9 - Create Action to Get Data from SAP S/4HANA Cloud

In order to access the demo SAP S/4HANA Cloud business partner API on the SAP Business Accelerator Hub, you need to create a destination.

1. Go to the SAP Business Accelerator Hub and log in (or create a free account)

   

   On the top-right, click your avatar, and then click Settings.

   

   Click Show API Key.

   

   Save the key for later.

   

   The last time we tested, the Copy Key and Close button did not work, so you may have to select the key and copy it manually.

2. Download the destination definition.

   Click S4HANA-Hub-Public, and then click the download button.

   

3. In the SAP BTP cockpit, click Connectivity > Destinations.

   

4. Click Import Destination, and then select the S4HANA-Hub-Public file you downloaded.

   

   The draft destination will be filled in except for your API key.

   

   Enter the key (you saved earlier from the SAP Business Accelerator Hub).

   Click Save.

If you click Check Connection, you will get a 401 response code. This is OK, and you have successfully created the destination.

To learn more about the SAP Business Accelerator Hub and how to set up destinations for any API, watch this video from Daniel Wroblewski.

SAP Build Process Automation enables administrators to control which destinations – and, therefore, which backend systems – can be connected to processes during runtime.

In this step, you will enable the destination to be used in your processes.

1. Go to the SAP Build main page.

2. Go to Control Tower, and then click Backend Configuration > Destinations.

   

3. Click Add.

   

   Select your destination, SHANA-Hub-Public.

   Click Next.

   

   On the second screen, keep the settings to allow the destination in All Environments.

   Click Add Destination.

   

   The destination will be added to the list of destinations that can be used within your processes.

   

1. In the SAP Build lobby, click Connectors > Actions.

   

   Click Create.

   

2. Choose OData Destinations as the API source.

   

3. Choose S4HANA-Hub-Public.

   

   Why do I see the CAP service?

   You might be wondering why you see the CAP service here, when you only added the SAP S/4HANA service in the Control Tower.

   In the Control Tower, you added the destinations that could be used during runtime – and the sap.processautomation.enabled additional property in the destination enables the administrator to select it for runtime.

   But destinations have a second property that indicates whether they should be shown in the actions setup screens, sap.applicationdevelopment.actions.enabled. When you set up your destinations, you added this to both the CAP and SAP S/4HANA destinations.

   You will now see all the APIs contained in the Business Partner service, including those for the A_BusinessPartner entity. Expand A_BusinessPartner to see the specific APIs available.

   

   This screen is just to show you the APIs available – you do not have to select anything.

   Click Next.

4. Enter:

   • Business Partner for the Name

   • API to read Business Partner from SAP S/4HANA Cloud for the Description

   Click Create.

   

   After about a minute, the action project will be created and open.

   You will now see all the APIs in the service, so that you can select the ones you want to include in this action project.

5. Expand the A_BusinessPartner entity.

   It might help to select the GET filter and search by retrieves business partner data.

   

   Select the GET operation that is called /A_BusinessPartner(‘{BusinessPartner}’) with the description Retrieves business partner data by using business partner number (see screenshot above).

   Be careful! There are a lot of APIs that look the same. Use the search to help make finding the right one easier.

6. Click Add.

   The action project Business Partner opens under a new tab.

   

   The action will open with the selected APIs. You can always go back and add additional APIs to expose.

You have now created an action project and selected the API to expose. But now you must configure – for example, what inputs to require, what outputs to return, and what OData parameters to include.

Your action should be open to the Retrieves business partner data by using business partner number (GET) API, and you should see the Input tab.

1. Click the Output tab.

   Under Body, select all the fields by selecting the checkbox next to d.

   Then expand the node and deselect only the needed fields highlighted in the screenshots below.

   
   
   

2. Scroll back up, and click Remove.

   

   Confirm Remove.

   

   Under Body, you will now see only the needed fields.

   

3. Click Save.

4. Click the Test tab.

   Select your Destination from the dropdown value, S4HANA-Hub-Public.

   Under Test Input Values, set BusinessPartner to 11.

   Click Test.

   

   You should get a 200: OK response, and see the data from the demo API.

   

To make the action available to your processes, you must release and publish the action.

1. Click Release.

   If Release is disabled, make sure you’ve saved the project.

   

   Click Release again, to confirm.

   

   The action project status is changed to Released.

2. Click Publish.

   

   Click Publish to confirm.

   

   Now the action project status is changed to Published.

   

   Go back to the SAP Build main page, refresh the page, and under Actions you can see your action and its released version.

   

   If it’s not updated, you can refresh the page or refresh the list with the refresh icon on the top right.

You’ve created an action to retrieve data. Now add it to the process so you can retrieve data inside the process.

1. Return to the SAP Build lobby, and open your Purchase Approval project.

   

2. Select the Editable version at the top, and then under Overview > Artifacts, click Purchase Approval Process.

   

   Click the plus sign, +, just below the API trigger block.

   

3. Click Action.

   

   Choose Browse All Actions.

   

   Choose your action created in the previous steps. You may want to filter by your action project – if necessary, click Show Filter.

   

   Click Add.

   The action is added to the process flow.

   

4. With the new action block selected, go to the side panel and configure the action.

   In the General tab, click the Destination Variable field, click Create Destination Variable.

   

   Enter Business_Partner_Destination for the Identifier, and click Create.

   

   The destination variable creates an environmental variable for the destination. That is, when the process is deployed, you can then select which destination – meaning which backend system – to use in that environment.

   You can change the destination at deployment without having to change the process itself.

5. In the Inputs tab, click in the BusinessPartner field, and select Process Inputs > Business Partner field.

   

   BusinessPartner field is now mapped.

   

6. In the Outputs tab, expand result to see all the fields that will be returned by the action and be available inside the process.

   Notice it only includes the fields you selected when defining the action.

   

7. Click the condition block, and from the side panel click the 3 dots and then Open Condition Editor.

   

   Click Add.

   

   Set this new condition as follows:

   Field	Value	How to Enter
   1st	BusinessPartnerGrouping	Select from action fields
   2nd	is equal to	Select from comparison options
   3rd	BP01	Type in

   At the top, under Satisfies, change to Any.

   You can expand Summary to get a verbal summary of the conditions in plain English.

   

   Click Apply, and then click Save (upper right).

   What’s going on?

   Previously, anything less than 1000 was automatically approved. But now, if the related business partner is in group BP01, those requests are also automatically approved.

8. Click anywhere on Approval Form block.

   In the side panel under Inputs, you will now bind the business partner fields because you now have data from the backend.

   Bind the following fields:

   Field	Action Field
   BP Grouping	BusinessPartnerGrouping
   Business Partner	BusinessPartner
   Business Partner Full Name	BusinessPartnerFullName

   

9. You may see an error next to your script task.

   If you do:

   • Open the editor for the Script Task.

   • Click Apply.

   

10. Click Save (upper right).

11. Click Release.

    

    Confirm by clicking Release again.

12. Click Show Project Version.

    

    Click Deploy.

    Select the Public environment, and click Upgrade.

    

    The triggers that will be deployed will be displayed. There is nothing to do here but confirm.

    Click Deploy.

    

    Now you will see the environment variables for which you need to provide values.

    

    Previously, you did not get this screen because you did not have any variables to configure. But now you defined a variable for managing the destination, so you must select the destination for this variable for this deployment.

    Select the destination you created for accessing SAP S/4HANA.

    

    Click Deploy.

    The status of the project changes to Deployed.

    

13. Go back to the SAP Build lobby, refresh the page.

    Next to your process project, click the row of the project, or click the chevron.

    

    Click the Versions tab, and hen click the 3 dots next to the latest deployed version.

    

    Click Publish to Library.

    

    In the dialog, click Publish.

Now that the process expects a business partner, we must change the app to provide one.

1. Open the ShoppingApp project from SAP Build lobby.

   

2. Navigate to the cart page.

   

3. Click Variables.

   Choose Page Variables on the left, then click Add Page Variable > From Scratch.

   

   Change the name of the variable BP.

   Click Save.

   

   Since you need to get a business partner from the user, and then pass it to process, you will need a place to store it.

4. Click User Interface.

   Click the business partner dropdown list, and bind Selected value to Data and Variables > Page Variables > BP.

   

   Click Save (upper right).

   The skeleton project already had the business partner dropdown list to have 2 business partner IDs that were valid in the demo API, one with grouping BP01 and one with grouping BP02 – in order to test out the logic of our process.

5. Click the Purchase button and open its logic canvas.

   

   Click the Trigger process flow function.

   

   On the right, under Input Parameters, click Custom object.

   

   In the dialog, bind Business Partner to Data and Page Variables > Page Variable > BP.

   Click Save.

   

   Click Save (upper right).

1. Relaunch the app.

2. Select a product.

   

   Change the quantity to 5 and click Add to Cart.

   

3. Click Cart in the left navigation menu.

   Select 1000000 for the business partner.

   

   Click Purchase.

   

   You should get a purchase confirmation message – it may take a minute.

   

4. In the SAP Build Lobby, navigate to the Monitoring tab.

   

   Under Monitor, click Process and Workflow Instances.

   

   Select the process you just triggered.

   

   Examine the Log, and you can see that the Retrieves business partner data by using business partner number action was executed successfully.

   

   In the process Context you can see that data from S/4HANA is fetched successfully.

   

   You can also see that the last step is an approval form, waiting to be filled out – the request is over 1000 and is not from someone in grouping BP01.

5. Open your Inbox by clicking the icon in the header.

   You should see an Approve Form task in the Inbox

   Open it, and you should now see that the business partner fields in the form are filled in with the backend data.

   

   Click Approve at the bottom of the page.

   Refresh your Inbox, and now you will see the approval notification form.

   Click Submit.

   

6. Go back to the monitoring tab and click Refresh.

   The Purchase Approval Process flow is now Completed.

   

You can test again with the other business partner to see if your purchase gets automatically approved.