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Author's profile photo Harikrishnan Panakkal

SAP Chatbot – Talk to SAP Applications with Google Home/Facebook Messenger/Skype

Here is one proof of concept on how human can interact with SAP applications with natural language! There are several AI/NLP platforms available, but I found the most robust and easiest platform is Google’s API.AI. API.ai is a standalone NLP framework which can be used to natural language-enable any application via APIs as well as to build own chatbots. API.AI makes it possible to receive and respond to user queries in natural language. So, whether you aim to answer questions or help users to be more productive, API.AI can help you build engaging experiences.

To build a Conversation Action with API.AI, start by defining the user requests or intents that your service will handle. Then design the conversational flow. If you’re new to API.AI and want to develop Conversation Actions, see handy docs and tutorials.

Once your agent is ready in API.AI platform, you can integrate your agent to SAP Cloud Platform via creating a Webhook. Webhook can be any application deployed in SAP Cloud Platform which accept requests in JASON format and respond back in JASON.

SAP Cloud Platform provides most powerful capabilities for connecting with SAP backend systems via SAP Cloud Connector.

In this PoC, I created a chatbot who helps a transportation settlement specialists in an organization. The backend systems involved here is SAP Transportation Management. The bot can answer the statuses of documents or it can send freight settlement documents from SAP TM to connected SAP ERP system – by just talking to the bot the same way we talk to our friends. The various components involved here are,

 

There are thousands of use cases we can think of with this by creating chat-bots and connection different sap application systems. The architecture shown above stays same for any type of bots. SAP Cloud Platform gives powerful ways to interact with an SAP system like never before.

With API.AI integration capabilities, you can easily create bots with facebook, skype and connect to the agent you created in api.ai.

Here is the facebook messenger integration example:

and the Skype integration example:

There is no limit for imagination… so start developing your SAP-Bots now….

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      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

       

      Valuable information! Looking forward to seeing your notes posted. Thank you for sharing the nice article. Good to see your article. pokesniper

      Author's profile photo Varkey George
      Varkey George

      Harikrishnan,

      Thank you for this blog.

      Interacting with SAP system with natural language is becoming a very interesting subject. Looking forward to seeing more blogs from you on the subject.

       

      Author's profile photo Ananth Bhat
      Ananth Bhat

      Nice Hari... good one. what are your future plans here.

       

      Author's profile photo Harikrishnan Panakkal
      Harikrishnan Panakkal
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Ananth.... this will be a new UI paradigm in future..lets see..

      Author's profile photo Ravish Ramakrishna Shetty
      Ravish Ramakrishna Shetty

      Nicely done

       

      Author's profile photo Harikrishnan Panakkal
      Harikrishnan Panakkal
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Ravish

      Author's profile photo Clark Huang
      Clark Huang

      Awesome blog! It would be best that there is step by step document which we can refer to.

      Author's profile photo Rohit Mahajan
      Rohit Mahajan

      Great Blog Hari...

       

      Best regards,

      Rohit

       

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Hari,

       Great article. Can you help with concept of webhook in SCP. 

      Author's profile photo Zenon Kowalewski
      Zenon Kowalewski

      Fantastic!!!

      Author's profile photo Praveen Singh
      Praveen Singh

      Awesome article Hari!!

      Author's profile photo Rinky Karthik
      Rinky Karthik

      Awesome ! Great Blog. I have been reading about SAP's integration capabilities with AI and Bot. I came across your blog while researching for the same for SuccessFactors. I have a use case that I want to use to develop a Bot with Skype or Slack for SuccessFactors. Your blog fueled additional ideas. Thank you !

      Author's profile photo Harikrishnan Panakkal
      Harikrishnan Panakkal
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Rinky for the feedback.

      Author's profile photo Christopher Ambrose
      Christopher Ambrose

      Can you explain the Security Authentication and Authorization behind the Bots being used to access SAP?

      How do these SAP Bots Authenticate the User is valid before continuing? You don't want a Bot to go into Payroll and make an adjustment.

      What are the Authorizations being used in SAP?

      Author's profile photo Harikrishnan Panakkal
      Harikrishnan Panakkal
      Blog Post Author

      HI Christopher,

      Authentication shall be done by SAP Cloud Platform and Authorization has to be done by the individual back-end application using regular SAP authorization mechanism.

       

      Author's profile photo harish vyas
      harish vyas
      Hi HariKrishnan,
      I am trying to build a chatbot using DialogFlow and want to integrate it to SAP i.e. bring data from SAP when some user query is made on DialogFlow tool.
      Was able to connect to SAP from DialogFlow via SAP cloud Platform i.e. DialogFlow --> SAP CP --> SAP.
      But my requirement is to connect to SAP directly from DialogFlow. To achieve the same I have created a OData Service and maintained URL for the same Service in Fulfillment section of DialogFlow, but it is giving me error “webhook call failed. error webhook response was empty”.
      The OData service I have created, in that I have maintained SERVICE TYPE usename/password for same service in SICF. Because of this, I am able to access the OData link directly through internet explorer i.e. it is not asking for username/password.

      Also using HTTP or HTTPS make any difference?

      Can you suggest the things you did to achieve this requirement.

      Regards,

      Harish

      Author's profile photo Evgeniy Kalinogorskiy
      Evgeniy Kalinogorskiy

      We already have develop own bot server for interaction with sap with inbound text classification and interface with possibility to flexible call any fm inside sap. So we have some benefit now – possible to install locally inside the customers landscape, easy enhance with new function, secured chat with 128 bit encryption and authentication with x.509 certificate ).

      You may see mvp in our demo chat bot: www.sapbot.ru

      Author's profile photo Amit Kumar Barik
      Amit Kumar Barik

      Hi Could you please provide in detail about how to get particular intent using Actions and how to send that using web hook and how to get the response back from SAP.

      Author's profile photo Jini Tidalgo
      Jini Tidalgo

      Hello!

      Could you please let us know the steps in integration from API.AI to SAP and back?

      Currently, there is not much documentation on this step for beginners like me.

      Thank you!

      Author's profile photo George Abraham
      George Abraham

      Hi Harikrishnan Panakkal ,

      Is there a step-by-step guide or something that is available for me to try this out? Trying to create a very simple chat bot.