High-Resolution Flow Images for Documentation

Dear integration consultants,

I developed a free tool that can help with your SAP Cloud Integration documentation workflow. You can get the Flow image in PNG or SVG format and paste it into the documentation in seconds. While it has some rough edges, it is ready to use and ready for feedback.

Advantages

• Readable flow images with less effort
• Vector SVG image can be used to generate other formats. (If you want a big poster of your flow on the side of a building, it is now possible)
• No need to position the flow to get the perfect shot.

Drawbacks

• Word has performance problems resizing complex SVG images and also big images.
• Differences between flow editor and image(some of them can be fixed in later releases)

Usage:

1. Select a tenant
2. Select a flow
3. Copy the image type you want.
4. Paste to the documentation

Scale is based on the real flow dimensions, even if you see a small flow on the screen, the copy button will generate the real dimensions when the zoom is 100%. It is pretty readable.

2x scale PNG option generates very clear images, you may not need SVG.

Example

Right-click and open images in a new tab, and use zoom for better comparison

Screenshot with full-screen browser and a relatively big monitor

Image generated with CPI Explorer

Notes from underground(coding)

• I wrote it from scratch to generate SVG. As a side note, I drew the exception event icon myself ⚡🤠
• There is a lot of stuff going on under the simplicity of Flow designer, I appreciated the work done by UI5 Galilei Editor developers more.
• Reverse engineering the logic of Quadratic Bézier Curves, for round edges? Let’s go to sleep now.

Installation & one-time setup

I can write a separate post for this step but it is pretty straightforward.

 
Update(2020-08-08): Now this tool is part of Pizug Companion docker image. Check out the new application: https://blogs.sap.com/2023/08/07/companion-for-sap-cloud-integration-tools-you-love-comes-as-a-docker-container/

Just download it from Microsoft Store:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/cpi-explorer/9pbkk398ww57

1. Go to Config, Create a tenant with the management hostname and credential configuration, bind them together.
2. Go to Check Connections, set your password and ensure that the connection can be established. You should see a green tick with status 200!
3. You are ready to use the tools.

Next Steps

You can tell me which is more interesting for your use case:

• Fixing bugs.
• Better word wrapping for steps.
• Online version to upload .iflw or Flow .zip?
• Choosing specific processes and generating a separate image?
• Different colors, patterns, or shapes can be applied for different objects to make them more comprehensible at first glance?
• Export PDF?
• Automatic numbering for flow steps?

Thanks

Thanks, Raffael Herrmann for bringing up this specific pain point & discussion afterward!

Thanks for reading!