How do you manage to synchronize the delivery of both business functionality and integration development at the same time? How do you deploy both SAP PI, SAP CPI, and API Mgt at the same time?
The normal approach in SAP would be to use CTS+ or Charm to handle the transport. There is normally a number of manual steps involved in the process.
We have gotten the question of how we can make sure that content is transported and imported at the correct time.
We already have transportation for SAP PI, SAP CPI (iflows and value mappings) and API management. How about we enable users to integrate with their external tools?
A lot of companies are using tools like Jira, ServiceNow or Azure DevOps to manage their SAP projects. What if you wanted to simplify your deployment process using one of these tools?
From the start, we decided to enable this with our External ID on the ticket where you could add information about what the reason for the change was.
You can see a demonstration of how the API works here.
Watch on YouTube How the new Transport API works to release SAP CPI and API transports
To help the development process of a team there are two objects of relevance.
- Ticket
- Transport
Ticket
A ticket is an entity used to register all the changes that a user is making to solve a problem. It is connected to the Jira id so you can always go back to it and see why a developer made a change to any object. That means you can go into an object, for example a mapping or iflow, and see which ticket in Figaf it was changed in.
We have an option to add external id and URL so you can always link them to the correct place. That means you can go from any object and know who requested the change in the first place.
The ticket is linked to one landscape so it can either be API Management, CPI, or SAP PI/PO.
Transport
Once you have done all your development in a ticket and tested the interfaces with the built-in tooling, it is possible to select “Start Transport”. This will trigger the transport of all the objects involved in the change.
So all transports are linked to a ticket.
Depending on the landscape setup you may have the option to set up approvers in each landscape. So you can have Integration Architects approve before import to QA, and then testers should approve before you import to production.
How to automate your transports
We have now published APIs to make it easy to handle the transport so you can ensure that everything works as expected.
Search API
You can get all information about a ticket. Then it is possible to find the tickets that involve a given external ID.
You will also be able to see the information about the given object and what stage it is in.
{{figafhostport}}/api/v1/ticket/ISSUE-156
{{figafhostport}}/api/v1/ticket/search
Import API
You also want to import your changes into an environment like QA or Production. We have added an API that allows you to import to a given landscape. You can then specify which ticket or external id you want into a given landscape, and then it will be imported.
If the transport is not ready for import then you will get an error message back.
If you have approval on the landscape you will still need to import it before you can see the data there.
{{figafhostport}}/api/v1/ticket/import?externalTicketId=jira-4444&targetSystem=QA
API Documentation
You can view all our APIs on the API page:
{{figafhostport}}/swagger-ui.html#/
To get access you need to create an OAuth token with roles ticket:read and ticket:import
To get a Bearer token you need to call
{{figafhostport}}/oauth/token
More integration
We keep improving the APIs together with clients, so they solve the real use cases customers have.
If you have questions, just reach out.
Getting started
It is really simple to start using the Figaf DevOps Suite. You can connect your first SAP CPI or PI system and then try out the transport APIs.
start a free trial to get started.
