Activation of XI services on backend

All HTTP services which are required to be activated (also for AEX integration scenarios) can automatically activated by running report RSXMB_ACTIVATE_ICF_SERVICES on the ABAP backend system (thanks for the comment from Michal below, see also SAP Note 517484). However in some cases, for example if the report was not running properly, the specific services need to be activated manually. For this case, please follow my guideline below.

When using the SOAP adapter for communication with an ABAP backend system, the URLs of the ABAP XI services needs to be entered in the “Target URL” field of the SOAP communication channel (see screenshot below). This both needs to be done for pure SOAP or XI 3.0 (proxy) protocol:

To quickly check if these services are running and activated properly on the ABAP backend systems, the Target URL of the communication channel can be pasted into the web browser.
If the service is not activated in the ABAP system, the following error message will appear in the browser:

To activate the services in the ABAP system, transaction SICF needs to be called (as mentioned in the error screen above, marked red). To do this perform the following steps:

• Start transaction SICF

• Goto to the path as given by the URL starting with “default_host“, i.e. for Target URL http://<hostname>:8000/sap/xi/engine?type=entry goto path default_host -> sap -> xi -> engine
• Right-click on entry and click “Activate Service” and confirm the window with “Yes”

Now try again to enter the URL in the browser. If a login window appears (as seen below), the service is running properly: