Introduction
This blog post will guide you, how to integrate SAP Task Center with SAP Alert Notification service to monitor the connected "task providers". Please also read the documentation at help.sap.com of SAP Task Center for additional details.
To get an overview about SAP Alert Notification service please have a look into the official help.sap.com documentation for more insights.
Scenario
SAP Task Center allows you to establish a "central inbox" across SAP solutions (task providers) like S/4HANA Cloud, Ariba, SuccessFactors, ... . Please read the documentation at help.sap.com to get an overview about the supported solutions in detail.
By using SAP Alert Notification Service we are able to identify and get informed, in case a specific status during the execution of the jobs exists. Especially if an error by fetching tasks from an connected system (task provider) this information can help to investigate the issue as fast as possible by for example an Administrator.
SAP Alert Notification service is part of the DevOps portfolio from the SAP Business Technology Platform.
Architecture
From an architecture point of view we will introduce the SAP Alert Notification service into the existing SAP Task Center scenario what we've outlined also in the "SAP Discovery Center" mission for the initial setup:
Prerequisite
To setting up this scenario you need to have successfully finished the configuration of:
- SAP Task Center on SAP BTP (SAP Discovery Center Mission)
- Integrated a task provider in our example SAP S/4HANA Cloud (SAP Discovery Center Mission)
- Initial setup of SAP Alert Notification service (help.sap.com documentation)
SAP Task Center configuration
To enable SAP Task Center to send notifications we need to create a new destination in the subaccount by performing the following steps:
- Switch in the subaccount in which the SAP Task Center instance is running and create a new destination. Ensure to create the new destination based on the existing SAP Alert Notification service instance and provide the following details:
- [Important] Please ensure (see also the official help.sap.com documentation) that the destination defined exactly with the following value for the "Name":
Task_Center_notifications- As final result you will now get an overview about all details about the destination, afterwards please save the changes by choosing the save button:
Congratulations with the creation of the destination we can now use the SAP Alert Notification service to check the status of the connector background jobs. In the following section we will now configure a simple scenario to get notified from SAP Alert Notification service in case something is happening.
SAP Alert Notification service configuration
In the BTP subaccount navigate now to Instances and Subscriptions and choose the SAP Alert Notification service entry:
In the Alert Notification service cockpit choose Subscriptions and press the create button.
The wizard will now guide you to the required steps:
- Create a subscription (for details please read also the official help.sap.com documentation).
- Create or select an existing condition, in our case we create a new condition to fetch notifications from the INITIAL connector background job.
- After the successful creation of the condition we can now select this condition:
- In this step we will now create a new action to receive, in case our criteria met an Email (there are plenty other options like Slack or MS Teams integration available please read for details the official help.sap.com documentation).
- In the configuration screen for the Email action we will define it like this:
| Property | Value |
| Email Address | receiver Email |
| Use HTML | <deselected> |
| Subject Template | SAP Task Center alert !!! |
| Payload Template | <empty> |
[Important] If the action is successfully created you will get an Email to confirm the subscription.
- In addition to the evenType we can also trigger a notification based on the status of the SAP Task Center connectors. For example to get informed in case an ERROR is raised. To configure this in our example we need to create a new condition by using the severity as additional condition. In our example we will use now a condition for the severity INFO and a second condition for the "eventType" INITIAL:
The following table gives you an overview about the possible statuses (for additional details please find more details at the help.sap.com documentation):
| Condition | Condition value | Job Status |
| severity | ERROR | ERROR |
| severity | WARNING | WARNING |
| severity | OK | OK |
And the eventTypes which are supported:
| Condition | Value |
| eventType | INITIAL |
| eventType | CONFIG |
| eventType | DELTA |
| eventType | META |
| eventType | PUSH |
SAP Alert Notification service test
To validate our SAP Task Center integration with SAP Alert Notification service we will use an exiting destination and perform and repopulating (see also help.sap.com for more background) of the task cache. we will disable and enable the destination from one of our existing task providers.
- Disable:
- Enable again:
If you check the SAP Task Center Administration web application we can identify that during the enablement the "eventType" INITIAL with severity/status OK will raised:
SAP Alert Notification service will identify now that our defined condition is fullfilled and you should get an Email like this (with all details):
Or in case you've configured another receiver channel for example here Slack, you should got a similar message like this (severity: ERROR:
Summary
I hope this little blog demonstrate how easily you can use SAP Alert Notification service together with SAP Task Center and which steps are required to perform for setting up this scenario.
In case of any question pls drop a comment here on the blog or send me a direct message!
If you want to learn more about SAP Task Center, Join us at SAPTechEd Hands-On Lab (Nov 15-16) in the session: Enable, Configure, and Integrate a Central Inbox on SAP BTP [IN264] we will guide you trough the complete SAP BTP setup by using SAP Task Center, SAP Cloud Identity services and more.
In one of the next blogs, I will guide you how you can use SAP Process Automation to get this notifications also integrated directly in SAP Task Center. SAP Process Automation is supported now for the SAP Task Center integration, please check in parallel also at help.sap.com the current restrictions.
Additional ressources
SAP Task Center - SAP Help Documentation - Administration
SAP Task Center Community Page
SAP Task Center L3 presentation (recently updated)
SAP Task Center roadmap
Related SAP Discovery Missions
Establish a Central Inbox with SAP Task Center
Integrate Your SAP SuccessFactors Tasks Into SAP Task Center
Integrate Your SAP S/4HANA Cloud Tasks Into SAP Task Center
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