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Intro
With our August 2024 release, we are happy to share the general availability of our OData API to extract analytics data from SAP Signavio Process Intelligence.
SAP Signavio’s OData API is a scalable, out-of-the-box interface. It aims to make process mining data available to a broader audience and accessible in 3rd party tools other than SAP Signavio, including e.g. SAP SAP Analytics Cloud and Microsoft Excel.
Users can integrate valuable process insights in their existing enterprise dashboards, democratizing the value of SAP Signavio Process Intelligence overall.
Additionally, SAP’s data integration capabilities like SAP Cloud Integration within SAP Business Technology Platform can be leveraged to further ease the integration of the OData API.
This will play a crucial part for our customers to streamline their process mining insights into central analytics and reporting tools, such as SAP Analytics or related BI solutions.
In this blog post, we would like to give you an overview of this new capability.
We will guide you through the steps on how to create the API token, then how to setup an OData view that defines which data can get extracted by the API and then ending with the actual consumption of the API in Microsoft Excel and SAP Analytics Cloud.
Create API Token
Let's start by selecting the process.
In the top right corner, select the process settings option.
When you now enter your process settings within a process of SAP Signavio Process Intelligence, you will find a new tab called "OData Views". Here you can define an API token that is required for the technical authentication against the API and also an OData view that selects the right data from your event log.
Let's start by creating a new API token. Here you can define the new name of the token and set the validity duration of the token. By default, the duration is set to 90 days.
Once you done, you can simply create your token, which then displays your token exactly once. Hence, make sure to copy it down as you will not be able to retrieve the token again once you leave the page.
Create OData View
Now we want to define the data that can be extracted with this OData API. For that we require the same SIGNAL query we use on our dashboards to query the data in our event log. In this example, I used a table widget on a dashboard and viewed it in SIGNAL mode, where I can easily copy over the SIGNAL query into my clipboard.
Now going back to my OData view tab where I created my API token beforehand, I can create an OData view.
Here I can provide a new name for the OData view, a description relating the data that can be extracted and also paste in the SIGNAL query which I copied over from the table widget in my dashboard.
Note that the column name in your SIGNAL query can't have a blank space, hence we recommend you to replace it with an underscore or letter.
Once you are done, you can click on create and you get navigated back to the OData view page, where your newly created OData view is ready to be used.
Load data into Microsoft Excel
To perform a quick test against the API before connecting it to proper enterprise applications, you can use tools such as Postman or Microsoft Excel. In this example, as it is an OData API, you can simply open a new Excel worksheet and get data via the power query option.
Here you select the option OData.
Here you need to define the URL and insert the API token as password under basic authentication. Note that the URL is built up in this format:
https://<baseUrl>/pi/signal/odata/v1/<resource>
The base URL is based on the API endpoint where your Signavio workspace is hosted. In my case the name of the OData view is "NPS_Case_Status". The username is not important as the API token is implicitly already linked to your Signavio user. In this case, I used "unknown", but you can use any username as it will not be applied. More details on this can be found in our official documentation.
Once the API call was successful, you should see the dataset of your OData API.
Once you are happy with the data query, you can close and load the data into your excel worksheet.
Connect API to SAP Analytics Cloud
Now we want to use the API to extract data into SAP Analytics Cloud. For that we can create connection.
Here we select the OData Services option.
Here we can provide the OData Connection a name, URL and the API token, similarily to the setup in the Excel worksheet. Also here, the user name is set as mandatory, but will not be technically required for the authentication against the API. In our example, we use a Signavio workspace in the EU region, which can be seen in the respective URL, which can be found in the documentation. Again here, the user name is not required. I used "not_required", but you can use any word as it doesn't get used during authentication.
More details on this can be found in our official documentation.
Once the connection was successfully saved, we can now used it in a model.
You can use your newly created connection as a baseline for your model.
Then the system displays you all created OData Views where your user has access to. In my example, I have access to these four OData views that were able in my single process. We can select the "NPS_Case_Status" OData API and provide it a similar name.
After that we can select what columns we want to display in SAP Analytics Cloud. In our case, we would like to see all data as part of the OData API.
Once the data was successfully imported, you should be able to the newly extracted data under data foundation. Here you can use the extensive analytical capabilities in SAP Analytics Cloud to merge this model with your existing analytics artifacts.
And that is it! Let me know what you think of this new API and what you use it for. In case of questions, feel free to reach out to us.
Additional resources
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