SAP ARIBA WITH SAP S/4 HANA : CIG CONNECTIVITY.

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SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway

Is a platform for integration between buyers and suppliers to the SAP Ariba application and the SAP Ariba network.This article introduces the architecture of Buy side SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway.

SAP Ariba and SAP S/4HANA Connectivity 

Cloud Integration Gateway, or in short CIG, redefines how we integrate with Ariba – world’s largest business commerce network. It provides an efficient way to integrate with Ariba apps and facilitate transacting with trading partners faster.

CIG enables SAP to deliver integration as a service to suppliers. CIG, or Cloud Integration Gateway, is built using SAP Cloud Platform Integration, CPI i.e., is a service on top of SAP Cloud Platform.

CIG provides a self-service portal that allows the users to configure and integrate to SAP Ariba apps and transact with partners seamlessly. It guides users through each step required to connect customer back-end systems to SAP Ariba applications. Using SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway, we can configure integration between Ariba apps and ERP applications. In fact, to manage one or more back-end ERP systems, we can specify cross-references, value mappings.

Today, CIG supports integration with SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA On Premise. All major releases of SAP ECC, starting with ECC 6.0 enhancement pack 0 and above are supported. Similarly, all major releases of SAP S/4HANA On Premise like 1511, 1610, 1709, etc. are supported. There is no additional license requirement for customers to use CIG.

The integration with CIG allows clients to integrate their back end to all the different modules of SAP Ariba vis., Ariba Sourcing, Contract Management, Buying and Invoicing, Supply Chain Collaboration, Catalogs, etc. It provides out-of-the-box integration with the source-to-settle processes. With CIG, the integration content like mapping, transformation of messages, etc. are pre-delivered in the cloud.The standard mappings, which are delivered in the cloud, can also be extended to accommodate custom fields. Also, there are BAdIs to accommodate any client-specific logic on the message transformation.

Given below is a high-level architecture for the deployment of CIG (Buy side)…

SAP Cloud Platform Integration enables CIG. On the left side, we see a typical client environment with SAP ECC or S/4HANA On Premise. In order to integrate the client landscape to SAP Ariba, we need to first install the CIG add-on on S/4HANA On Premise system.

The add-on allows us to maintain certificates, port definition, and carry out any specific customization for different integration scenarios. Integration through CIG is generally an asynchronous process, which means no more file channel for transactional data. CIG allows only web-services based integration.

Another important aspect with CIG, is that the applications actively push the message instead of using the pull mechanism. Which means all outbound messages from the back end to the CIG use SOAP or IDoc interfaces. Inbound messages or inbound connections from, or to the customer back end are enabled via the cloud connector.

For master data, the CIG add-on is responsible for extracting the data in the right format, to be sent to the SAP Ariba environment via the CIG.

For transactional data, data is sent and received from ECC or back-end S/4HANA via CIG to SAP Ariba applications. The mappings are actually executed in the cloud within CIG, using the SAP Cloud Platform Integration.

The add-on provides enriched outbound messages so that there is no need for callback for additional data. The CIG add-on is available for both S/4HANA On Premise as well as ECC to enable the integration between back-end systems and to Ariba Network or Ariba applications.

As we know that SAP Ariba customers can have multiple realms for using SAP Ariba applications.They need to be able to select realm ID for a connection and associate it with a specific back-end system ID.Therefore, CIG allows the realm ID to be selected for the connection. In case the customer has a multi-back-end or multi-ERP scenario, they need an ability to do a receiver determination.Therefore, CIG also provides the capability to do custom routing using XPath expressions. XPath is a description to locate specific values in a XML. So with XPath expressions, any value in an XML message can be used to derive a logical expression.

The CIG add-on is shipped through SAP Service Marketplace.The add-on enables ease of configuration of the integration via a standard SPRO transaction.The add-on also provides BAdIs, to embed any customer-specific logic.

With CIG, no deployment of PI/PO,
or middleware is actually needed. However, a SAP customer can still use it’s existing middleware for mediated connectivity. The bug fixes and enhancements for the CIG add-on get delivered via SAP Notes and, preliminary correction instructions, which allow smooth upgrades for the customer, using the Software Update Manager.

After the add-on is installed. Typically, the CIG needs to be enabled on customer specific network account. So once that is enabled, we can go to the CIG portal via the Integration Manager area. Also, after enablement, we can do a single sign on from SAP Ariba environment directly to the CIG portal.

Troubleshooting & Monitoring

In the situation, where a document does not reach the desired destination, we would need an easy way to find out where actually the error has occurred. All possible permutations and combinations of error scenarios could lead us to troubleshoot the error, in three main areas.

1. IDoc message related errors: e.g. transactional data is sent from backend system to CIG, we can open the IDoc monitoring transaction like WE02, WE05, to monitor the IDoc.
2. Proxy message related errors: e.g. web services related messages, we can launch the transaction SOA Manager for checking the configs and the logs or traces or we can also launch the transaction SRTUTIL for checking the error logs
3. Within CIG: we can monitor the message in transaction tracker where we can see both the inbound message and the outbound traces, together with the message payloads

Migration

There are different migration strategies to move to Cloud Integration Gateway. We can,

• Migrate all the transactions of SAP Ariba solution, master data, catalog to CIG and configure them to integrate with back end.
• Migrate designated transaction master data, and catalog etc, move them to the Cloud Integration Gateway and integrate with back end. In this case, the transactions that we have not migrated to the CIG will remain intact.

This is an important capability that CIG can be co-deployed with the old legacy integration technology. This enables SAP customers to use the CIG as an integration mechanism in addition to their existing integration solution. Therefore, this allows the customer to move the integration in parts, rather than all at once.

The migration itself consists of three core activities, Pre-migration, Migration and, Post migration.

• Pre-migration activity is mainly to secure the inbound data transfer from CIG to back-end on premise system. It includes things like maintaining certificates, migrating master data, catalog, invoice status updates, product activity messages, and also some of the other components or transactions that we have to migrate.
• The main Migration activity includes migration of some key database tables, into the new database tables, which are created for CIG. This also includes migration of transaction configurations, migration of any customer-specific logic into the new BAdI interfaces.
• Post migration includes modifying partner profile settings, or configuring event linkages, logical ports, service names, value maps, and so on. The detailed technical migration processes are defined in the SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway Migration Guide.

Please visit the help page of SAP Ariba CIG if, you want to explore CIG in more detail vis. CIG Release Guides, Configuration Guides, Migration Guides, etc.,

If you are a customer or a consultant working with a customer, who is interested to enable CIG, please contact your customer service administrator to enable the CIG on your customer account. Thereafter, you can access the CIG portal and start configuring your integration project.