Launchpad Designer

For most of the SAP Fiori Launchpad's history, the launchpad designer was the one tool for launchpad content. Administrators used it to:

• create technical and business catalogs;
• add tiles from tile templates and configure their title, icon and intent;
• define target mappings that resolve an intent to an app;
• build groups for the classic home page.

The designer runs as an SAPUI5 app on the front-end server and has two scopes. The configuration scope (/UI2/FLPD_CONF, used with client 000) holds cross-client content; the customizing scope (/UI2/FLPD_CUST) holds content for one client and is the default when no scope is given. Customizing content overrides configuration content for that client, which is why the designer marks a catalog as outdated when its configuration version changed after a client-specific copy was made. Many SAP installation guides and community tutorials written before 2020 still walk through these steps. The launchpad designer explains much of the launchpad content found in older systems, even where it is no longer the right tool.

Yes. SAP's SAP S/4HANA 2025 FPS02 documentation states that the launchpad designer is deprecated and must no longer be used. The timeline SAP gives:

1. Launchpad release 2020: new design tools are published, and SAP stops recommending the launchpad designer.
2. Release 2023: the launchpad designer is officially deprecated, with removal announced for an upcoming release.
3. 2025 FPS02: SAP repeats that no new launchpad content may be created with it and asks customers to migrate existing content to the successor formats.

SAP lists SAP Note 3170196 as related information for the deprecation. The deprecation is not only a recommendation about tools. Technical catalogs created in the designer use a different persistence than catalogs built with the launchpad app manager, and new launchpad features build on the newer format. Depending on the release, older front-end servers in SAP ERP landscapes may lack the launchpad app manager, which keeps the designer in use there. For any SAP S/4HANA system on a current release, the launchpad designer is a migration source, not a design tool.

The launchpad app manager, formerly called the mass maintenance tool, became the main tool for technical catalogs with ABAP Platform 2020. SAP cites independent transport of app descriptor items, simpler translation and better search among its advantages. Every routine launchpad designer task now has a named successor, with custom tiles as the one documented exception.

Business catalogs need no migration: the launchpad content manager reads them as they are. Technical catalogs do. SAP provides the Migration of Technical Catalogs toolset (/UI2/MGR_TC):

1. Implement the SAP Notes listed in SAP Note 3397026 and set the catalog type to Standard Catalog in the allowed catalog types for the launchpad app manager.
2. Check the status of each catalog in /UI2/MGR_TC: ready for full migration, ready after an assignment, or ready only for partial migration.
3. Optionally run the pre-migration cleanup to fix content that cannot be migrated automatically.
4. Migrate the whole catalog, or partially migrate only the apps that qualify.

After migration, the launchpad app manager becomes the default tool for that catalog, including its persistence. Groups move separately, by converting them into pages. A frequent complaint in practitioner communities is that partial migration leaves catalogs split across two tools for a long time; planning the cleanup of non-migratable apps avoids that. Migrating catalog by catalog, starting with custom content, keeps launchpad designer dependencies visible and shrinking.

1. Following an old tutorial. Many guides still show /UI2/FLPD_CUST as the way to add an app. Creating new tiles there produces content in the deprecated format; use the launchpad app manager instead.
2. Editing in the wrong scope. Changing cross-client content in the customizing scope creates client copies that stop following later configuration changes. The designer flags them as outdated, but someone has to act on the flag.
3. Copying tiles to change a label. Adaptation mode in the launchpad app manager changes the title or icon of an SAP tile without breaking the link to SAP's original.
4. Extending groups. Every hour spent on groups is spent on a deprecated home page; spaces and pages are the target.
5. Assuming the designer is gone. It still exists in the system and still matters for custom tiles, so administrators should restrict who can use it rather than ignore it; SAP documents this restriction at OData service level.

Most launchpad designer problems today come from treating a legacy tool as the default.