Tutorial: Connecting Groupware to Portal Applications (SAP Library

Tutorial: Connecting Groupware to Portal Applications

Use

Groupware connectivity allows employees in an organization to access groupware servers through the portal.

At the moment, the lack of an established standard in the area of electronic mailing and scheduling necessitates the use of vendor-specific tools or libraries to integrate a particular groupware application. For example, to connect to the Microsoft Exchange server, the Microsoft Collaborative Data Object is required, while to connect to the Lotus Domino server, the Lotus Domino toolkit is required.

Groupware Framework

The Groupware Framework provides an abstraction of the groupware APIs across different vendors, thus introducing a standard for integration with SAP NetWeaver Portal. (Currently, the Groupware framework provides abstraction only for calendar data and not for tasks and contacts.)

Different groupware applications can be connected by implementing a set of APIs called the transports. The figure below shows how groupware calendar data from the groupware server can be connected to portal applications (iViews).

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

The groupware connectivity architecture consists of the following technical components:

Groupware Framework Component	Description
Calendar Repository Manager	Is built using the Repository Framework and provides access to calendar items in the groupware server in a manner consistent to any repository item.
Groupware Framework	Mediates between the Calendar Repository Manager and the configured transports.
Transport	Connectivity to a groupware system is implemented and configured as a transport. The transport implements the necessary API for data extraction and submission to the groupware system in question using the vendor-specific libraries. SAP ships a Microsoft Exchange and a Lotus Domino transport out-of-the-box. To integrate other groupware applications, such as Novell Groupwise, you need to develop and deploy new transports. The credentials for the transports are maintained using systems. See Creating a System

The Groupware Framework allows the quick development and deployment of reliable, secure, scalable, and manageable transports.

Procedure

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1. Develope the groupware transport.

To develop a transport, you use a set of Classes and Interfaces.
The steps to develop a transport are described in Developing a Transport.

2. Configure the Calendar Repository Manager.

The transport can use its own configuration to perform the necessary operations. The configuration can be groupware server name, domain, and so on. This configuration can be created and maintained using the KM configuration framework. The initialize method receives the list of configurations that can be used to perform the necessary operations.

To access the Calendar Repository configuration in the portal, choose System Administration ® System Configuration ® Knowledge Management ® Content Management ® Repository Managers ® Calendar Repository.

In the configuration of each Calendar Repository Manager, you can set the default transport and configure the transport properties.