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SAP Build Process Automation is one the three services of SAP Build. SAP Build is a low-code and no-code solution of SAP that provides services and capabilities to create applications, automate tasks and processes and design business sites with drag-and-drop approach and simple configurations.
With low-code no-code tools, SAP is already helping organizations to accelerate their developer efficiency thereby addressing the challenges faced by scarcity in skilled developers and empowering citizen developers or non-IT developers to contribute to the application and process development.
To further accelerate the solution development, SAP Build has published wide variety of pre-built content packages across different industries and line of businesses on common identified whitespaces. These 450+ pre-built content can be explored from SAP Business Accelerator Hub where the content is published by SAP (available for free) and by our partners (available with price).
Each content package contains pre-built processes/workflows, business rules, automations, business monitoring dashboards, UI5 applications, DOX (document extraction) templates and many other artifacts that are needed for the pre-built use case. Organizations can import and configure these content packages – for free – without writing even a single line of code.
Isn’t that what you want when you are working on common scenarios like creating and managing business partners, dealing with mass maintenance of billing blocks in sales orders, or working with journal entry external approvals before posting or invoices processing etc.
If you too are planning to start development on any new scenarios or upgrade existing scenarios in Finance, Procurement, Human Resources, Sales, Asset Management, Manufacturing etc. in your organization, then this blog will help you to kick-start your project with pre-built content.
In this blog, you will find answers to all the queries on the content like where can I discover the content, how to search for the right content, what is SAP Store and how is it different from Business Accelerator Hub, how to import the content, can the content be extended, where to get the support, how to publish content as a partner and many more. If you still do not find the answer, then please leave a comment and I will address it.
Let us start with very basic query:
Why Pre-Built Content?
You may ask why we should go for pre-built content when I have an IT team or implementation partner to build the same use case. Valid point! An enterprise solution requires an IT team or team of professional or solution developers to create an end-to-end use case. There are many building blocks to an enterprise solution. They can create these building blocks using SAP Build or SAP BTP tools and services. But it takes time!
Pre-built content just helps these teams to accelerate their development by saving resources, saving time to market, having a modularized approach, and reducing waste with less coding and testing efforts. Then why not leverage the enterprise ready template or ready-to-use pre-built content that are available for free, aligned with SAP best practices and having full scope of customization and extension.
I strongly recommend my customers and stakeholders, to look for the pre-built content for their industry use cases, import them, extend them if needed and finally integrate them with their applications or other components of their solutions.
… now you will wonder where to look for these pre-built content?
How to find the right content?
SAP Build content can be discovered from:
- SAP Business Accelerator Hub from the following direct link: https://hub.sap.com/build
- Store option in SAP Build Process Automation subscription application.
where SAP Business Accelerator Hub store is free to explore which means that you can navigate through the store without the need for license of SAP Build or Build Process Automation service but for embedded Store option you will need SAP Build or Build Process Automation service subscription.
Let me start with Business Accelerator Hub options and same steps will apply for embedded store as well.
When you reach to the Business Accelerator Hub – SAP Build Domain page, you will be provided with search and filter options on the left panel. Using these options, you can filter the content or direct type in the search-term to find the content you are looking for.
For example: I want to search for all Finance content, so I will expand Line of Business section and select Finance and you will get the list of related content.
Another example: let us say you know the few terms based on your use case, then you can directly write in search-text. Say Fixed Asset
Go across all the results to find the right content by looking at the title and the description. If you want to know more about the content, then click on content tile and it will take you to the details.
- In the overview, you will find the long description of the content which explain what this content does and how it extends the standard solution, including a solution diagram
(which explains the component interactions)
- On switching to Artefacts, it gives an overview of complete list of artefacts it bundles. These are the artefacts that you will configure and extend after importing the content.
- Documents section provides a detailed step-by-step setup and configuration guide. This will be needed once you decide to use the content. It is the first set of instructions you will need to consume the content in your project.
How to import and use the content?
To import the content, you will need respective SAP Build service. For now, as most of the content is based on capabilities of SAP Build Process Automation service so:
- First thing you have to do is install SAP Build Process Automation, if you do not have the subscription already ( follow this help documentation to setup the service in your enterprise or trial account )
- Open SAP Build Process Automation subscription application which will take you to Lobby. From Lobby, click to open Store from the left panel.
- Store or embedded Store provides the view of only SAP Build content packages as seen in SAP Business Accelerator Hub, with options to import the content. Here as well you can filter or directly search the content with search-text. Same experience as from accelerator hub.
note: you will notice button options like Create from Template, Add or both.
- Add option is shown for ready-to-use content which means these content packages are imported as-is and only minimum configurations are allowed.
- Create from Template is shown for template content which means the new business project will be created from this template, and you get full scope for any customization or extension.
- There will be few contents which has both options, which means you can use them as ready-made, or template based on your requirements.
you can find more details on these metadata properties here.
4. Import the content using Add or Create from Template one-click action.
Important Note: You must follow the setup and configuration guide ( attached with each content) to ensure that you have created and configured all the needed mandatory artefacts like destinations to connect to S/4HANA system, embedded UI5 application as Start tile in Work Zone, setup cloud connectors for any on-premise based content etc.
5. Once the content is imported in the Lobby, you can navigate into the respective project to configure, customize, or extend the content
All the artefacts, templates (excel, PDF or DOX) and source-code (for SAPUI5 apps, CAP models etc.) are provided to you with the imported business project. You can now follow the documentation to first configure the mandatory artifacts, as explained in the document and then choose to extend it based on the requirements or use it with the minimum configuration.
That’s it, that it all it needs to use the SAP Build content. If you haven’t explored them yet I would recommend trying them out in your ongoing or next project – and I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised with the variety of the content and how much it helps you ease your work.
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Let me now cover some commonly asked questions:
1. How to get support for the content?
Not all contents are supported. The content that are supported, the respective support information is provided in the documentation. It will either be an email or support component where you can raise ticket for any bug or consultation.
2. What is difference between SAP Store and SAP Business Accelerator Hub?
For SAP Build Process Automation content, SAP Store is the commercial hub which means any partner or LoB who wants to publish a paid content – will have to publish the content in SAP Store. The same gets replicated in SAP Business Accelerator Hub or embedded Store. You cannot directly import the paid content from the embedded Store.
You will notice the Buy option for such content when opened in the embedded store. Clicking this option takes you to SAP Store – which means you must first buy the content from respective vendor, and they will provide instructions to use the content.
3. Can customer or partner publish the content?
Currently only partners can create and publish the content in the store. All the guidance to publish the SAP Build Process Automation content is available in Partner Edge portal.
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In upcoming blogs, you will find interesting details on some of our selective and most-sought-after content for different industries. Concluding this blog with some important links that will help you learn further:
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