How to setup SuccessFactors Adapter with SAP Data Services

Within SAP, we created a SAP Data Services Job to extract some recruiting data from SuccessFactors in order to store those data on an internal HANA system for reporting.

Since SAP Data Services 4.1, a specific adapter is available to connect with SuccessFactors. An adpater is a java service running in the background of Data Services which is able to deal with Cloud Web services. I would like to share with you some of my findings with SAP Data Services 4.2 and SFSF adapter.

Prerequisite

Please identify which Cloud instance of SuccessFactors you will use. It can be done via this URL:

https://sfapitoolsflms.hana.ondemand.com/SFIntegration/sfapitools.jsp

Please validate with this URL that you are able to open the connection from the SAP Data Services Job Server. To achieve this you need to ask SuccessFactors administrator the following things:

provide an API user with proper authorization and password
provide the Company ID
Setup the data services IP address into the whitelist of SuccessFactors otherwise you will face this kind of error message

Adapter – Proxy Setup:

As your SAP Data Services is running in your internal network, please pay attention to the proxy definition by adding the following parameters in the adapter web interface setup:

Parameters to be added : -Dhttps.proxyHost=<proxy> -Dhttps.proxyPort=<8080>

Please also activate the Trace mode to True to have a view on trace and errors.

Certificate setup

If you receive this error below, you need to upload the right certificates in the keystore used by the adapter in order to enable the SSL connection (There are sometime mistakes in some documentations.)

Please perform the steps below:

Obtain 3 SFSF certificates

Below are the steps to export all certificates from the certificate path using FireFox.

1. Click on the lock

Click ‘More Information’

3. Click ‘View Certificate’

4. Click ‘Details’

5. The ‘Certificate Hierarchy’ show 3 certificates – it is really important to get those 3 certificates to enable the SSL connection.

The root certificate is ‘VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority – G5’.
The child certificate is ‘VeriSign Class 3 Secure Server CA – G3’.
The grandchild certificate is ‘*.successfactors.eu’.

6. To export a certificate, click to highlight the certificate. Below shows how to export the root certificate.

7. Click ‘Export’, to save the certificate file.

Upload those 3 certificates in the right keystore

a) Open a Dos command and Type set JAVA_HOME=%LINK_DIR%\ext and press Enter.

b) Type set path=%LINK_DIR%\ext\jre\bin;%path% and press Enter.

c) Type cd %link_dir%\ssl\trusted_certs and press Enter.

d) Type notepad sslks.key to view the keystore password.

e) Type keytool -import -alias verisign_class3g5ca -file “need full path to VeriSignClass3PublicPrimaryCertificationAuthority-G5.crt” -keystore jssecacerts and press Enter.

When ask ‘Enter keystore password:’, copy the password in step (d).

When ask ‘Trust this certificate? [no]:’, type yes

f) Type keytool -import -alias verisign_g3 -file “need full path to VeriSignClass3SecureServerCA-G3.crt” -keystore jssecacerts and press Enter.

When ask ‘Enter keystore password:’, copy the password in step (d).

When ask ‘Trust this certificate? [no]:’, type yes

g) Type keytool -import -alias sfsf_eu -file “need full path to sap.successfactors.eu.crt” -keystore jssecacerts and press Enter.

When ask ‘Enter keystore password:’, copy the password in step (d).

When ask ‘Trust this certificate? [no]:’, type yes

h) Restart the adapter

Nota Bene : In some technical documentation it is mentioned %LINK_DIR%\ext\jre\lib\security and to have the connection working properly we work here with \ssl\trusted_certs. In the technical documentation they mentioned the keystore cacerts and here we use jssecacerts.

Reference blogs:

I hope those tips will help you if you need to enable the communication between SuccessFactors and SAP Data Services (on premise).

Other possibilities are available with SAP PI and >Hana Cloud Integration which are presented in the reference blogs.

I will continue to update this blog with other findings later in 2015.

Best regards

Thomas

13 Comments

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Eriki Gopi February 25, 2015 at 7:20 pm

I am planning to use BODS integrationlayer to extract data into BW from SF. Do you see this as a good chocie. Please suggest any other options.

Thanks,

Gopikrishna

like (0)
1. Esté Scholtz November 18, 2015 at 8:18 am
  
  Hi Eriki,
  
  Did you have any luck with this?
  
  Thanks,
  
  Esté
  
  like (0)
2. Nitesh Ghotiya December 2, 2015 at 9:31 am
  
  Did it work Eriki? I am exploring the same option for recruitment data.
  
  like (0)
3. Thomas DELALOY Post authorJanuary 8, 2016 at 2:34 pm
  
  Hi Eriki and Nitesh,
  
  We have implmented this solution internally within SAP IT one year ago in order to allow Webi and Ad-hoc reporting on top of SuccessFactors, combined with other data sources.
  
  After one year, we can say that it is working fine and we are currently migrated the reporting database on HANA, keeping DS as extractor tools and Webi as reporting tools.
  
  We have also other possibilities which combine multiple layers like HCI, SAP PI, …
  
  Regards,
  
  Thomas
  
  like (0)
surendra kumar January 8, 2016 at 2:15 pm

We have followed above steps and tried integrating SF into BODS, and getting the Below error :

1. Do we need a SFAPI user to connect using the url mentioned in the screenshot ???

2. Is the URL correct ?

like (0)
1. Thomas DELALOY Post authorJanuary 8, 2016 at 2:29 pm
  
  Hi Surendra,
  
  For the API url, you have to use the sfapitools to find the proper URL related to the datacebnter where your SuccessFactors instance is running:
  
  https://sfapitoolsflms.hana.ondemand.com/SFIntegration/sfapitools.jsp
  
  In addition you can try from your DSJob server to connect with this tool and with user/pwd. Your DSJob server has to be registered in the white list of Successfactors.
  
  Yes you need a Sfapi user with password to connect – certificat is not enough as one system can have multiple companies / sfapi users.
  
  Hope it helps.
  
  Thomas
  
  like (0)
  1. surendra kumar January 8, 2016 at 3:07 pm
    
    Hi Thomas,
    
    Thank you for the clarification.
    
    I found the url of QA system from the sfapitools url you have mentioned.
    
    https://qacand2.sflab.ondemand.com/sfapi/v1/soap
    
    Please help me to find the process to register the DSJob server ( IP Address) in the whitelist of SF.
    
    like (0)
TCS Consulting February 15, 2016 at 11:04 am

Hi Thomas,

I need to connect SAP Sucess Factor with BODS 4.2 . Can you please share me your Email ID or Contact no so that I can contact on the same.

My Emial ID is :Pandeyanuj21@gmail.com

Its very Urgent.

Thanks

Anuj Pandey

like (0)
Ksenia Ivanova March 1, 2016 at 5:35 pm

Great blog!

At Integratus Solutions we have been working on SuccessFactors and SAP Business Objects integration using SAP Data Services – Please feel free to view our Success Story: How to Integrate SuccessFactors with SAP BusinessObjects

Best,

Ksenia

like (0)
1. Narciso Rodrigues May 27, 2016 at 12:02 pm
  
  Hi Ksenia,
  
  Is the full version of Data Services needed to achieved this or the Data Services capabilities present in packages like SAP BO BI Suite is enough.
  
  I’m currently looking to licensing costs for this connection and could be huge.
  
  thanks in advance,
  
  Narciso
  
  like (0)
  1. Nitesh Ghotiya June 11, 2016 at 9:47 am
    
    You should be able to download and install adapter if you already have data services on SAP BI/BO platform. No extra licensing required.
    
    like (0)
Kuldeep Singh March 6, 2017 at 8:07 pm

Hi Surendra, Thomas,

I followed this post and able to configure BODS with SF, however I am getting the same error that Surendra faced.

Please can you guide me to fix this?

Thanks

Mandeep

like (0)
Kuldeep Singh March 6, 2017 at 8:09 pm

Screenshot of the error

like (0)