This is part two of a series that covers features of the Cloud Integration Automation Service.

In this blog I will show you how you can work with the inbox itself and the tasks of your workflow. There are certain tasks that are mandatory for each workflow and they need to be completed before you can actually start with the tasks that cover the integration setup itself.

Some features are obvious, others may be new for you.

Mandatory tasks for each workflow

Once you have generated a CIAS workflow (see my blog for details) you can start to work on your tasks which reside in your CIAS Inbox.

The 3 first tasks exist for each CIAS workflow:

1. Disclaimer
2. Confirm System Components
3. Assign Users to required Roles

Disclaimer:

Please read through the Disclaimer note and learn what might be special for this CIAS configuration workflow.

You can also see on the left side different CIAS workflows that have been created and where tasks are on your name. Normally in a customer environment this will be only one or far less than in this example.

If you press the I Agree button in the right bottom corner, the next task will come up.

Confirm System Components:

Here you see the system details that you entered during the generation of the workflow. There may be some additional system information needed, but in general all system details should be taken from the generation steps of the workflow.

If no system information was entered during the workflow generation, the fields in this screen, for the access of systems, will be empty. In order to continue with the workflow, you need to enter the system details here.

Press Confirm Systems and you will come to the next step:

Assign Users to required Roles:

“Assign Users to required Roles” is an important task for the workflow.

Here you define who will be assigned to the tasks in the different systems. If the person who starts the workflow is also the person who will be doing all the configuration tasks, you can easily use the button Assign all roles to my user. Like this, all tasks of the workflow will show up in your own inbox.

However, if there are different administration users for the different systems involved, you can distribute the tasks accordingly.

Important: the username which you enter, has to be an existing username in this BTP account. Only then, this person will get the tasks for the respective system in his inbox.

You can also assign the roles to more than one user. E.g. you have two administrators of a system and you are not sure who will take the tasks for this role. In that case you assign both users separated by comma to one role (e.g. user01@system1, user02@system01). Now both users will get the tasks for this role in their inbox.

To make sure, that the different users will not work on the same task at the same time, there is a claim button for each task, which will then reserve this task to the user that claims it for him- or herself.

There are two more tasks that occur in the beginning of some workflows but not in all.

General Prerequisites

This task will give you an overview what prerequisites have to be fulfilled in order to complete the configuration. For some scenarios you need to finish other steps or gather additional information (e.g. Fieldglass configuration information) before starting with the configuration through this workflow.

Confirm the execution scope

If this task appears, you can choose between different ways to configure the scenario. E.g. if you want to connect to a Business Suite System with or without Load Balancing.

Information in the different tabs in inbox view

Once the first default tasks are completed, you can start with the configuration tasks for the chosen scenario.

In the tabs bar you will see 6 different tabs which carry the named information.

First tab is called Task instruction. Here the manual task procedure on the configuration of the scenario is describted. You will find a manual description in all cases, also if this is an automated step. Go through the instruction and finish the task. Then press Task completed on the lower right corner of the screen and the next task will automatically show up.

Remember, the manual procedure and the button Task completed is only visible on the tab Task instructions.

The following tabs are:

• Overview
  • Here you will see all tasks of this configuration workflow
• Comments
  • Here you can leave a comment for this task (e.g. parameter set…). This will be visible in the summary of the workflow execution
• System Access
  • Here you will find the information in which system this task has to be carried out
• Assigned to
  • Role and User name of the user to whom this task is assigned
• Support Information
  • Scenario Details, Execution Details, Planning Details (including Scenario Support Component in case there are difficulties to finish the task)

In most cases you will not need the different tabs but they can sometimes be helpful.

How to use automated tasks

In order to use automated tasks, it is essential that the systems are maintained correctly and that the user, that carries out the automation, has the right authorizations in these systems for the configuration steps.

You will detect in the task description view that there is a banner saying: “This is an automated task…”

Sometimes you may need to enter parameters that are to be applied in the system with the automation. Sometimes theses parameters are already predefined and should not be changed.

At the bottom of the screen you will see the Execute Step button. Once you press it, the execution should start in the background. On successful execution, you will see this pop-up:

How can I see the completed tasks of a workflow

Once the execution of the workflow is completed, you can download a PDF file from Scenario execution monitoring completed tasks (Use filter to choose the completed tasks) after confirming Summary task.

The last task of each workflow is called “Summary”. Here you get a short overview of the activities and you can download a detailed description of all tasks that were carried out during the execution of the workflow. Just press the Export to PDF button.

You will then get a document in PDF format which looks something like this:

As mentioned, here you will find all details of the workflow task execution, including username, timestamp, system, comments etc.

Best Regards

Stefan Jakobi

Product Management @ CLM