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

1. Open SAP Build, and click Actions.

   

2. Click Create.

   Scroll down and select SAP Business Accelerator Hub.

   

   Enter BusinessPartner in the search.

   

   Select Business Partner (A2X) from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

3. The next screen just shows all the API calls inside this API package, for your information.

   

   Click Next.

4. Now you can name the action.

   

   Keep the defaults, and click Create.

   The newly created action opens, again showing all the OData calls. But now you can select which ones to include in your action.

5. In the search, enter Retrieves business partner data.

   Open the Business Partner node, and select the /A_BusinessPartner(’{BusinessPartner}’) API call.

   

   Click Add.

   You now get the action where you can modify the inputs and outputs.

   

6. Click Output.

   Check the d node, and then expand it.

   

   Uncheck the following fields (it might help to sort by Key):

   

   • BusinessPartner
   • BusinessPartnerGrouping
   • CreationDate
   • FirstName
   • LastName
   • NameCountry

   Scroll back to the top and click Remove and then confirm Remove.

   

   You should be left with just a few fields in the output.

   

7. Click Test.

   Select Manual under Host.

   For the URL, enter:

   URL Copy

   https://s4-mock-server-with-bp-created-events.cfapps.eu10.hana.ondemand.com/sap/opu/odata/sap/API_BUSINESS_PARTNER

   

   Set the authentication to Basic Authentication and then enter the user and password distributed in the CodeJam by your instructor.

   

8. For the BusinessPartner, input the ID for the business partner you created (or enter this ID: 1003769).

   Click Test.

   You should get data from the backend.

   

9. Click Save.

   

   Click Release, then click Release to confirm.

   

   Click Publish, and then click Publish to confirm.

   

In the action test, we supplied the URL and credentials, but this was just for the test. In order to use in production, we want to use a destination – a connection defined in the SAP BTP cockpit to a backend system.

Destinations can then be used seamlessly in applications and processes to connect to systems, without needing to know the connection details and using all types of sophisticated authentication schemes.

1. Download the destination template.

   Click Destination template, and then click the download button.

   

2. Go to the SAP BTP cockpit for your subaccount.

   You can always return to your trial account cockpit by going to https://account.hanatrial.ondemand.com/ and then opening your subaccount.

   Click Connectivity > Destinations.

   

   Click Import Destination, and select the file you downloaded.

3. Enter the password distributed in the CodeJam by your instructor.

   Click Save.

   

4. Click Check Connection, and you should get a 200 status code.

   

You created a destination, but you must let SAP Build Process Automation know that you want to allow it to be used in deployed processes.

1. In the main SAP Build page, click Control Tower.

2. Click Destinations.

   

3. Click Add.

   

   Select the S4HANA_Badges destination.

   

   Click Next.

   Keep All Environments, and click Add Destination.

   

The destination should now appear in the list of destinations that can be used with your processes.

1. Go back to your process project.

   Make sure you are in the Editable version.

   

2. Under the trigger, click the plus sign, +.

   

   Select Action.

   

   Select Browse All Actions.

   

   Click Add next to your action. To help you find the right action, you can see the name of the acttion project.

   

   The action is added to the process.

3. With the action selected and the process panel on the right open, find the Destination Variable field.

   Click Select a Destination Variable, then click Create Destination Variable.

   

   For the identifier, enter BPdest.

   Click Create.

   

4. In the Inputs tab, click inside the BusinessPartner field.

   Select Process Inputs > data > BusinessPartner.

   

5. Save the process by clicking Save (upper right).

Now that we’ve retrieved the data, we want to display it in the approval form. You will add a field to display the business partner’s country and grouping.

1. On the Badge Approval form, click the three dots and select Open Editor.

   

2. Click the Text field on the left twice, which adds 2 new text fields at the end of the form.

   

3. Set the 2 fields as follows:

   Field Name	Settings
   Country	Make the field Read Only
   Grouping	Make the field Read Only

   Click Save.

   

4. Back in the process, select the Badge Approval form.

   Open the Inputs tab.

5. Bind the 2 new inputs as follows:

   Field	Binding
   Country	Retrieve business partner > result > Business Partner > Ctry/Reg. for Format
   Grouping	Retrieve business partner > result > Business Partner > Grouping

   Click Save.

   

1. Click Release.

   

   Click Release.

   Note that after releasing, you are still inside the editable project, not the released version.

2. Click Show project version (upper left).

   

   This will take you to the released version of your project, so you can deploy it.

3. Click Deploy.

   

   Select the Public environment.

   Select Upgrade – as you already have a version deployed.

   You get a message that your deployment will update the existing trigger.

   

   Click Deploy.

   You now get a new dialog to select values for all the environment variables you created for this project. In this case, you created a destination variable for your action, in order to select the destination for connecting to your backend system.

   

   Select your S4HANA_Badges destination, and then click Deploy.

1. Go back to the Create Business Partner app we provided to you.

   

2. Enter the following:

   Field	Value
   First Name	Anything you want
   Last Name	Anything you want
   Country	Select one of the countries
   SAP Community Username	Your user name in the SAP Community

   IMPORTANT: You set up your REST Delivery Point to publish only events that contain your community user. So you need to provide your user in order for the event to be delivered to your SAP BTP tenant and to trigger your process.

   

   Click Create.

   Your business partner is created.

3. Check that the event was received into SAP Build by going to Monitoring (in the main SAP Build page).

   Click Acquired Events.

   

   Click Business Events. You should see an event created for your new business partner, including the business partner ID that you saw when you created it.

   

1. In SAP Build, click Monitoring.

2. Click the Processes and Workflow Instances tile.

   

3. Click on the process instance to see its details.

   In the Logs area, you will see the step where the action was started and completed.

   

   In the Context area, you will see data received from the event, as well as the data retrieved from the action call to our business partner.

   

4. In your Inbox, see the approval form. It now contains the country and grouping, which you retrieved from the SAP S/4HANA Cloud backend.

   

Feel free to finish the process by approving the badge and then acknowledging the notification, as you did in the previous tutorial.

• Actions in SAP Build Process Automation (video)

• Create an Action Project (Help Portal)

  • Using $filter in actions

Things to Ponder

What is the advantage of creating actions?

When creating an action, why configure it? Why not leave all the API calls and all the inputs/outputs?

What is the purpose of a destination variable?

What is another advantage of using actions (related to SAP Build Apps, see this news item)?