Universal Worklist with SAP NetWeaver Portal

2.1  Connecting SAP Systems

Most of the time, the first thing you will want to do with UWL is to connect it to an ABAP-based system so you can bring work items from SAP Business Workflow through to the portal. This is particularly important when you are using the portal to access more than one SAP system’s workflow—users don’t want to have to log into one system (SAP SRM) to approve purchase requisitions and then log into another system (SAP ERP) to approve the resulting invoices for payment. In this section, you’ll see how to set up connections to a workflow system and find out some of the things you have to look out for when you’re doing the configuring.

Throughout this section, we’ll set up a connection to client 100 of a SAP Business Workflow system “NSP” (a SAP NetWeaver Trial Version instance), which is system number 00 and whose web interface is accessed with the URL http://workflow.fortybeans.com:8000.

2.1.1  Portal System Definitions

You need to create an entry in the Portal System Landscape entry for each back-end system that you want to get work items from by going to the menu System Administration • System Configuration • System Landscape and then right-clicking in the Portal Content Directory (PCD) on the desired location for the system entry and selecting New • System (from template), as shown in Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2: Create a system definition in the portal’s System Landscape

The Portal System Landscape is not the same as the SAP NetWeaver System Landscape Directory (SLD).

There are three types of system entry which you can use:

• SAP system using dedicated application server

The property categories you need to fill in to work with the Universal Worklist are Connector (which is used to get the work items from the back end), ITS(to launch back-end based task handlers using the default SAP GUI for HTML or IACs) and WAS (for task handlers using BSP technology or Web Dynpro).

Connector settings

Figure 2.3 to Figure 2.5 show examples of the minimum information necessary to establish a connection for each of the three templates. Here are the settings you need to use:

SAP system using dedicated application server

• Application host: the host name or IP address of the SAP Business Workflow system, as seen from the portal server
• SAP Client: the workflow system’s client number
• SAP System ID (SID)
• SAP System Number
• System Type: Usually SAP_R3 unless this is a BW or CRM system, in which case SAP_BW or SAP_CRM, respectively.



Figure 2.3: Minimal settings for Dedicated Application Server

SAP system with load balancing:

• Group: the login group (of application servers) to use
• Message Server: the host name or IP address of the SAP Business Workflow system’s message server, as seen from the portal server
• SAP Client: the workflow system’s client number
• SAP System ID (SID)
• SAP System Number
• System Type: Usually SAP_R3 unless this is a BW or CRM system, in which case SAP_BW or SAP_CRM, respectively.



Figure 2.4: Minimal settings for Load Balancing

SAP system using connection string:

• Connection String to Application: the connection string to use to get to the workflow system via a SAP router (See the SAP Help Portal on connection strings at SAProuter • using SAProuter • Route Strings).
• SAP Client: the workflow system’s client number
• SAP System ID (SID)
• SAP System Number
• System Type: Usually SAP_R3 unless this is a BW or CRM system, in which case SAP_BW or SAP_CRM, respectively.



Figure 2.5: Minimal settings for Connection String

ITS and WAS settings

Once the Connector properties are correctly defined, then you need to configure the web access sections—SAP GUI for HTML and IAC components use the Internet Transaction Server (ITS)section (see Figure 2.6); Web Dynpro and BSP components use the Web Application Server (Web AS) section (see Figure 2.7).These property categories are set up almost identically, using the same values for the Host Name and Protocol fields.



Figure 2.6: Settings for ITS

The Host Name field is the host name (or IP address) and port of the SAP Business Workflow server as seen by the user’s browser, as opposed to the Connector setting above which is the name of the server as seen from the Portal server. The Protocol field determines whether the user’s browser uses HTTP or HTTPS as protocol to access the SAP Business Workflow server. An HTTPS connection is strongly recommended for production situations, for security reasons.



Figure 2.7: Settings for Web AS

The only field which differs between the two categories is the Path field, which is set to /sap/bc for the ITS Path and /sap for the Web AS Path (although it turns out that in most cases, the values of Path are actually ignored by the Portal).

2.1.2  UWL System Definitions

Now you’ve set up the definition of the system you want to connect to, the next step is to make the UWL aware of it.

The first thing to do is to assign a System Alias, or nickname for the system. If you don’t do this, then the system won’t be available for selection when you’re setting up the UWL—system aliases are what the portal components use to refer to system entries.

1. To assign a System Alias to a Portal system, select System Aliases from the Display drop-down menu when you’re editing that system in the Portal (see Figure 2.8).This will take you to the System Alias editor.



Figure 2.8: Selecting System Aliases from the Display drop-down

2. Once you’re in the System Alias Editor (see Figure 2.9) you need to enter at least one alias. The first alias you enter becomes the default alias (the default alias is the one used for setting up User Mapping, a single sign-on method which is beyond the scope of this book). In the example shown, the alias SAP_R3_Workflowis about to be added to a system which already has a default alias of NSP_100.Click the Save button when you’re done entering aliases.



Figure 2.9: The System Alias Editor

3. Next, select Permissions from the Display drop-down and make sure that end users have at least Read permissions, with the End User box checked, for the system entry in the Portal (see Figure 2.10). Figure 2.10 shows the simple option of giving Everyone access—in a more restrictive security environment, you may wish to be more specific about which portal roles are allowed access to the system (although even with Everyone given access, users are still restricted in what they can do in that system by the security roles assigned in the back end itself). Make sure to click the Save button when you’ve defined the permissions.



Figure 2.10: Read permissions for the system entry

4. Now you’ve created an alias for the system and set the permissions. Navigate to System Administration • System Configuration • Universal Worklist & Workflow • Universal Worklist–Administration and click on the New button to start the process of connecting UWL to the system you’ve just defined (see Figure 2.11).



Figure 2.11: Universal Worklist Systems screen

5. In the resulting form, enter a System Alias of the system you’re connecting to UWL. Leave the connector type set to WebFlowConnector, leave the other entries at their default or empty values for now and then click Save (see Figure 2.12).



Figure 2.12: Universal Worklist Systems definition

6. The newly defined system (SAP_R3_Workflow) will then appear in the list of Universal Worklist systems.

2.1.3  SAP Authorizations and Prerequisites Needed for UWL

Before you actually connect to the back-end SAP Business Workflow system, there are certain things you need to have in place on that system. These are slightly different depending on whether you are using a SAP NetWeaver 2004 or a SAP NetWeaver 7.0 system:

Common Prerequisites

• Users need to have authorisation in the SAP Business Workflow system to call Remote Function Calls (RFC) in function groups SWRC, SDTX and SSCV.
• The back-end workflow system must have an active Internet Transaction Server (ITS) enabled.
• Workflow has been set up in the SAP Business Workflow system (transaction SWU3)
• Single sign-on has been set up from the Portal to the SAP Business Workflow system

SAP NetWeaver 2004 Prerequisites

• Either Content Management must be installed, or the instructions in SAP Note 702255 must be followed.
• Users must have authorisations to call RFCs in function group SWK1 and also to run transaction SWK1.
• Workplace plug-in 6.0 must be installed on the back-end workflow system.

SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Prerequisites

• See SAP note 941589 for the roles required by UWL administrators and end users in the workflow system.
• Users also need authorisation to call RFCs in function group SWN_UWL_WL.

2.1.4  Registering Item Types

The final step in getting the Universal Worklist up and running is to tell it about all the different kinds of work item in the back end and what to do when a user clicks on each type of work item. The easiest way to do this is to pull down a list of task definitions from the back-end system—we’ll look at how to customise the launch behaviour later on in section 2.4.

The downloading of this configuration from the back-end is called registration, and is achieved by clicking the Register button in the list of Universal Worklist systems, as shown in Figure 2.13. It may take several minutes to download the item type configuration from the back-end.



Figure 2.13: Universal Worklist Systems list

If you make any changes in the back end, for example changing the workflow configuration or changing the UWL customisation in transaction SWFVISU (see section 2.4), then you must come back to the UWL systems list and click the Re-Register button.

2.1.5  Configuring Alerts

To configure the UWL to receive messages from the SAP Alert Framework, just create an entry in exactly the same way as described above (you can use the same System Alias name), but choose AlertConnector instead of WebFlowConnector.

You can find documentation on configuring the Alert Management Framework in the SAP Help Portal (http://help.sap.com) in the category Alert Management (BC-SRV-GBT-ALM).

2.1.6  The Result

Now you’ve set up the Universal Worklist to talk to an SAP Business Workflow system. To prove that it all works, you’ll want to kick off a sample workflow and see the resulting work item appear in the portal. Here’s how you do that.

1. First of all, log into the SAP Business Workflow system and run transaction SWU3. This is the transaction used to set up the workflow system (see Appendix A for details), so assuming the system has been set up correctly you should see a list of green ticks (don’t worry if the Guided Procedures entry has a red cross: this is only needed for connecting SAP Business Workflow to Guided Procedures—more details in Chapter 4). You can see what this transaction looks like in Figure 2.14.



Figure 2.14: Transaction SWU3 showing a mostly set-up SAP Business Workflow system

2. If you click on the icon Start verification workflow, this will start a simple workflow. You can check that this has worked by clicking on the icon (SAP Business Workplace) which will take you to the SAP Inbox—select the Workflow category and you should see a work item titled First step in workflow verification (see Figure 2.15).



Figure 2.15: SAP Inbox showing the work item from the verification workflow

3. As a final step to check that everything is set up correctly, log into the portal and navigate to the Universal Worklist. Assuming you have the Standard User role — pcd:portal_content/every_user/general/eu_role — this will be at Home • Work • Overview.

4. If everything has gone to plan, you should see a screen that looks something like Figure 2.16, with a work item titled First step in workflow verification.



Figure 2.16: Universal Worklist showing a work item from a SAP Business Workflow system