SAP Configuration automation POC using

ServiceNow

Biswaroop Chatterjee
 Agenda

 Objective of the POC

 What we could achieve

 Architechture and Process Flow

 IBM POV

 Demo scripts and Lessons learnt links

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 Objective

• Explore means whether Functional Configuration activity for SAP projects can be automated using ServiceNow scripts

• Come up with IBM POV based on a POC

• Learn how to customize and enhance ServiceNow that can play a big role to address some of the gaps that exist today in
the DevOps toolchain for any SAP project

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 What we could achieve

2. Automated import of file content in the SNOW Data sources

1. Customized Front-end to create the data sources dynamically in SNOW based on
the input file structure

4. Detailed logs with all the success and failures

3. Automated triggering of back-end updates in SAP

• Customized front-end in SNOW to create the data sources ( temporary storage structure in SNOW ) dynamically based on the input file
structure
• Automated population of the SNOW data sources with input file contents through scheduled jobs
• Automated triggering of back-end updates in SAP by calling relevant SOAP-based ABAP Webservice from another scheduled job in SNOW
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 Architechture & Process Flow

4. Imports the data from the data

DaTA Soucre 1 DaTA Soucre 2 source , call the SOAP-based
ABAP web service in SAP to 5. Configurations are
update the configuration updated
3. Creates the temporary storage
table structures automatically and
populate the data from the file 6. Results are sent back ABAP Web
FTP server service SPRO
updates
FTP handler
using SNOW Job 1 SNOW Job 2
FileZilla 2. Picks up the file

1. Input file in local directory in PC

IBM ECC in Cloud
7. SNOW log showing the details of success & failure

IBM ServiceNow in Cloud

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 IBM POV
Evaluation Criteria
Flexibility of Customizing in SNOW to build automation script
Reusability of the automation scripts in SNOW for different input files
Automation on SAP side – can we avoid coding or have a reusable
solution
Can this version be extended as a fully automated effective solution for
Functional Configuration Automation in SAP
Rating Comments
We had extensive enablement in SNOW as part of this POC and could acquire in-
depth knowledge on how to write scripts in SNOW, schedule jobs , build custom
front-end, integrate ABAP web service calls
With some minor effort on the input file structures, we were successful to create
the temporary storage structure in SNOW ( Data Source ) dynamically based on the
input file structures and populate the input file contents in them
Unfortunately we ended up writing ABAP code on SAP side to update the
configurations and also could not make it reusable. By putting some more effort, we
can make the code more dynamic in nature for different input files to increase the
reusability part but still we can’t avoid the coding altogether
No benefit envisaged to extend this version of POC for Functional Configuration
automation since we are not able to avoid coding on SAP side . But we can explore
new ways like integration with Blueprism & PEGA as next step

• To summarize, we went through an exciting journey to learn tricks on how to write automation scripts in SNOW and make
the scripts reusable for different input files consisting of Fuctional Configuration request.
• But we could not find a way to avoid writing code to update configuration on SAP side nor could we make it reusable
• As a next step, we need to explore ways whether we can call robots created using Blueprism or PEGA solution dynamically
from SNOW scripts and can move to a fully automated solution with zero coding on SAP side
• We also need to explore other functionality of SNOW in details especially those Nestle will adopt

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 Acknowledgement of the team

The team that made it happen:

• Technical SME on SNOW side

• Anup Mondal34/India/IBM
• Jim Suan/Philippines/IBM
• Technical SME on ABAP side
• Gouri Ghosh/India/IBM
• Technical Leads and Architect
• Surindam Dhar/India/IBM
• Pabitra Ghosh1/India/IBM
• Functional Lead on SAP side
• Debanjan Das Gupta/India/IBM
• Overall Coordination and Leadership
• Biswaroop Chatterjee/India/IBM

IBM Service Line and Nestle Leadership team :

• Aditi Bhattacharya/India/IBM
• Sarmistha Sarma/India/IBM
• Kelly Hutton/Switzerland/IBM

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 Demo video Link

Demo script Link

https://ibm.box.com/s/72rk9vdji3y00nb7rgq93ieoti4ogiom

Lessons learnt doc

https://ibm.box.com/s/1b40yq2z1tprkyus5k3ob05kaas09g3f

ServiceNow related knowledge doc

https://ibm.box.com/s/wrktn1sy4kcp3n651pzblka3d253jy5l

https://ibm.ent.box.com/s/hobi6w2c2d77ukkx45hvoq70m6fplb18

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