Create Business Partner Action Project in SAP Build Actions

1. Download and extract Open API Specification zip file for Business Partner (A2X) API in your local file system.

Open API specification of 2.x or 3.x or higher is needed for creating action project. For APIs that are available in SAP Business Accelerator Hub, you can directly download the specification from the API overview section. For example: The API specification that will be used for fetching customer details in this exercise is downloaded from here.

1. Open SAP Build lobby with your username and password, then do the following

   • Under Connectors, select Actions.

   

2. Choose Create.

   

3. In the Choose an API Source popup, under API Specification, select Upload API Specification.

   

4. Drag and drop or click Browse Files to upload open specification file downloaded in step above.

5. Choose Next.

   

6. In the Create an Action project popup, do the following:

   • Enter the Project Name as Business Partner.
   • Enter the Description as Fetch customer details from the Business Partner API.
   • Click Create.
   

7. Wait until the action project gets created.

   

   As soon as the Business Partner Action gets created, SAP Build Actions will automatically open and the Add Actions From Business Partner pop up will appear.

   

1. In the popup, you have to select GET method of /A_Customer API. You can either directly search from the given list of APIs or follow the steps below:

   • Select filter option.

   
   • Select GET.
   

   • From the filtered list of APIs, choose Customer and select GET option for /A_Customer API.

   • Click Add.

   

   SAP Build Actions will open with the selected APIs which can be further configured based on the requirements.

2. The Action supports JSON files and the file size is limited to 5 MB, you need to fetch a specific number of records from your data source. This can be done using the $top input parameter. For this use case, you will be setting the parameter to 150. This will enable us to fetch the first 150 records and display their details.

   • Select the $top parameter.
   • In the side panel, toggle the Static option to YES.
   • Enter 150 in the Value field.
   • Select Save.
   

   With this you have configured the action project name and API input fields.

3. Similarly, configure the output fields. Do the following:

   • Click Output tab.
   • Expand the output key d.
   • Select the results key.
   • In the side menu, select the Tags dropdown and choose Main Output Array.
   • Choose Save.

   What is going on?

   If this array is not marked as Main Output Array, the Actions Project will not be visible in the Form Editor as a data source.

   

1. Once the action project is configured and saved, it is time to test the changes and output. To test the API, do the following:
   • Click Test tab.
   • Select Destination option under Connectivity.
   • Select S4_Business_Partner from the dropdown options.

   The destinations are fetched from the SAP Business Technology Platform. The selected destination is already created in the account configured for this tutorial.

   Notice that the input value is already picked from the default value entered while configuring the action project.

   • Click Test.
   
   • Once the execution is successful, you see 200 OK response with the details of the customers in the backend S/4HANA Cloud system.
   

   The action gives a response which, in this use case, returns the customer details and related details. You need to display the customer names which are in an array of objects.

You will now release the action project to create version(s) and then publish a selected version in the action repository. It is then these published actions that can be used in different processes and applications to connect to external systems.

• To release a version of the action project, click Release from top-right corner.

• In the release popup, enter the Release Notes of your choice and click Release.

Notice the version of the project. It is in majorVersionNumber.minorVersionNumber.patchNumber format.

Once the action project is released, you can then publish any released version of the action by clicking Publish to Library from top-right corner.

With this you have successfully completed creating, configuring, releasing and publishing of action project. Now you will use this published action to get data for the dropdown in Form.