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What is the Groupware Framework?

Various Java standards are emerging in the area of electronic mailing and scheduling. At the moment, the lack of an established standard necessitates the usage of vendor-specific tools or libraries for integrating a particular groupware application. For example, Microsoft Collaborative Data Object is required in order to connect to the Microsoft Exchange server, while Lotus Domino toolkit is required in order to connect to the Lotus Domino server.

The Groupware framework provides an abstraction of the groupware APIs across different vendors, thereby bringing in a standard for integration with SAP Enterprise Portal.

 

Architecture

The Groupware framework provides an abstraction of different groupware applications and provides the necessary APIs for integration with SAP Enterprise Portal. Different groupware applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server or Lotus Domino Server can be integrated by implementing a set of APIs called transports.

 

The figure below depicts the Groupware architecture.

 

Transports

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 by using the vendor-specific libraries.

 

Note

SAP ships Microsoft Exchange and the Lotus Notes transport out-of-the-box. You need to develop and deploy new transports in order to integrate other groupware applications such as Novell Groupwise.

 

Systems

The credentials for the transports are maintained using systems. For more information, see Creating a System .

 

Features

The Groupware framework allows the quick development and deployment of reliable, secure, scalable, and manageable transports. It is written entirely in Java programming language, which allows portability and multi-platform support.

 

Functions

The Groupware framework supports the functions listed below. However, the functions actually available depend on the transport deployed and its capabilities. For more information, see the Features section of the appropriate transport documentation.

 

E-mail

Sending e-mails using SMTP servers

Saving sent e-mails on groupware servers that support IMAP

Sending e-mails in HTML format

Sending e-mails with attachments

Including signatures in e-mails sent

Refer to SAP Note 1299989 for configuration steps.

Changing the default value of the number of attachments

Refer to SAP Note 1265992 for configuration steps.

Increasing the height of the default e-mail editor

Refer to SAP Note 1239602 for configuration steps.

Specifying the number of users to whom you want to send e-mails

Refer to SAP Note 1291383 for configuration steps.

 

Scheduling

Creating non-recurring appointments

  • Creating daily/weekly recurring appointments

Sending non-recurring meeting requests

  • Sending daily/weekly meeting requests

Reading appointments

Modifying appointments

Deleting appointments

  • Modifying entire series of recurring appointments (Microsoft Exchange Server only)
  • Deleting entire series of recurring appointments

Modifying current instance of recurring appointments

Deleting current instances of recurring appointments

Sending meeting requests with attachments

Scheduling online meetings

Deployment Scenario

Groupware integration has been designed to allow employees of an organization to access groupware servers using the portal. However, it is not possible for external users such as business partners or customers to use groupware integration, as there is no possibility of accessing the groupware servers of one organization from the portal of another organization. This is due to security restrictions.

Process Flow

The following steps have to be carried out to enable Groupware.

Configuring E-Mail

Perform the following steps to enable the sending of e-mails from SAP Enterprise Portal.

  1. Create a system
  2. Install and configure e-mail connectivity

Configuring the Calendar

Perform the following steps to enable calendar integration in SAP Enterprise Portal.

  1. Create a system
  2. Install and configure calendar connectivity

Configuring Native Web Clients

Perform the following steps to integrate native Web clients into SAPEnterprise Portal.

Microsoft Exchange Web Client Integration

  1. Configure Outlook Web Access and refer to SAPnote 732911See also: Integrating MS Exchange Using Outlook Web Access
  2. Refer to SAPNote 712902 for information on implementing single sign-on for Outlook Web Access.

Lotus Domino Web Client Integration

  1. Configure Lotus Domino iNotes See also: Integrating Lotus Domino Using iNotes
  2. Implement single sign-on to iNotesSee also: Implementing the Ticket Verifier