In the previous blog post in this series we created a work pattern in SAP Jam. In this blog post, we will customize and extend our work pattern to bring real-time data from an application into our SAP Jam work pattern. We will perform all of these actions in the SAP Jam developer edition environment that we used in the previous blog post.
Creating an external application in SAP Jam
First, let’s integrate SAP Jam with the external application. For this exercise, we will use the ESPM reference application introduced in the SAP Jam Developer Guide. Follow the steps outlined in the Use SAP Jam with external applications topic in the SAP Jam Developer Guide.
Extending the work pattern
Now that you have created the ESPM external application in SAP Jam, we now need to revisit our Product Innovation Template, that we previously created, and set it to Inactive such that we can edit it. From the SAP Jam Admin menu, select Group Templates.
You will see the Product Innovation Template that we created in the previous blog post. Click the slider next to the template to make it inactive.
Click on the Actions drop down menu for the Product Innovation Template and select Properties.
In the Create Template window, click the Business Records drop-down and select Products. This step now associates our group template with Product data from the ESPM application that we created earlier. Click OK.
Lets now edit our group template to add a widget to the Overview page to display the Product data. Click on the Actions drop down menu for the Product Innovation Template and select Edit.
We are now presented with our group template. Click the Edit link.
Click the Add Widget button underneath the welcome text and select the Business Record widget.
Enter a Widget Title in the Business Record Widget e.g. Product Details, and press OK.
Click the Publish button. We are now presented with our Overview page and it now contains a Business Records widget for displaying product data.
The last step is to activate our group template such that it is available to be used for creating new groups.
From the SAP Jam Admin menu, select Group Templates. You will see the Product Innovation Template in the list; click the slider next to the template to make it active.
Browsing Business Records
Now lets connect to our external application and use our group template to create a group where we can collaborate around data coming from ESPM. Click on Business Records in the SAP Jam menu.
The Business Record browser allows a user to browse data coming from external applications. Click on ESPM.
Click on Products.
We are now presented with the real-time product data coming from ESPM.
We can hover over any of the records to see more information about that data record but also we can create a new group from this data record or feature the record in a group. Click on the Create Group button.
In the Create a Group window we are presented with the available templates to use and our Product Innovation template is available for selection. Select the Product Innovation template.
Provide a Group Name e.g. the name of the product that you have selected. For this example, I used the “1UMTS PDA” product. Select Private for the group permissions and ensure the Activate this group now checkbox is enabled.
You have now created a new group – using the Product Innovation template – that includes real-time data coming from an external application.
Clicking on the View More Details link in the Business Record widget will display more details for the product record and you can even comment and start a discussion on the data record itself.
Bringing it all together
So, what have we created? We now have an SAP Jam Work Pattern that integrates data from an external application. The work pattern we have created brings together people, content, tools, real-time data and best practices to help drive product innovation.
SAP Jam already provides a number of work patterns out-of-the-box that are designed to drive company-wide and functional KPIs such as customer engagement, account management and selling, customer service, learning, and mentoring including integration to other SAP applications and through this blog post we have seen how easy it is to connect SAP Jam to an external application and use real-time data in our work pattern.
In the next blog in this series, we will look at how you can bring collaboration capabilities to your applications using SAP Jam.
- SAP Managed Tags:
