Product Information
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Integration Checklist
Last modified @Sept 13th, 2019
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Integration Options
Integration is a key enabler for the digital transformation of organizations. The quicker and better enterprises can integrate, the farther ahead of their competition they will be. Hence, we are offering following types of integration that suit our customer needs.
The following from Sven explains the various integration options and benefits very well.
Whenever you have an integration requirement in mind, check if it is already offered as an SAP Best Practice. If you find a match, then the time and effort it takes to implement is significantly less than doing everything from scratch. In the following video, my colleagues and I explain how to find S/4HANA Cloud Integration Best Practices in the SAP Best Practice Explorer.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Integration: Where to Start?
In a nutshell, SAP Best Practices are some of your best friends on your S/4HANA Cloud implementation journey.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Integration Checklist
In order to make things clear, I put together a step-by-step check list that may come in handy whether you are simply evaluating or about to implement.
If you can’t find a match, check if it is on the road-map or in the innovation repository IFR. You could avoid custom development effort if something is available in the road-map.
If the road-map also comes empty, then you are in the territory of customer integration development. In order to be successful, first you need to ensure right APIs available and then decide whether you need to use a middleware (SAP Cloud Platform Integration or SAP PI) or direction connectivity is possible.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud provides following several types of APIs even though white listed public API are preferred for custom integrations.
SAP Public APIs:
SAP releases APIs such as OData/SOAP for SAP S/4HANA Cloud and other SAP Cloud Products to enable customers digitizing their business to securely connect apps to other systems.
Published on SAP API Business Hub
CDS Views
SAP releases CDS Views for SAP S/4HANA Cloud to read data from SAP S/4HANA Cloud system.
They can be consumed as read only OData services using custom communication arrangements or consumed in SAP Cloud Platform using View Replication
More info available in SAP help & blog
Business Events
Business Event Handling is a system-wide standardized event mechanism for business objects across SAP S/4HANA Cloud applications
Support event-driven architecture for seamless communication across different platforms
BAPIs/IDOCs
Released BAPIs/IDOCs can be used to connect SAP S/4HANA Cloud with SAP on-premise applications only.
Requires the use of Cloud connector.
Exceptions for 3rd party need to be approved by SAP
Where to find SAP S/4HANA Cloud white listed APIs is well explained by my colleague Andreas Muno in the below video.
One of the nice feature of SAP API Business Hub is that, it will let you try the API without leaving the page where you find them. For more info, please read the following blog.
Key blogs describing how to consume API’s from SAP S/4HANA Cloud and API Business Hub are listed below.
My colleague Karsten explains how to test SAP S/4HANA Cloud APIs in the following video.
Should you still not yield a result, request APIs or extensions to be built using the Customer Influence Site SAP S/4HANA Cloud Integration
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Connectivity Options:
SAP S/4HANA Cloud and its APIs support various flexible connectivity options to meet customer’s needs. Some key options are listed below
- Direct or point to point Integration
- Go-to connectivity type
- Easy to setup
- For SAP out-of-the-box solutions (Eg: ML use cases)
- Via SAP Cloud Connector
- Relevant only for SAP S/4HANA Cloud integration with SAP applications on Premise (Eg: 2-tier)
- Secured by “lightweight VPN” connection
- Bi-direction RFC and HTTP calls via tunnel connection
- Via SAP Cloud Platform Integration
- Preferred option for Cloud to Cloud Integrations
- Accelerate implementations using prepackaged integration content available (iFlows)
- Cloud platform operated by SAP, monitoring by customer
- Extensibility possible
- Using other or on-prem middleware such as SAP Process Orchestration
- On premise integration landscape, but also possible for on premise to cloud
- On premise installation
- Operated by customer
My colleagues Marcel/Mert explain how to integrate SAP S/4HANA Cloud with SAP Cloud Platform Integration(3rd option from above) in the following blogs.
| Integrate SAP S/4HANA Cloud with SAP Cloud Platform Integration using SOAP APIs: Part 1 |
| Integrate SAP S/4HANA Cloud with SAP Cloud Platform Integration using SOAP APIs: Part 2 |
Tools of trade used in the above checklist:
My recorded session from SAP TechEd Las Vegas 2018 on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Integration Stategy is listed below.
Stay tuned for more.
Hello Sir, I am SAP SD certified consultant. I am required S/4 HANA Simple Logistics Documents and SAP SD implementation documents. If available please provide on raviraj.rp16@gmail.com
Can certified partner apps from the SAP App Center be integrated with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, too? And if so, at what step in the checklist should I be looking for them?
Great point Andreas. I have updated the checklist with that step. If one needs an extension for the existing integrated business process, he or she can extend the integration using options from SAP Extensibility Explorer and/or apps from SAP App Center/.
Hope this helps!!
Best Regards
-Bharath
wow, this is a great, comprehensive overview! thanks!
i am Looking for a tutorial or how-to guide to call from on-premise ERP one of the Services listed in API hub für my S/4 Cloud tenant. do you have something like this?
thanks, Johannes
@Karsten : I followed the exact steps as provided in the nice Video, to read POs from the Cloud tenant, but testing in the API Hub Always just Returns "Error". Is there some prerequisite so that my S4HC tenant can be reached from API Hub?thank you,Johannes
it works now - i had to correct the URL, you have to use the "-api" in the hostname.
Thank you very much Bharath and Andreas . Great summary and certainly enabled me for key decision situations . Much appreciated .
Any updates to be made into the Best Practice Explorer page overview video?
It looks a lot different than the one in the video ( referring to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Integration: Where to Start? video)
I had hard time to follow it up with the current version of BPX.
tHanks
Zeynep England