Describing OData API, API Center, Integration Center, and Security Center

API stands for Application Programming Interface. API is a set of clearly defined methods of communication between various software components. This communication is useful for passing information back and forth between SAP SuccessFactors and other third-party systems.

APIs are trending towards more direct Representational State Transfer (REST) style web resources. Representational state transfer (REST) or RESTful Web Services is a way of providing interoperability between computer systems on the Internet. REST-compliant Web Services allow requesting systems to access and manipulate textual representations of Web resources by using a uniform and predefined set of stateless operations.

The following topic focuses on REST APIs and their communication through OData.

OData (Open Data Protocol) is an OASIS standard that defines the best practice for building and consuming RESTful APIs. OData helps you focus on your business logic while building RESTful APIs without having to worry about the approaches to define request and response headers, status codes, URL conventions, media types, payload formats, query options, and so on. OData also guides you about tracking changes, defining functions and actions for reusable procedures and sending asynchronous batch requests, and so on.

OData provides both a standard for how to represent your data and a metadata method to describe the structure of your data and the operations available in your API.

A standards-based protocol eases API support and increases adoption by the following considerations:

• OData is an SAP Standard.

• Powerful query features pull data from multiple entities (think SQL JOINS).

• Data can be returned in nested data structures, with choice of XML or JSON formats.

• These standards are critical to HANA Cloud Extensibility.

• Since OData is considered an industry standard, Customers don’t have to learn proprietary features of SFAPI like SFQL and our custom metadata.

With OData API, you can:

1. Query to extract data from the system.
2. Create (insert) new data in the system.
3. Update existing data in the system.
4. Delete data from the system.
5. Operate on multiple related entities in a single operation.

It's important to note that the metadata operation allows you to view the data schema:

• What are the entities in a customer’s configuration?

• What are the relationships between these entities?

• What are the fields and data types of these entities?

• What are other metadata features used like field labels, field behaviors, and so on?

All the MDF Entities are automatically exposed through the OData APIs. By using the MDF OData APIs users can access the MDF Entities, create, upsert, and delete them. Admin users can also create and manage MDF Object Definitions and picklists through the MDF OData APIs. Also, MDF OData APIs are used to integrate with third-party systems.

To get extra information, such as language labels, picklists, and so on, beyond what the standard OData metadata provides, SAP SuccessFactors OData exposes metadata as an entity.

The SAP SuccessFactors OData API exposes an entity named Entity. Its properties are exposed as complex type value embedded in the response body of Entity. Different forms of metadata can be exposed without changing the standard OData metadata format.

You can access the new metadata like you access a regular entity. Also, it supports a simple filter to output metadata of a specific entity or a group of entities.

In addition to the information you can get from the OData API dictionary about an entity, the metadata gives you information on the entities associated with the entity, picklists, relationships between the entity and other entities, and so on.

The API Center is a one-stop shop for accessing the OData API Audit Log and the OData API Dictionary.

You find the API Center from the Action search. If you cannot see it there, check that you have the permission, Access to API Center (available in Manage Integration Tools in Role-Based Permission).

The OData API Dictionary contains all the entities available in your instance. It lists the allowed operations, the field (property name), the label, and which fields are required or not. To view the OData dictionary, you use the Action search to search for the OData API Data Dictionary.

The OData Audit Log can help with support and debugging issues related to OData usage. The Audit Log Integration tool monitors traffic and gets detailed payload information about API requests made to your system.

Other considerations include:

• The OData Audit Log captures payload details for the last 10,000 OData calls. This log lets you inspect the exact OData payload requests made to the system and corresponding OData responses sent by the system.

• The tool is for developers who use OData during an implementation, or administrators who want to share information in this log with SAP SuccessFactors HCM solution support to help resolve OData related issues.

• You can download data from individual calls and send it to a Support representative for analysis.

• OData API Metadata Refresh and Export tool

Within the OData API Metadata Refresh and Export tool, you'll see the following buttons:

• Refresh: Refreshes the metadata cache. The updated metadata is regenerated and saved into the cache and is available for future operations such as export.

• Export: Exports and downloads the metadata. The default export file name is CompanyName-Metadata.xml.

The Integration Center enables administrators to build, run, schedule, and monitor simple integrations. It simplifies the common export and import use cases. Integrations can be built quickly and easily through a guided workflow. Predefined templates are available, and you can also create your own templates.

It works on both outbound (sending information from SAP SuccessFactors out to third party systems) integrations as well as inbound information (bringing third party information in for use in the instance).

Integration Center supports both file and Web Service based outbound integrations:

• For file-based integrations, Integration Center supports CSV, TXT, XML, and EDI/Stacked formats.

• For Web Service based outbound integrations, Integration Center supports SOAP and REST outbound integrations.

Also, Integration Center supports CSV-based inbound integrations. To access Integration Center, from the Action Search, enter Integration Center. Here, you can build customized file extracts using any data using SAP SuccessFactors OData APIs catalog. For example, an administrator can use the Integration Center to run immediately or schedule a job to export a provider-specific OData object to SFTP, based on defined filter conditions and applying a provider-defined output order and file format.

The files generated in the Integration Center are directed to a configured SFTP server location. They're fully ready to be imported to the external provider system that needs synchronized data with SAP SuccessFactors applications.

Integration Center is part of the SAP SuccessFactors HCM solution package and works even without Employee Central.

The supported building integrations with ODATA APIs include the following modules:

• Employee Central

• Recruiting

• Performance Management

• Goals

• Succession

The following figure shows an overview of the Integration Center.

You can create or schedule Integration jobs only by using Integration Center (from Action Search, enter Integration Center). Integration Center jobs created and scheduled from Provisioning fail.

You can build integrations by using different tools that are available as part of SAP SuccessFactors applications:

• Built-in templates available from Integration Catalog
• Integration Center
• Data Model Navigator

You can create integrations from a third-party or external application to SAP SuccessFactors. You can create inbound integrations one of two ways from the +Create menu in Integration Center:

• Scheduled CSV Integration
• More integration types

For more information about the Integration Center, review the Integration Center guide available from SAP Help Portal: https://help.sap.com/viewer/60ba370328e0485797adde67aee846a0/latest/en-US

Security Center allows you to create and manage keys, certificates, and configurations that can be used in integrations.

To access the Security Center, you must have enabled access to any one of the tiles from Manage Security Center.

The Security Center is available from Admin Center or the Action search. The Security Center provides a dashboard that has the following tiles:

• PGP File Encryption Keys: Import a PGP Public Key to encrypt files generated by using SFTP Outbound Integrations.
• OAuth Configurations: Configure OAuth 2.0 configurations for outbound connections to other systems.
• X509 Certificates: Generate and download X509 certificates for OAuth with SAML and mTLS authentication.
• Other Keys: Generate and download keys for file decryption, file signing, and SFTP server authentication.
• HTTPS Trust Certificates: Pull certificates from servers or upload Root CA certificates to establish client-server trust.
• Destination Settings: Maintain SFTP and REST destination settings for Outbound Integrations.
• LinkedIn Account Setup: Create customer LinkedIn accounts and select LinkedIn integrations.