Watch the full flow of Figaf to handle SAP CPI Change Management

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We have an integrated approach for handling Change Management for SAP CPI (Cloud Platform Integration aka HCI). In this video (25 minutes) I show how the full application is connected. It is a way to have a central place to manage all your SAP Integration development.

In the video I show how you can get a good change management process for SAP CPI with

  • Full traceability for all modifications made for the development, and linking with business request
  • Ability to view differences between objects and understand how they have been changed because of a business request
  • Test the process have been developed correctly
  • Configuration of Iflows across the landscape, so there are no manual steps for the transport
  • Transport of individual iflows in the landscape
  • Document all changes in the process

There is also part of the monitoring that makes monitoring of the CPI easier and enables you to setup alerting if a message is in a specific state.

If you like it and want to see how we are able to support the change management process in SAP PI/PO.

If you want to try it out then try our cloud offering for Figaf IRTCloud

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How do you Document your SAP CPI Iflows

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Documentation of integration has always been a strange thing. It has been pretty difficult to make sure we documented the details correctly and had enough information with. Normally you will just get some document designed to document some other thing and then try to adapt it to your integration. That will never give a good result. You may be compliant but just a waste of time if the documentation is not useful.

For SAP PI/PO we have for ages been using a Word template for the documentation of each interface. We support that with the Figaf IRT tool, so you can generate it fast. You can see an example of the SAP PI documentation here. The inspiration was to avoid having the documentation that was never updated and always had the initial version.

SAP Best practive

I did find an example of a SAP CPI template in the best practice guide. I did not like if for a few assumptions:

  • It was focusing on the wrong things that were a bit to detailed and too generic. Like a file conversion, or mapping it just has empty tabs that users need to fill in.
  • It could not be automated every well, which ment it did require a lot of user governance to host the information
  • It was juggling 3 different adapters and not showing the required details

I wanted to improve the process and make it even easier to capture the most important part of a CPI Iflow. It ended up with the following information:

  • Overview of the iFlow header information like name and description
  • History of changes logged with business requirements
  • Connection sender and receiver together with information
  • Test cases you have created for the tool
  • Flow description which is a table representation of the iflow. It will give some overview of how the different steps are connected
  • Configuration parameters configured in the full landscape, so you got some information on what is being used and the relavant resources.
  • Resources and the lat change data for them.

You can download an example of the document here for the SF to AD iflow.

Documentation Packaged_Integration_SF_EC_to_AD_Create_User_AccountDownload

There are ways to improve the document with more information. If you have anything that you think will provide value and make it easier to understand the documentation. Do let us know.

Automated documentation does have some limits like being able to update it different places, and add the extra information that makes sense.

You can try it own on your own iflows and see how it performs in your landscape.

Try IRT cloud and create your documentation

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Figaf now improves your SAP PI/PO CTS transports

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SAP PI/PO Change management and documentation have not developed much. And the full cycle of development is the same. It is really a manual process that requires people are spending a lot of time on documentation.

Is your Integration Important. Do you want to minimize the downtime and failures? Then the documentation and QA important.

If you are doing spending too much time on documentation, and if you are not you don’t have enough documentation of the changes made.

We have automated the full process from start to end designed to optimize SAP PI/PO. So you can get the transport documented with all integration objects have been changed.

This means that all your SAP PI/PO transports will be

  • Documented all your development objects
  • Changed link to a business reason, so you know how have approved the change and why.
  • Tested and validated in the QA system with same set of test cases, so you know that everything works as expected.
  • Configured in once place so developers do not need access to configure production system
  • Linking with the incident system so you can get information about what is wrong with your system faster

Check out the video

Because of the above reason, you will be able to:

  • Deliver integrations faster because of an automated delivery process with less time consumption
  • Happier employees because they do not need to perform documentation manually
  • Your QA process will be a lot faster because you don’t have everything delivered automatically
  • Higher quality with fewer errors because you are able to test all integrations fast
  • Fewer differences in the productive system because people are not doing modifications in other systems

Try IRT

Try out IRT on your own

We also support the same change management process for SAP CPI

Links to your SAP Cloud Landscape

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As a developer one of the things that I often struggle with is to understand what system I need to login to to develop. With PI your learn to remember that PIT is the test system. But with CPI you just have some seemingly random numbers and it can be difficult to remember. I have received my fair share of emails with links in that I often go search for. I need to create a long series of bookmarks. And all new developers need to do that. Now we have made it easier for you to access the different pages.

I also normally added new tab names for each system so I can remember which system I’m currently have open in my tab.

With the new release of Figaf IRT 2.8 we are adding a function to allow you to configure your full landscape so you from the Figaf home page can go to all the relevant systems. Since we support transport and monitoring in your landscape you will anyway need to configure all your systems in Figaf IRT. You can also register all instances to a landscape so you will get links to all the entries in your environment.

The new homepace of Figaf IRT now look like this.

New Figaf IRT homepage with links to all your SAP Integration tenants or systems.

From each landscape you can then go to the relavant tennant and links. You can have multiply landscapes of each.

  • For API management it is both the developer portal and the API portal.
  • For PI it is /dir, Netweaver Administrator, PI monitor and B2B Add-on homepage
  • For CPI it is design, monitoring and IRT monitoring page.

If you have ideas to more then let me know.

We may add links to SAP sites like status pages or Cloud Platfrom links.

This feature will be rolled out to Figaf IRT Cloud and Figaf IRT around 14 May. You can get free access on either link. We also have some other cool features making your development process a lot easier.

SAP PI/PO Governance made easy

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One of the biggest challenges with SAP PI/PO has been the lack of governance models for users. Documentation part has really been lacking making it and it has required a lot of manual work to get it done.

The process for handling governance for SAP PI/PO is just the same as with SAP XI for 15 years ago. The tooling has not changed much. There have just been a few changes that could say to improve the area. Ever since I started with XI/PI i have been working on different ways to improve the process of documentation but we have not made the dream solution yet.

Last year we added the option to use the ticket and thereby log changes to any object in SAP PI and PO, so all versions between them would be remembered. This was the first step in making documentation easier with Figaf IRT.

Now we are ready with the next big thing liking the full development together. So all documentation of your development is linked to CTS transports. That way you will know why something was changed and can see what is being transported much more transparent.

We have also added a central configuration of your channels. So there is just one place where you need to configure the information. IRT will then apply the configuration once the transport has been imported.

You can then make exports of your Integration scenarios documentation, and then show a changelog of this. And also show what was performed as a result of a ticket that you can add to your Jira, Solman to prove what you have done.

Ticket InformationDownload
Scenario DocumentationDownload

Here you can find the recording of the webniar that I did on 1 May 2019, where we showed this information to the public.

We are soon adding this to the release, so signup to check out the current version, and be the first to know once we have released the new iteration. If you have ideas on how to improve the tool and be a part of the beta program reach out to support@figaf.com.

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