Generating guided workflows

You can use different methods to generate guided workflows for your SAP business needs. You can generate guided workflows automatically for SAP business projects that are imported from SAP Solution Manager, you can generate guided workflows manually for business process definitions (BPD) that are defined in IBM® BPM, or you can generate guided workflows interactively by using SAP Transaction coach views that you can build by dragging SAP components from specified SAP transactions.

Before you begin

See the Hardware and software requirements, SAP Solution Manager integration to ensure that your software is at the required levels for the SAP Guided Workflow toolkit.

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Review the following procedures and choose how you want to generate the guided workflow.
Parent topic: Using guided workflows

Automated generation

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You can automatically generate a guided workflow for a SAP business project that you import from SAP Solution Manager. The SAP business project is imported into IBM BPM as a process application with an SAP Guided Workflow toolkit attached to it. In the guided workflow, an SAP server is created for each logical component of the imported SAP project for which you can define transactions and to which you can add business objects that enable the bidirectional information flow between the SAP transactions and IBM BPM.

To automatically generate a guided workflow for an imported SAP business project, complete the following steps:

Procedure

  1. Ensure that a connection between SAP Solution Manager and IBM BPM is set up. If this is the first time that you set up the SAP Solution Manager integration, see Setting up a connection between SAP Solution Manager and IBM Process Center.
  2. In IBM Process Center, click Import Process App, select SAP Solution Manager, and complete the Import Process App wizard to import the SAP business project from SAP Solution Manager into IBM BPM. The SAP project is imported as a process application, and the business processes in the SAP project are imported as business process definitions (BPD). For each logical component of the SAP project, a SAP server is created in the process application.
    1. Select Keep me logged in to save your user name and password so that the next time you access SAP Solution Manager using this account you will directly access the project list in SAP Solution Manager.
    2. For the process that you selected to import, select Generate a Guided Workflow to automatically generate the default guided workflow for the BPD.
  3. In the BPD diagram, select a step in the process flow and, under Properties, open the Custom view. The Transaction table lists the transactions for the selected step. If there is no standard transaction, set an existing transaction as standard or create a standard transaction.
  4. Click Process App Settings and, on the Servers tab, review the list of SAP servers for the process application. Each SAP server represents a logical component in the imported SAP project.
  5. Configure the SAP server on the Servers tab:
    1. In the Servers list, select a SAP server. If none exists, add a new server of type SAP Server.
    2. Under SAP Location, enter the information for the SAP server that the transactions will run on. If different SAP servers are used when the process application is deployed to different environments, enter the SAP server information for all the required environment types.
    3. Click Save.
  6. Run the generated SAP guided workflow in Process Portal:
    1. Launch Process Portal.
    2. Click the name of the BPD that has the generated guided workflow to run the human task from the WebSphere® Portal Server. If Single-Sign-On (SSO) between IBM BPM and the target SAP system is not configured, you must enter your SAP user name and password to log in to the target SAP system and launch the SAP transaction.

Manual generation

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If you do not import SAP business processes from SAP Solution Manager, you can manually generate a guided workflow for a business process with SAP steps that is defined as a business process definition (BPD) in IBM Process Designer.

To manually generate a guided workflow for a BPD, complete the following steps:

Procedure

  1. Open your process application in Process Designer.
  2. Attach the SAP Guided Workflow toolkit to the process application.
  3. Click Processes > Business Process Definitions and select the name of the BPD that you want to work with.
  4. In Process Designer, in the Diagram view, select a business object and, on the Properties tab, in the Implementation view, click Default SAP Transaction Human Service.
  5. In the Custom view, review the transaction in the Transaction table. If no standard transaction is available, set an existing transaction as standard or create a standard transaction. If the Transaction table is not displayed, open the Data Mapping view, specify a transaction value for the defaultTransaction input, and create a system value for the defaultServerInfo input.
    If you want to implement a guided workflow for the Fiori application, set the type transaction parameter to Fiori, and set the other parameters as appropriate for a regular transaction.
  6. Click Process App Settings and, on the Servers tab, see the list of servers for your process application. Each server represents a logical component in the BPD.
  7. Configure the SAP server on the Servers tab:
    1. In the Servers list, select a SAP server. If none exists, add a new server of type SAP Server.
    2. Under SAP Location, enter the information for the SAP server that the transactions will run on. If different SAP servers are used when the process application is deployed to different environments, enter the SAP server information for all the required environment types.
    3. Click Save.
  8. Run the generated SAP guided workflow in Process Portal:
    1. Launch Process Portal.
    2. Click the name of the BPD that has the generated guided workflow to run the human task from the WebSphere Portal Server. If Single-Sign-On (SSO) between IBM BPM and the target SAP system is not configured, you must enter your SAP user name and password to log in to the target SAP system and launch the SAP transaction.

Interactive generation by using SAP Transaction coach views

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You can also generate guided workflows interactively in the Process Designer coach editor, by using drag and drop. The interactive generation of guided workflows is based on SAP Transaction coach views. In the coach editor, for each SAP transaction that you want to run in your coach, drag an SAP Transaction coach view from the palette onto the canvas. Build each SAP Transaction coach view interactively, by dragging SAP components from a specified SAP transaction window onto the coach view. Each coach view is bound to a business object of type ANY, and can be configured.

To interactively generate a guided workflow, complete the following steps:

Procedure

  1. Open your process application in Process Designer.
  2. Attach the SAP Guided Workflow toolkit to the process application.
  3. Click User Interface > Client-Side Human Service and select the name of the client-side human service that you want to work with.
  4. In the Process Designer web editor, double-click the coach that you want to populate with SAP transactions to open it in the coach editor.
  5. In the palette, scroll down to the Views, and then drag the SAP Transaction coach view onto the coach canvas.
  6. In the Configuration tab of the selected SAP Transaction coach view, in the appropriate areas, enter the SAP transaction t-code, SAP account and SAP server information, and then click New SAP Transaction to start the SAP transaction for your coach view. The New SAP Transaction window displays the information that was provided in the Configuration tab.
  7. In the New SAP Transaction window, enter whatever configuration information was not provided in the Configuration tab or edit the existing information as required, then click OK.
  8. Click Drag Mode to turn on the drag-and-drop mode, and then drag the appropriate SAP components from the SAP transaction window onto your coach view in the coach editor. You can drag the SAP components onto your canvas one by one, or you can select multiple fields and then click Copy to copy all of them to your coach view. Click Clear to clear the multiple selection. Click Edit Mode to pause the drag-and-drop mode and continue working on the SAP transaction as usual.
  9. In the Set Component Parameters window that opens when the SAP components are dropped onto the canvas, specify the information that defines how the SAP component communicates with IBM BPM in the information flow. Some of the options that you can specify are as follows.
    • Business Object Field: Specify whether the component is used in the information flow.
    • Output: Select if IBM BPM requires information from this component or must provide information to it.
    • Extract regular expression: Specify how you want to extract information from this component by using the regular expression editor. Click Generate to open the regular expression editor.
    • Format: Specify the format to be used to verify the output.
    • Selector: Lists the system-generated component IDs that are copied.
    • Exclude: Specify the component values that you want to exclude from the copying. Use the Add and Remove buttons to adjust the list of excluded values.
  10. After all the required SAP components are dragged to the SAP Transaction coach view, in the Configuration tab, specify the name of the business object that you want to create for this coach view, then click Generate Business Object. A business object is generated, and variables for the new business object type are generated and bound to the SAP Transaction coach view. Concurrently, a CSS customization specification is generated by the guided workflow browser extension.
  11. Optional: If you closed the SAP transaction window, in the Configuration tab, click Show Transaction Window to reopen the window. You can resize and reposition the SAP transaction window on the screen as needed.
  12. Optional: In the Configuration tab, you can use the generated CSS customization specification to customize the SAP web user interface.
  13. Click Save.