PI Monitoring Tool developed with SAP Fiori

In Summary: We have developed a new tool built upon standard capabilities that combines good features of SAP PI User-Defined Search and SAP Fiori which can be deployed to SAP NW. It enables payload search with Service Interface based user authorization.

This tool is also briefly explained in presentation format here: link

Table of Contents

1. Problem & Solution Justification
2. Screenshots
3. Infrastucture Highlights
4. Availability
5. Credits

1. Problem & Solution Justification

User Defined Search in SAP PI NetWeaver Administration(NWA) enables search with message content(payload).

• It is a great tool for both PI users/consultants & end users to check the status and the content of the message.
• It is performant with little runtime overhead because of the fact that it prepares indexes for the given criteria.
• It is intuitive for end users to search for a field they know in the process like “Order Number”, “Document Id”, “Document Date” etc.

Overall it is a well-designed feature of SAP PI. However as we gained experience with the workflows of the customers we have noticed a few things to improve:

• Security concerns of creating many PI users with roles that can monitor all messages.
• NWA usage is complex for end users, thus requiring education.
• Mobile access?
• If Users/Consultants responsible for SAP PI helps end users this can become a real workload depending on message volume.

Medepia PI Monitoring Tool is our solution to these problems.

It really shows the premise of Fiori with the one of the powerful products of SAP, SAP PI.
Let’s remember core features of Fiori from sap.com:

• “Improve user productivity by simplifying and automating day-to-day tasks across any device”
• “Boost user adoption with an appealing UX design tailored to key tasks and activities”
• “Increase compliance and data quality by making it easier to enter information into your system of record”
• “Reduce training and support costs with simple, role-based screens that speed ramp-up and minimize user errors”

Access from any device ☑, good UX ☑, easier to use ☑, role-based screens ☑ . This tool achieves all of them thanks to SAP Fiori.

It brings self-service to User-Defined Search. It has the benefits of classic division of labor.

PI users can work with more business value. Also end users can learn about their messages faster!

2. Screenshots

Home screen for admin. Regular user can only see User Defined Search tile.

Admins can add or remove SI based authorization for regular users!

Payload Search screen for regular user. Each user can only search for messages in Service Interfaces attached to them by admins: 

Search results where you can see the status of the message and show payload in different ways:

It works on mobile!

3. Infrastructure Highlights

• Works natively in SAP PI NetWeaver as an Java application
• Works with SAP NW authentication and roles
• Custom SI based authorization for each user on top of SAP NW roles.
• SAP Fiori user interface
• Uses SAP standard web services for User-Defined Message Search, this ensures performance stability.

There is one technical PI user with monitoring roles. This user is used between the application and standard User Defined Search web services. It is configured for application in Java System Properties(NWA).

Admins should have MEDEPIA_MONI_ADMIN role.

Regular users can only have MEDEPIA_MONI_USER_DEFINED_SEARCH_USER role.

So when an end user enters NWA it can’t access monitoring or any other tool. This situation is in accordance with the principle of least privilage.

As I stated in the screenshots a regular “User Defined Search” user(in this case end user) can only search in the Medepia PI Monitoring Tool. Also users can only search for Service Interfaces that admins have authorized them.

4. Availability

Medepia PI Monitoring Tool is ready for production. It is tested on SAP PI Java single stack. In case of interest you can contact me.

5. Credits

This work couldn’t be realized without the help of my colleagues so they deserve speacial thanks.

• Thanks Former Member for vision and support.
• Thanks @tahir.z for feedback, support & help with standard UDS web services.
• Thanks Former Member for initial ideas and support.
• Thanks Former Member for initial ideas and support.

And thank you for reading!