SAP Ariba SDK for SAP Intelligent RPA - Sneak Peek

former_member766716 · ‎2021 Sep 15

In this blog post I would like to introduce you to SAP ARIBA SDK that has been recently added into the SDK family of SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation 2.0.

The ARIBA SDK will be available with the upcoming 2109 release of SAP Intelligent RPA.

Introduction

The SAP Ariba SDK package is a collection of activities needed for automating SAP Ariba. SAP Ariba is one of the most widely used procurement solution so there are plenty of use cases that we, as an end user would like to automate in the application to make our day to day work easier.

ARIBA Custom Controls

ARIBA Input

ARIBA Element

As of now, ARIBA SDK has only two custom controls. All other controls are handled and managed by our existing Web Connector.

ARIBA SDK Activities

ARIBA SDK has no new activity of its own. It works on the top of the CORE SDK. If any of the control is detected as ARIBA custom control then the activities (click, set element) are automatically handled by the ARIBA SDK. Whereas the activities for controls other than that of ARIBA are handled by the CORE SDK itself.

To get more familiar with ARIBA SDK let us try to automate a basic SAP ARIBA use case i.e., searching an order by id in Seller Portal Dashboard. First, we will do it manually and then we would be creating an automation bot for the same.

Bot Designing

For manual flow, login into the Seller Portal Dashboard with the valid credentials.

Once we are in the seller portal dashboard, enter any order id in the order number input box.

Then click on the search icon as shown in the image below

Once we click on search icon, the system filters the orders based on the order id that we entered.

Now we will create an automation bot for the above scenario using SAP IRPA 2.0.

Prerequisites:

1. Cloud Studio should be on 2109.
2. ARIBA SDK is available in the Store.

To create an automation bot, we need to log into Cloud Studio and then follow below steps.

Create a new project in Cloud Studio.

Create a new application and then capture SAP Ariba Web Page. Make sure that the web page is already open, and the tab is an active one.

Once the application is captured, change the framework to ARIBA manually.

Then declare the elements.
In our case we need to declare the Order Number Input and the Search Icon (as shown below)
While selecting the element for declaration, the ARIBA smart declaration will itself recognize the elements as ARIBA controls if applicable.

We can start with automation now!!
Add the activities as per your requirement to the automation. Activities for the above use case includes:
Step 1- Start the application.
Step 2 - Once the screen is loaded, we need to enter an order Id in the Order Number Input.
Step 3- Finally Click on Search Icon.

And yes… we are ready to run the automation!!!!

Similarly, we can create automation bots for all other use cases of SAP Ariba.

Conclusion

The automation creation of SAP Ariba is like all other applications. The only thing to note here is that after capturing the application we need to select the framework as ARIBA manually. And then we are good to go.

Do not forget to have a look at the Learning content in our Store, as it contains many useful examples of use cases.

Find more information on SAP Intelligent RPA: