S/4HANA Public Cloud & SAP Document Management Service, Integration Option - External Repository

[jens_sinnigen]

If you have to setup SAP Document Management Service (DMS), Integration Option in connection of S/4HANA Public Cloud connecting an external repository - this blog-post will summarize steps to archieve a solution.

Why Document Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Please refer to the blog-post of ANUPAMA CHANDRASEKHAR: Document Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud | SAP Blogs

This will give you a good starting point if you are not familiar with DMS-History and a first glimpse to a S/4 Public Cloud solution.

Start with SAP BTP Document Management Service (DMS)

Please refer to the blog-post of Alex Dong: Start with SAP BTP Document Management Service (DMS) | SAP Blogs

This will give you a detailed introduction on how to set-up the SAP BTP DMS-Service, integration option - even though it covers the connection to a SAP S/4 On-Prem.

How to connect your external CMIS repository to S/4HANA Public Cloud?

Well this question is nearly easy to answer - just check out the up-to-date documentation Integrating SAP Document Management: Integrating SAP Document Management | SAP Help Portal

This will cover:

a. Side-step to set-up BTP Service

b. What communication arrangement to choose

c. Where and what to customize in SAP Central Business Configuration (SAP CBC)

After covering all given steps now the verification has to happen: factory accaptence test.

How to test SAP DMS, Integration Option with an external repositoy?

For having chosen a SAP repository (=non-external repository) there is the BTP-service to use called SAP Document Management, application option to use. For a short view on this refer to the blog of Tia Xu: Use SAP Document Management service (DMS), Application Option to Store Document Files

But how to test the transfer of created documents from S/4HANA Public Cloud to your external CMIS-repository?

And again I can highly recommend to refer to a well documented blog-post by Alex Dong: Utilizing CMIS Workbench together with BTP DMS | SAP Blogs

Here you get to know a java-based open-source tool CMIS workbench. With this tool you are able to check on your external repository what files / documents are transferred.

Summarize

Just because I had to collect all the informations for connecting a external CMIS repository to the SAP BTP service SAP Document Management Service, Integration Option I saw the necissity to make this collection public.

If you had set-up this solution too I would like to know if you came across the same questions we had:

a. How to monitor the transmission of documents in S/4HANA Public Cloud?

For example: you add a document in the APP 'Manage documents', you save it and yes - it will be transferred to the external repository. But what happens if the connection is lost or whatever reason may interrupt the transfer.

b. Why is the SAP BTP Usage-Analytics for the SAP Document Managment Service (DMS) not in real-time. This means when testing the interface from SAP S/4HANA to the external repository via SAP DMS there is no update of the usage-analytics in SAP BTP Cockpit covering the API-Calls.

Document Mgmnt Service - Usage Analytics - SAP BTP Cockpit

All-in-all testing the interface with an external CMIS repository is a black-box. I would highly recommend SAP to give some kind of support for this. Also the topic of 'governance' for me is not clear - this is positioned on the provider of the external repository yet.

 

 

[MustafaBensan]

Hi jens_m45,

Since the SAP Document Management Service (DMS), application option is not limited to internal repositories and can also be used with external repositories, why not use this for testing / monitoring file transfers to the external repository?

I implemented exactly this approach in the scenario where SAP Document Management, integration option was configured with an external OpenText repository.  We then created an external repository in SAP Document Management, application option, referencing the same external repository as the DMS integration option.  This way we could easily view and verify all the documents that were transferred to the external repository via the integration option by launching the DMS Application.

Regards,

Mustafa.

[jens_sinnigen]

Hi mbensan ,

thanks for your response. Reading this I was really curious to check it out.

But the SAP Document Management service, application option has no free tier option. In case you have a client (as I do) we now have to negotiate to use the service on base of CPEA.

I will keep it in the back for the future.

Kind regards

Jens

[MustafaBensan]

Hi jens_m45,

If you are employed by an SAP Partner company, even though there is no free tier for DMS application option, you can try it at a very nominal cost using the Partner PAYG subscription for SAP BTP.

Regards,

Mustafa.