Technical Articles
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:
- Select a tenant
- Select a flow
- Copy the image type you want.
- 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.
Just download it from Microsoft Store:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/cpi-explorer/9pbkk398ww57
- Go to Config, Create a tenant with the management hostname and credential configuration, bind them together.
- Go to Check Connections, set your password and ensure that the connection can be established. You should see a green tick with status 200!
- 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!
Hi Fatih,
Nice tool..it will more helpful.I will try.
Thank you,
Syam
Thanks Syambabu! Let me know if there is a bug 🙂
Regards,
Fatih
Awesome, your thinking beyond the developers & consultants.
Hope all CPI folks will enjoy your tool 😉
Thanks Yogananda! I'm trying to make them enjoyable. There is another big idea for CPI Explorer, but I have to build it first before announcing 🙂
Please let me know if you have any feedback/advice.
Hi Faith,
Nice work. Your tools are simplifying the integration development.
Hi Suraj, thanks! I'm open to more ideas!
Well done, Fatih. I'll provide feedback as we use the tool; the plan is to start using it in our documentation going forward. 🙂
-Jon
Thanks Jon!
I fixed the word-wrapping issue. And there is another update on the way. It should be available in 2-3 days.
Let me know if you have any feedback!
Regards,
Fatih
Hi Fatih,
I have the problem with CPI explorer that it says "status 200" but it won't download any artifacts
Could that be an issue with the assigned roles to my OAuth client id?