New “Transaction Record & Execute” feature for cloud connector ECS Core

“Transaction Record & Execute” feature for ECS Core

A new feature for transaction recording has been released for cloud connector ECS Core recently.
The capabilities of the feature are explained this blog article and demonstrated with two videos, the first showing the basic functionality oft the feature and the second showing a real-life integration scenario for journal entry creation in SAP.

First a little recap of what this is all about:

ECS Core comes with a tool called the WebService Designer that allows to create REST web services for SAP integration.

API integration: Until now it was possible with the WebService Designer to address so called function modules or BAPIs in SAP, which is what we call “API integration”. This approach made it possible to extract data from and write data to SAP but required some knowledge from the service architect about the SAP functions and their configuration.
Table Query Integration: Furthermore, the access of SAP tables was supported, which is what we call “Table Query Integration”. With this approach SAP table data could be queried and returned with a web service.
UI integration: Now there is a third approach we summarize under “UI integration”, this is the new “Transaction Record & Execute” feature.

With this option transactional processes in SAP can be recorded and then configured and executed as a web service. This approach is very helpful if there is no standard function in SAP available for API integration, or if a standard function in SAP is only badly documented and therefore difficult to configure.

How does it work?

Recording a transaction and configuring the resulting web service is quite easy. Just drag and drop the action to the WebService Designer canvas and enter the requested SAP transaction code. The SAP GUI will automatically open and you can start navigating through the process. After the process is finished (usually by clicking the save button), the application closes and you find yourself again in the WebService Designer. There the recorded transaction can be configured and mapped to parameters that work as input fields for the end-users later.

Look how easy is that:

Practical example

In practice there are numerous use cases where the transaction recorder feature can add some value. In the following example we demonstrate, how transaction recording can be used for journal entry creation in SAP.
Journal entries are a term from the SAP FI module and summarize debits and credits of different financial transactions. A practical example we used for demo purposes here, are so called “petty cash” transactions denoting small amounts of cash to cover minor expenditures such as transportation costs.

Such petty cash bookings and journal entries in general are handled in SAP through transaction FB50, if a document shall be posted right away, or transaction FBV0 respectively, if the journal entry shall be “parked” first for further review.

In our example we record these transactions and embed the resulting web service in the Nintex Workflow Cloud as a custom connector. The workflow is triggered through a SharePoint Online list, where the journal entries are created as list items. Have a look at the following video where the scenario is demonstrated and explained: