Introduction
SAP has introduced SAP Build Process Automation as the successor product of SAP Workflow Management in SAP Business Technology Platform. SAP has officially announced the retirement plan of SAP Workflow Management. This blog explains the migration possibilities for Workflow Management customers and advantages of migrating to SAP Build Process Automation. SAP Workflow Management is used by customers in SAP Business Technology Platform Neo and Cloud Foundry environment. Obviously there are different approaches of migrating Neo and Cloud Foundry solutions.
SAP Build Process Automation - Value Proposition
SAP Build Process Automation as the successor product of SAP Workflow Management has Workflow, Business Rules and Process Visibility capabilities of Workflow Management. These capabilities are well integrated together with SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation and provides a Citizen Developer experience for building process automation solutions. SAP Build Process Automation reuses all Workflow Management capabilities with further enhancements, enable customers to deploy their existing Workflow Management content in SAP Build Process Automation. Some of key differences between SAP Workflow Management and SAP Build Process Automation are given below.
| SAP Workflow Management | SAP Build Process Automation |
| Pro-Code development with loosely coupled services | No-Code development with integrated services including automation. Deployment of Workflows using Business Application Studio possible. |
| SAP UI5 based start and task user interface. | No-Code Forms, SAP Build Apps(planned) and SAP UI5. |
| Different versions for artifacts in the same solution. | One version for all artifacts in a project. |
| Untyped interfaces in Workflow. | Typed interfaces and data types. |
| Local My Inbox at subaccount level. | Task Center - One Inbox for all workflow tasks. |
| Different monitoring applications. | Integrated monitoring of all project artifacts. |
| Single metric - Active users for all capabilities. | Multiple metrics for different usage scenarios. |
| Requires additional SAP Build Work Zone standard license. | SAP Build Work Zone included for Process Automation usage. |
SAP Workflow Management Customers - Way forward
SAP Workflow Management will be retired from 15th August 2023.Customers can continue to use Workflow Management until their current contract end date. Meanwhile they can plan SAP Build Process Automation adoption plan to ensure smooth transition technically and operationally. The commercial models are available in SAP Discovery Center and it helps customers to evaluate the cost benefits while transitioning to SAP Build Process Automation. Unlike Workflow Management, SAP Build Process Automation has multiple metrics to meter the usage.
Transition to SAP Build Process Automation
It is important to understand the transition path depending on your current data center and solution status. SAP Build Process Automation contains Workflow, Business Rules and Process Visibility capabilities. This ensures existing Workflow Management content can be easily transitioned to SAP Build Process Automation with minimal changes. The below solution diagram shows target solution view and value proposition.
- No-Code tools to model Process and Forms
- Out of the box integration with SAP Task Center.
- Central Lobby to access all design time tools.
- Content store to access automation and process content.
- Integrated monitoring.
- Deploy workflows to SAP Build Process Automation using SAP Business Application Studio.
- Consume Workflows as referenced subprocess from Processes modeled using no-code tooling(process builder).
Transition Path
SAP Workflow Management is available in SAP owned data centers (Neo) and various hyperscalers (Cloud Foundry) but SAP Build Process Automation is available only in limited Cloud Foundry Data Centers. The below table explain the transition path of your Workflow Management solution to SAP Build Process Automation.
| Data Center | Migration |
| Cloud Foundry Data Centers. EU10,US10,US30,AP10&JP10 |
|
| Other Cloud Foundry Data Centers |
|
| Neo Data Centers |
|
Workflow Management(Cloud Foundry) to SAP Build Process Automation
Workflow Management content deployed in Cloud Foundry Data Centers with SAP Build Process Automation service availability has an easy transition path. Each of the capabilities in Workflow Management requires certain steps to transition the content to Build Process Automation. Post migration customers can not only use no-code based tools to model processes and forms but also existing pro-code tools like SAP Business Application Studio. This help customers to transition from pro-code tool based solutions to no-code based solutions over a period of time.
Workflow Management content deployed in Cloud Foundry Data Centers without SAP Build Process Automation availability needs to deploy the migrated design time content to a data center with SAP Build Process Automation. Customers could complete their existing Workflow Management tasks and workflow instances,export their workflow runtime data before removing their Workflow Management entitlement.
- Subscribe SAP Build Process Automation.
- Assign SAP Build Process Automation roles collection to users or user groups. Process Automation Participant roles collection only required for the Standard User metric.
- Create a service instance based destination using SAP Build Process Automation service instance.
Workflow
- Enhance Workflow Modules to SAP Build Process Automation using Business Application Studio.
- Adapt Workflow definitions to automatically reconfigure service bindings.
- Modify Workflow instance based routes used in SAP UI5 based start and task UIs.
- Adapt all workflow service APIs based destinations to SAP Build Process Automation APIs.
- Reconfigure SAP Build Work Zone Standard content using SAP Build Process Automation.
There are couple of features of Workflow service is not available in SAP Build Process Automation. This may be planned for future releases.
- Workflow scopes used for authorizing technical user based access of APIs are not available in SAP Build Process Automation.
- All APIs related to Workflow definition is not part of SAP Build Process Automation.
Please make sure to have a service instance of Workflow in your sub account to keep existing workflow runtime data and logs.This restriction is planned to remove soon. Please read the help documentation for more details.
Business Rules
Business Rules Projects can be transported from SAP Workflow Management to SAP Build Process Automation using the import/export features. All existing Business Rules projects in SAP Workflow Management can be imported using Manage Rules Project application in SAP Build Process Automation. Manage Rules Project application is only meant for reusing existing Business Rules content and not for creating new projects. New Business Rules can be modeled using the Decision capability in SAP Build Process Automation. The Rule services part of these projects can be executed using Business Rules runtime APIs.
There are couple of Business Rules service features not in SAP Build Process Automation.
- Business Rules repository apis are not available in SAP Build Process Automation.
- Business Rules control or Decision table cannot be embedded in external application due to missing repository apis.
Process Visibility
Process Visibility scenarios can be transported from SAP Workflow Management to SAP Build Process Automation using import/export feature. All existing visibility scenarios can be transitioned to SAP Build Process Automation.
Live Process Content
All live process content packages are migrated to SAP Build Process Automation and available in SAP API Business Accelerator Hub. These content packages can be consumed using the new content store part of SAP Build Process Automation.
Workflow (Neo) , Business Rules(Neo) to SAP Build Process Automation
Workflow and Business Rules are the capabilities available in Neo platform. Neo Workflow projects are not part of a multi target application(MTA). All Workflow and SAP UI5 content needs to be migrated to a multi target application with a managed approuter. Please go through the blog for more details.
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