Technical Articles
Using Common Resources templates in SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors
SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors provides a library of Common Resource templates for some of the most common use cases. These Common Resources templates includes the necessary field mapping and all the required JavaScript transformations to transform data provided by some of the most frequently used non-SAP connectors into single, normalized resources.
The Common Resources templates can be viewed, cloned and modified for your integration scenarios. In this blogs, steps to clone and consume these Common Resource templates have been covered.
For more information about Common Resources and how to utilize and create them, refer Introduction to Common Resources blog.
Prerequisites
Exploring Common Resources templates in SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors
In this section, steps to explore and clone a pre-shipped common resources templates named basic-companies has been covered. The basic-companies common resource template is pre-mapped to multiple non-SAP connectors from CRM Hub via a normalized interface for the accounts or companies entity providing basic information like name, description, phone, website, shipping address, billing address.
SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors is available for test, explore and try out in SAP Cloud Platform trial. If you have not enabled SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors in your trial tenant, refer this blog to enable it.
- Logon to your SAP Cloud Platform trial and Navigate to the Neo Trial Environment.
- From services tab, search and select Open Connectors tile and click on the Go to Service link.
- You would be navigated to SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors Home or Landing page.
- Click on Common Resources tab and select Common Resource Templates tab to view and explore all the pre-shipped Common Resources templates.
- The pre-shipped Common Resource templates are displayed in this tab. In this blog, the basic-companies template was used and therefore select the basic-companies tile.
- In the Common Resource template Overview tab, details about the exposed fields, field types , description , list of mapped connectors for the selected common resource template is shown.
- Select Mappings tab to view details about the mapped connectors of the selected common resource template.
- Select Clone to copy or clone the selected common resources template to your SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors tenant.
- In Clone common resource template wizard, select the check box next to Connector Name to select all the connectors and select Next button.
- Select the Level account and click on Next button.
- Provide a unique name for the cloned common-resources and then select Save.
- After the common resources is cloned, you would see the common resources cloned to your SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors tenant and it would show all the mapped connectors instance which is present in your tenant.
Testing Cloned Common Resources Template
In this blog, we have used a non-SAP application from the CRM hubs which is HubSpot . You are free to use any other non-SAP application of your choice for this exercise. In the blog Simplified connectivity to third-party CRM hubs application, detailed steps to connect to HubSpot tenant has been covered and can be refereed to create an authenticated connections to your HubSpot tenant using SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors.
- Select the connector instance for non-SAP CRM hub, that you have in your SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors tenant.
- The mapping of the basic-companies to the selected non-SAP connector can be tested from SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors.
- For select the non-SAP CRM connector instance say myhubspotdemo .
- Select the Play or Try it Out button to test the common resources.
- Click on Send button to test the Common Resource template.
- Both the transformed response and raw response can be viewed in the test pane.
Common Resources provide a canonical data model view of your data objects eliminating the need for point-to-point mapping of data to each and every new application. This enables you to keep the application code clean and simple. Since the Common Resources are exposed as APIs you could use the common resources in an application of your choice whether it is a Fiori based Web application or your mobile application enabling you to re-use your mapping across multiple application and integration scenarios.
Really interesting! This could be a way for us to get some of the Governance possibilities as we have today in ESR. Missing connectors and feasible Rest-development strategy for On-premise R/3 but maybe you have such plans? I have seen a "picture" of a R/3 BAPI connector.
Thanks!
Janne
Hi Jan,
Currently in Open Connectors we don't have the R/3 BAPI connector. In SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors we focus on the API based integration with non-SAP SaaS solutions and provide connectors to non-SAP SaaS application.
SAP Cloud Platform Integration can be used to securely access R/3 BAPIs, RFC using SAP Cloud Connector and then from the integration flow it can mashed up with data from non-SAP cloud application using SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors.
Thanks and Best Regards,
Divya
Thanks Divya,
I was afraid that was the case... The really appealing thing with Open Connectors is the possibility to utilize common company resources and map them against different applications, also legacy SAP would be beneficial. That would give us a common repository similar to what we have today with the Enterprise Services Repository.
By the way, how does the "Virtual Data Resources" relate to the "Common Data Model" announced by Adobe, MS and SAP?
Thanks and Best Regards
Janne
Thanks Divya!
But I got issue with finding the “Connector instance” & “Connector Instance Resources” at that step !
Up to that step all looks good , after when I try to enter some thing like this “non-* ”
the pop-up in below saying that “no element instance found for this user and organization”.
Did I missed any?
Thanks,
Sankar-
Hi Sankar,
Can you check if you have a connector instance created as explained in this blog. Looking at the error it looks like there is no connector or element instance created in your Open Connectors account.
Thanks and Best Regards,
Divya
I did that step to connect the HubSpot CRM and able to get the API call and received successful response.
I don't see any wrong in that step. As it is I did with out changing any-
have the same issue: no templates at all in my trial account