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Understanding the Overall Process for Integrating Collaboration for a Business ObjectLocate this document in the navigation structure

This section provides a general, high-level description of the overall configuration and integration required to enable collaboration for a business object in a separate system through SAP Jam. This section is provided purely for conceptual and illustrative purposes and begins with an example of a use case. Where relevant, links to specific information for the configuration of individual elements in the overall integration process are provided.

A Use Case for Collaboration

Joe User needs to initiate collaboration around a purchase order because some aspect of the original transaction could not be completed according to standard processing guidelines and the purchase order has been rejected by his system. Joe wants to discuss the issue with his supervisor and come up with an alternate way to process it. To share details of that business object with his supervisor, Joe logs in to his SAP Fiori app that contains the purchase order and selects it. He then chooses the Share or Discuss icon in the app and shares details about the purchase order to an SAP Jam group he set up specifically for this purpose. His supervisor, a member of this group, is able to log in to his own SAP Jam account and see the shared details of the purchase order. They discuss the purchase order and come up with a solution.

How Did the Details for the Purchase Order Get from the App to SAP Jam?

At a high level, there are three things that you must do to enable collaboration and sharing of a business object through SAP Jam. Within each of these are many sub-steps that also require some configuration. These can be more complex depending on your system environment or landscape; details about these activities is provided in later sections. Overall, configuring the integration of a business object in SAP Jam and enabling collaboration involves doing the following:

  1. Implementing the business object in the SAP Fiori App
    Note

    SAP Fiori app developers must provide the attributes required by the external object property for the collaboration component. The attributes are passed to the footer bar control, which in turn passes them to the collaboration component. Review the SAP Fiori app documentation to verify whether the app implements external objects in its SAP Jam integration. For more information, see SAP Library for SAP Fiori for SAP Business Suite on SAP Help Portal at http://help.sap.com/fiori. Choose SAP Fiori Apps, then locate your app.

  2. Configuring the mapping for the business object in the back-end system

    This allows the business object to be shared. Customization is required to map from an internal OData service, used by the SAP Fiori app, to an external OData service, used by SAP Jam. To complete this step, you do the following:

    1. Create the host mapping from the internal to external URL
    2. Create an ABAP SMI service registry entry for each object type that needs to be supported
    3. Create Business Add-In (BAdI) implementations for specific mapping rules for keys, collections, and annotations.

      This implementation is done in the back-end system where the business objects are stored. The BAdIs are called from the system where the service registry is customized.

  3. Configuring the business object in SAP Jam

    This allows SAP Jam to retrieve it from the back-end system where it was originally stored. To complete this step, you do the following:

    1. Configure the external application
    2. Configure the external object

Details on each of these activities is provided in the sections that follow. To see examples of SAP Fiori apps that have integrated SAP Jam collaboration, see SAP Jam Collaboration Integration Scenarios.