What are Design Guidelines?
Watch this video to get an understanding of the design guidelines.
Why are design guidelines important?
Each design guideline serves as a rule that helps developers create better integration flows. For example, they ensure that:
- The integration flow remains easy to understand.
- Memory leaks and performance issues are avoided.
- Attachments are handled correctly.
- Security integration patterns are applied.
The design guidelines are logically grouped, such as all rules related to error handling or transaction management.
Enabling Design Guidelines
Before enabling design guidelines, you must understand their implications. The in-app help provides detailed information on each guideline.
Steps to enable or disable design guidelines:
- Navigate to Settings→Integrations→Design Guidelines.
- Select Edit.
- Enable or disable guidelines based on your company's requirements.
- Choose Save.
Harmonizing Across All Tenants
It is essential that all development tenants follow the same deign guidelines to maintain consistency in integration flow validation.
Steps to synchronize design guidelines across tenants:
- In the source tenant: Open Settings→Integrations→Design Guidelines.
- Select Export and save the file.
- In the target tenant: Open Settings→Integrations→Design Guidelines.
- Select Import and upload the exported file.
Reviewing and Productizing Integration Flows
After enabling design guidelines, a new integration flows must comply with them. The integration lead can review the design guidelines report and decide whether an integration flow is ready for production.
If an integration flow is created in a development tenant, it can be transported to a production tenant after validation.
Important Notes
By consistently applying design guidelines, you ensure high quality and standardization of integration processes within your company.
- Design guidelines do not affect the execution of existing or new integration flows.
- They can be used for both custom and prepacked SAP integration content.
- Administrators can assign a dedicated Integration Lead responsible for enabling the guidelines.
Additional Insights from Cloud Integration
Availability of Design Guidelines
Design guidelines are available across multiple environments in Cloud Integration, including Standalone NEO, Cloud Foundry, and the Integration Suite. This ensures that integration teams can apply these guidelines regardless of their specific environment.
Roles and Responsibilities
Two main roles are involved in the configuration and application of design guidelines:
- Tenant Administrator/Integration Lead/Solution Architect: Configures design guidelines at the tenant level to make them available for all integration flows. Reviews the compliance report and makes go-live decisions for production.
- Integration Developer: Executes design guidelines on the integration flow. Downloads the compliance report and shares it with the administrator for review.
Workflow for Using Design Guidelines
The recommended workflow for using design guidelines consists of the following steps:
- Configuration of deign guidelines: The tenant administrator activates the relevant guidelines at the tenant level.
- Development of the integration flow: The integration developer designs the integration flow in compliance with the guidelines.
- Execution of design guidelines: After development, the integration developer runs the guidelines to validate compliance.
- Review of compliance report: The developer shares the report with the integration lead for final assessment.
- Go-live decision: Based on the report, the integration lead decides on production deployment.
Executing Design Guidelines in the Integration Flow Editor
After designing an integration flow, developers can run the enabled design guidelines directly within the integration flow editor. The editor automatically identifies applicable guidelines and validates the flow accordingly. If non compliance is detected, it provides detailed analysis and recommendations for correction.
Skipping Design Guidelines
In specific scenarios, it can be necessary to bypass certain guidelines, such as false positives. The integration flow editor allows developers to skip noncompliant rules with a valid justification. This action can be reversed anytime to reapply the guideline.
Public Remote APIs for Automation
For Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) requirements, design guideline operations can be managed via public remote APIs. This facilitates automation and integration with existing development workflows.
By incorporating these advanced features and processes into your development lifecycle, you can ensure that integration flows not only meet the highest quality standards but are also implemented efficiently and consistently across different projects and teams.
- Read more here: SAP Integration Suite - Design Guidelines in the integration Suite
- Read more here: Design Guidelines View | SAP Help Portal
Summary
Design guidelines help integration developers create secure, efficient, and enterprise-grade integration flows. They ensure readability, performance optimization, security compliance, and error handling. Previously available as recommendations, these guidelines are now embedded in Cloud Integration and can be enabled as rules.
By applying design guidelines, companies enhance integration quality, maintain consistency, and streamline their Cloud Integration processes.