SAP Integration Suite – Advanced Scheduler Configuration

Introduction

SAP Cloud Integration version 5.45.**/6.37.**, one of the capabilities of SAP Integration Suite, comes with an enhancement for integration flow Timer flow step, where you can now configure complex and granular schedules. This blog describes how to use the advanced schedule configuration options in timer flow step.

SAP Cloud Integration version 5.45.**/6.37. ** software update is planned on mid/end of March 2023  (date and time subjected to change).

Timer Advanced option

The Timer flow step with version 1.2, you will now see an additional radio button with label Advanced.

It has been labelled as Advanced, as it provides you advanced capabilities in configuring your schedules. Below is the sample screenshot of same.

When a Timer flow step in integration flow editor is dragged-and-dropped, and Advanced radio button selected, by default, a recurring schedule of every 5 minutes would be selected as shown in the above image. You can change the configuration as per your requirements. As you can observe, the sections of this scheduling options reflects the Cron expression parts viz Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Months and Years.

Let’s see some of the advanced scheduling examples and how to achieve them.

1. Scheduling at every hour from midnight to 6 AM, with an offset of 15 minutes, IST time zone.

To configure this, you need to select the options from Hours and select 0th and 6th dropdown entries, and select 15th minute from Minutes sections. Sample images below.

2. Schedule at 5th and 20th day at 8 AM, every month, CET Time Zone

To configure this, you need to select the options from Days dropdown and select 5th and 20th day, and 8th in the Hours section, and 0th minute, 0th second from respective dropdown entries from Minutes and Seconds section respectively. Sample image below.

3. Scheduling on some specific hours, e.g., every day at 10 AM and 3 PM CET Time zone

To configure this, you need to select the options from Hours dropdown and select 10th and 15th hour. Sample screenshot below.

4. Scheduling on the last day of month, at 6 am IST

To configure this, you need to select the last day of the month entry from Days section and select 6th hour from Hours section and 0th minute, 0th second from respective dropdown entries from Minutes and Seconds section respectively. Samples images below.

Scheduling on last day of the month

5. Scheduling on 1st and 3rd Monday, every month, 4 PM IST

This configuration is not possible with single timer flow step. You need to choose two timer flow steps and you need to model your scenario accordingly. And on 1st timer, you need to select the 1st Monday in Days option and on 2nd timer you need to select the 3rd Monday, and 16th hour in Hours section. Sample images below

Above schedules for first timer step

Above schedules for second timer step

A limitation in Externalized Parameters view

Currently, there is a limitation with respect to externalisation of advanced scheduler option. When you externalise this advanced scheduling option and look at the Externalized Parameters view, and click on Select button, you wont observe the Advanced radio button. This is currently a limitation. Below are the images with explains about the same.

Externalize the schedule by clicking on Externalize button

Provide a key and click on OK button

Click on Externlized Parameter view and click on Select button

Once you click on Select button, you will see only 3 radio buttons and Advanced radio button will be missing as shown in the image below, this is the current limitation

Advanced radio button is missing

This is the limitation only in Externalized Parameters view.

Configure action works well as any other parameter configuration you generally handle for externalized parameters. Below are the sample images for configuration for the externalized advanced scheduler.

Click on Configure inside the integration flow editor

Click on Configure action in artifacts list view Action column

Configure advanced scheduler against the externalized key

As shown in the above image, Configure action on advanced scheduler works as expected.

Note: Reuse of advanced scheduler externalized key.

We recommend not to reuse the externlized key in existing old timer flow step and/or in polling adapters like SFTP or Mail senders. This is due to the fact that, the old timer flow step and polling senders will not understand the advanced scheduler configuration, and if you re-use the advanced scheduler externalized key, you will see a validation error upon save of your integration flow.

Summary

As the timer flow step now provides more advanced options to schedule in newer version of the timer flow step in SAP Cloud Integration, you can fine tune your schedules in your integration scenarios. Fixing the above mentioned Externalized Parameters view limitation and options to (1) directly add Cron expression and (2) allowing multiple schedules in single timer flow step, are something we have in our roadmap and will be considered for future product roadmap.