ODATA, ABAP and Amazon Alexa integration

Introduction

Hey SAP community,

With this blog post we would like to share our experience with SAP and Amazon Alexa Integration. We achieved this by automating the process of contract creation in Agricultural Contract Management. In this blog we would be discussing the steps needed in order to create a simple connection between the SAP system and Amazon Alexa.

Problem Statement

To achieve an integration between SAP and Amazon Alexa in order to leverage the voice command abilities so as to automate the processes in SAP system.

Approach:

This application requires the following components.

1. SAP Cloud Platform.
2. SAP Cloud Connector.
3. Service odata provisioning
4. Service odata from ERP side.
5. Amazon Alexa Skill configuration.
6. Amazon Lambda functions.

Basic knowledge of java script programming is required, specifically in Node js, also in ABAP language, odata services, in addition to the management of the SAP and Amazon cloud platforms.

Steps performed are as follows:

1. Create oData Service (transaction – SEGW)
2. Cloud Connector and Cloud Platform configuration and connectionCreate an account on Cloud Connector and link the System destinationCreate SAP cloud platform account and link with above cloud connector

   

   Create the destination of the back-end system, where oData Service is created
   

3. oData Service and Destination in oData ProvisioningEnabled oData Provisioning and add the system destinationRegister the oData Service from the destination system, which needs to be triggerd

   

   Go to the service and check the service URL

   

4. Create Amazon Alexa Skill Set – https://developer.amazon.com/alexa, after creating trial accountIn Alexa skill set, we define the utterances and the parameters which would be taken as importing
5. Amazon Lambda function – https://aws.amazon.comLink the Alexa skill Sets created in previous stepPass the URL of oData Service and in authorization set the basic authentication, which is a base64 code of user and password combination

   

6. Calling oData from above Lambda Function, using the defined utterances from Skill set, we can return the desired output with the result details

Conclusion:

We were able to achieve the following through the process.

Increased User Accessibility

• Time Saving and increased User Accessibility in Customer Processes because of simpler interactions
• Extension of Voice Skills to create end to end processes which also enables a person with disabilities

Use of voice skills for  E2E process in a SAP product

• Integration of Voice Based commands with SAP Applications

This blog post has been created with support by Rajni Yadav & Sakshi Goel