Product Information
Monitoring tools for Cloud Integration Capability of SAP Integration Suite
In every heterogeneous landscape, especially with a middleware in place, monitoring plays an essential role.
The Cloud Integration capability of SAP Integration Suite brings already multiple monitoring functionalities out of the box, which in most cases are enough, e.g. for integration developers and technical profiles. However, the business users, who are more interested in functional aspects and in end-to-end monitoring, find those monitors often too technical and not always useful for them.
To overcome this separation of roles, SAP offers several possibilities, which shall be introduced to you by this blog.
| Solution | Description | Pros | Cons | Persona |
| Cloud Integration standard monitoring | Out-of-the-box monitoring covers all aspects needed for integration | Delivers all needed technical information for an integration developer/administrator | Too technical for business users and no alerting out-of-the-box | Integration developer and administrator |
| SAP Cloud ALM | BTP Central end-to-end monitoring and alerting tool for hybrid and cloud SAP-centric landscapes | Brings the technical flow closer to the business context and no needed on-premise infrastructure. Central end-to-end monitor at single message level | Not really suitable for on-premise centric customers | Business user and citizen integrator |
| SAP Solution Manager | Monitoring and alerting in case of errors or performance problems for on-premise-centric customers | Possibility of leverage the existing infrastructure without further investment | Every single scenario must be configured in SOLMAN_SETUP to be monitored and only aggregated information is available | Business user and citizen integrator |
| SAP Focused Run | Licensed based product for service providers and large hybrid customers with strong on-Prem footprint | Central monitor at single message level for components in a hybrid landscape | License based product that the customer must install in his landscape | Business user and citizen integrator |
| SAP Analytics Cloud | SaaS with responsive and interactive dashboard for Cloud Integration | Dashboard with quick overview of relevant KPIs and slice/dice & filtering options | More a reporting dashboard than a monitoring dashboard | Business User |
| SAP Application Interface Framework | Interface management tool that enables monitoring and analyzing from a central location in the application | Allows business users to correct errors and improve the efficiency of error handling | Just used for scenarios where SAP S/4HANA or SAP Business Suite are in place. If an error happens in integration layer, it does not appear in monitoring dashboard | Business user, citizen integrator and integration developer |
| Cloud Integration OData APIs | Extract all monitoring data to build a custom solution. | Allows integration with SAP and non-SAP products | Development needed for custom product | Integration developer |
This blog post belongs to a series of two blog posts about monitoring and alerting. This first blog post addresses the monitoring topic. The second blog post treats alerting.
Standard Monitoring in Cloud Integration Capability of SAP Integration Suite
Obviously, the Cloud Integration capability within SAP Integration Suite comes with what you would expect initially as needed in terms of monitoring.
The overview section of the Web UI has the following main areas regarding monitoring:
- Manage integration content: shows the number and status of deployed integration artifacts. It also shows the endpoints of the corresponding artifacts.
- Message processing monitor: provides an overview of the messages processed on a tenant in a specified time window and allows you to display the details for individual messages.
The message processing log (MPL) displays structured information of the selected message (status, properties and logs). See message processing log for more information. With the log levels Debug and Trace (configured via Manage Integration Content) the MPL can be viewed in graphical form making readability easier. With log level Trace the payloads, properties and headers of a message can be accessed.
The MPL always contains a Message ID and a Correlation ID (relates MPLs of different integration flows that belong to the same end-to-end process execution). However, at runtime additional properties can be written to an MPL using a content modifier step. By this you can add more business content to the log. Those default properties are Sender, Receiver, Application Message ID, Application Message Type and Custom Status. The integration developer can decide how to fill those properties.
Also, by using script, it is possible to add further custom properties to the MPL containing business-related information that might be of help to the business users. Both, the default and the custom properties can be used as filter criteria in the message processing log monitor to search messages of a specific business context.
Also, again by using scripts, it is possible to add attachments to the MPL that can store whole business payloads even without activating the log level Trace.
- B2B monitor (currently already available in beta; general availability is currently planned for Q4 2021): enables business experts to monitor integration scenarios on the business level for finding and handling issues and searching messages.
More information on monitoring of the Cloud Integration capability of SAP Integration Suite can be found in our help portal.
Per default, monitoring data is stored 30 days on your Cloud Integration tenant. To keep the data for a longer period, you can use the archiving capability described on Archiving Data.
SAP Cloud ALM
SAP Cloud ALM (application lifecycle management) is a fully integrated SaaS ALM suite built natively on SAP BTP for small, medium and large cloud-centric customers, managing cloud and hybrid scenarios, who demand a standardized cloud-based operation platform. It provides central end-to-end monitoring and alerting tools for hybrid SAP-centric landscapes that brings the technical flow closer to the business context.
SAP Cloud ALM
SAP Cloud ALM provides monitoring capabilities. The entry points in the SAP Cloud ALM are the following
- Integration & Exception Monitoring
It gives an overall overview of components involved in scenario or of specific systems/tenants:
Integration and Exception Monitoring
From there, for an integration tenant, the number of messages and deployed artifacts can be accessed
Message Overview
Navigating to the messages, it gives information of a specific message with the possibility to drill down to the MPL in Cloud Integration Monitor by clicking the link under Application Data:
Message Details
This view allows to correlate the information with executions on up- and downstream components to come to an end-2-end view of the single message.
For the deployed artifacts detailed information can also be shown:
Artifact Status
- Health monitoring: focuses on technical aspects of the systems. The entry point gives an overall overview of all cloud services in the landscape.
Health Monitoring
After accessing an integration tenant, the status of certificates (validity) and JMS queues are shown:
Certificates and JMS Queues
Also, with historical data to see evolution:
Historical Data
Other products are already supported via SAP Cloud ALM. The complete list can be found on Supported Products
More information on how to configure SAP Cloud ALM for Cloud Integration Monitoring can be found on SAP Cloud ALM for Operations and SAP Cloud ALM for Operations – YouTube series
SAP Solution Manager
SAP Solution Manger is a fully integrated ALM suite for on-premise-centric midsize and larger customers who are satisfied with the currently provided functional scope. SAP Solution Manager allows you to monitor the integration scenarios in SAP Integration Suite – Cloud Integration with the Interface and Connection Monitoring and with the Exception Management and create alerts in case of errors or performance problems. For that you must first configure in transaction SOLMAN_SETUP what scenarios of SAP Cloud Integration shall be monitored.
The entry point is the Interface Monitoring which shows an overview of the status of all the monitored scenarios together with the outstanding alerts:
Interface Monitoring
From the alert pane you can jump to the Exception Management to see details of a specific alert:
Exception Management
From the scenario pane in the Interface Monitoring, you can jump to the overview of a specific scenario showing the status of the components involved:
Scenario Overview
For every scenario the displayed metrics are the following:
| Metric | Description |
| Number of erroneous integration flows | Erroneous integration flows in SAP Cloud Integration. Retrieved from SAP Cloud Integration via Exception Management in SAP Solution Manager |
| Number of erroneous integration flows (Delta) | Erroneous integration flows in SAP Cloud Integration. Retrieved directly from SAP Cloud Integration. Exception management not necessary |
| Number of erroneous integration flows (Delta – from ExcMgmt): | Single exceptions in SAP Integration Suite – Cloud Integration. Retrieved via API from SAP Cloud integration into central Exception Management in Solution Manager. Data Collection executed in delta mode |
| Number of erroneous integration flows (last 24h | Erroneous integration flows in SAP Cloud Integration during the last 24h. Directly retrieved from SAP Integration Suite – Cloud Integration. Exception Management not necessary |
| Number of erroneous integration flows (last 24h – from ExcMgmt) | Erroneous integration flows in SAP Cloud Integration during the last 24h. Retrieved from SAP Cloud Integration via Exception management in Solution manager |
| Average Response time of integration flows | Response Time collected from SAP Cloud Integration. Exception Management not necessary |
| Average Response Time of integration flows per integration flow | Average SAP Cloud Integration Response Time per integration flow collected from SAP Cloud Integration. Exception Management not necessary |
| Number of integration flow executions | Integration flow executions from SAP Cloud integration. Exception Management not necessary |
Scenario Metrics
More information on how to configure monitoring for SAP Integration Suite – Cloud Integration in SAP Solution Manager can be found on SAP Solution Manager Application Operations.
SAP Focused Run
SAP Focused Run is a solution designed for businesses that need high-volume system and application monitoring, alerting and analytics. It is specially oriented for service providers and customers with advanced needs in system management, user and integration monitoring and analytics.
SAP Focused Run comes with the advanced integration monitoring use case to manage your complete integration scenarios. This use case allows monitoring of high volumes of single interfaces calls (peer-to-peer integration) or simple message flows (orchestrated integration). More information on Advanced Integration Monitoring can be found on this video.
SAP Focused Run
The main point of the Advanced Integration Monitoring is the Integration & Cloud Monitoring to monitor the integration scenarios:
Integration and Cloud Monitoring
The first screen shows an overview of the configured integration scenarios.
Scenarios
Clicking on the relevant scenario you jump to an overview of the components and communications of the integration scenario, and you can see a summary of the messages:
Scenario Overview
From the Alert Ticker you can jump to the details of the erroneous integration flows. There you have detailed information to analyze the issue. Clicking on the Message ID, a pop-up with more information appears and from there you can jump to the local Cloud Integration monitoring tool.
Message Details
More information can be found on Integration & Cloud Monitoring.
More information on how to configure monitoring for Cloud Integration can be found on SAP Integration Suite – Cloud Integration.
SAP Analytics Cloud
SAP Analytics Cloud is an all-in-one cloud product offered as software as a service for business intelligence, planning and predictive analytics.
SAP Analytics Cloud provides the Cloud Integration Reporting Dashboard. This is a responsive dashboard that provides intuitive and interactive widgets with slice and dice capabilities and shows the relevant indicators of a Cloud Integration Tenant. The dashboard provides an analytical view on the performance and statuses of messages and integration content artifacts deployed on a CPI tenant.
The Cloud Integration Reporting Dashboard provides three key views:
- Message Processing View: Visualize, sort and track message processing happening on your SAP Cloud Integration tenant. Here you can monitor messages per integration flow, per date, per status and per status by date over a period of time. In the message details section, you can find integration flow name, ID, artifact type, package ID, message GUID, correlation ID, status, log level and end processing date. For getting more delails on a specific message, Message GUID can be copied from here and used to search for more information on the Cloud Integration tenant. More information about this model can be found on CPI Message Processing Logs.
Message Processing View
- Deployed Artifact View: Reports the number of integration artifacts deployed based on the type of integration content. Here can be viewed the history of deployed artifacts over a time period and information like artifact name, ID, type, version, status, date of deployment and deployed by. More information about this model can be found on CPI Integration Runtime Artifacts.
Deployed Artifact View
- Service Endpoints View: In this view, you can find the service endpoints distributed per protocols. More information about this model can be found on Cloud Integration Service Endpoints.
Service Endpoint View
More information on how to configure the dashboard can be found on the blog Interactive Reporting Dashboard for SAP Cloud Integration using SAP Analytics Cloud
SAP Application Interface Framework
The SAP Application Interface Framework is an interface management tool embedded in SAP S/4HANA or as an add-on in SAP Business Suite that enables the users to develop and monitor interfaces as well as to execute error handling in a single framework residing in your SAP backend system.
It provides business users friendly transactions for interface monitoring, error handling and correction of errors efficiently directly from within the application system (both SAP GUI and Web-based user interfaces), eliminating the resending of messages from the sender application.
SAP Application Interface Framework
The entry point for monitoring is the Message Dashboard under Message Monitoring section.
Message Monitoring
You get there an overview of all the interfaces configured in SAP Application Interface Framework together with their messages and statuses.
Message Dashboard
Clicking the number of messages/errors you jump to view more details of the specific messages.
Message Details
More Information about SAP Application Interface Framework and configuration can be found on Application Help for SAP Application Interface Framework.
OData APIs to monitor the Cloud Integration capability of SAP Integration Suite
If all the given solutions are not enough for your requirements or if you have your own monitoring tools (custom or non-SAP) and want to use them to monitor SAP Cloud Integration, then SAP Cloud Integration offers the following public OData APIs related to monitoring on SAP API Business Hub:
- Integration Content: Manage and query integration artifacts of design time and runtime. Useful for example to integrate SAP Cloud Integration with a CI/CD environment. See the blog CI/CD for SAP Integration Suite? Here you go!
- Processing Logs: Get an overview of the messages processed on a tenant and get the details for individual messages. It is often the basis for external monitoring tools
These APIs are also the basis for the use of the above explained monitoring options (SAP Cloud ALM, SAP Solution Manager, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Focused Run).
Summary
SAP offers several solutions to bring the Cloud Integration monitoring closer to the business. Depending on your requirements, landscape, starting point and strategy, one can fit better than the others.
Technical users will keep on using the standard monitoring options of SAP Integration Suite, while business users may prefer to use other options. If you are a long SAP customer and have a lot of on-premise systems in the landscape but also hybrid scenarios, then you may choose SAP Solution Manager. However, if you are a cloud-centric customer, you may choose SAP Cloud ALM or SAP Analytics Cloud. If you are a hybrid customer or a service provider, SAP Focused Run may be your choice. If you are integrating your processes with SAP Business Suite or SAP S/4HANA, SAP Application Interface Framework probably fits you.
If none of them satisfies your monitoring requirements, you can integrate it with your preferred solutions by using the OData APIs.
More Information
- Positioning of SAP Solution Manager, SAP Cloud ALM and Focused Run can be found in the CIO Guide for Integration
- Blog post 2: Alerting for Cloud Integration Capability of SAP Integration Suite
Francisco Miguel Mangas
Dear Francisco Miguel Mangas
Thanks for sharing a good and useful blog
Regards
Bhaskaran G
Hi Fran,
Nice to read you again.
Amazing post!
Regards
Excellent overview of what can be done. Very useful!
Thanks for covering it in detail. Are there any future plans to include CI-DS and CIG to include into the ALM / Integration Suite ?
Hi Vivek,
Thanks for your question, but it has not really to do with the blog post, which handles just the monitoring topic for Cloud Integration capability of SAP Integration Suite. However, you can find more information on this in the Integration Architecture Guide for Cloud and Hybrid Landscapes.
To sum up, the formerly known CPI-DS is now called Data Services of the Cloud Integration capability of SAP Integration Suite. It belongs to the SAP Data Intelligence, which is part of the SAP Integration Suite.
SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway is enabled (based on) by SAP Integration Suite.
Hello Francisco,
Can we extract the error information of all the iflows ran in a particular timeframe? I want the error details - iflow name, date and time of error, error message, message ID for all failed iflows in a excel sheet.
Can you please tell me how can we get this.
Thanks.
Purush
I could get all the details except error message, I want it too.
Thanks for the nice overview, very useful.
Excellent summary. Practical guide on all the tools. Thank you for this.
Excellent and very useful overview!
Thank you for this overview!
I miss something for the end user, I want to send a message (generated in an iFlow) to an end user with a message like "Supplier Invoice XYZ could not be generated, Business Partner not found". Basically, I want an easy endpoint where I can send those messages too. We used elmah.io in a few projects, haven't found a similar SAP based solution yet. Any ideas?
Hi Christopher,
What you are missing has to do more with a scenario requirement than with monitoring, which is the topic of this post. You can build your own integration flows or extend the existing ones with the required steps to send a message to an end user. Also you can use alerting (not covered in this blog) to inform the end user or admins about anomalous behaviors in your integration flows. There are several options to use alerting, see for example the SAP Alert Notification Service.
Makes sense, thanks for your response!
Thanks for sharing the blog!. It is really very helpful to find the alternate options based on the customer needs.
Regards,
Souvik
Really helpful! Thanks a lot!