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Social Media integration provides collaboration in business processes with SAP Jam, the social collaboration platform from SAP. The integration gives you social capabilities where and when they are needed in business processes and keeps the connection to the working environment.

SAP Jam provides social collaboration tools to help you drive results wherever you work. With it, you can add structure to conversations and work to quickly drive actions, make decisions, or solve critical business issues. The integration connects transactional work with collaborative tasks, such as (pre-)planning, decision making or problem solving, which up to now are carried out independently via e-mail or document exchange. In collaborative business applications, you can discuss business transactions and exchange business data with internal or external users in a secure environment designed for collaborative needs.

A business process with integrated social collaboration can be processed as follows:

  • Clarification or more information is needed in a business process, for example missing input during master data maintenance

  • Collaboration will be initiated, to clarify questions, or to solve an issue in an SAP Jam group

  • Find the right people to help and expose the context for collaboration with all of the necessary information

  • During collaboration, the application sends status updates to SAP Jam or SAP Jam notifications are sent to application system (via subscription)

  • Collaboration can take place from within the application system or with the SAP Jam web interface, for example, to include external participants

  • Include the results of the collaboration in your business process

  • Proceed with your business process in the application system

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text.

Business applications with integrated social collaboration

Implementation Considerations

The integration is based on the technology of the Social Media ABAP Integration Library (SAIL). SAIL is an API library with features providing the integration with SAP Jam. The features can be used by each SAP application in the ABAP environment. SAP offers different integration options with which you can start your own business collaboration project:

  • Social Media integration with SAIL is available in several SAP applications, for example:

    • SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM)

      For more information, see SAP Library for SAP CRM on SAP Help Portal at   http://help.sap.com/crm702   Application Help  . In SAP CRM Library, choose   Business Functions for SAP Customer Relationship Management   Basic Functions and Performance   Integration of SAP Jam with SAP CRM  .

    • SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management (SAP SLC)

      For more information, see SAP Library for SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management on SAP Help Portal at   http://help.sap.com/slc113   Application Help  . In SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management Library, choose   Technical Concepts   Business Functions   SLC, Integration with SAP StreamWork   (to use in compatibility mode with SAP Jam).

    • SAP ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM)

      For more information, see SAP Library for SAP ERP under   SAP ERP Central Component   Human Resources   Personnel Management (PA)   Personnel & Organization   Landing Page   Creating the Landing Page  .

  • Social Media integration is also available with the Collaboration CHIPs in Side Panel for Business Suite and can be added to each SAP Business Suite application.

    For more information, see SAP ERP library under   SAP ERP Cross-Application Functions   Cross-Application Components   Side Panel for Business Suite  .

To use social media integration, note the following prerequisites:

  • Depending on the release of your application, you have installed one of the necessary SAP NetWeaver releases to use the integration. For more information about the SAP NetWeaver releases in which SAIL is available, see the SAP Jam ABAP Integration - Configuration Guide on SAP Community Network at   http://scn.sap.com   Solutions  . On the Technology tab, choose   Content and Collaboration   SAP Social Software  . On the Content tab, choose the configuration guide from the list.

You have activated the Business Function Enable Social Media ABAP Integration 3. For more information, see SAP ERP library under   Cross-Application Components   Business Functions   Business Functions in SAP NetWeaver   Enable Social Media ABAP Integration 3  

You need access to SAP Jam as SAP Jam integrations with SAP applications require the SAP Jam Enterprise Edition. For more information, contact your account executive.

Note Note

Note SAP Jam is the successor platform to SAP StreamWork, you can continue to use SAIL with the new SAP Jam platform. Those applications that already provide the Social Media ABAP Integration with SAP StreamWork will also run with SAP Jam as the platform.

End of the note.

Features

The social media integration provides the following features:

  • Set of easy-to-use application programming interfaces (APIs) based on ABAP Objects

  • Implicit authentication (for SAP Jam the authentication is based on OAuth 1.0a with SAML2 bearer token)

  • ABAP Integration with SAP Jam: Each SAP application can use the APIs of the Social Media ABAP Integration Library (SAIL) for SAP Jam.

  • Compatibility mode for integrating with SAP StreamWork and SAP Jam as the platform: API methods that were originally developed for SAP StreamWork are compatible with SAP Jam. You have only to adapt Customizing. For more information, see the SAP Jam ABAP Integration - Configuration Guide.

  • Gateway notifications: You can send SAP NetWeaver Gateway notifications to a collaboration platform, as SAP Jam also works as a feed aggregator. Configure which OData service notifications will be sent in the additional Customizing.

  • User Mapping: SAIL needs an e-mail address to link user names (SAP user) from the back end to SAP Jam. With a Business Add-In (BAdI), you can define the mapping between the back-end user name and the e-mail address (and vice versa).

  • At several extension points, you can add application-specific developments via the Business Add-Ins (BAdIs) provided in Customizing for Collaboration.

For more information about these features, see SAP Jam ABAP Integration - Configuration Guide and SAIL - Programming Guide on SAP Community Network at   http://scn.sap.com   Solutions  . On the Technology tab, choose   Content and Collaboration   SAP Social Software  . On the Content tab, choose the guides in the list.

More Information

  • For more information about Gateway notifications, see SAP Library for SAP NetWeaver Gateway on SAP Help Portal at   http://help.sap.com/nwgateway   Application Help  . In SAP NetWeaver Gateway Library, choose   SAP NetWeaver Gateway Developer Guide   OData Channel  . Then choose the following paths:

    •   Advanced Features   Subscription and Notification Flow   Subscription and Notification Flow for Push Oriented Scenarios  

    •   APIs and Coding   OData Channel APIs   OData Channel Push APIs  

  • For more information about SAP Jam, see http://www.successfactors.com/jam.