SAP Market Communication for Utilities

Follow this procedure to set up SAP Market Communication for Utilities as a proxy system.

Prerequisites

  • You have user credentials for an external back-end system with read and write permissions.

  • To establish the connection between Identity Provisioning and SAP Market Communication for Utilities, you need to set up the communication user in SAP Market Communication for Utilities. You can do it now (as a prerequisite) or in the process of configuring SAP Market Communication for Utilities as a proxy system, as described in step 5.

Context

The SAP Market Communication for Utilities application is based on SAP BTP ABAP environment. You can use Identity Provisioning to configure SAP Market Communication for Utilities as a proxy system to execute hybrid scenarios. That means, it can provision its entities to another (external) back-end system by request, and then continue executing CRUD operations back to SAP Market Communication for Utilities, whenever the external back-end requests such. This scenario supports:

  • Reading of business users (Employee) and business roles (which are considered as groups)

  • Writing of users and assignments

Procedure

  1. Open your subaccount in SAP BTP cockpit (valid for OAuth authentication to the Identity Provisioning proxy system).
  2. Create a technical user with the necessary authorizations. It will later be used by the external consumer to connect to Identity Provisioning.
    • For Certificate-based authentication, follow the procedure in Manage Certificates for Inbound ConnectionSAP BTP, Neo Environment

    • For OAuth authentication, proceed as follows:

      1. Go to Start of the navigation pathSecurity Next navigation step OAuth Next navigation step ClientsEnd of the navigation path and choose Register New Client.

      2. From the Subscription combo box, select <provider_subaccount>/ipsproxy.

      3. From the Authorization Grant combo box, select Client Credentials.

      4. In the Secret field, enter a password (client secret) and remember it. You will need it later, for the repository configuration in the external system.

      5. Copy/paste and save (in a notepad) the generated Client ID. You will need it later, too.

      6. From the left-side navigation, choose Start of the navigation pathSubscriptions Next navigation step Java Applications Next navigation step ipsproxyEnd of the navigation path .

      7. From the left-side navigation, choose Start of the navigation pathRoles Next navigation step IPS_PROXY_USEREnd of the navigation path.

      8. Choose Assign and enter oauth_client_<client_ID>.

        For <client_ID>, enter the one you have saved in the previous main step.

  3. Access the Identity Provisioning UI.
  4. Add SAP Market Communication for Utilities as a proxy system. For more information, see: Add New Systems.
  5. Set up the communication between Identity Provisioning and SAP Market Communication for Utilities and configure your authentication method (basic or certificate-based).
    1. In your newly added SAP Market Communication for Utilities proxy system, select the Certificate tab and choose Start of the navigation pathGenerate Next navigation step DownloadEnd of the navigation path, as described in Generate and Manage Certificates for Outbound Connection.

      Skip step a. if you want to use basic authentication.

      The next steps are performed in SAP Market Communication for Utilities backend system and are relevant for both basic and certificate-based authentication.

    2. Create a communication user and provide the respective credentials.

      For basic authentication, provide User Name and Password.

      For certificate-based authentication, upload the certificate you have generated in the Identity Provisioning UI on the previous step.

    3. Create a communication system and assign the created user to the communication system.

      For your Identity Provisioning scenario, provide System ID, System Name and Host Name.

    4. Create a communication arrangement with the created system.

      For your Identity Provisioning scenario, choose Scenario ID SAP_COM_0193 (SAP Cloud Identity Provisioning Integration).

      For more information, see Maintain a Communication Arrangement for Inbound CommunicationInformation published on SAP site

  6. Choose the Properties tab to configure the connection settings for your system.

    Mandatory Properties

    Property Name

    Description & Value

    Type

    Enter: HTTP

    URL

    Specify the API URL to your SAP Market Communication for Utilities system.

    ProxyType

    Enter: Internet

    Authentication

    Enter your authentication method:

    • BasicAuthentication

    • ClientCertificateAuthentication

    User

    Valid if BasicAuthentication is configured as authentication method.

    Enter the User Name from the communication arrangement.

    Password

    (Credential) Valid if BasicAuthentication is configured as authentication method.

    Enter the Password for the user name from the communication arrangement.

    maco.skip.read.archived

    In the event of archived (disabled) entities in your SAP Market Communication for Utilities system, choose whether the provisioning jobs to continue reading such entities or to skip them.

    This property is enabled by default. If you want to always read disabled entities, set the property to false, or delete it.

    ips.date.variable.format

    yyyy-MM-dd

    (needed for the Read Transformation)

    maco.user.roles.overwrite

    This property defines whether the current roles of a user to be preserved or overwritten by the Identity Provisioning service within the SAP Market Communication for Utilities proxy system in a hybrid scenario.

    • true – the current user roles will be deleted in the proxy system, and the user will be updated only with the roles provisioned by the service.

    • false – the current user roles will be preserved, and the new roles (if any) will be added for the relevant user in the proxy system.

    See also: Extended Explanation of the *user.roles.overwrite PropertiesInformation published on SAP site

    (Optional) maco.roles.filter

    Enter OData filtering for reading roles in the SAP Market Communication for Utilities system.

    To learn what criteria you can use, see: OData URI ConventionsInformation published on non-SAP site4.5 Filter System Query Option

    (Optional) maco.roles.page.size

    Indicate how many business roles (considered as groups) per page to be read from your SAP Market Communication for Utilities system.

    The value must be an integer number.

    To learn what additional properties are relevant to this system, see List of Properties. You can use the main search, or filter properties by the Name or System Type columns.

    Exemplary destination:

    Type=HTTP

    Authentication=BasicAuthentication

    ProxyType=Internet

    URL=https://12345-aaaaa-3333.abap.hana.ondemand.com

    User=MyMaCoUser

    Password=************

    ips.date.variable.format=yyyy-MM-dd

    maco.skip.read.archived=true

    maco.user.roles.overwrite = false

    maco.roles.filter=startswith(ID, 'EMPLOYEE_LEVEL_3') eq true

    maco.roles.page.size=30

  7. (Optional) Configure the transformations.

    Transformations are used to map the user attributes from the data model of the source system to the data model of the target system, and the other way around. The Identity Provisioning offers a default transformation for the SAP Market Communication for Utilities proxy system, whose settings are displayed under the Transformations tab after saving its initial configuration.

    You can change the default transformation mapping rules to reflect your current setup of entities in your SAP Market Communication for Utilities system. For more information, see:

    Manage Transformations

    SAP S/4HANA Cloud API: Business User

    Default read and write transformations:

    Read Transformation

    Write Transformation

    By default, Identity Provisioning reads group IDs and members. If you want the service to also read group descriptions, you can add an extra mapping to the "group" resource in the Read Transformation. To learn how, see Guided Answers: Business Role DescriptionInformation published on SAP site.

  8. Connect the external consumer to Identity Provisioning with the technical user you have created in step 2.

    If the external consumer system is SAP Identity Management, you can export the newly created proxy system as a SCIM repository from Identity Provisioning and import it in SAP Identity Management. This will create a SCIM repository in SAP Identity Management where most of the repository constants will be automatically filled in. You need to provide the technical user credentials that you have set up in step 2 and the SCIM assignment method as described below:

    • For AUTH_USER and AUTH_PASSWORD, enter your client ID and secret.

    • For the SCIM_ASSIGNMENT_METHOD constant, make sure the value is PATCH.

Next Steps

When a proxy system is connected to an external backend system (in the case of SAP Identity Management this means the exported CSV file is imported into the Identity Management Admin UI and a repository is configured), you can start managing the users and groups into this external system. Usually, the first operation is the initial load of the existing entities into your external system. When this load has finished, changes in the external system, such as creating new users or updating existing ones, can trigger CRUD requests back to the proxy system.

To see an example with SAP Identity Management, see Hybrid Scenario: SAP Identity Management → sections Next Steps and Future Identity Lifecycle.