Enabling the information flow between the SAP transactions and IBM BPM

After you generate the SAP guided workflow for your BPD, you can use it to enable the information flow between the SAP transactions and IBM® BPM.

About this task

You can either set up the guided workflow to automatically accept input and output transaction parameters from an external source, such as a predefined parameter definition file (unidirectional flow), or manually add and configure input and output parameters for each transaction in your business flow (bidirectional flow).
Parent topic: Using guided workflows

Enable a unidirectional information flow

About this task

For a BPD that has SAP information, IBM BPM V8.5.5 provides a wizard to configure a unidirectional information flow. When you are setting up the unidirectional flow, you can select a predefined file from your local file repository or from the SAP Guided Workflow toolkit repository to be the data definition file, which has a .tpar file extension in the following example.

To enable a unidirectional information flow for an activity that has SAP information in a BPD with an implemented guided workflow, complete the following steps:

Procedure

  1. In the BPD diagram, select the step in the process flow and, under Properties, open the Custom view. The Transactions table lists the transactions for the selected step. Set or create a standard transaction, and then select it.
  2. Click Add Business Object.
  3. IBM BPM searches the transaction definition information in the transactions.zip file provided by the SAP Guided Workflow toolkit. If the search fails, in the Edit Parameters wizard, select File on local disk and specify the name and the location of the predefined .tpar file that contains the parameters to use for the selected transaction. A sample .tpar file, called Transactions_DEMO.tpar, is provided in the SAP Guided Workflow toolkit. You can download this file and change it according to your transaction information. After getting the transaction definition information from the local file, you can edit the screen field IDs for which you want to create business object parameters.
  4. Select Create a private variable to add a private variable, and complete the wizard to create the business object with the parameters specified in the data definition file.
  5. On the Data Mapping view, assign the input, output, and private variables to the corresponding variables of the implemented heritage human service. Ensure that the private variable is assigned to the transactionBO parameter.
  6. Click Save.

Results

To enable a unidirectional information flow for an activity that does not have SAP information in a BPD with an implemented guided workflow, complete the following steps:
  1. Determine the transaction to be run by the activity.
  2. Create a business object, and add a parameter for each required SAP screen field to it. Set the screen field ID as the parameter name, if valid. If the screen field ID is not a valid parameter name, replace all the invalid characters with underscore signs (_) and, in the Parameter Documentation, enter the original screen field ID preceded by "SAP Transaction Parameters: ", and add a line above and a line below it.
  3. Create a private variable for the BPD, and set its type to the business object created earlier.
  4. In the Data Mapping view, assign the input, output, and private variables to the corresponding variables of the implemented heritage human service. Ensure that the private variable is assigned to the transactionBO parameter, and set the value of the defaultTransaction parameter to the target transaction.
  5. Click Save.

What to do next

  1. Repeat one of the procedures described earlier to complete the setup of the unidirectional information flow for the remaining activities that run SAP transactions in your BPD flow.
  2. Log in to Process Portal and click the name of the BPD that has the generated guided workflow.
  3. In the My Tasks portlet, select each task in your BPD flow and, on the Guided Workflow page, verify that the customer fields are populated with the required information.

Enable a bidirectional information flow

About this task

You can configure a bidirectional information flow by using a business object that defines how to get or set values from or to the SAP HTML transaction screen in IBM BPM. Each parameter of the business object is bound to one or to a list of HTML elements in the SAP transaction screen. The binding information is provided as one or more descriptors in the Documentation field of each parameter.
Restriction: The bidirectional information flow is supported only on Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Internet Explorer. An extension is required, and the installation packages for this extension are provided by the SAP Guided Workflow toolkit. Furthermore, additional configuration is required for Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 or 10. For more information, see Configuring Internet Explorer to support the Browser Helper Object extension.
To configure the bidirectional information flow for an activity in a BPD with an implemented guided workflow, complete the following steps:

Procedure

  1. If the activity has SAP information, set or create a standard transaction for it. Otherwise, determine the transaction to be run by this activity, and set it as the value of the defaultTransaction parameter in the implemented heritage human service.
  2. Create a business object, and add a parameter for each required SAP screen component to it. Use the Documentation field to bound the parameter to the target screen component. For more information, see Defining business objects to enable the bidirectional information flow.
  3. Create a private variable for the BPD, and set its type to the business object created earlier.
  4. In the Data Mapping view, assign the input, output, and private variables to the corresponding variables of the implemented heritage human service. Ensure that the private variable is assigned to the transactionBO parameter.
  5. Click Save.
  6. Repeat the steps above to complete the setup of the bidirectional information flow for the remaining activities that run SAP transactions in your BPD flow.
  7. Log in to Process Portal and click the name of the BPD that has the generated guided workflow.
  8. In the My Tasks portlet, select each task in your BPD flow and, on the Guided Workflow page, verify that the customer fields are populated with the required information and that the output data is captured.