Simplify Your Integration Experience of SAP Launchpad Service with SAP S/4HANA

[bavya_badrinarayanan]

As you would know, SAP Launchpad service enables organizations to establish a central point of access to SAP (e.g. SAP S/4HANA), custom-built, and third-party applications and extensions, both in the cloud and on premise.

Until today, the integration of SAP Launchpad service with SAP S/4HANA was based on different SAP Help Portal pages with no personalized guided experience from start to finish and no possibility of automation. With the recent availability of the scenario SAP Launchpad Service Integration with SAP S/4HANA in Cloud Integration Automation service which covers SAP S/4HANA on-premise, we provide you with a guided role-based end-to-end workflow, that helps you

• Save effort and time with automated execution capabilities covering over 40% of the tasks


• Save effort in identifying documentation for the end-to-end setup


• Personalized URLs for tasks with integrated landscape information


• Exchange metadata and certificate files easily during integration between different users


• Validate the end-to-end technical setup with a sample business scenario to expose a business role from your SAP S/4HANA system and configure a site on SAP Launchpad service that consumes the content


• Get started with SAP Launchpad service in hours

While this blog focuses on SAP Launchpad service integration with SAP S/4HANA on premise, I would also like to mention that we have an end-to-end workflow for initial setup available for SAP Launchpad service integration with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, which would soon receive updates with more automation capabilities. For more information, please have a look at the SAP Help Portal here.

Restrictions

• The Cloud Integration Automation service is available for free and automatically entitled on your SAP BTP subaccount hosted on AWS data centers. For latest information on availability, visit Discovery Center


• It is important to highlight that the scenario covers the initial setup for one business role. You can then extend it yourself for multiple business roles based on your needs outside the workflow

Scope of the workflow

The end-to-end personalized workflow helps you arrive smoothly at the below setup:

The complete workflow thus consists of the following:

1. Defining the Business Scenario: where you select the scope of your workflow, for example, a business role or the type of Single Sign On setup


2. Preparing the SAP S/4HANA System: to set up content exposure in your SAP S/4HANA system and pre-steps to configure notifications


3. Preparing the SAP BTP Subaccount: to prepare your subaccount for automated tasks in the workflow, establish trust with Identity Authentication service


4. Preparing Identity Authentication: where you configure your SAP BTP subaccount as a service provider, prepare your Identity Authentication service for automated tasks, and create users for the Launchpad administrator role and the end user role


5. Configuring the SAP BTP Subaccount: where you handle entitlements and subscription to SAP Launchpad service, and role collection mapping and generate credentials for push notifications


6. Configuring the Cloud Connector: where you connect the Cloud Connector to the SAP BTP subaccount, and establish connectivity with the SAP S/4HANA system


7. Configuring the SAP S/4HANA System: to finalize the principal propagation setup and push notifications from your SAP S/4HANA system to SAP Launchpad service


8. Configuring the SAP Launchpad service: where you configure destinations on SAP BTP subaccount, fetch content from your SAP S/4HANA system and finally, validate it with a site on SAP Launchpad service that displays the fetched content

Key Prerequisites

To utilize this integration workflow on Cloud Integration Automation service, you need

• SAP S/4HANA on minimum 2020 release with embedded front-end-server deployment available


• SAP BTP global account on Feature Set B


• Cloud Connector


• Identity Authentication service

How can you use it?

As mentioned previously, Cloud Integration Automation service is a free service that is automatically entitled on your SAP BTP subaccount on Cloud Foundry. I would like to point you to the blog post How to activate Cloud Integration Automation Service on Cloud Foundry, where my colleague stefan.jakobi explains how to get started with the service.

To open the SAP Launchpad service Integration with SAP S/4HANA, once you are on the service, select Plan for Integration.

You will then see the list of integration scenarios available on Cloud Integration Automation service. On the search bar, search for “Launchpad” and select the scenario SAP Launchpad Service Integration with SAP S/4HANA.

For how to start an integration scenario workflow with Cloud Integration Automation service, I would like to point you to the blog post that again my colleague Stefan Jakobi wrote, New video: Easy to Use Cloud Integration Automation Service where he takes you on a tour around the user interface and the necessary steps for workflow generation.

Conclusion

In this blog post, you have learnt how to take advantage of the new integration scenario workflow  with automation capabilities, available in Cloud Integration Automation service on SAP BTP, to simplify your integration experience of SAP Launchpad service with SAP S/4HANA.

Do note that you can make the content on SAP Launchpad service available on mobile using SAP Mobile Start app; learn more about this app at SAP Mobile Start community page.

Stay up to date with latest news and post your questions or feedback about SAP Launchpad service by visiting your SAP Portal and Digital Experience community page and click “follow”. We’ll be publishing more informative blog posts. Want to be notified? Check your #communications to ensure you have your settings activated.