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How to build a business case

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For any business investment you must to is to build a business case so you can show a positive ROI. Otherwise, money can spend on something else that has better output.

The same applies if you want to get a better SAP PI/PO testing up and running. And all of my customers of Integration Regression Tool (IRT) must go through this process. Therefore I thought about helping them out, so you don’t have to start from scratch.

I have created an IRT-ROI-business-case 2019.

There are obviously a lot of assumptions that I have made in it. The assumptions are for a medium SAP PI/PO customer based on my experiences. I have tried to explain them in the video that I have made.

In this case, normal usage of testing would cost around 80.000 EUR a year.
If you go for IRT the first year, it will only cost around 40.000 EUR. The second year would be even better because you have made all the initial investment in the testing.
I was trying to see whether you really should be testing. This part had some nasty consequences like have system or factory down for 2 hours or losing a relationship with a customer. Here the price was 85.000 EUR. It had big fluctuations if you depending on how if your system was down every year or every second year.


Do let me know in the comments if there are ways this can be improved.

News for Figaf IRT – January 2019 Improving SAP CPI and PI development and monitoring

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Enhanced SAP CPI Monitor, Web integration and PI create test form error

So, lately I have been working with development of Figafs Integration Regression Tool, and I think the new stuff is pretty cool. Hopefully, it will be something that is useful for you to improve the ability to develop and run SAP CPI/PI content even faster and give you less support. If you have ideas for improvements I’ll like to hear.

Improved SAP CPI monitoring

We have improved the logging of errors. So it will download the attachments for the failed flows. Then it will be a lot easier for you to monitor and process the alerts. We have also improved the OData filter, so you can specify filters for messages that do not fail. So if you are using sender and receiver information you can setup a filter like Sender = ‘Salesforce’ and Receiver = ‘LOG’ that way you can get the payloads even if there are no errors on the CPI flow.

Support tool with webhooks

The IRT Support desktop is not the only one in your organization. This way you can setup integration with Jira, Paparduty or Solution manager. We configure to receive Jira notifications in about 1 hour with the information we got from the rules using zapier.com but you can use SAP PI/CPI for it.

 

Used Mappings report

Understand what is used on your SAP PI system of mappings, we have now added an option to show also Java Mappings, XSLT and also Message Mappings. Just use the Excel export of your configuration scenario.

In December 2018 I published a blog about this topic: SAP PI/PO Used message mapping.

Create a test case from a failed message

If your message fails because of a message mapping, you can set up a new test case to cover that case. This way it becomes a lot faster to validate that you have fixed the mapping once you have fixed the problem.

 

Want to ease your work?

I do believe that these improvements will make your work a lot easier. If you want to learn more please watch this video:

 

The last details

I also cover my newest insight about IRT in this slideshow:

 

You can try the features now on your own SAP PI/CPI system.

Download IRT for now

Casestory: Using Figaf IRT before testing SAP PI/PO upgrade

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Almost a year ago I had the great pleasure of having Mark Oshifeso on the sixth episode of the Integration Podcast. Mark was one of the first users of the  Integration Regression Tool for SAP PI/PO. Mark works for a mid-size oil and gas producer based in Texas, and he and his team found out, that using Figaf IRT made it a lot easier to do upgrades of the SAP PI/PO system. I haven´t had the resources to go deeper into the interview before now, but I do think it is interesting because Mark Oshifeso has some great insights from a customer point of view.

The episode was called How to automate SAP PI/PO testing with Mark Oshifeso from Anadarko Petroleum.

Stock image

You don´t need to be a scientist

By using Figafs IRT-tool Mark Oshifeso was able to test much faster.

“The tool is crazy easy to use. It is another generation from the usually SAP-tools, you list your Iflows, you mark those ones, you press record, and it is basically listening to messages in for example production. Once you have done that, you can run your test cases” Mark says and continue:

“The IRT tool helped us run a test circle with almost no human interaction, and we are now in the situation that we upgraded our production based on the automated testing, and we are hoping now to move from a 2-3 years cycle to a 6-month circle.”

Our ambition at Figaf is to create and keep on developing on the tool, so it is easy to use even in companies with many interfaces. Mark Oshifeso agrees that the tool gives a great overview in the process of the testing:

“It is easy to use, you don´t need to be a scientist, and this is really why we were able to introduce the tooling into our landscape of 300 interfaces. Some companies have more than 20.000 interfaces,
and if you have a large number of interfaces you need to have an easy tool. The tool helped us automate the test. The tool is really intuitive.”

“With IRT tool there is a very fast learning curve, and if another person takes over, you have people quickly getting familiar with this tool. There is no science, which is also why we choose it.”

There is no waiting anymore

What we want at Figaf is to give people a chance to optimize their workflow by using automated testing. And fortunately Mark Oshifeso thinks, that we have achieved this:

“The tool it selves is very speedy to use. There is no waiting anymore. The tool is really great to help facilitate, save money and especially save so many hours. The figaf tool is the most holistic approach, and easy to get everything set up, I don´t see anyone else so far on the market”, he says and finishes:

“I can really recommend this tool, if you want to go to automated testing, this is one of the tools
I would really look into.”

Here you can find the podcast: How to automate SAP PI/PO testing with Mark Oshifeso from Anadarko Petroleum.

As you can see Mark Oshifeso had great success using the tool. Since the interview we have made many improvements to the Integration Regression Tool, so I should be even more easy to use today.

Download IRT for now

 

 

Highlights from the Integration Podcast 2018

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So, since I made the first episode of the Integration Podcast on February 4., 2018 I have published 29 episodes. There was one podcast that was skipped and delivered later. It has been a really interesting experience trying to understand how to do a podcast, interview people and learn about integration. I think the cool thing about creating the podcast has been the ability to ask really smart people about what they are working with and how they see the future of integration.

In this blog post, I will take a look back on the three episodes I like the most.

Episode 6: How to automate SAP PI/PO testing with Mark Oshifeso from Anadarko Petroleum

The first episode, I would like to mention is called How to automate SAP PI/PO testing with Mark Oshifeso from Anadarko Petroleum and was published February 28., 2018.

In this episode, I had Mark Oshifeso on the show. Mark was one of the first people to use Figaf´s
Integration Regression Tool for SAP PI/PO.

Mark wanted to make it a lot easier to do an upgrade of the SAP PI/PO system, and with the help of
Figaf IRT he was able to do so.

“It´s crazy easy to use”, Mark says.

Episode 24: SAP Integration and API

The second episode which I would like to highlight is called SAP Integration and API and was published Oktober 29., 2018. I did the episode at SAP Teched Barcelona and it was fun to sit down with Harsh.

In this episode, I talked with Harsh Jegadeesan, who is a product manager from SAP. He is responsible for quite a few of the integration as SAP and has a strong presence in SAP progress
to API.

We talked among other things about the following topics:

  • Using API as a way to remove the complexity of your landscape, as the bedsheet you use to throw over
    your bed to cover the mesh.
  • Why is the API different than the Enterprise SOA. One of the differences Harsh mentioned
    was that E-SOA was a waterfall approach whereas the API is a lot more agile. SAP is using
    the same API for UI so they will do a better job understanding them.

Episode 29: SAP Integration with Adam Kiwon

The last episode I would like to take a look at again is called SAP Integration with Adam Kiwon.

In this episode, I had a conversation with Adam Kiwon who is the part of WhitePaper InterfaceDesign. Adam and his team have created different CPI Adapters, content and products
for making SAP PI/PO better. The thing I liked about it was we got a really great conversion going about what was happening in SAP Integration.

In the podcast we talked among other things about the following topics:

  • Migration strategies when it makes sense. And we talk a little about upgrading single stack 7.31
    system and migration to single stack
  • Creating CPI adapters and how they did it
  • How to create CPI content as a partner and the CPI marketplace
  • How Adam sees the need for tools to improve CPI/PI where he has different interface
    monitoring systems
  • Why Adam had proposed to use the Figaf Seeburger tools for migrating to the B2B Add-on
    on a project
  • We talked about some of the training they where working on for the CPI

Highlights from the Figaf Blog 2018

So, I really hope you enjoyed the three podcasts, I had chosen to highlight. If so, you might also like to read this blog post: Highlights from the Figaf Blog 2018.

Highlights from the Figaf Blog 2018

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So, here, at the beginning of 2019, I think it will be appropriate to take a look back on what happened on the blog on Figaf.com during 2018.

Last year, we published 35 posts on the blog. Some blogs post were about new releases on some of Figafs´s tools, some were about new insights or how I did see the future and some were about how you can use SAP PI/PO to optimize your workflow. To be honest, I had great fun making all the videos, slideshows and blog posts.  Still, after working with SAP in more than 15 years, I find it very interesting to develop new functions on the different tools, Figaf offers, so that users, in the end, will have a better experience working with  SAP PI/PO.

So, in this blog post, I will take a trip down memory lane and show you the three blog post from 2018, that I appreciate most. Not necessarily, because it was exactly these blogs which had most readers or got most shares or likes on the social media, but because they are still worth reading today in the very early stage of 2019.

Why our testing is different than most test systems for SAP PI

This first post, “Why our testing is different than most test systems for SAP PI“, was published March 24, 2018. This blog is still very interesting, because of two reasons. Firstly, testing is, and will always be, a very important part of working with SAP PI. Secondly, the blog follows up on a podcast with Mark Oshifeso, who is a customer of Figaf IRT.

It is always very interesting for me when customers take time to explain, which challenges they see when they are working with SAP PI. And maybe it will also be valuable for you to read.

SAP PI/PO support, why not learn from the errors

The second post, “SAP PI/PO support, why not learn from the errors“, was published on September 28, 2018. I think it is still worth a read because it is very important to learn from errors and bad created scenarios when you work with SAP/PO.

As you can read in the blog, there are two kinds  of errors in an SAP PI/PO context:

  1. Errors that repeat and solvable by actions like restart the message, refresh of the cache or send mail to the business user in charge.
  2. Errors that occur because a coding error that will be fixed and never occur again (hopefully.

In the blog, you will find a video, where I talked about how you can optimize your SAP PI/PO Support.

Optimize your SAP PI/CPI development

The last blog post I would like you to take a look at is called “Optimize your SAP PI/CPI development“, and was published November 21, 2018. SAP is always in progress, and it is important to set aside time to develop so that your scenarios and solutions always are up to date. In other words, I think it will be valuable for you to take a look at the blog.

In the blog post I talk about a process built on the following steps:

  • Scoping
  • Development
  • Testing
  • Document
  • Transport
  • Validation
  • Go live
  • Support

In the blog, I also talk about a webinar, I held, about how the Figaf tool allows you to optimize and automize the different steps in the process, so you don´t have to have all the manual paper tasks to fill in. You will get much greater visibility into what is developed of your SAP PI/CPI landscape.

I hope you liked the content, I have chosen for this blog post. If so, you might also like to see Highlights from the integration podcast 2018.

If you have questions to the three blogs or other topics regarding Figaf.com, do not hesitate to contact me.