Introduction

With the 3.35.x/6.11.x release, SAP Cloud Integration introduces a self-service capability to unlock the design time integration artifacts and packages.

This feature is described in the SAP Help Portal ( see Designtime Artifact Locks).

In this blog, I will give a brief overview of this feature.

New with SAP Cloud Integration May 2021 release (5.21.x/6.13.x).

With this release, we have simplified the experience and usage of the feature to unlock the design time integration artifacts and packages by

1. Removing the 24 hours unlock due. It means tenant administrator should able to unlock the artifact regardless when the artifact was locked.
2. Improving the unlock artifact confirmation dialog by displaying artifact name, artifact type, locked by, so tenant admin can recheck the data before releasing the lock.

Please refer the SAP Cloud Integration 5,21.x/6.13.x release section for details.

Why self-service capability to release the artifact lock?

There are various scenarios and situations where integration artifacts and packages are locked by users and not released. For an instance, an integration developer could have locked an integration flow to update it as per the revised business logic or a change request. But if the user who locked the artifact is unavailable for several reasons and there is an urgent business need to edit the artifact, then another user must report an incident to SAP Cloud Integration with a request to unlock the artifact. This process is a bit time consuming which shall delay the urgent needs.

To address such scenarios in a straightforward way, we have produced a self-service capability for the user who has tenant admin privilege to unlock the artifact.  All users of the tenant can view the locked artifacts. Only the tenant admins can unlock the artifacts.

The tenant admins can unlock the artifacts only 24 hours after the artifact was locked. We are also audit logging the action that release the artifact lock.

Now let’s experience how to consume this feature.

Choose Manage Locks –> Designtime Artifact Locks in the Operations view. This tile lists the design time artifacts that are in locked status and the count. Click the tile.

Image 1: Designtime Artifact Locks tile that display the count of the artifacts that are in locked status.

In the Locked Designtime Artifacts view, you see the integration artifacts and packages that are locked along with its details.

The following information is shown for each locked artifact:

When an Integration Package is locked, third column “Package” is empty to avoid showing a duplicate value.

Image 2:  Locked Designtime Artifacts view.

Only the tenant admins can unlock the artifacts using the (unlock) icon. Tenant admins can release the artifacts that are due for unlock. For artifacts that were locked within the last 24 hours, tenant admins must wait until those artifacts are due for unlock.

When the tenant admin clicks the (unlock) icon, a dialog appears asking to confirm the artifact unlock action.

Image 3: Unlock of the artifact.

A toast message appears upon successful unlock of the artifact.

Image 4: Success toast message when the artifact is unlocked.

Once the artifact is unlocked, the entry is removed from the list.

Image 5: Unlocked artifact removed from the view.

You can sort the locked artifact by Name, Type, Package, Locked At, and Locked By.

Image 6: Locked artifacts can be sorted.

You can filter locked artifact by Name, Type, Package and Locked By.

Image 7a: Criteria for filtering locked artifacts.

Example of the locked artifacts that is filtered based on “Locked By”.

Image 7b: Locked artifacts filtered based on “Locked By”.

All the users without tenant admin privilege can view the locked artifacts. However, if they attempt to unlock the artifact, and an error dialog will appear blocking the action.

Image 8: Error when unauthorized users attempts to unlock the artifact.

SAP Cloud Integration 5,21.x/6.13.x release

With this release, we have simplified the experience and usage of the feature to unlock the design time integration artifacts and packages by

• Removing the 24 hours unlock due. It means tenant administrator should able to unlock the artifact regardless when the artifact was locked.

Image 9: 24 hours rule is removed.

• Improving the unlock artifact confirmation dialog by displaying artifact name, artifact type and locked by, so tenant admin can recheck the data before releasing the lock.

Image 10: Unlock artifact confirmation dialog is improved.

Conclusion

Hope this feature will ease your work when there is a need to perform urgent changes in the artifact but the user who has locked artifact is not available for several reasons. This self-service capability will help you causing no delay.

In case of questions or feedback, please feel free to comment on this blog.