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vinayak_adkoli
Advisor
Advisor

A Launchpad for a harmonized Suite experience


As my colleague Gautham beckoned to the simplification that SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite brings to your heterogeneous enterprise landscapes, we are happy to announce that the Integration Suite now features a Launchpad that acts as a common control center to a) govern provisioning and activation of the different integration capabilities and tools needed to do a job, b) provide a navigation experience that makes context switching and deep-diving into different Integration Suite capabilities ever so simple.

We would like to give you a quick whirlwind tour of the steps involved to get started with the Launchpad. Note that at this time of writing, the Integration Suite launchpad is available only in the SAP Cloud Platform Trial accounts. This will be made available in Factory accounts soon and my colleagues will have a blog post out when that happens. This blog article has been written assuming you are operating in Factory accounts. Some of the steps may vary in the Trial setup.

In order to make for compelling reading, this blog will be split into 3 sections.

  • Section 1 - Getting started, by assigning entitlements and activating the Integration Suite service.

  • Section 2 (optional) - Setting up SAP Cloud Platform Identity Authentication Service
    (IAS) as a custom Identity Provider in the subaccount to connect to the Integration Suite service and capabilities (this may be relevant only if you are interested in learning about working with custom Identity Providers in the future).

  • Section 3 - Getting into the Integration Suite launchpad to set up and configure the needed capabilities.


 Section 1 - Steps to assigning entitlements and Service activation


Login in your Global Account and create a new Subaccount


 

I'm creating a Subaccount on Microsoft Azure Provider in the NL region. Make sure you give a 'short' subdomain name as well.


 

Wait for the Subaccount to be provisioned.


 

Enable the 'Cloud Foundry' on the Subaccount


 

Create a Space with the default Roles assigned on the Space. Next, click on Entitlements to start assigning the needed Service Plans.


 

Look for the 'API Management, API portal' Service and add the listed plans. It's a good idea to include all the listed plans as typically you may need these at different points.


 

Look for the 'API Management, developer portal' Service and add the listed plan. This plan will let you get  API access to the APIs behind the Developer Portal, should you want to programmatically control the onboarding experience yourself, and also have your developers programmatically create Applications.


 

Next, Look for the 'Process Integration' Service and select all the listed plans. Finally, commit the step by adding all the selected Service Plans.


Now, you may want to come back to the subaccount page and look for 'Subscriptions'. Make sure that you select the right Tile here. Note that you may have other related individual tiles here as well - for example, 'API Management, API Portal' 'Process Integration' depending on your license type (e.g. CPEA) In this blog, we obviously focus on the 'Integration Suite' tile.
Also, note that if you already have activated the subscriptions for the individual tiles, you will not be able to activate the Integration Suite tile in the same subaccount. You should start with a new subaccount in such cases.


 

Click on 'Subscribe' to activate the Service.


Congratulations, you have successfully subscribed for the Integration Suite service!


The next step would be to go about the Roles assignment. To do so, either follow along with Section 2 where we look at ways to connect the Integration Suite account setup to a custom Identity Provider.

Alternatively, if you prefer to keep things straightforward, you may want to assign the user to the 'Integration_Provisioner' Role Collection to give her the provisioning privileges and jump over to Section 3.



(Optional) Section 2 - Steps to setup a custom Identity Provider  to connect to the Integration Suite service


Refer to this blog article to learn about setting up a custom Identity Provider in order to configure Roles needed to access the Integration Suite capabilities. Note that this is an optional step.

Section 3 - Steps to provision Integration Suite capabilities from the launchpad


Once you invoke the Integration Suite Application (with the role needed for provisioning), you are led into a launchpad that serves as an entry point to the individual capabilities of the Suite. The launchpad, to begin with, will mediate the activation of the different workspaces needed to perform Integration tasks and eventually will serve as a 'control center' to effectively Design, Inspect, and Monitor APIs and Integration packs.


 

Here is a quick summary of the aspects that can be done today.  The 'Add Capabilities' button will lead you to the harmonized provisioning experience that my colleague Appala has blogged here.


The launchpad also lists a bunch of useful resources like product documentation guides, learning journeys, and Community pages that are constantly updated to keep you abreast of the most relevant information.


Upon 'Add Capabilities', a list of different capabilities (Process Integration, managing APIs, non-SAP API Integration, Interface, and mappings) are presented for activation. The wizard goes through the process of collecting inputs to setup various capabilities and complete the activation steps.


A summary of the capabilities that will be activated.



A progress indicator for the various phases.


Upon completion, one can step out of the provisioning screen into the launchpad by clicking on the Integration Suite button at the top left corner.


The launchpad lists the activated Tiles and here again, depending on the role the user bears, she will be able to either manage the capabilities (add new ones, etc.) or just navigate to the respective workspaces (again, with the right Developer / Administrator role)


 

'Manage Capability' option will be presented only to the Provisioner role.


As an example, here the user is unable to navigate into the 'Design, Develop and Manage APIs' tile as she does not bear the required roles.

 


Continuing the setup in alignment with the custom Identity Provider that we established in Section 2, let's go back to the Role Collection mappings section on the custom IDP.


Here, we grab the needed Role Collections and assign it to the name of the custom Group that comes in from the Identity Provider.


Remember that in Section 2, we had created an 'IntegrationDevelopers' Group as well. Let's map that Group to the Role Collections needed for Integration Development and Content Advisor capabilities respectively.



To demonstrate that the Launchpad also works with these configured user Roles without the Integration_Provisioner role, let us remove the Integration_Provisioner Role from the assignments tab.


We note that the launchpad behaves as per the Role assignments, i.e. the user with the Developer roles for the respective capabilities does not have the option to 'manage capabilities'.


Now, when we attempt to launch for example the 'Design, Develop and Manage APIs' tile, we are taken to the Configure screen to setup the virtual host and the API Management settings to create a Tenant.


And in a matter of few clicks and seconds, the service is configured and ready to use!


Note that on the API Portal screens now there is an explicit button on the top left corner to take you back to the Integration Suite launchpad. This ensures that as a developer with cross-functional skills, one can easily navigate and context switch between different workspaces.


Similarly by clicking on the 'Design, Develop, and Operate Integration Scenarios' and 'Implement Interface and Mappings' tabs, we are led into the respective development workspaces.


 


 

Summary:


The Integration Suite launchpad packs in a host of features to enable a smooth and harmonized development experience across all the capabilities of the Integration Suite and we will bring in additional convenience aspects in upcoming release cycles. Stay tuned!

 
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