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Author's profile photo Finny Babu

“New & Improved” Integration Flow Editor in SAP Cloud Integration’s Web Application

Introduction

The integration flow editor in SAP Cloud Integration’s Web Application is revamped and improved with lot of usability features to enable the integration developers to work with it more efficiently.

In this blog, I will give a short overview of each of these new features.

 

Improved Visualization

As soon as you open the integration flow, you will notice the difference of the new editor which is much better look and feel compared to the earlier one.

 

Image 1: New Integration Flow Editor

 

Image 2: Old Integration Flow Editor

 

Zoom-in & zoom-out

In case you have a very large and complex integration flow, you can use the zoom-in and zoom-out feature to move to a particular part. For zoom, you can use the mouse scroll or use the “+” and “-” action buttons on the right corner of the editor.

 

Image 3: Zoom-out the integration flow 

 

Image 4: Zoom-in the integration flow

 

Global View

If you have used the zoom-in or zoom-out on your integration flow and now want to go back to see the entire integration flow in the visible area, you will have to click in the centre of this “Global View” icon.

 

Image 5: Global view of integration flow

 

Scrolling or Moving

If you want to scroll or move your integration flow, you can click & press the left mouse button on the empty space and move your mouse. You can also use the left, right, top and down button on this icon (see image below) on the right corner of the editor to also scroll or move.

You can also select multiple components and drag them to move them around.

 

Image 6: Scrolling & moving your integration flow

 

Overview Mode 

If you have a very large integration flow and want to jump to a particular part of the Integration Flow, you can use the “Overview Mode” button on the right corner of the editor. On click of this button, you get a miniature view of your integration flow and also an option to select a particular area and navigate to that part of the integration flow.

 

Image 7: Overview mode icon

 

 

Image 8: Overview mode open

 

Visibility of Quick Buttons 

In the old editor, the quick buttons to connect, delete or see technical information were made available when you hover the mouse pointer over the component, but in the new editor, you need to select the component to access them

 

Image 9: Visibility of quick buttons in Edit mode

 

In the read-only mode, you can access only the technical information quick button, but in the edit mode you will be able to access all applicable quick button on selection.

Image 10: Visibility of quick buttons in Read-only mode

 

Delete Components

In the old editor, if you had to delete an adapter, you had to select the message flow and click on the delete icon in the palette as there was no quick button available to delete an adapter. But in the new editor, we have now enabled the delete of adapter also via the quick button, which appears on selecting the message flow.

 

Image 11: Delete as quick button for adapters

 

You can also select multiple components from the editor and delete them together using the delete icon in the palette.

 

Image 12: Multi-select and delete 

 

Auto Expand of Pools

If you select a component from the palette and drop it in a pool (Integration Process, Local Integration Process or Exception Subprocess) and if there is not enough space available to accommodate this component, the editor auto-expands the pool and makes enough space for the component.

 

Image 13: Drag and drop of filter from palette

 

Image 14: Auto-expand of pools

 

Minimize & Maximize 

With the integration flow editor and the configuration view split in half, it was difficult to scroll down or zoom-out to get a better view of large and complex integration flows.

To overcome this limitation and give the integration developer more space to work either on the integration flow editor or on the configuration view, we have now introduced minimize and maximize action buttons on right top corner of the configuration view.

 

Image 15: Default view with minimize & maximize action buttons 

 

When the configuration view is minimized, the action buttons available on the toolbar are restore and maximize. Restore brings the configuration view back to the default 50-50 split of integration flow editor and configuration view.

 

Image 16: Configuration view when minimized 

 

Image 17: Configuration view when maximized

 

Similar action buttons will be provided in all the split views that we have in the SAP Cloud Integration’s Web Application.

 

Modelling Constraints

We have also enhanced the modelling constraints (or restrictions) to ensure that you do not model a wrong integration flow. Some examples of modelling constraints are:

  • Restrict drop of flow steps outside a pool
  • Restrict drop of Sender & Receiver system in a pool
  • Restrict drop of Local Integration Process in a Integration Process
  • Restrict drop of Error Start event in Integration Process and Local Integration Process

 

Conclusion

In the future increments we plan to continue improving the user experience and provide more features like copy-paste of components, undo-redo and auto-align (pretty print) the integration flow.

Looking forward to your feedback on the new integration flow editor.

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      22 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Sujit Hemachandran
      Sujit Hemachandran

      That is awesome!

      Author's profile photo Finny Babu
      Finny Babu
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Sujit for your feedback !!

      Author's profile photo Gagandeep Batra
      Gagandeep Batra

      Great!!!

      Author's profile photo Finny Babu
      Finny Babu
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Gagandeep.

       

      Author's profile photo Morten Wittrock
      Morten Wittrock

      Really cool to see the Web UI editor receive some love 🙂

      When will the updates be live?

      Regards,

      Morten

      Author's profile photo M. Jaspers
      M. Jaspers

      We received these new features during the latest update on our (dev) systems.

      Author's profile photo Morten Wittrock
      Morten Wittrock

      Turns out my tenant has not been updated yet. Soon, hopefully.

      Author's profile photo Finny Babu
      Finny Babu
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Morten for your feedback.

      Hope you have the updates now available in your tenants.

      Author's profile photo Morten Wittrock
      Morten Wittrock

      Thanks, Finny. It arrived a few days later.

      Author's profile photo Peter Ha
      Peter Ha

      This is what we are waiting for a long time. Great improvements!

       

      Author's profile photo Finny Babu
      Finny Babu
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Peter.

       

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Way to go !!!. it is better to have all development kit in one place. ( web UI). I am looking for trace activation. right now, we need to use both but it is better to have on the UI with time control ( minimum one-hour ).

      Author's profile photo Finny Babu
      Finny Babu
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Narayana.

      Tracing in the WebUI is something that we are working on and would be coming in the near future.

      Author's profile photo Naresh Dasika
      Naresh Dasika

      Thanks for the information.

      In the earlier version it was easy to see the any payload/logger data easily in a single screen for any integration flow under "Monitoring tab".

      But now the data (logger) is restricted with a scroller which is not comfortable and by this way it is not possible to see the data in one shot. One has to copy the data to a notepad to see the data in single shot.

       

       

      Author's profile photo Finny Babu
      Finny Babu
      Blog Post Author

      Can you please share a screenshot of the UI you are talking about?

      Author's profile photo Casper Sloth Andersen
      Casper Sloth Andersen

      On the absolute top of my wish-list is the ability to copy/paste in the mapping editor.

      So for example if I have created a series of steps to map from A to B, it would be really nice to be able to reuse this logic for other fields.

      Alternatively make it possible to do mapping functions (like in Boomi) where you can define a set of steps and then reuse these again and again. And yes - this can be accomplished with scripts, but it's really time consuming in comparison)

      #2 on the wish-list: Being able to debug/simulate groovy scripts - both for payloads and mapping functions.

      Author's profile photo Finny Babu
      Finny Babu
      Blog Post Author

      Casper, we have also got similar feedback from several other customers and we have them in our roadmap.

      Author's profile photo M. Jaspers
      M. Jaspers

      Hi Casper,

      I absolutely agree with these requirements!

      Would be very good if these would be added.

      Kind regards,

      Martin

       

      Author's profile photo Holger Himmelmann
      Holger Himmelmann

      Hi Finny,

      after using the updated editor for several weeks now I'm still struggling with the handling of the scroll functionality. When I want to scroll by just clicking into an empty space, I often accidentially drag and move objects around. This happens quite often if you have complex integration flows and not a large screen resolution available. The navigation button at the top right corner is also not optimal as it takes quite a while to navigate to the target.

      From my point of view scrollbars would offer a much better usability. Was it intended not to use scrollbars any more?

      Regards, Holger

      Author's profile photo Finny Babu
      Finny Babu
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Holger

      You can click on empty space in the diagram and drag it up or down to scroll across the integration flow (see section "Scrolling & Moving" in the blog above).

      Yes, this new editor offers scroll only via these two mechanisms, using the navigation button or drag by clicking on the empty space.

      Regards

      Finny

      Author's profile photo J. Evertse
      J. Evertse

      Hi Finny

      Is there a setting somewhere to disable the scrolling mouse behaviour and to get it back to the normal window up and down movement? In edit modus I regularly move a subprocess around it’s  and also when I compare to or work on a flow when using a functional design (in Word) it is not handy. I rarely use the zoom in and out function.

      Can we also modify the the time-out setting for the user session?

      Regards

      John

      Author's profile photo Joel Anthony
      Joel Anthony

      Awaiting an option for something like pretty printer where all the alignment of the boxes and arrows happens automatically once the iflow is complete. Currently only doing this manually seems to be an option. Currently horizontal alignment of the boxes and vertifcal alignment along with the arrows and not to forget alignment with senders / receiver boxes takes time.