directory. Finally add appropriate roles for the consumers of the content. It’s all a bit much. The Web Page Composer is a first attempt at making the addition and modification of portal content a lot more seamless and a lot more PC-like. End-users shouldn’t have to bother with the PCD and KM. Why understand technical detail if all you need is to update a few lines of text or add an image?
The Web Page Composer is freely available on the SAP Service Marketplace. It needs to be downloaded and deployed using the JSPM. After installation, the J2EE engine should be restarted. Once installed, users may be assigned various roles – the possibility of providing full publication access or requiring approval is possible. Users wanting to make use of the WPC require the role wpc_editor_role added to their user master. A new tab appears in the navigation ribbon for the WPC.
Of course, the WPC cannot satisfy all content requirements and is probably best used for very simple content: ideally text and images, maybe some links and uploads. For anything else, the KM and PCD has to be used, but I’m certain that SAP is moving towards a full WYSIWYG environment eventually.
Creation of a new site is a prerequisite. At present, it seems somewhat problematic to integrate existing content.
For access to the WYSIWYG magic, we can edit or create a page on that site. Effectively, the WPC provides a bunch of containers into which content may be “dropped”.
The selection of a suitable layout is possible:
Various content types may be created. There are still issues with text length – in my tests, I had to constantly chop paragraphs off the text I had pasted until the editor would accept and save my input. It is fairly easy to add images, though these need to be added to the portal content beforehand. That’s a fairly simple upload task.
Once saved, the content appears once again in the design view.
That’s basically all there is to it – now save and publish and the content appears in the relevant section of the portal.
There are still some issues with the type of content one may wish to edit or create and I’ve yet to find a way of making the WPC read existing content for further manipulation. If your end users require a quick and easy way of updating simple content on the SAP portal, the Web Page Composer may well be the way to go. It’s no FrontPage. Then again, that may be a blessing. But it is certainly a lot easier than having to work in the Portal Content Directory. In the world of SAP, it’s generally accepted that any better way is better! Regardless, this is sure to be the future interface SAP will be pushing out in future releases.
