Take a Tour of the SAP Cloud Platform Cockpit

Welcome to your SAP Cloud Platform cockpit for your trial account. In the following steps you will explore many of the options on the left navigation pane, the details of the System Status section, and how to move around using the breadcrumbs.

Before you move on to the next steps, make sure you are on this Cockpit Overview page.

The System Status section on the Overview page gives you a quick glance at your application health. You can host Java applications, HTML applications, and Database systems on SAP Cloud Platform. The Overall Health will let you know if any of your started applications are experiencing outages. You can also see an overview of how many applications you have, as well as how many are started of stopped.

To get more details about the applications, click on the Applications tab on the left navigation pane. Then click on Java Applications.

From the Java Applications page, you can take initial actions. If you already have an existing Java application that you were developing, you can deploy you application to your SAP Cloud Platform here (see #1 in image below). You will also have this option for HTML5 applications and XSA systems.

For applications already deployed to the SAP Cloud Platform, you can take standard actions against the application here (see #2 in image below). By clicking the play styled icon, you can start the application if it is not already running. Alternatively, you can stop a running application by clicking the circled square icon. Using the trash can icon, you can delete the application. And the star will favorite the application.

You can explore more about an application by clicking on its name. If you are new to the SAP Cloud Platform, you may not have an application available to explore right now which is OK!

Once you click on the name, you are taken to the Application Overview page. This page is a high level look at the single application you clicked on.

Here you will find specific information about your application. You can monitor resource consumption, update the application version, find the application URL, and more. It is your centralized dashboard for an application.

You may have noticed there are new left menu options. Here you can dive into the logs of the application under the Monitoring tab, configure your data sources under the Configuration tab, and update application permissions on the Security tab.

Let’s take a look at how the Security features might work.

Go ahead a click on Security, and then Roles to get to the Roles page for the application.

Applications will have different roles. Maybe some of your team needs admin access to the Application Overview, while others may just be developers and only need access to the code. Using the Roles under the Security settings enables you to define how much access each user or group of users needs.

To assign an individual to a role, first select a role in the Role list. Then click on the Assign button next to Individual Users.

In the pop up box, enter the User ID (for example: your P number) and click Assign.

Now that user will have access next time the refresh their session.

This is very helpful with productive accounts, but you might not find yourself using it with you trial account. But if you never need to share an application with a colleague or teammate, remember this!

Now you may be asking yourself how do you get back to the cockpit since the left menu changed. Don’t worry! Those handy breadcrumbs at the top of the screen are helpful with navigation.

The first item ( #1 ) in your breadcrumbs list is the trial home. This lets you know that you are in your trial account. If you click this link, you will get back to the trial home where you can select your Neo account or Cloud Foundry account. This is handy for switching between the two when you need to set things up.

The second item ( #2 ) is your region. This is where your data center for your SAP Cloud Platform is. By click on this, you can quickly switch between regions. This is also handy for moving over to a previously set up Cloud Foundry landscape, or moving into your companies productive accounts.

The third item ( #3 ) is your subaccount. This will take you back to your Cockpit Overview page. If you ever get too deep in the weeds, this is a safe space to come back to!

And in this case the fourth item ( #4 ) is the Java Applications. Your breadcrumb list will reflect which left menu item you clicked into. By clicking on the arrow next to the application name, you will see a list of your other Java Applications to quickly navigate between them.

Go ahead and navigate back to your SAP Cloud Platform cockpit.

The SAP Cloud Platform provides an abundance of services for you to use. Future tutorials cover some of these in depth, but sometimes it is fun to peruse what is available.

To see the list of services available with the SAP Cloud Platform, click the Services tab in the left menu.

On the Services page, you can explore a service by clicking on the tile. Select any service and click on it.

On a Service Overview page, you will find a couple standard things.

The 1st ( #1 ) is the service status. It will generally either be enabled or disabled. To change the state, just click the button. It can be helpful to disable a service when you are not using it in a productive account as leaving it Enabled may impact billing.

The 2nd ( #2 ) is the Actions you can take on a service. Once the service is enabled, you will have a Go to Service option to launch the service. You can also configure the service if you need additional destinations and data sources or updated permissions for the service. Some services will have more actions as they may have multiple portals to utilize all the features.

The last thing ( #3 ) to take note of is the Availability. If you are wondering why you may not see a service in your company’s productive account, it may be related to the availability in that region. Not all services are available in all regions and on all landscapes.

Head back to your SAP Cloud Platform cockpit.

Another handy developer tool to note is the Repositories. Repositories are helpful for code maintenance and migration. If you click on the Repositories tab in the left menu, you will find a couple different types of repos you can store on SAP Cloud Platform.

Click on Git Repositories to navigate to the repos page. If you have used GitHub or another code management tool before, you will find the experience is similar.

In the repos page, you will find a listing of all your repositories, the availability to create new ones, and usage data for the repos.

If you have repos, click on a repo name.

When cloning new repos from other environments, you will find a hand tool in the Git Repo overview for a specific repo. You are able to quickly clone the application into SAP Web IDE, SAP’s cloud based development environment. You will learn more about SAP Web IDE in future tutorials.

Additionally, you’ll find information here about your disk usage, URLs for the repo, and the deployed application if applicable.

Don’t forget to utilize this tool as it has integrations across many of the SAP Cloud Platform services and other SAP tools!

Back in your SAP Cloud Platform cockpit, check out the SAP HANA/SAP ASE section of the left menu. When you click the SAP HANA/SAP ASE tab, you will find 3 types of data management: Database Systems, Databases & Schemas, and Service Requests.

Back in your SAP Cloud Platform cockpit, check out the Connectivity section of the left menu. When you click the Connectivity tab, you will find 2 types of connectivity: Destinations and Cloud Connectors.

Destinations will assist you in connecting to external cloud-based systems, whether they are SAP systems or not, and using that system for data across your SAP Cloud Platform. It handles a lot of the heavy lifting around authentication, permissions, and same-origin policies on most browsers. It also validates with the source that you can use this data point in your applications by handling the cross origin validation. You will find this very useful when making API calls.

Cloud Connectors will assist you in connecting to your on premise SAP systems. You will find this handy when you want to get your data off your on premise SAP software or product, and use it for extension building in the cloud.

Back in your SAP Cloud Platform cockpit, check out the Security section of the left menu. When you click the Security tab, you will find 3 things you can manage: Trust, Authorization, and OAuth.