What’s new in SAP Process Orchestration 7.31 SP13 / 7.4 SP08

As we are close to the holiday season, we cannot resist providing you a little gift 🙂 with the new features and enhancements in SAP Process Orchestration 7.31 SP13/ 7.4 SP08. After reading this blog you for sure want to use the time now to upgrade to this latest SPs to leverage all new enhancements.

Gateway Java

One particular highlight of this version is a new deployment option for Gateway. Now SAP Process Orchestration can serve as a Gateway hub via the embedded Gateway (Java) component. Basically we took the Gateway ABAP and ported this to Java. As there is now only one middleware system needed to do application integration and expose service from the backend for UI consumption, this simplifies the landscape (though the backend component within the backend system is still needed). The backend component IW_BEP is already part of NetWeaver 7.40, for older releases it can be deployed as an add-on. Via the Gateway Java component the backend data can be exposed via OData channel (ODC) and also supports multi-destination, the aggregation of data from multiple backend systems. As these are great news, there are also some restrictions currently: only connection to ABAP backend systems; cannot run Fiori apps; cannot run Unified Inbox…but it is planned to work on this, it’s on our roadmap!

Sounds good to you!? Then please take a look at this blog to get further details:

Exposing Gateway Services from SAP Process Orchestration

New Process Integration features

For all the PI fans out there, let’s take a look at the new PI features:

• Display flat file content on receiver side
• Integration Directory programming interface enhancements
• Support of receiver rules in integrated configuration
• Copy content of successful message to new message and resend it
• WS adapter supporting WS-RM, and SAML sender vouches
• Support for receiver determinations without Sender Agreement in the message flow discovery
• Disable field data type validation during IDoc-XML parsing (see SAP note 2036878)

Customer Connection Requirements

We have now closed the customer connection project and shipped the last missing feature: Flat File Display in PI Monitoring at sender side File Adapter. So now you can store the original or converted payload for e.g. auditing reasons or also test the file conversion. With the new parameter messageLog the new log version is added.

Support of receiver rules in Integrated Configuration object

We have closed now a gap in the Integration Configuration object on the Java side. You are able to maintain receiver determination condition once and reuse it in different configuration scenarios. There receiver rules specify the conditions which messages are forwarded to particular receivers. These rules can be reused across receiver determinations and Integrated Configuration objects.

For the next SP it is planned to provide this also for Integration Flows.

Copy content of successful message to new message and resend it

For recovery of the receiving backend system, successfully processed messages can be sent again, or to be more precise copied messages will be sent in this case. Here, we do support two flavors, either send immediately or copy only and schedule later.

New Web services adapter on Adapter Engine

The Web service adapter also supports WS-RM(1.0 or 1.1), supporting SOAP version 1.1 and 1.2. Furthermore basic authentication and authentication via client certificate, WS addressing, HTTP proxy, WS-security signature and SAML sender vouches are supported.

Business Process Management features

There are also some news in the BPM-side of the house, for the developer (Dev), for the administrator (Admin) as well as for the end user (user). Let’s see what’s in.

Enhanced OData Service: Get Process Instance Details (Dev)

The OData services which come out of the box we have further enhanced with an additional service to get information about the process instance. Basically you will provide the process instance ID and get several attributes, e.g. name, subject, date etc. Exactly the same functional we have already in the Java API.

Task UI on external system (Dev)

The integration of Custom UIs has been enhanced. Now you can use placeholders to refer to the HTTP destination instead of deploying the task UI on the same system where BPM is running and using a relative URL. The placeholder is replaced at runtime with the destination URL, supporting root and sub-paths. In this case SSO is very much recommended, as you don’t want to disturb your users with an addition log on screen, right?!

Generate SAPUI5 task UI (Dev)

We know many of you have waited for this…and now it’s there! With this version you can now generate SAP UI5 tasks as you are used to it with Visual Composer or WebDynpro UIs. For sure you will get the full source code of the SAP UI5 application which can be adapted as required. Cool, isn’t it!? Currently “simply types” are only supported, but there is more to come.

Re-import service interface from ESR (Dev)

Once a service interface has been changed, you can now simply reimport this into Process Composer while preserving existing mappings.

Delete process instances without archiving (Admin)

There is an option available (job “bpm_delete_only”) to not write data to archive store (e.g. for testing) and just delete the selected process instances.

Save custom filters as preset in NWA Manage Processes (Admin)

Improvements for the usability will the administrator now also find in the monitoring area, while saving custom filters.

Show total count of process instances (Admin)

A small one; but in case you have a lot process instances running (you for sure have), and your list will be cut…you will get the total number of active processes with one click.

Completing task with comment (user)

The end user is now able to leave comment (optional) when the task is completed directly in the inbox with custom actions (e.g. approve or reject).

That’s all…

Hope you have enjoyed the information of these new features – so upgrade, make use of them and gain the benefits right now.

We wish you happy holidays, all the best for 2015 and are looking forward sharing with you the news next year – stay tuned 😉

Additional information:

• More about Process Orchestration and an archive of “What is new” overview blogs can be found in this library: Introduction to SAP Process Orchestration
• For a complete overview and further information of the enhancements with SP13, please see these release notes: Support Package Stack 13 – What’s New in SAP NetWeaver 7.3 EHP1 (Release Notes) – SAP Library