CodeJam 2.0!
On Friday, October 30th of the year 2015 we had the pleasure of organizing a new kind of CodeJam. Based on
feedback from our peers and collaboration with SAP AG we have successfully created an mixture of new content based
on HCI to E-commerce scenarios and fresh out of the box HCI Web GUI content.What made this CodeJam unique is that the greatest part of the hands-on session exercises was produced by ourselves.
Preparations and Set-Up
After having several conference calls with SAP HCI Product Manager, Dr udo.paltzer we finaly set the date for the CodeJam. We also pitched the idea of providing the content for the hands-on session. We received positive feedback from SAP and we proposed several scenarios. After a series of quick conference calls with SAP everything was set. We went on creating the content and finding a suitable location for our event.guido.koopmann%40proxcellence.com presented the idea of having the home of his local football club N.A.C Breda as suitable location for our event. It provided us with opportunity to host an CodeJam in a new kind of environment and it was pretty centralized to be reached from most of The Netherlands and Belgium. After we wrapped up the scenarios and the location there was only one thing left to do which was to invite people.
Eventbrite page and a graphic was created and shortly after that we started the social media campaign to promote it.We were on our way. Four weeks later we were sold out! We had so much positive response that we had to create a waiting list.
The Event
We were pleased to see that so many people showed up on Friday the 30th at the NAC Breda Stadium. In order to get everybody warmed up for the main event we provided a small lunch which also had the authentic dutch croquettes (kroketten) on the menu. It was also an ideal moment to introduce ourselves individually to our attendees. Everyone was excited to see what was cooking in the HCI kitchen.
Pre-event lunch
After the pre-event lunch in the foyer everybody found a spot, and booted up their machines, we could start the show. A small introduction was given by myself and guido.koopmann%40proxcellence.com and shortly after that the floor was given to udo.paltzer. He provided us with up to date information regarding the current portfolio, the road map and outlook for the SAP HANA Cloud Integration. Next to the information about On Premise vs Cloud and Platform-as-a-Service there was also a very useful slide about "When to use what" regarding the integration solutions provided by SAP.
udo.paltzer presenting
Several interesting "When to use what" points:
- Pre-packaged integration content is shipped for SAP HANA Cloud Integration as well as SAP Process Integration
- Need of compliance scenarios, such as e-invoicing and payroll, to integrate with legal authorities
- Fast innovation
- Subscription fee based license model
- Possibility to certify your content
Note:
(If you read carefully you will see that the world of integration is changing in a direction where customers are more and more demanding when it comes to providing integration solutions in order for them to be one step ahead of the competition)
One other thing that caught our attention was that SAP engages with partners to develop connectivity with competitor software solutions such as third party adapters. The speed of developing these kinds of connectivity solutions (and publishing them) is a make or break factor for the integration tooling, which makes this a very smart move from SAP.
After the presentation it was time for the participants to get their hands dirty. After a short explanation from guido.koopmann%40proxcellence.com, rayan.koendjbiharie provided everybody with the hands on document. The assignment was to use HCI to integrate it with E-commerce platform Magento.
Participants paying close attention
The exercises were constructed in a way which would learn the participants about the usage of tools within HCI such as request-reply , content modifier and content enricher. It was beautiful to see everybody working with such enthusiasm to successfully get their integration flows working. As always there were couple of hickups such as problems with wsdl files or java versions but they were fixed very quickly. The vast majority of participants successfully created, modeled, deployed and tested their scenarios.
Exercise screenshot
After a short break it was time to start with exercise number two. This exercise was created to learn participants how to use pre-delivered standard integration content from SAP and how to leverage key capabilities provided by HCI for the integration between a SuccessFactors system and SAP ERP. This all working with SAP HCI Web tooling. Yes, you read it well, WEB TOOLING. Just start your web browser go to your HCI tenant url, develop, design and run your integration solution.
example mapping creation in HCI web tooling
Again, it was wonderful to see that everybody worked on their exercises with such enthusiasm (despite being friday afternoon).
Wrap up!
As the end of the (working) day was approaching and everybody was wrapping up their exercises it was the time to slowly bring the event to the end. But not before a little surprise for our co-host and all the participants. Every participant received one (World Famous in Breda) Breda Beer.
We received during the event and days to follow lot of positive feedback about our event.Of course there were also points for improvement and these were duly noted. One of the participants b.vanrooij even wrote SCN blog about our event (thanks again Bob). We also received mail stating that it was the best code jam session he/she ever attended.
All what is left to say is that it has been a wonderful experience to organize an event that stands out. If you are thinking about organizing a CodeJam yourself, do hot hesitate is our advice.
Until Next Time!
Additional Links:
More info about SAP HCI
https://cloudintegration.hana.ondemand.com/
SAP CodeJam Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.787938537998195.1073742015.148283928630329&type=3
b.vanrooij blog about our event.
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