Webcast Series: Optimize, integrate and analyze your business processes with Process Management software from SAP

We are pleased to invite you to the 2013 Process Orchestration webcast series starting on May 29^th!

SAP has made significant investments into its middleware solution and consequently got named a leader in Gartner’s Application Infrastructure Magic Quadrants 2012. Join us for a 5 webcast series to hear how Process Management software from SAP can help you to quickly automate and flexible optimize business processes – from simple workflows to integrated processes than span applications, geographies, and organizational boundaries. Also hear who you can gain full real-time process visibility for faster, better-informed decision making.

Solutions featured during this webcast series include SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration with its Business Process Management, Process Integration and Rules Management components, as well as SAP Operational Process Intelligence and SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management. Join us and learn about current and future solution scope, implementation use cases and benefits to our customers and get your questions answered by Process Orchestration experts after each session!

The scope of the webinars is to demonstrate in detail the SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration offering, as well as the SAP Operational Process Intelligence and SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management offerings. Functional deep dives for system integrators are not part of these webinars.

Registration is required to attend these SAP webcasts. Please register for your chosen events here.

If you know a friend or colleague that you think might be interested in one of these sessions, please forward this blog to them.

We look forward to meet you on our sessions!

P.S. If you can't attend or have missed any of the sessions, you will have the opportunity to access all recordings after registration (before or after the webcasts have taken place).

Here is a new demo that shows SAP Sybase Event Stream Processor (SAP Sybase ESP) integrated with SAP NetWeaver BPM.

The scenario is monitoring equipment on towers across a wide geography to watch for overheating. Sensors on the equipment report temperator, and weather data is received from weather stations. ESP watches for situations where the equipment temperature is significantly above he ambient temperature and then sends an alert to the BPM system which uses information in the alert to open an equipment repair order. 

Access the demo here.

You may have heard already from Tammy Powlas (@tpowlas) Where's the Workflow? If not check it out.

SAP NetWeaver BPM | Process Orchestration and SAP Operational Process Intelligence experts will be meeting you up there as well!

Presentation category: Business Integration, Technology and Infrastructure (BITI);

Secondary presentation category: BITI: Workflow and Business Process Management.

SAP Business Workflow expert and ASUG volunteer Susan Keohan (@skeohan) has not only pulled together this track, but has started a wonderful blogging initiative introducing some of the speakers to all who are lucky to be at the ASUG Annual Conference this year. Take a look and tell me if you are not inspired!

Meet the Speaker - Alan Rickayzen (@alanrick)

Meet the Speaker - Martin Maguth

Meet the Speaker - Torsten Schnorpfeil

And last but not least, if you have not meet her yet (or if you did!), Meet the Speaker - Susan Keohan in Alan Rickayzen’s blog.

Now when you know more about some of the speakers let’s drill down into details. What you will actually experience and learn from all these great folks.

Which Inbox, How, and When?

Meet Susan Keohan, Peter McNulty and Eduardo Chiocconi to discuss questions like: Are your users still thrilled with the traditional SBWP workflow inbox? Do you (should you) have POWL (Personal Objects Work List)? And what about SAP Netweaver Business Process Management (BPM)?

Key learning points: Learn what are the benefits of each option, what SAP has planned for upcoming releases, and understand the importance of getting the right information - in the right tool.

In SAP Workflow Classics, Martin Maguth (also presenting The Cornerstones of SAP Workflow) and Torsten Schnorpfeil will show how to enhance your investment in SAP by activating and using standard SAP workflow templates, which are already part of every SAP ERP system. Three key workflow templates will be introduced: for financial accounting, purchasing, and for system administration. Their functional scope and technical components will be reviewed. In addition, you will see how to configure and use those templates in your SAP system with detailed step-by-step implementation instructions.

Join Susan Keohan and Alan Rickayzen in the SAP Workflow and Business Process Management Open Forum to meet up and network with other SAP Workflow and BPM professionals and get your questions answered.

Sue and Alan will be also leading SAP Workflow and Events: Control the Flow - a session covering best practices for delivering events. SAP Business Workflow uses the powerful 'publish and subscribe' paradigm to allow you to initiate, control, and terminate workflows. But in order for customers to truly benefit, we need to be able to create our own events. Should you use status management or change documents? Find out in this session!

Take part in the SAP Business Workflow Mobility Influence Council with Scott Steadman

In this round table, the Influence Council will mainly gather customer requirements. The purpose is to influence SAP development efforts.

Meet Alan Rickayzen and King Tantivejkul from Colgate-Palmolive in Putting the Intelligence Back Into Process Operations

This presentation will reveal the technical aspects of new SAP software: SAP Operational Process Intelligence built on SAP HANA, the integration to existing SAP workflow engines, and its customer perspective. Automating your business processes in SAP, whether with SAP Business Workflow, SAP NetWeaver BPM, or just plain IMG customizing is a huge step towards sustaining your competitiveness against whatever the future holds. Your company now has an automated engine that drives itself. But 20 years after the birth of R/3, the rocket science of process automation is behind us, and the lessons learned from process reengineering have been digested. It is time to focus on the oiling of these processes and the benefits your company has by putting more intelligence into the day-to-day running of the processes. Hear about the new SAP tooling, which sits on top of the existing process-automation engines, giving your company the transparency of the processes across system boundaries. See how to let the intelligence of the workforce add their experience and know-how to drive and fine-tune the running of the individual processes better than ever before.

Join Harsh Jegadeesan, Peter McNulty and Eduardo Chiocconi in

SAP Operational Process Intelligence Ramp-Up Experiences - Best Practices and Lessons Learned hear about the experiences of customers and partners who participated in the SAP Operational Process Intelligence ramp-up program. SAP Operational Process Intelligence is an SAP HANA technology solution offering visibility into all aspects of business operations and performance to provide process participants the real-time information they need to stay on track. Do not miss finding out the best practices and lessons learned from both an organizational and technology perspective.

Hope this is a bit helpful as agenda builder. Now go rock at ASUG and remember to share your findings and experiences when you come back!

If you are fortunate to attend SAPPHIRE NOW as well, find out more about Process Orchestration and SAP Operational Process Intelligence sessions in this blog: Attending SAPPHIRE NOW? Catch up with Process Orchestration Champions!

Here is all March 2013 community buzz in the Process Orchestration, PI & SOA Middleware, B2B Integration, Business Process Management and Business Rules Management spaces.

Special thanks to all first time contributors!

Here is the February Spotlight: SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration PI | B2B | BPM | BRM

Co-authors: Alexander Bundschuh and Christian Loos.

SP06 of EHP1 for SAP NetWeaver 7.3 is already released to customers and brings various enhancements for Business Process Management, Process Integration and Orchestration scenarios. There are several enhancements in direction of further tightening the integration between SAP NetWeaver PI and BPM. Here are some of the most important news.

Process Orchestration Integration Patterns: Conditional Process Start

Conditional process start is now introduced to support integration patterns for Process Orchestration scenarios. A typical example would be to collect a number of similar messages in a single BPM process instance. The start event and the intermediate message event share the same interface/trigger. If you send a message to the BPM process, the message can either start a new process instance, if there is no process running already, or it can be consumed by a running instance. There are different variants of how you can end your instance: counter (n number of messages reached), timer (x hours passed) or dedicated end message (end now).

Some restrictions:

• The order in which messages are collected is not guaranteed to be exactly the same in which they have been sent from the backend system. Messages which were initially matched to a running instance but not consumed (because the instance was completed in the meantime) are put back to the queue and will be processed again.
• Conditional start processes cannot be started via the Process Repository application integrated in the SAP NetWeaver Administrator or via the public Java API.

For more information on integration patterns for Process Orchestration scenarios read these blogs:

• SAP Process Orchestration Integration Patterns.
• Get your free #BPM Enterprise Pattern models for #SAPNetWeaver Process Orchestration here.

And also refer to SAP documentation: Conditional Start.

BPM Analytics with out of the box dashboards

We have introduced out of the box dashboards providing better insight for business administrators and process owners. The access is role-based – you will only see processes and tasks for which you are the administrator.

Main functions:

• View process and task statistics per process definition and status.
• The data is available to business process administrators and/or business task administrators.
• Direct navigation to SAP NetWeaver Administrator tools.
• Data export functionality for further data analysis.

Processes and task statistics are also available via the BPM public API giving you the ability to create custom dashboards and use data in Xcelsius, Crystal Reports etc.

Also see:

• Demo video: Business Process Analytics in SAP NetWeaver BPM.
• SAP documentation: Monitoring Processes and Tasks with the BPM Analytics Dashboard.

Custom Task Attributes

For each task definition you can now create a custom list of attributes to display additional information that is useful for the persona performing that particular task:

• Attributes are defined per task in the Process Composer.
• Support for simple types (string, float, date).
• Translatable labels.
• Filled via expressions on task context.
• Values can be retrieved via BPM Public API. Integration into the BPM Inbox is planned for SP07.

See documentation on SAP help portal: Defining Custom Attributes for Tasks.

BPM Reporting API

The BPM Reporting API is introduced as an extension to the BPM Public API. It allows you to find your process by context values. It enables you to provide process monitoring to end users, different from the tech monitoring via SAP NetWeaver Administrator, so that end users can see the step, what’s the status of the process instance, etc.

In a nutshell Process Monitoring UIs for end users allow to:

• Find process instances by values stored in the reporting data source.
• Search either within one reporting data source version or across all versions.
• Wildcard search is supported.
• All data types from Reporting Data Sources are supported except Date, Time and DateTime .
• The user needs to have the following UME actions: SAP_BPM_RDS_View, SAP_BPM_RDS_Search, SAP_BP_RDS_Query.

Sample application available on SAP Code Exchange: BPM Reporting API project.

For more information read these blogs:

• BPM Reporting API: Description and Usage
• BPM Analytics: Dashboard and API
• BPM Analytics API: Custom Service and Crystal Reports

Also refer to SAP documentation: BPM API for Reporting Data Source-Based Search.

Managing of Substitution Rules in your BPM Inbox

There are two options for creating substitution rules:

Option 1: Tasks are automatically forwarded during pre-defined period of absence.

Option 2: The person who will substitute can activate automatic task forwarding and take over in case of unforeseen absence.

You have an overview of current substitution rules for your substitutes and colleagues for whom you are a substitute. These rules can naturally be activated / deactivated and are persisted in the BPM system (not managed in your inbox).

For more details see SAP documentation: Managing Substitution Rules in the BPM Inbox.

SAP NetWeaver BPM as a provider for SAP Operational Process Intelligence
SAP Operational Process Intelligence provides you with insight and end-to-end visibility into your business processes running across multiple provider systems with process logs and flow events from Process Observer (enabling SAP Business Suite), SAP Business Workflow, SAP NetWeaver BPM and from SAP NetWeaver PI in the future.

With SP6, SAP NetWeaver BPM is available as a provider system for SAP Operational Process Intelligence scenarios.

The following events can be currently used in a scenario definition:

• Process start and end.
• Referenced sub-process call.
• Created, claimed or completed human activities or tasks.

In addition, attributes updated by a reporting activity are available as context data in the scenario.

Prerequisites for running SAP Operational Process Intelligence scenarios:

• SAP HANA.
• SAP Operational Process Intelligence 1.0.
• SAP NetWeaver Gateway for importing the BPM process model to the HANA studio.
• SLT to replicate the runtime data from SAP NetWeaver BPM to HANA.

Read more about sapopint SAP Operational Process Intelligence here.

SP1 of Secure Connectivity Add-on and B2B Add-on is also coming with multiple new features and enhancements. For full details see:

• this blog: SP1 of B2B with SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration is now released.
• and SAP documentation: http://.help.sap.com/nw-secure-connect

Large Message Queue

As you probably know, with the shift from dual to java-only stack, customers have two installation options:

• AEX – pure messaging, mainly for stateless message processing.
• Process Orchestration – combination of PI, BPM and BRM for stateless, stateful message processing combining human centric and integration centric processes.

Customers migrating from dual-stack to Java only can get avail of improved runtime behavior and limiting concurrent processing of large messages to avoid ‘out of memory’ (OOM) occurrences. When large messages are processed concurrently, there is a risk of OOM for the Java server when the system performance goes down. Typical use cases could be memory intensive mappings such as XSLT or memory consuming receiver processing.

The solution provides a proactive approach for handling of large messages that can be processed at the same time across a set of Messaging System queues on one AS Java server node. You have to configure two parameters mainly: number of permits and threshold. All incoming messages which message size exceeds the threshold are treated as large messages. The number of permits determine the number of parallel large message queues.

In a nutshell: Large Message Queue configuration via permits and threshold:

• Large message requires message size / threshold number of permits or maximum number of permits.
• Messages wait until the required number of permits is available.
• Message larger than threshold * number of permits can be blacklisted.

Also see SAP note 1727870 and read more in SAP documentation: Handling Large Messages Using Claim Check Pattern.

Graphical Mapping Editor in ESR Eclipse
Improved usability and ability to create complex mappings. The graphical editor has a similar look & feel like the Enterprise Services Builder (Swing client).

Expression editor or graphical mapping editor?
The expression editor becomes a challenge in case of complex mappings. You can now choose between both editors in Preferences. The graphical editor which is more intuitive is used by default. The graphical editor for field mappings is used by simply dragging and dropping of fields and functions into the editor pane. It allows easy maintenance and better visibility.

Referenced Channels in Integration Flows
You can now further reduce TCO via re-use of channels and reduced maintenance. You can choose to use Inline Channels as part of the Integration flows or Referenced Channels that can be assigned to one or multiple Integration flows as independent objects with own lifecycle.

Lifecycle of Referenced Channels:

• Create, edit, and delete channels within SAP Process Integration Designer perspective.
• On activation, channels get deployed on runtime.
• Assign/ un-assign channels to Integration flows.

Activation of incompatible changes is prevented and requires un-deployment of the Integration flow. Incompatible changes are for instance changing the direction of the channel or assigning it to a different adapter channel.

Integrated Monitoring between AEX and BPM
Reliable messaging has been introduced and you can now get avail of improved TCO by monitoring messages across SAP NetWeaver PI and BPM in the BPM Log Viewer.

To provide monitoring capabilities for SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration scenarios across PI and BPM, message-related business log entries contain the message ID that is delivered by PI to BPM using the XI 3.0 message protocol. This information can be looked up in the BPM Log Viewer to follow up on what happened to a PI message in BPM. From the PI message ID in the Business Log Viewer, you can navigate to the PI message monitoring.

Context sensitive navigation:

• For a given BPM process instance, details of all associated PI messages are shown.
• For a given PI message, details of the associated BPM process are shown.
• You can search for business log entries based on the PI message ID.
• You can also use this procedure to search the PI messages based on the Process Instance ID.

Prerequisites:

• The communication component has to be marked as Integration-Centric Process.
• PI and BPM have to communicate with each other using XI 3.0 message protocol.

Please note:
The PI message ID is only provided for Process Orchestration scenarios. For scenarios that do not involve PI, and which specifically do not use the XI 3.0 protocol for sending messages, no message ID is displayed with the corresponding business log entries.

For more details refer to SAP documentation:

• Monitoring messages across PI and BPM in the BPM log viewer
• PI and BPM Runtime Integration
• Configuring Message Processing from PI to BPM
• Configuring Message Processing from BPM to PI

Please see the release notes for a complete overview of enhancements with SP06, including different SAP NetWeaver components.

We recommend that you upgrade to the latest SP to benefit from all new enhancements.

Latest Update: For those of you who don't have a NWDS yet I've added a few more samples as attachments for you to look at instead.

Roll up Roll up get your free Enterprise Integration Pattern models here… ok so now that I’ve got your attention…  most people like free stuff, and we have some free stuff to help those of you who are getting into the wonderful world of SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration.  Here's a sample:

What are Enterprise Integration Patterns for?

Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP) help in solving recurring problems faced in the integration of enterprise applications.

What does it take to put Enterprise Integration Patterns in place?

Most patterns consist of a mix of SAP NetWeaver PI Integration Flow (iFlow) configurations and SAP NetWeaver BPM process implementations… in other words they rely on the power of SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration which combines both of these technologies.

Why have these models been created?

We’ve noticed that a lot of customers, partners and even SAP employees who are coming into SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration are coming from a SAP NetWeaver PI background.  As such, we’re seeing people pick up the Integration Flows fairly quickly – as many of the concepts haven’t changed that much so it’s mostly about getting used to a new, more graphical editor.   However the BPM process models are very different to the old ccBPM models in earlier releases of PI.  Even though the BPMN notation is comparatively straightforward to understand, wrapping your head around how to organize the processes to achieve certain integration goals can take a while.

Now, the guys back in the lab (SAP Labs, that is) do hope to provide working (complete, executable) examples of the patterns as soon as they can, but that’s going to take a little while as a full pattern has many dependencies – WSDLs to create, adapters to be configured, many individual objects to be created and then mapped together, not to mention the server and release dependencies, and there’s the odd other project or two they need to work on in the meantime, such as features for the next release.   We expect the working examples will be offered as a follow up to Abdul-Gafoor Mohamed’s (ably assisted by Prashant Gautam) excellent blogs on the Enterprise Patterns when they are ready.

However in the meantime, having had a few discussions and a bit of back and forth with the guys, and with several reviews from the leading lights in this area especially Volker Stiehl, but also Alexander Bundschuh, Joachim Bayer and Martin Moeller, we’re offering a set of REFERENCE MODELS ONLY that you can import into NWDS to help with getting started with Enterprise Integration Patterns in Process Orchestration or as a quick start for creating your own processes.

The aim of these reference models only is to: 

• Demonstrate how to build the patterns in BPMN notation
• Provide some guidance through annotations and step descriptions on details and options
• Act as a quick start for creating your own executable processes by importing the patterns into your own Process Composer projects

PLEASE NOTE: These are NOT executable models and not intended to be executable – they are reference models only.   To make them into complete executable processes you would need to add your WSDLs, mappings, and integration flows.

What’s included in these models?

All of the Enterprise Patterns released in SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration 7.3 EHP1 SP04 to SP06 (yes we’ve included the Conditional Start pattern).   We’ve also included variations – e.g. how to control aggregation with a counter vs. controlling aggregation with a timer. 

You’ll notice lots of annotations with explanatory notes – we’ve even indicated where perhaps for simple scenarios you might want to not use a BPMN model at all but handle the pattern entirely in Integration Flows.

In the title of each process pool we’ve indicated the minimum release required.

And make sure you read the step descriptions of each step – these contain additional details, such as for Claim Check the specific Service Interface and Operation required to complete the Retrieve Messages from Database step.

How do you use the models?

First step is to pull the models into your own NWDS.  The models have been created in NWDS release 7.3 EHP1 SP05 – but because they are models only you should be able to pull them into any NWDS that offers the BPMN import.

1. Download the zip file of the Enterprise Patterns reference models, unzip it and save the SCA file to your local network
2. Open your NWDS
3. Go to the Development Infrastructure Perspective
4. Using the context menu on LocalDevelopment choose the option Import SC to select and import the SCA file you have downloaded.
5. The Software Component EAI_PATTERNS will then appear under LocalDevelopment.

The next step is to view the models.

To view the models expand the Software Component EAI_PATTERNS and use the context menu to Create Project for the DC eai_patterns_samples. Most importantly DO NOT go to the Associated Perspective yet. Just create the project.  This is because the associated perspective is the Process Development perspective and because these are models only, if you go there you will see a whole bunch of “please complete me" errors for the processes.

Instead use the menu Window > Open Perspective > Other…  to choose and open  the Process Modeling Perspective.

Expand the project [LocalDevelopment] eai_pattern_samples to find all the reference models in the Processes folder under Process Modeling.  You can then double-click on any pattern to view the details.

Finally if you want to use a pattern as a quick start for your own process, just use the context menu on the relevant process pattern to export it in BPMN 2.0 format and store the exported file somewhere on your local network. 

Then expand your own Process Composer Project, and use the context menu on the Processes folder (in your own project) to import the BPMN 2.0 file into your own project.  Don’t forget to rename the process!

BTW because these are reference models they were deliberately created in Draft status.  So before you complete the pattern in your own project, put your cursor anywhere in the drawing area outside the process pool and in the Properties pane General tab you will see the model is in Release Status: Draft.
Press the Release to Build button to take it out of draft status and then you are free to complete the pattern.   Just remember that at this point you will also start seeing all the “please complete me” errors, which will help guide you to what you need to provide to make the process executable.

And Finally...

Remember these are REFERENCE MODELS ONLY – use them to help you understand how the Enterprise Patterns should be described in BPMN and to
quick start your own processes.  Just remember to ignore any errors or warnings you see on the models if you happen to view them using the Process Development perspective, instead of the Process Modeling perspective.

Enjoy!   And please let us know if you find them useful.

Had you been paying too much for getting your hands on Process Orchestration hosted on AWS? Now here it's another chance to try Process Orchestration for 3 Months(trial License) without feeling heat on pocket.

Following are the Steps:

1. Download and Install VMware player as per the OS (I have used one for Windows)
2. Download Windows Server 8 (R2) trial Version (180 days) from (Registration required)

  3.   Installing OS on Virtual Machine:

Open VMware player and select “Create New Virtual Machine”

Select the option "Installer Disc Image file"

  Select the option for activating the key Manually and click "yes". leave everything blank and click "Next"

Increase the Disk Size to 100GB and click "Next"

  Default Memory 1GB is not sufficient to Run PO. It requires at least 4 GB Memory. Click on "Customize Hardware"

Click on "Memory" on left pan and increase the size to at least 4GB and then click on "close".

Summery page depicting the system configuration will appear. Click on "Finish". After few Minuts Windows Server 8 (R2) will be installed.

Administrator user will get created by default and it will ask change the password on first login.

Now to activate 180 days trial version Right click on computer-> Properties ->Activate Windows

4.              Preparing for Installation of PO:

4.1          Download media files from Service Market place for Installing PO.

Navigate to Service Marketplace (S-User Required) and follow the path:

Installations and Upgrades --> A-Z index --> N --> SAP NetWeaver --> SAP EHP1 FOR SAP NETWEAVER 7.3 --> Installation and Upgrade.

             I had installed it with MaxDB as database

·         EXE         51043228_7        NW 7.31 Java 1 / 5

·         RAR        51043228_8        NW 7.31 Java 2 / 5

·         RAR        51043228_9        NW 7.31 Java 3 / 5

·         RAR        51043228_10      NW 7.31 Java 4 / 5

·         RAR        51043228_11      NW 7.31 Java 5 / 5

·         ZIP         51044253_7     MaxDB 7.9 Windows Server on x64 64bit

·         ZIP        51044253_4     NW 7.31 Kernel, Inst.Master, Upgr.Master WIN x86 64Bit

(Please note that it is for 64 bit OS)

4.2          Download "Software Provisioning MGR"

Navigate to Service Marketplace (S-User Required) and follow the path: Installations and Upgrades --> A-Z index --> N--> SAP NETWEAVER - >  SAP EHP1 FOR SAP NETWEAVER 7.3 -> SOFTWARE PROVISIONING MGR 1.0

Download:  SWPM10SP01_3-20009707.SAR  Software Provisioning Manager 1.0 SP 01

4.3          To unzip .SAR file

Download SAPCAR.exe from:

Navigate to Service Marketplace (S-User Required) and follow the path: Support Packages and Patches - S" SAPCAR" SAPCAR 7.20

The Simplest Way is get the SAPCAR-GUI so as to execute SAPCAR.exe file:

Get these files onto VMware Machine in one folder.

So as to share files on your local desktop with Virtual Machine, from Virtual Machine Open Computer -> Network -> "click to change" -> "Yes turn on the network discovery and file sharing"

executed 51043228_7(part of media file downloaded above) and save all the extracted file into a folder. These file will be required while installing PO.

Once all the Files are on Virtual Machine, execute sapcar-gui downloaded from above and select file SWPM10SP01_3-20009707.SAR -> click on extract all and save all the files into a single folder

Now open the directory wherein the files extracted using SAPCAR-gui are stored and execute sapinst.exe

Select the option as shown below so as to install Process Orchastration

For further assistance we can refer excellent blog Download and Installtion of PO and a  blog by Phillip Parkinson.

For requesting trial version licence key https://websmp230.sap-ag.de/sap(bD1kZSZjPTAwMQ==)/bc/bsp/spn/minisap/minisap.htm. Refer Blog by

Mariana Mihaylova to know more about it.