Federation

Federation is needed to create the end-to-end (E2E) view of process definitions that is displayed in the process monitor. Process federation allows you to combine different processes without having to model all the possible combinations. There are two kinds of federation:

Local federation

Local federation allows two or more processes in your local system to combine to form a realized process chain. It uses application integration via the local database, based on business object instances which are shared and/or referenced between different processes.
Federation across systems

Federation across systems, as the name implies, allows two or more processes across different systems to combine to form a realized process chain. It always uses process integration to communicate across those systems.

For more information, see Configuring End-to-End Federation

You can view process definitions for local and remote federation setup in a side panel.

For more information, see Configuration of the Side Panel for Process Observer

Federation in Process Definitions

Federation in process definitions is defined at the level of process steps and the in-going and out-going integration points of those process steps.

Communication Types used in Federation

Different types of communication can be used, depending on the communication type already established in a system. For this reason, each integration point is assigned a communication type code, an ID, and a direction (in-going, or out-going). Theses following communication type codes are delivered by SAP:

Communication Type	Communication Type Code	Communication Type ID
Asynchronous Web and Enterprise Services	MSG	Message type name
Remote Function Calls and BAPIs	RFC	RFC name

The following communication type codes also exist:

Communication Type	Communication Type Code	Communication Type ID
Synchronous Web and Enterprise Services	WS	Web service in-going interface name in case of synchronous Web and Enterprise Services (you ignore out-going interface name also on the out-going site)
ALE	IDOC	IDoc name
CRM Middleware	BDOC	BDoc name
Type of communication is unknown	UNKNOWN	Dummy name

Process Registry (Master Registry):

You set one of the systems as the master registry. The master registry is automatically updated by the local systems whenever local process definitions are changed. The master registry contains:

Assigned E2E process definition ID(s)
(Potential) Inbound and outbound integration point types and names
Calling relationship between the (local) processes as per the E2E process definition

Federation in the Process Monitor

Federation in process definitions and the setup of the process registry are prerequisites for using federation in process monitoring. In the Process Monitor, you can see in what system(s) activities have been executed.