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Enabling Mobile Services

In SAP mobile service cockpit, set up developer and customer accounts.

Procedure for Trial Environments

Create an SAP Business Technology Platform Trial account and enable the mobile services service.

  1. In your browser, navigate to the SAP Business Technology Platform web site and click Start free Trial.
  2. Register for your Trial account. When you click Submit, you'll receive a confirmation message indicating that an activation link has been sent to your email account.
  3. Open the activation email and click the activation button.
  4. Log in to the SAP Business Technology Platform with your new account credentials. You'll be prompted to upgrade your account.
  5. Complete the Upgrade Account dialog and click Register. The SAP Business Technology Platform cockpit opens. SAP Business Technology Platform Trial
  6. Click the Enter Your Trial Account button on the SAP Business Technology Platform cockpit homepage. You are redirected to your Subaccount overview page.
  7. Navigate to your Subaccount by clicking the trial tile.
  8. Navigate to your development space by clicking the dev space.
  9. In the left-hand menu, choose Services > Service Marketplace.
  10. Search for mobile services and click on it.
  11. Click Support to open the SAP mobile service cockpit
  12. Choose your trial organization and dev space from the drop-down list, then click Open.
  13. You are now logged in to your trial SAP mobile service cockpit.

Enable Developer Accounts

A developer account allows you to explore the basic functionality of SAP Mobile Services. A developer account is also called a trial account, and access is open to everyone. As a mobile services developer, you may wish to test your applications in an end-to-end environment. A developer trial account gives you access to administrative features to help you do that. To learn more about the developer trial account, see Getting a Global Account and Getting Started with a Trial Account in the Cloud Foundry Environment.

Note

Please be aware that trial accounts are restricted in usage. See Service Plans for information about plans, capabilities, and limitations.

The procedure to enable mobile services for developer trial accounts is identical to the procedure in Procedure for Production Environments.

When you select a space and log in, SAP mobile service cockpit performs a health check and informs you of configuration problem such as:

  • Missing core services
  • Missing mobile services
  • Exceeding instance limit threshold
  • Exceeding memory limit threshold

This enables you to figure out setup problems right away.

Procedure for Production Environments

An SAP Mobile Services customer account allows you to support production, business-critical applications. A customer account is also called a production account.

To explore and use the powerful capabilities of SAP mobile service cockpit, verify that you:

  • Have purchased a license for SAP Mobile Services.

  • Have a single user within your organization that has access to the global account, and is known as an administrator. This user has full access to SAP Business Technology Platform Cockpit and can assign subscriptions for SAP mobile service cockpit to your organization's SAP Business Technology Platform account.

  • Have one Global Account and at least one Subaccount in a Cloud Foundry Infrastructure. See Getting Started with an Enterprise Account in the Cloud Foundry Environment to verify.

  • Know whether Feature Set A or Feature Set B is assigned to your global account. To find out, right click your user name in the upper right corner of SAP Business Technology Platform cockpit, and select About. The Cloud Management Tools property identifies your assigned feature set. To learn more about feature sets, see Cloud Management Tools – Feature Set Overview.

  • Have basic knowledge of Cloud Foundry entitlements and quotas, and mobile services quotas. See Mobile Services Quotas.

Note

Do not change any of these settings.

To set up the SAP mobile service cockpit and integrate it into your internal landscape, a super administrator must perform the following steps.

  1. Log in to your SAP Business Technology Platform Global Account, and navigate to the menu option Subaccount Assignments under Entitlements.

  2. Select the Subaccount for which you want to enable mobile services. If you haven't yet created a Subaccount, go to the menu option Subaccounts and create a new account first.

  3. Click on Configure Entitlements and select Add Service Plan.

  4. Select Cloud Foundry Runtime and Mobile Services. Depending on your license, mobile services might show up with two different service plans, "b2c" or "standard". Even though you can use both from one Subaccount, please only select the one you would like to use. The plans are charged for differently. See Service Plans to familiarize yourself with the price plans before using the service plans.

  5. Set the Subaccount Assignment for "mobile services" to 1 unit.

  6. Determine whether you need to assign additional Client Foundry Runtime to the Subaccount. The mobile services need at least 1GB (smallest unit) of Cloud Foundry Runtime assigned to the Subaccount. Cloud Foundry Runtime also controls routes and services instances. See Mobile Services Quotas for additional information.

  7. If you have not yet done so, create a Space and add Space Members using information provided in Managing Spaces. You'll need to be aware of whether your account uses Feature Set A or Feature Set B.

    Once the Space is created and set up, navigate to the Space and click on Service Marketplace in the left menu. A tile for Mobile Services should appear. If this is not the case then restart and ensure the right Subaccount is selected.

    Note

    The SAP Business Technology Platform Cloud Foundry Space Manager and Org Manager can manage space members and their roles. For more information about Cloud Foundry default roles, see Organizations, Spaces, Roles, and Permissions.

    SAP Mobile Services Cockpit read / write access is controlled by these roles:

    • Space Developer role ‒ read and write access to mobile services.

    • Space Auditor role ‒ read access to mobile services.

    • Space Manager role ‒ read access to mobile services.

    • Org Manager ‒ read access to mobile services.

    • Space Supporter ‒ read access to mobile services.

    The Space Manager and Org Manager roles have read-only access in the mobile services context, with the exception of being able to assign the Space Developer role to any user.

  8. To access SAP mobile service cockpit, select Mobile Services in the Marketplace and click on the Support link shown in the service details. Or, create an instance or use an existing service instance, and open the dashboard link shown for each service instance. If you do not find the mobile services option listed, this may indicate that the Cloud Foundry landscape is an extended landscape, since extended landscapes do not appear in the Support link. To use SAP mobile service cockpit in an extended Cloud Foundry landscape, you must create a SAP Mobile Services instance from the SAP Business Technology Platform cockpit. To access the SAP mobile service cockpit, select the SAP Mobile Services instance link, Open Dashboard. For more information see Using SAP Mobile Services Cockpit in an Extended Landscape.

    See the complete list of SAPUI5 supported browsers on SAP Help Portal.

    If a SAP mobile service cockpit session times out and displays a blank screen, refresh or restart the browser.

  9. (Optional) To access on-premise back ends, install and configure SAP Cloud Connector. See Installation.

    Note

    In SAP mobile service cockpit, configure on-premise HTTPS back-end connections as HTTP using the virtual host address. Communication between the cloud and your on-premise SAP Cloud Connector is secure. Communication between SAP Cloud Connector and your back-end system uses standard HTTPS security.

    1. In SAP Cloud Connector, verify that necessary back-end service URLs are allow-listed. Every on-premise URL that is configured in SAP mobile service cockpit, such as application endpoints or the security configuration, must be allow-listed. See Configure Access Control (HTTP).

    2. Generate a system certificate and import it into SAP Cloud Connector. See Initial Configuration (HTTP).

  10. Access one of the SAP mobile service cockpit URLs described in step 8.

    Note

    When you select a space and log in, SAP mobile service cockpit performs a health check and informs you of configuration problem such as:

    • Missing core services
    • Missing mobile services
    • Exceeding instance limit threshold
    • Exceeding memory limit threshold

    This can help you figure out setup problems. If a warning appears, return to the Entitlements section and try to fix the issue. Ignoring the warnings can lead to unexpected results.

  11. Create an application in SAP mobile service cockpit. See Configuring Applications.

Mobile Services Quotas

Describes how mobile services consumes Cloud Foundry Runtime. Use this information to analyze your requirements, and configure your quota plan for mobile services.

Basic Consumption

SAP Mobile Services creates one route and two service instances in a customer Space. SAP Mobile Services also creates some additional routes and service instances for system mobile apps (such as SAP Mobile Cards, and Mobile App Catalog), and one Cloud Foundry application, BindMobileApplicationToMe, to which all routes are bound. Each of the system mobile apps holds one route and two service instances.

In summary, to create N mobile apps in mobile services requires:

  • 128MB memory

  • N+3 app routes

  • 2 * (N+3) service instances

In the Cloud Foundry environment, a quota of memory, routes and service instances is assigned per Cloud Foundry runtime unit. One runtime unit is typically 1GB memory + 10 routes + 100 service instances. (For some old subaccounts, one runtime unit is 1GB memory + 10 routes + 10 service instances). Please refer to the platform documentation for information about mapping the application unit to memory, routes and service instances.

Consumption Example

If your account's Cloud Foundry runtime = 1GB memory + 10 routes + 100 service instances, you need the following to create N mobile apps:

Cloud Foundry runtime units = Ceil( Max( (N+3)/10, (N+3)*2/100, 128M/1GB)

For example:

  • Units = 1 when N = 1, 2, 3, ... 7

  • Units = 2 when N = 8, 9, 10, ... 17

  • When N = 10, Max (1.3, 0.26, 0.128) = 1.3 ~= 2

Service Plans

Describes the service plans that are available for SAP Mobile Services. Use this information to analyze your requirements and select the right plan. The terms license type and service plan are used interchangeably. For detailed information, see SAP Discovery Center (filtered for SAP Mobile Services).

Service Plans for mobile services

Service Plan Description Comments
Free (free) Develop, configure, and manage mobile apps that access enterprise data. Free tier is available for production accounts and can be upgraded to a production plan.

Try out a service using a global account without additional cost, and then move to a paid service once you reach the technical limits of the service. Only community support is available for free tier service plans, and these are not subject to SLAs. Additional restrictions may apply.

See Important Free Plan Information and Upgrading the Cloud Foundry Runtime below for additional details.
No feature limitations, but quota limits apply:

Maximum of 3 apps, up to 10 user registrations per app

Maximum destinations per app: 5

Maximum concurrent requests per destination: 2

Maximum request payload size: 1048576 bytes (compare 2G for Resources)

Maximum push registrations: 10

* Interval between two push notifications to the same registration: 2 minutes.

Maximum SAP Mobile Cards registrations: 10

Additional restrictions may apply.

Note that only community support is available for free tier service plans and these are not subject to Service Level Agreements.
Lite (lite) Develop, configure, and manage mobile apps that access enterprise data.

The Lite plan is for SAP Mobile Services in a trial landscape. Lite is only available for trial accounts and cannot be upgraded to a production plan. There are no feature limitations, but quota limits apply. Only community support is available for free tier service plans, and these are not subject to SLAs. Additional restrictions may apply.
No feature limitations, but quota limits apply:

Maximum of 10 apps, up to 3 user registrations per app

Maximum destinations per app: 5

Maximum concurrent requests per destination: 2

Maximum request payload size: 1048576 bytes (compare 2G for Resources)

Maximum push registrations: 3

Interval between two push notifications to the same registration: 2 minutes

Maximum SAP Mobile Cards registrations: 3

Maximum Card Types: 5

* Maximum Cards per Card Type: 3

Additional restrictions may apply.

Note that only community support is available for lite service plans and these are not subject to Service Level Agreements.
Resources (Tiered Edition) (resources) Develop, configure, and manage mobile apps that access enterprise data. Key features include app content lifecycle management, push notifications for data updates, on-device storage of data (offline apps), app security, and app monitoring and usage reporting.

Billing is based on active resources, which is a user identifier (or device identifier for anonymous users) that has accessed SAP Mobile Services within the calendar month. No limitations are imposed on available features, resources, or apps.
No feature limitations. Unlimited resources and apps.

Every day, resource identifier hashes are sent to our internal metering service for those that have accessed SAP Mobile Services during the day. Each calendar month, cloud reporting and billing systems run distinction and aggregation processes for the resource identifier hashes to get the final number of active resources for the month. A resource is counted once if the user (or device in the case of anonymous users) uses the same name or name resource under multiple subaccounts.

In fact, the main difference between Resources and Consumer Edition is pricing. Please refer to SAP Discovery Center for details (logon required).

Examples: (1) If the application is authenticated explicitly (using a method such as OAuth, SAML, Basic, or HTTP) and is accessed by 100 users from 200 mobile devices in a month, it is counted as 100 resources; and (2) If the application is accessed anonymously (using API-KEY) and is accessed by 100 users from 200 mobile devices in total in a month, it is counted as 200 resources. SAP Mobile Services does not differentiate whether it’s 100 actual users or 200 actual users.
Users (standard) Deprecated (Deprecated) Develop, configure, and manage mobile apps that access enterprise data.

Standard plan billing is based on registered users. A registered user is a current named user that is associated with device registrations and application connections. A named user is an individual who is authorized to access the service. Users may be employees of customers or customer affiliates, or business partner users. There are no feature limitations..
No feature limitations.

At the beginning of each month, all registered user hashes are sent to our internal metering system. New registered user hashes are sent in the following days of the month. If a user terminates registration during the month, it is still counted in the current month and will not be counted in the next month. Users are considered registered until they terminate registration, whether they use the service during the month or not. A user is counted once if he or she uses the same user under multiple subaccounts.
Consumer Edition (b2c) Deprecated (Deprecated) Develop, configure, and manage mobile apps that access enterprise data.

Consumer Edition billing is based on active users. An active user is an individual user of a platform application that connects to the service at least once during any rolling three-month period. Billing is determined for active users that have accessed SAP Mobile Services within the calendar month. There are no feature limitations, and unlimited users and apps are allowed.
No feature limitations.

Every day, user name hashes are sent to our internal metering service for every user who has accessed mobile services during the day. Each calendar month, cloud reporting and billing systems run distinction and aggregation processes for the user name hashes to get the final number of active users for the month. A user is counted once if he or she uses the same user under multiple subaccounts.

Important Free Plan Information

When you create a mobile app in SAP Mobile Services, SAP Mobile Services creates a "BindMobileApplicationRoutesToME" Cloud Foundry app under the same space. When you enable the Cloud Foundry Runtime, you can choose a Cloud Foundry runtime plan that is either Free or Standard. If your Cloud Foundry Runtime is not using Free Plan, the "BindMobileApplicationRoutesToME" app incurs a cost.

Keep in mind:

  1. If you want "totally" free, you should enable Cloud Foundry Runtime with the Free plan, and place SAP Mobile Services in the Free plan's Org and Space. The drawback of this selection is that when you choose to upgrade Cloud Foundry Runtime from the Free plan to a non-free plan, you must do so manually. If there are any other apps under this Free Cloud Foundry Runtime, they will begin to incur charges.

  2. You can also use the SAP Mobile Services Free plan under the Cloud Foundry Runtime Standard plan. Thus the runtime app does incur a charge. You can manually shut down the apps under the Org and Space to minimize the cost. The benefit is that you can convert the SAP Mobile Services Free plan to non-free plan without upgrading Cloud Foundry Runtime.

Upgrading the Cloud Foundry Runtime

Following are the basic steps for upgrading the Cloud Foundry Runtime from Free to Standard plans:

  1. From SAP Business Technology Platform log into your Global Account and access Cloud Foundry Runtime and your Subaccount.

  2. Choose Instances and Subscriptions in the menu.

  3. Scroll down to Environments.

  4. Click the menu button () and select Update.

  5. Change the plan from Free to Standard (non-reversible).

  6. Click Update Instance.

Using Mobile Services in an Extended Landscape

You can use mobile services extended Cloud Foundry landscapes from SAP mobile service cockpit using the API Endpoint of an extended landscape.

  1. Open the SAP mobile service cockpit using the Service Marketplace > SAP Mobile Services > Support link. The SAP mobile service cockpit dialog, Select API Endpoint, appears.

  2. In API Endpoint, either select the default value, or enter the API Endpoint of the extended Cloud Foundry landscape. The API Endpoint can be found under Cloud Foundry Environment on SAP Business Technology Platform cockpit, for example, https://api.cf.us10-001.hana.ondemand.com.

  3. Select Login to access the URL.

  4. After you log into the endpoint, the Organization and Space prompt appears. The current API Endpoint value appears.

    You can choose the organization and space to access, and then select Open to access it. If the organization that you want to access is not listed, you might have used the wrong API Endpoint. In this case, you can log out and log in again, in order to input the correct API Endpoint value.

    Choose Organization and Space

    Org/Space Description
    Organization Select an organization, such as mobile-tenant99.
    Space Select a space, such as dev.

    Once you have successfully logged into the organization and space, the associated URL appears in the API Endpoint list.

Note

If you previously created a mobile-services instance, you can still select its Open Dashboard link to open SAP mobile service cockpit without using the API Endpoint.

Next Steps


Last update: February 15, 2024