Getting Started with Integration Flow Design Guidelines - Timer-Initiated Scenario

After you’ve set up your SAP Integration Suite tenant (refer to the prerequisites of this tutorial for assistance), launch Integration Suite by selecting the respective tile. Now, you find yourself in the Discover > Integrations tab of Integration Suite. Here, you find all integration packages that are pre-delivered by SAP and its partners.

Tip: If your navigation bar is collapsed and you can only see icons, select the sandwich icon the upper left corner next to the SAP logo to enlarge the navigation bar.

1. In the search field, type in integration flow design guidelines. You will see a list of integration packages. For each design guideline, one or more reference integration flows are documented and packed together into so-called integration packages.

2. Scroll down till you find the integration package called Learn the Basics.

   

Once you’ve found the integration package called Learn the Basics, copy it into your tenant.

1. Select your integration flow package.

2. Choose Copy. Wait for the confirmation that the package was copied successfully.

After you’ve successfully copied your integration flow package, go to Design > Integrations and APIs. You can now see a list of all existing integration packages on this tenant. Select your newly copied package by clicking on the title Learn the Basics.

1. In the package, you find yourself in the Overview tab. Switch to the Artifacts tab. You can now see all integration flows that are part of that integration package. There’s usually more than one integration flow (artifact) packed into an integration package. The integration flow names follow the naming pattern ‘Category-Guideline-extension’.

2. Select the integration flow you’re interested in. In our example, Modeling Basics - Timer-Initiated Scenario.

   

3. You are now looking at the integration flow editor view. Here, your integration flow is displayed, showcasing all its components and steps. Your integration flow consists of three components:

   • A timer event Start Timer that is set to Run Once and that initiates the integration flow once it has been deployed;
   • A message body Define message body that defines a hard-coded message body that reads Hello World!;
   • A write step called Write data store entry that takes the message body and writes it to the data store.
   

   Tip: Select the respective shapes, to view the parameters of the respective integration flow step. You might need to pull up the window from the bottom of your screen.

   For integration flows, in general, you always have the following options:

   • Edit: This option allows you to edit the components and steps of the integration flow. You can add or delete steps, and/or change the adapter setup. In general, the edit-option is unnecessary for integration flow design guidelines as these flows are constructed in such a way that they meet the required criteria already.

   Caution: In general, if you edit an integration flow, you will not receive any automatic updates for this edited integration flow once new features or steps are available.

   • Configure: This option allows you to configure parameters more easily via a quickly accessible wizard without having to edit the entire integration flow.

   In this tutorial, you do not need to configure or edit anything as this integration flow design guideline is ready to be deployed.

4. Choose Deploy and select Confirm transaction handling configuration.

5. Upon deployment confirmation, choose the Deployment Status tab on the property sheet. Here, you can see details about the deployment for the integration flow. The expected deployment status is Deployed and runtime status is Started.

   

In this final step, check whether the data store entry “Hello world” has been written to the data store.

1. Wait for a message to tell you that the deployment was successful.

2. From the left hand navigation bar, choose Monitor > Integrations and APIs.

3. First, check the message processing log of the message. The message processing log (MPL) stores data about the messages processed on a tenant. Select Monitor Message Processing > All Artifacts > Messages.

   You now see a list of all messages that have run on this tenant. Select the entry with artifact name Modeling Basics – Timer-Initiated Scenario and check whether the Status displays a green success message: “Message processing completed successfully.”

4. Now, to download the message. Go back to the Monitor > Integrations and APIs overview and select Manage Stores > Data Stores.

5. From the list, select the name of the data store. In this example ModelingBasics-SmokeTest.

6. Select the entry and click Download to download a file containing the predefined message body.

   

7. Open the file with the “Hello World” message.

Congratulations! You’ve successfully copied and deployed a very simple timer-initiated integration flow which is part of the Learn the Basics integration flow guideline.