SAP Intelligent RPA for Developers: Automate business processes using SAP Intelligent RPA and learn the migration path to SAP Process Automation

Preface

SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software. With nearly 440,000 customers worldwide, 77% of the world's transaction revenue touches an SAP system. SAP has made automation a key pillar across its product suite and counts on SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate repetitive work and integrate automation capabilities across SAP and non-SAP systems. This book provides end-to-end coverage of business process automation using SAP Intelligent RPA.

You will learn about various building blocks of the SAP Intelligent RPA solution, follow many step-by-step tutorials on creating bots from initial application declaration to workflow design and deployment, and make bots run in attended and unattended modes. You will also learn about SAP Intelligent RPA 2.0 components such as the low-code Cloud Studio and an updated runtime to create and execute your bots.

By the end of this book, you will be able to create bots capable of interacting with SAP and non-SAP systems. In addition, you will understand the efficient management of these bots and various SAP Cloud Platform services that complement SAP Intelligent RPA. Finally, you will also learn some of the lessons that we as authors of this book learned while delivering SAP Intelligent RPA projects.

Who this book is for

This book is for developers and business users interested in learning SAP Intelligent RPA for the automation of non-value-add, monotonous, and error-prone work. SAP Intelligent RPA offers three modes of development—no-code, low-code, and pro-code. Business users can use the no-code development mode with no technical knowledge assumed. A rudimentary understanding of JavaScript is helpful for business users but is essential for developers who want to engage in pro-code development to address complex challenges.

Access to the SAP Business Technology Platform trial system would be necessary as you progress through the book. Although you can wait to set the system up when needed, we recommend setting it up now by using this link, https://www.sap.com/products/business-technology-platform/trial.html and exploring the available functionalities as and when possible.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, SAP Intelligent RPA Architecture and Components, explains the overall architecture of SAP Intelligent RPA along with their dependency on other components in using the SAP Intelligent RPA. You will understand the options available to develop and deploy the automation solutions and which component is relevant for any step in automation solution development.

Chapter 2, An Overview of SAP Intelligent RPA Cloud Factory, gives an introduction to SAP Cloud Factory, which centrally manages all common resources related to SAP Intelligent RPA. This chapter introduces terminology and usage of the Cloud Factory and explains Environments, Agents and Agent Groups, Packages, Jobs, and Triggers.

Chapter 3, Installing SAP Intelligent RPA On-Premise Components, explains the system requirements for installing and running the Desktop Studio and Desktop Agent, and installation procedures. It also explains installing third-party dependencies.

Chapter 4, Setting Up SAP Intelligent RPA On-Premise Components, includes an explanation of various topics required to complete the setup and before running the automation solutions, which includes security within SAP Intelligent RPA, authorization, roles, and authentication.

Chapter 5, An Overview of Desktop Studio, includes a short introduction to Desktop Studio perspectives to familiarize you with the terminology.

Chapter 6, An Overview of Desktop Agent, gives an introduction to Desktop Agent, explains the role of Desktop Agent during the automation process, how Desktop Agent is launched, and how to connect Desktop Agent to Cloud Factory.

Chapter 7, An Overview of Cloud Studio, explains the Cloud Studio and its usage, differentiating the Desktop Studio from Cloud Studio, and different options available in Cloud Studio to import packages, create workflows, and export projects.

Chapter 8, An Introduction to SAP Spotlight and Signavio, introduces a couple of additional tools from SAP that can help ease understanding the process and orchestrate an automation solution.

Chapter 9, Desktop Studio Perspectives, is an extension of Chapter 4, Setting Up SAP Intelligent RPA On-Premise Components, which includes a very detailed explanation of the Desktop Studio, different perspectives, and usage while developing an automation solution.

Chapter 10, Creating and Managing Projects, covers a detailed explanation of projects, including how to create projects, structuring projects, project properties, dependencies, and maintaining versions.

Chapter 11, An Introduction to Technology Connectors, gives an introduction to eight connectors available in SAP Intelligent RPA, including a detailed explanation of the Web, UI Automation, SAP GUI, SAPUI5, and Win32 connectors, along with usage examples on when to use which connector for capturing screens.

Chapter 12, Capturing and Declaring Applications, Pages, and Items, introduces us to SAP Intelligent RPA terminology used for automating applications. It has a detailed explanation of how to capture different types (Windows Desktop applications, and web applications) of applications, capturing and defining pages, and subpages within applications. The chapter also shows how to identify the controls within the page and defines the criteria for identifying these.

Chapter 13, Designing Scenarios, covers creating workflows and adding activities such as set or get values from UI components/controls, or performing actions on controls such as clicking a button.

Chapter 14, Advanced Criteria Definition, covers extending the criteria definitions learned in Chapter 12, Capturing and Declaring Applications, Pages, and Items; this chapter covers advanced declaration techniques provided by SAP Intelligent RPA that are used to identify pages and controls uniquely in complex applications.

Chapter 15, Controlling Workflows and Scenarios, explains how to includes loops to process a list of data and control the flow based on data, that is, to include conditional flow in the workflows.

Chapter 16, Designing Custom Pages with UI Designer, includes a detailed explanation of the UI Designer perspective and how to create custom pages and use them in a workflow.

Chapter 17, Generating Code, provides a detailed explanation of building the automation project and where to look for compilation errors while building the project. This chapter also covers how the generated project source code is organized.

Chapter 18, An Introduction to SDK Reference Guide, covers the SDK and different libraries available in the SDK that are useful while developing an automation solution.

Chapter 19, SDK Extension Libraries, is a continuation of the previous chapter, where a detailed explanation of SDK extensions is covered. This includes integrations with Office apps such as Outlook, Excel, and so on, PDF integration, and other specific technologies, such as SAP extensions.

Chapter 20, Managing Environment Variables, covers the usage of environment variables, how to create them in the Cloud Factory, and reading and using them in workflows.

Chapter 21, Building Projects, explains how a project is built for testing or deployment and probable issues and resolutions faced during building the project.

Chapter 22, Deploying Projects, covers how a project is deployed to the Cloud Factory and different options available for controlling the deployments targeted to specific groups based on either users or business areas.

Chapter 23, Debugging Projects, targets developers involved in automation solution development. This chapter includes a detailed explanation of the Debug perspective. It covers the steps to follow to check the state of the pages, screens, and controls, and identify and monitor the changes to variables and controls.

Chapter 24, Development Using Cloud Studio, provides a detailed explanation of how the Cloud Studio is used for developing automation solutions and how the Cloud Studio can be used like Desktop Studio for the development of automation solutions.

Chapter 25, Reusability of Packages Across Multiple Solutions, covers how to manage solution components and reuse them across automation solutions.

Chapter 26, An Introduction to Process Recorder, gives an introduction to process Recorder and how it can be used to accelerate the development process.

Chapter 27, SAP Intelligent RPA Store, explains the usage of SAP Intelligent RPA Store and how to download the predefined solutions and adopt them by updating as per business requirements to increase automation productivity.

Chapter 28, SAP Intelligent RPA – Future Roadmap and Automation-Related Services, discusses SAP Intelligent RPA's future roadmap as well as a list of automation-related services available in SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).

Any errata related to this book can be found at the following link: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/SAP-Intelligent-RPA-for-Developers.

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here:

https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781801079198_ColorImages.pdf

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: Since this is an SAP page, we will be using the keys defined under SAPScripting and not e.key.Enter, which can be used for non-SAP pages.

A block of code is set as follows:

Horizontal MaximumRowsOrColumns=3 ItemHeight=200 ItemWidth=200>

    Red />

    Blue />

    Green />

    Yellow />

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: Right-click on the GLOBAL node in the Workflow perspective and select the New Workflow… option from the context menu.

Tips or important notes

Appear like this.

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Prologue – SAP Process Automation Service

Just before this book was published, we learned that the SAP Intelligent RPA service might soon be discontinued in its current form. While the news came as a shock, we talked with the SAP team to understand the way forward. As a result, we learned that while the SAP Intelligent RPA and Workflow Management services may be discontinued soon, they will become part of a new service, SAP Process Automation (SPA). This information quelled the initial shock, but several additional questions came up overall. In this prologue, we will try to answer those questions under the following topics:

Understanding the SPA service

Transitioning to SPA from SAP Intelligent RPA

Where to begin and look for help when needed

Understanding the SPA service

SPA is a new SAP service that intends to combine two existing services, SAP Intelligent RPA and Workflow Management, to offer automation developers a full suite of tools in one place. Within the SPA service, we still have the option of creating either automation or a workflow or creating an end-to-end process. However, all these options are available under a single service now. If your license for SAP Intelligent RPA or Workflow Management is valid for more time, you can still keep using those services for that duration.

Our core concern is to help you transition from SAP Intelligent RPA to SPA. Therefore, we will touch upon only the relevant parts of the service. Let's see how SPA looks and how we can create automations using this new service.

Check out the following screenshot:

Figure Prologue.1 – SAP Process Automation

Let's discuss the nine areas of interest shown in the preceding screenshot:

Lobby: This is the landing page of the SPA service, shown in the preceding screenshot. The one significant difference from SAP Intelligent RPA that you will also see here is a link to My Inbox (5).

Store: This tab leads to the pre-built content for SPA. Here, you will see the content for live processes (workflows) in addition to process automation content. Store is slightly different from the SAP Intelligent RPA store, and there are no bots built using Desktop Studio. Here is a screenshot of it:

Figure Prologue.2 – SPA store

Monitor: You can manage and monitor all your processes and workflow instances from this tab.

Figure Prologue.3 – Monitor tab

Settings: You can manage agents, backend configurations, destinations, and several other settings from this tab.

Figure Prologue.4 – Settings

My Inbox: My Inbox opens up in a new tab and shows all tasks assigned to the logged-in user. Since we have no running automations yet, our list is empty.

Figure Prologue.5 – My Inbox

Create a Process: This link leads you to an interface similar to the Workflow Management service. After providing the project and process names, you can create an end-to-end process using various constituents, such as forms, approvals, automations, decisions, actions, workflows, and controls.

Figure Prologue.6 – Create a Process

Create a Form: As the name suggests, this link leads you to a form editor where you can create a custom form for your scenario.

Create an Automation: As Intelligent RPA developers, this link is the most relevant to us. This link leads us to a project creation screen.

Figure Prologue.7 – Automation project creation in SPA

Once the project is created, the next screen for Create Automation pops up.

Figure Prologue.8 – Create Automation in SPA

Once you have provided the necessary information on this screen, you will see the familiar editor from SAP Intelligent RPA with all the constituents exactly as you would be used to.

Figure Prologue.9 – Automation editor in SPA

Since we are at the beginning of the book, these images may not mean much to you now. It would be safe to say that even if SAP Process Automation Service replaces the SAP Intelligent RPA service in the future, you will still be able to use your learnings from this book in the new service.

Browse Content: This link leads you to the Store tab (2).

Transitioning to SPA from SAP Intelligent RPA

Transitioning from the SAP Intelligent RPA service to SPA raises the following two questions:

How long can I continue working on the SAP Intelligent RPA service?

We have been told that customers can keep using the SAP Intelligent RPA service until the end of their license validity. However, license renewal may or may not be available after the license validity expiration.

Can I migrate my current SAP Intelligent RPA projects to the SPA service?

Yes. With some limitations, you can now migrate your SAP Intelligent RPA projects to SAP Process Automation. For details, please check here, https://blogs.sap.com/2022/04/20/move-now-import-your-sap-intelligent-rpa-projects-into-sap-process-automation/.

So, you can create new automations, import pre-built automations from the store, and migrate your SAP Intelligent RPA projects to SAP Process Automation. Keep following the SPA roadmap at https://roadmaps.sap.com/board?PRODUCT=73554900100800003832&range=CURRENT-LAST#Q2%202022 to understand the updates to the migrate feature.

Where to begin and look for help when needed

While the SAP team has shared that the SAP Intelligent RPA and Workflow Management services may be retiring, these services have not been listed under the RETIRING SOON section. So, we can keep using these services for some more time:

Figure Prologue.10 – Services retiring soon

However, preparing for the eventual shift from SAP Intelligent RPA to SPA would be a wise move on your part to be ready for the transition. To experience SPA, now a part of SAP's new free tier, follow this blog by Sebastian Schroetel: https://blogs.sap.com/2022/03/30/sap-process-automation-free-tier-is-out-create-your-own-automations/. To start building projects in the SPA service, you can follow this seven-part series of blogs by Murali Shanmugham: https://blogs.sap.com/2022/02/20/getting-started-with-sap-process-automation-the-new-no-code-experience-for-automation-part-1/. You can also find answers to most of your questions at SAP's help page for SPA at https://help.sap.com/docs/PROCESS_AUTOMATION.

Summary

In this prologue, we discussed SAP's proposed transition from SAP Intelligent RPA to SPA. As we understand it, there is no direct impact on your ongoing SAP Intelligent RPA projects, and there is now a straightforward migration path for SAP Intelligent RPA projects to SPA. Also, all your learnings from this book will remain applicable to the new SPA service. Now, let's begin learning about SAP Intelligent RPA.

Part 1: Introduction to SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation

This is an introductory part of the book in which you will be familiarized with the products and different components available in SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA). You will also get an understanding of the brief history of SAP Intelligent RPA and how it has evolved into a reliable product for all automation needs of any organization or business area. This section also explains how to install and set up SAP Intelligent RPA and where to get the installable files. You will see a list of prerequisites before starting the installation and how to set up different third-party tools used by SAP Intelligent RPA for various development activities.

This section comprises the following chapters:

Chapter 1, SAP Intelligent RPA Architecture and Components

Chapter 2, An Overview of SAP Intelligent RPA Cloud Factory

Chapter 3, Installing SAP Intelligent RPA On-Premise Components

Chapter 4, Setting Up SAP Intelligent RPA On-Premise Components

Chapter 5, An Overview of Desktop Studio

Chapter 6, An Overview of Desktop Agent

Chapter 1: SAP Intelligent RPA Architecture and Components

This chapter aims to provide you with an introduction to SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (IRPA) and how you can use it to help your organization achieve its automation objectives. We will discuss a brief history of SAP Intelligent RPA, its components, and how they relate to each other. After this quick introduction, we will talk about all the available resources in your learning journey and where to seek help when you need it. Finally, we will address why you should learn SAP Intelligent RPA and why your organization should use it.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

A brief history of SAP Intelligent RPA

The core components of SAP Intelligent RPA

The relationship between Intelligent RPA components

Where to find help when needed

Why should you learn and use SAP Intelligent RPA

By the end of this chapter, you will understand SAP Intelligent RPA and why an individual or an organization should use it. You will also gain knowledge of how to use SAP Intelligent RPA.

Let's begin with understanding a bit of the history of SAP Intelligent RPA.

Technical requirements

For the instructions and code in this chapter, you just need an internet connection.

A brief history of SAP Intelligent RPA

SAP acquired Contextor SAS – a Europe-based firm specializing in delivering RPA solutions – in November 2018 and renamed it SAP Intelligent RPA soon after. However, Contextor had been delivering RPA solutions in Europe since 2003 and involved in research and development specific to RPA since 2000.

Why is this important?

It is necessary to understand that SAP Intelligent RPA is based on an RPA platform with a deep foundation and solution maturity spanning nearly 2 decades. Any RPA solution can offer the expected functionalities, but solution maturity takes time, and SAP Intelligent RPA has gone through that process.

The solution that SAP launched in 2018 as SAP Intelligent RPA is now renamed SAP Intelligent RPA 1.0, and a new version, SAP Intelligent RPA 2.0, has been launched recently. SAP started offering pre-built bots for Intelligent RPA as SAP Best Practice content in 2019 and changed the delivery model through the Intelligent RPA Store some time back. We will briefly discuss all core components in this chapter while leaving detailed discussions about each of them to later chapters in the book. For now, we will move on to discuss SAP Intelligent RPA's core components.

The core components of SAP Intelligent RPA

Six core components spread equally on cloud and on-premises make up the SAP Intelligent RPA platform. They are primarily categorized as cloud and on-premises components. Let's discuss each of these components in the following sections.

Cloud components

We can classify the following three components as cloud components:

Figure 1.1 – The cloud components of SAP Intelligent RPA

As the name suggests, cloud components reside in the cloud, specifically in the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), previously known as the SAP Cloud Platform. The three cloud components are Cloud Factory, Cloud Studio, and the Store, each discussed in the following subsections.

Cloud Factory

Cloud Factory – also known as Intelligent RPA Factory – serves as the orchestration and monitoring center of SAP Intelligent RPA. It hosts resource management tools and monitors job execution, displays logs, and historical job data. Cloud Factory is where the registration of desktop agents and the creation of agent groups take place. It also provides the apps for configuring a dedicated mail server and integration with the SAP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tool.

Cloud Studio

Cloud Studio is the newest entrant to the SAP Intelligent RPA toolset and is the main constituent and development tool of Intelligent RPA 2.0. SAP Intelligent RPA provides three modes of developing RPA bots – Low Code (LC), No Code (NC), and Pro Code (PC). Cloud Studio is currently aligned with NC and LC modes of automation development but will soon also offer PC mode. Using Cloud Studio, you can create new projects or assemble, test, and validate new and existing projects.

Store

The Intelligent RPA Store is the online catalog and delivery platform for all SAP's predefined content, including bots for business and learning, built using Cloud Studio and Desktop Studio. SAP clients can use these bots as a starting point to develop custom bots specific to their business case, saving both time and money in the process. Bot Store also lists all the SAP Intelligent RPA SDKs. You can search for desired content on parameters such as design tool, catalog, category, application, edition, line of business, and industry using the store. At the time of this writing, the Store lists 353 SAP packages. In the beginning, SAP delivered Intelligent RPA content through the SAP Best Practices channel but switched to the Store in 2020. You can access the Store from Cloud Factory or directly via this URL: https://store.irpa.cfapps.eu10.hana.ondemand.com/#/home.

Let's now discuss the on-premises components.

On-premises components

The remaining three components are classified as on-premises components, as shown in the following diagram:

Figure 1.2 – On-premises components

We will talk about each component in detail next.

The Desktop Agent

The Desktop Agent is a small software component that is essential on a workstation or server that is running automations. Desktop agents leverage user sessions to carry out automations by connecting with and invoking the actions on the components (Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Excel, the web browser, and so on) involved in the automation scenario. The desktop agent connects with Cloud Factory using a WebSocket connection (persistent and bidirectional) and runs both attended and unattended automations.

Desktop Studio

Desktop Studio is a software component installed on a developer's workstation and is the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for developing all aspects of process automation. Desktop Studio's various development perspectives provide tools for application capture, code editing, workflow design, and user interface design. Desktop Studio is associated with LC and PC modes of automation development.

The browser extension

The browser extension is the software module that gets installed along with other on-premises components and is responsible for the automation scenarios associated with a web browser.

Having learned about the different components that constitute SAP Intelligent RPA, we'll next learn about how they interact with each other.

The relationship between Intelligent RPA components

While all components of SAP Intelligent RPA are not equal and every member does not interact with every other component directly, there are numerous connections and interdependencies that drive the bot building and execution processes. Let's take each element one by one and discuss the following aspects:

The primary users of the component

Interaction with other components

Maintenance of the component

The following diagram describes all these aspects visually, but we will elaborate on these aspects as we go along:

Figure 1.3 – A flowchart showing interactions between Intelligent RPA components

Let's see how this interaction works:

Cloud Factory: Administrators are Cloud Factory's primary users, but developers also utilize Cloud Factory as the landing page for accessing Cloud Studio and the Store. Business users usually never need to access Cloud Factory directly. Cloud Factory is the de facto control center of the Intelligent RPA platform and hence connects with many components. Cloud Studio can only be accessed through Cloud Factory, while a user needs to access the Store from Cloud Factory to use any pre-built content. Cloud Factory and desktop agents interact to make unattended packages available at scheduled times and run automations in attended mode. SAP maintains and keeps updating Cloud Factory frequently:

Figure 1.4 – Cloud Factory

Cloud Studio: Developers are the primary users of Cloud Studio. Administrators also have access to the studio, but they do not need it for their function. Cloud Studio connects with the factory to deploy generated projects, and a developer can access the local filesystem to upload any available files or desktop packages. The maintenance of Cloud Studio is owned by SAP.

Store: Business users and developers are the Store's primary consumers to find predefined content relevant for their intended automations. The Store is connected to Cloud Factory but can also be accessed directly with a public URL. The Store is maintained by SAP and keeps getting new content regularly.

Desktop Studio: Developers are the primary users of Desktop Studio. The studio interacts with the browser extension for web application capture, and with the operating system and various applications on its host system to build automations, but it also interacts with the Desktop Agent for debugging. While newer versions of the studio are provided by SAP, it is a developer's or IT team's responsibility to keep the studio current.

Browser extension: Post-installation, no user needs to interact with the browser extension, except for maintenance directly. However, the browser extension interacts with Desktop Studio and the Desktop Agent for application capture and execution.

Desktop Agent: Besides business users, Cloud Factory is the primary user of the Desktop Agent. While business users use the Desktop Agent to run automations in attended mode, Cloud Factory interacts with the Desktop Agent to run unattended automations as per the schedule.

Now that we have learned about the various components of SAP Intelligent RPA and how they interact to create automations, let's understand why it is important to consider using SAP Intelligent RPA as your primary automation platform.

Why SAP Intelligent RPA?

With over 400,000 customers worldwide and 77% of the world's transaction revenue going through an SAP system (see https://www.sap.com/about/company.html for more details), SAP is the undisputed leader in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) space. Hyperautomation – a synergistic combination of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning with RPA, workflow, and Business Process Management (BPM) solutions – has featured in Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2020 and 2021.

SAP Intelligent RPA appeals to this large SAP customer base due to the native integrations, continuous product improvements, and SAP's plan to provide embedded automation inside SAP S/4HANA and other cloud Line of Business (LoB) products, which started in 2021 (see https://roadmaps.sap.com/board?PRODUCT=73554900100800002142&range=CURRENT-LAST#Q2%202021 for more details). Moreover, SAP Intelligent RPA delivers the benefits of hyperautomation by its unique placement alongside the complementing services of AI, ML, workflow, and BPM within SAP Business Technology Platform (previously known as SAP Cloud Platform), where SAP Intelligent RPA also resides.

This unique combination makes SAP Intelligent RPA the desired automation platform. It ensures that developers learning this platform will benefit from the vast customer base and continuous product improvements.

Where to find help when needed

SAP Intelligent RPA is a vast topic and is growing at a rapid pace. While we will bring you the core knowledge to begin your journey as a successful Intelligent RPA developer, we highly recommend supplementing your reading at the following places:

SAP Blogs (https://blogs.sap.com/tags/73554900100800002142/) is a great place to learn all things about SAP Intelligent RPA. Use the CATEGORIES selection (technical articles, product information, and so on) to limit the blog posts to your area of interest.

The SAP