Getting Started With SAP Process Automation

Objectives
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Have an overview of the learning objectives and content in the unit
  • Set up the prerequisite environment to use SAP Process Automation

Building a Process With SAP Process Automation

Welcome to the next unit in your learning journey, Low-Code / No-Code Applications and Automations for Citizen Developers. This unit is about "Building your first process with SAP Process Automation".

You have a few co-instructors for this unit, Archana, Samir, and Stephan.

Archana Shukla is a director of product management contributing towards product success and partner ecosystem, to drive strategic engagements for SAP Process Automation (including workflow, business rules, LCNC and automation). She has over 17 years of experience at SAP. Archana has conducted numerous enablement workshops, produced webinars and podcasts, and has been a regular speaker at several international conferences. She also provides technical support to consultants and solution advisors and is an eminent member of SAP Community.

Follow Archana Shukla | SAP People

Samir Hamichi is a senior specialist for SAP Process Automation at SAP, working on customer solution adoption. After completing a PhD in artificial intelligence, he started working as technical lead and trainer, conducting Intelligent RPA training sessions to enable customers and partners. While leading RPA projects and Adoption efforts, he understood very early the power of LCNC tools and how citizen developers need them to achieve their goals.

Follow Samir HAMICHI @ SAP Community

Stephan Schluchter is a product manager for SAP Process Automation. He enables customers, partners, and colleagues on the product. Fascinated by how no-code tools enable citizen developers to do process automation on their own, Stephan sees a whole new group of people joining the software-building bandwagon. He has more than 10 years of experience in Business Process Management and is a regular speaker at international conferences like SAPPHIRE, SAP TechEd, ASUG, and DSAG.

Follow Stephan Schluchter @SAP Community

What to Expect in this Unit on SAP Process Automation?

In this unit, there are several short lessons. Each lesson contains videos, text and diagrams that cover similar content, so that you can learn by watching, reading, or both. In the lessons for this unit, we will cover the following topics:

  • Introduction to SAP Process Automation
  • Get started with a business process
  • Digitalize and ease user interactions
  • Boost business processes with automations
  • Controlling the flow
  • Improve the process with decision logic
  • Get visibility into your process

This unit will ensure that you understand what it takes to adapt, improve, and innovate your business processes with automation. We will give you an introduction to the technology and then start with a simple example of a business process. As we progress through the unit, we will include more and more business requirements in the scope of the workflow we need to build, and therefore also enhance the process itself while making it simpler and more efficient.

While we follow the example, you will also get to know the different capabilities of our product, SAP Process Automation and, of course, you will enjoy hands-on learning with little exercises that teach you how to use the features in your own SAP environment.

This step-by-step approach will enable you to grow quickly from a basic level of knowledge to become an excellent citizen developer working with SAP Process Automation. You’ll increase your capacity to drive process automation with an intuitive, no-code developer experience that brings together workflow and robotic process automation (RPA).

And – that’s what these new low-code / no-code capabilities are all about – allowing you, the business-user-turned-citizen-developer, to solve your own problems, accelerate projects, and innovate faster while fostering efficient collaboration with IT. Get ready to say goodbye to waiting for slow development timelines and doing repetitive, manual workflows!

Setting up Prerequisites Environment to use SAP Process Automation

Ensure you have an account (free tier) in SAP Business Technology Platform, as described here: https://blogs.sap.com/2022/03/29/sap-process-automation-free-tier-availability/

To Run the Booster

Now you need to set up SAP Process Automation using the Booster. The Booster is a guided set of automatic instructions to achieve a specific goal. SAP Process Automation fully automates the onboarding of the service in your account without the need of any manual configurations. It will configure entitlement, enable SAP Process Automation subscription, and will assign all the relevant role collections to the given users for administrator or developer personas – and all this setup with just one click.

Steps

  1. Open SAP BTP Cockpit, and choose Boosters in the left side column.

  2. Open the Booster to setup SAP Process Automation and click Start to run the booster

  3. In the pop-up that you get follow the wizard and start the booster which will check the entitlements and quota, enable cloud foundry in your account, create the space if not already available, enable the subscription and assign all the relevant role collections to the given users. This operation take couple of minutes before the account is configured for SAP Process Automation.

  4. Once the booster is completed successfully, you will get the confirmation dialog which will have a direct link to navigate to your account.

  5. From your subaccount, open the SAP Process Automation Application Development workbench which will be your one-stop studio to develop, test, deploy and monitor your processes with different skills like decision, automation, forms etc.

Result

You will have the access to the Application Development studio which is a no-code environment from where you can start your development of the business processes.

To Install and Setup Desktop Agent

Among the SAP Process Automation, the Desktop Agent is an On-Premise component. Installing Desktop Agent automatically installs the web browser extension for Google Chrome. To prevent issues during the installation, close all the Chrome tabs open on your machine.

The setup program is provided in the form of an industry standard Windows MSI installer. You can download it from the SAP Software Center, which can be accessed by this link: Software Downloads - SAP ONE support Launchpad

Steps

  1. Launch the MSI file execution.

  2. Select Next to begin the installation process.

  3. On the Installation type pop-up, select the Desktop Agent option.

  4. Optional:Choose Browse to change the destination of the installation folder.

  5. Select Install to start the installation.

  6. The installation process may take a few seconds to complete. An authorization request to bring change to the computer might appear, Click OK if so.

  7. Once the installation has been successfully completed, click Finish and Launch your Desktop Agent.

  8. Click on the Desktop Agent, Click on the 3 dots and Select Tenants.

  9. Click on Add

  10. On the SAP Process Automation homepage, go to Settings, click Agents List and then click the Register new agent... button on the right-hand side of the screen.

  11. When the pop-up opens, select Copy and Close.

  12. Then paste the URL into the Domain field on your Desktop Agent Tenant Registration window and click on Save.

  13. Select the tenant, Activate and click on OKto confirm.

  14. Log in to your tenant with your user name or e-mail and password.

  15. The Agent should be in Idle state, waiting to start a project.

  16. Configure Web Browser: Alternative 1: Google Chrome.

    The Desktop Studio installation automatically installs the web browser extension for Chrome. You then need to enable that extension. This is described in the following steps.

    1. Open Google Chrome.

    2. Click the three dots at the top right of your browser.

    3. Select More Tools → Extensions.

    4. Click the toggle button to activate the SAP Intelligent RPA Extension.

    5. Optional: if you need to access html files locally, click Details on the SAP Intelligent RPA tile. Then enable the option Allow access to file URLs.

  17. Configure Web Browser: Alternative 2: Microsoft Edge.

    Installing the Desktop Studio automatically includes the installation of the web browser extension for Microsoft Edge. You then need to enable that extension. This is described in the following steps.

    1. Open Edge.

    2. Click the three dots at the top right of your browser.

    3. Select Extensions → Manage Extensions.

    4. Click the toggle button to activate the SAP Intelligent RPA Extension.

    5. Optional: if you need to access html files locally, click Details on the SAP Intelligent RPA tile. Then enable the option Allow access to file URLs.

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