Event notifications are critical to business operations as it requires business actions to planned and performed. Transitioning from request-driven applications to event-driven applications requires the organizations to decide on how to design and manage the applications effectively and efficiently. Digital transformation projects are heading towards combining multiple intelligent technologies such as – events, automation, AI, collaboration, analytics etc. to achieve business benefits.
The blog series highlights how to build event driven applications with 'Events-To-Business Actions' Framework in SAP BTP with deep-dive into the framework and its implementation details. The sample application mentioned here brings the critical and actionable events from Microsoft Azure and integrates the business actions in SAP business systems.
In this blog post, let us look at how to extend an event-driven scenario mentioned in the above blog posts and leverage the information from events to bring in collaboration among the stakeholders with Microsoft Team as depicted in Figure-1.
Figure-1: Business Scenario
Creating Value-Added Services in Event-Driven Application Development
Organizations want to stay focused on customer experience and are keen to look at providing real-time information to users from multi-channel options. Users want the notifications and alerts in multiple channels which can allow them to take actions/stay informed of the events from machines/systems/applications. As we move towards digital transformation, building applications with events and alerts is one of the key asks.
Let us look at the blog post on Integrating SAP Business Processes in Microsoft Teams using SAP Business Technology Platform with MS Teams and SAP S/4HANA using SAP BTP. This kind of application scenario allows users to interact with Enterprise Business systems via chat channel in both inbound and outbound scenarios. Leveraging this architecture, to design an end-to-end application scenario which integrates events and communications, below can be one of the architecture patterns that we can look at to notify the end users on the events and business actions that is getting executed in the system.
Let us look at a simple business process flow of Purchase Requisition Creation and Approval based on a real-time event information received on Inventory Out-of-Stock. The diagram below depicts the how the business processes are executed based on the events that is generated from event producer, the seamless integration between the event router and event consumer systems which helps the business users to get notified.
Figure-2: Sample Business process flow
High Level Solution Architecture
In this solution architecture, the source of the events is considered from Azure IoT Platform, the event producer could be any other system or application. These events are published to SAP BTP and based on SAP Business Rules the business actions/processes are decided accordingly. With the notification events generated in SAP S/4HANA for the business processes, these business events are notified to users via Microsoft Teams. This end-to-end application scenario brings integration of a business process flow initiated by event-driven application to collaborative business application.
Figure-3: High-level architecture with SAP S/4HANA
In this architecture,
In Step 1, an event from Microsoft Azure is sent to SAP Event Mesh; these events are based on certain rules defined in the Microsoft Azure IoT Platform such that only critical events which needs business actions to be performed are published to SAP Event Mesh.
In Step 2, the event information is sent the Event-To-Business Actions Framework.
In Step 3, the processor module of the extension application calls SAP Business rules to get the details of the business action to be performed. Chaining of actions to be performed are configured here.
In Steps 4 to 8, based on the event action to be taken, API calls to the target system (in this case SAP S/4HANA) is triggered.
In Step 9, based on the business action in SAP S/4HANA system, notification event is triggered and published to SAP Event Mesh. For e.g., Purchase Order Creation Event.
In Steps 10,11 & 12, the SAP S/4HANA event is sent to the Bot Handler Extension Application in SAP BTP which acts as Bot Handler and creates respective adaptive cards for MS Teams and integrates with Azure Bot Service that sends the message to Microsoft Teams.
Key Benefits
Integrating events to user interactions allows the business users to stay updated and take critical actions. The seamless integration between the systems is one of the key benefits which increases the automation at the same time keeps the end users informed about the events. Similar use-cases can be developed where integration of events and user interaction bring in value for good customer experience.
From technical perspective, the key benefits are:
- Events-To-Business Action framework which handles the management of the events between multiple applications and systems. Read the blogpost [Part-2] Explore "Events-To-Business Actions Framework by praveenpadegal on the details of the framework.
- Network security-focused design with SAP Private Link specifically for RISE with SAP customers between SAP BTP on Azure (any region) and SAP S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure (Read the blog post Extend your Business Processes with the new SAP Private Link service by harutyun.ter-minasyan2 on how to securely consume data from the SAP S/4HANA system).
- Principal propagation of users for communication between MS Teams and SAP S/4HANA via SAP BTP are some of the key benefits.
- Seamless Integration of events and user interactions with SAP Event Mesh and Extension application in BTP for MS Teams
Additional Reading
- GitHub Repository – Extend your SAP S/4HANA Business Scenarios into Microsoft Azure ecosystem.
- GitHub Repository – Build Events-to-Business Action Scenarios with SAP BTP.
- Link to SAP Discovery Centre Mission, go through the Basic Scope for this blog post – Enable Supplier Collaboration across SAP and Microsoft Azure Ecosystem using SAP BTP.
- Blog post by praveenpadegal on Using “Events-To-Business Actions" framework for building event driven business applications.
- Blog post by ajitkpanda on Leveraging ‘Events to Business Action Framework’ for SAP Service Cloud Scenario.
Conclusion
Organizations looking at accelerating their digital journey with automation and shifting towards integrated product and service offerings, at the same time they are keen to look at how best all these automations can give a good user experience for all users.
Do let us know your feedback and your use-case scenarios to create a collaborative and well-integrated system of integrations with events.
To learn more about SAP BTP, see the learning journey on SAP Learning called Discover SAP Business Technology Platform, a great introduction to BTP and the Intelligent Enterprise strategy to see what it’s all about for free or check out Develop Advanced Extensions with SAP Cloud SDK plus much more free learning at SAP Learning site.
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For more information about this topic or to ask a question, please contact us at paa_india@sap.com.
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