How to connect SAP Mobile Documents (HCP edition) to an ABAP System – Part I

In this blog I describe how I connected my trial instance of SAP Mobile Documents running on SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) to an on-premise ABAP installation. The explanation is not meant to be a best practice implementation in terms of scalability or security!

There are different ways on how you can configure your connection to the backend:

Option one is to use a service user connection. That means that all requests done by the HCP application to the backend will be done with one and the same user.

The second option is to use the same user for the backend connection that is logged on in the HCP (SAP Mobile Documents). This means that the authorizations for this user apply in the backend.

In the first part I describe how to first set up a connection with a service user, so you know that the connection works in general.

This makes troubleshooting much easier.

In the second part, I describe how to change the service user connection to a named-user connection.

Part I: How to connect SAP Mobile Documents to an on-premise ABAP System using a service user connection

These are the ingredients of the cake:

My own Mobile Documents Trial Account (based on HCP)

Windows-based ABAP System (with enabled CMIS connectivity)

Some Windows-based system used to install the HANA Cloud Connector

Installation of SAP HANA Cloud Connector

First of all I started with the installation of the SAP HANA Cloud Connector on the Windows machine, on which the ABAP system is installed (but it should not make a difference if both are installed on two different boxes).

For the installation I used this tutorial by Timo Lakner and Markus Tolksdorf:

https://hcp.sap.com/developers/TutorialCatalog/con100_1_setting_up_cloud_connector.html

After I installed the Cloud Connector and connected it to the HCP instance (as described in the tutorial), this is how I added the connection to the ABAP system:

The CMIS connection from Mobile Documents to the ABAP System is done via RFC.

For my system I chose to connect without load balancing.

Enter the name of the server. I recommend to use the full qualified name. I just used the server name as everything is installed on one machine.

Just confirm the settings on this screen.

Now you have set up the connection to the host. In the next step you add a resource to allow the connection through the Cloud Connector.

The function modules that are used for the CMIS connection to ABAP use the prefix FM_CMIS:

Now you are done with the basic settings in the Cloud Connector.

Create a Destination in HCP Cockpit

Go to http://hcp.sap.com –> Launch HCP

Log on with your trial account user and password.

Go to Destinations and click New Destination

Create a Connection in Mobile Documents Admin UI

You need to create a connection in the Admin UI of SAP Mobile Documents.

Go to the Admin UI (in case you are using the Mobile Documents trial, it will look like https://mdocs-<your-trial-account-name>trial.hanatrial.ondemand.com/mcm/admin – replace the part <your-trial-account-name> with – guess what – your trial account name!)

In the Connections area, create a connection that has the same Destination value as the name of your HCP destination you have created in the previous step.

Create a Corporate Repository

In the Admin UI of SAP Mobile Documents, go to Repositories – Corporate Content

Click Create

Select the Connection you have created in the previous step

Select a repository (if you get an error, something went wrong in the previous configuration steps :)).

If you are able to select a repository – Congratulations!!!

You need to set the Document Classification.

Save your entry.

After this you can check out how this looks for the end user.

Log on to the Web UI

Exchange the “admin” part of the URL with “browser”

In the Corporate Section, you now see the connected ABAP system!

If you now want to configure the connection to use the named user, check out part 2!