Product Information
Which Workflow Engine(s) for which workflow solution?
I have been asked to update a blog post published by Alan Rickayzen around two years ago about which of SAPs workflow solution is the choice for which workflow project. So, I changed a bit the structure and continued a lot the messaging from Alan. Thanks to him and Christian as well as to all colleagues reviewing my text. I will differentiate new workflows from existing ones, also monitoring requirements and migration of workflows to S/4HANA.
SAPs strategic Workflow Engine for process execution is workflow capability in SAP Business Technology Platform as part of SAP Workflow Management (and also as part of SAP Process Automation). Here you can get a detailed overview of all product capabilities. Explore more on the community page for SAP Workflow Management. New functionality is added on a weekly basis (e.g. par-for-each modelling option for subflows).
The Workflow capability has been adopted by SAP customers and by SAP Solutions, such as SAP Intelligent Product Design using SAP S/4HANA. It uses standardized methodologies, such as BPMN, to avoid relying on niche know-how, and ensuring that the developers modeling workflows can reuse know-how gained modeling workflows elsewhere to adopt the Workflow capability without hurdles. It is general purpose but especially suited for the SAP environment. Keep your eyes open for further enhancements, including in SAP S/4 HANA, to further simplify and enhance the cloud workflow capability enablement.
Workflow @ SAP
The newest child [General available since Feb 2022] in our workflow portfolio and the one strategically to be considered for the Cloud to automate business processes in combination with user interaction by Citizen Developers is SAP Process Automation. Check also the roadmap explorer to get the latest information on upcoming features/capabilities.
SAP BTP is the platform to consider when a central strategy demands one single environment for workflow & API management, especially taking into account the broader capabilities that SAP Workflow Management & SAP Process Automation offer, such as process visualization, decision management, but also SAP Integration Suite capabilities.
There are some cases where certain individual requirements can be handled differently as described in the subsequent paragraphs.
New Workflow Project
| Type | Environment | Advice |
| Workflow Management Solution | Involving Cloud or On-Premise | SAP Workflow Management (including Workflow Builder, Rules Service, Workflow Intelligence, Process Flexibility, Visibility and Administration) or SAP Process Automation (in case as No-Code is preferred); Look at API Business Hub for Workflow Content Packages to jumpstart your project. |
| Intelligent Workflows | Cloud or On-Premise |
For recommendations (actual ML recommended positive outcome) and out of the box machine learning capabilities in workflows SAP Workflow Management offers Workflow Intelligence [General available since October 2021]. Integration between SAP Workflow Management and SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA) offers additional possibilities. SAP Process Automation combines the offerings from SAP Workflow Management and RPA for Citizen Developers. On-Premise over Extensions (see below). |
| Single Cross-system (orchestration) processes | Where on-premise deployment of the workflow is essential |
If legal requirements forbid the use of the Cloud services for process automation then use SAP Business Process Management for cross-system processes, including environments where third party systems need to be integrated in the process. This software has proven itself as a robust, flexible, and powerful tool available as part of SAP Process Orchestration. |
| Standard local processes such as an approval | Cloud products, including SAP S/4HANA Cloud |
Use the workflow tooling embedded in the Cloud solution, be it SAP Ariba, SAP SuccessFactors or SAP S/4HANA Cloud to automate simple, standard, processes. This is usually tightly coupled with the application and offers design and control of the business processes without a learning curve. Stay alert from the beginning to detect signs of a non-standardized process or the need to break out and extract or propagate information from other software. That is a sure sign that your process requires extensibility making SAP Workflow Management / SAP Process Automation the better choice. In S/4HANA Cloud for custom objects you can use a custom communication scenario to implement a workflow solution on BTP. |
| Single customer specific local processes | SAP S/4HANA On-Premise |
In S/4HANA On-Premise you have the choice between developing classic SAP Business Workflows or developing new more flexible scenarios using SAP Flexible Workflow. Here we recommend using Flexible Workflow extension because of the empowerment this gives your process experts and because this is the tool selected by the embedded apps in SAP S/4HANA, such as procurement or sales. Only resort to the classic workflows if the capabilities that flexible workflow provides are not sufficient – but keep an eye on the release updates, particularly the Cloud releases, which are an indication of what will be available in the next On Premise release. Here you find the actual documentation. Stay alert from the beginning to detect signs of a need to break out and extract or propagate information from other software or cloud services. That is a sure sign that your process requires extensibility via the Integration to SAP Workflow Management. Also if you plan to move to cloud in general, consider to use SAP Workflow Management from start. |
Extensions of existing workflow solutions
| Type | Environment | Advice |
| Standard local processes such as an approval | S/4HANA Cloud and On Premise |
In-App Extensions via BAdIs are available for Custom conditions, custom agent rules available in the Responsibility Management framework, Scenario Specific Extension (e.g. Procurement) Side-by-side extension with SAP Workflow Management via extension steps for Standard Scenarios are planned innovations. |
| Single customer specific local processes | ECC / S/4HANA On Premise | Beneath the APAB Platform capabilities to enhance and build custom solutions you can extend existing workflows with cloud services using Side-by-Side Extensibility for Custom Classical and Flexible Workflows for User Decision Steps (Outcome Driven Extension Steps) and/or also for context driven background steps (Context Driven Extension Steps) with SAP Workflow Management. |
| Single Cross-system (orchestration) processes | SAP BPM | You can extend existing workflows with cloud services using Side-by-Side Extensibility with SAP Workflow Management also in SAP BPM (See here the documentation). |
The actual availability of extension steps for ERP solutions you see here:
Process Monitoring Requirements
Use the Process Visibility Capability of SAP Workflow Management to monitor and control your running process instances. This is available for Flexible Workflow and Business Workflow and is a planned innovation for SAP Business Process Management. See here the actual availability for S/4HANA and ECC.
Migration project of workflows from ECC/Suite/BPM to S/4HANA CE or OP
For Migration projects to S/4 please use the following decision tree to decide for each of your workflow solution you have in ECC/Suite/BPM in place.
Task Inbox
You should choose SAP Task Center as newest available Inbox SaaS-Product running on BTP [Check here for the actual available task providers and more information] or MyInbox (on SAP BTP or in S/4HANA OP / CE).
Great blog
One additional information. In the meantime SAP Task Center is general available. Please check SAP Task Center – Official Documentation
Updated in regards to availability of SAP Process Automation
Hi
I think that the line regarding the workflow management and Process automation shall be amended.
workflow management being retired June 2023
That raises some questions :
What about Business Rules which were a component of workflow management ? Shall we only use the decision artifact from process automation even if there is no workflow but just a rule that we want to call ?
Are we sure that process automation will stay for the long run ? [Workflow management was a low code solution relatively new (~2017) not yet fully recognized by the SAP customers].
Will SAP only have no code solution for the BTP workflow ?
Can you please provide a feedback ?