Top Picks: Innovations from SAP Business Technology Platform (Q4/2022)

With the beginning of a new year, I´m excited to see which innovations and highlights are coming up for SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) in the next quarters. But isn´t it worthwhile reviewing the Q4 2022 highlights of our recent deliveries out of the SAP Business Technology Platform product roadmap as well? With the subset of innovation highlights that I am listing in this blog post, I want to share my personal view of the highlights of what our development teams brought to the platform.

I hope you enjoy spending some minutes on my personal view of innovation highlights in Q4 2022:

SAP BTP Innovation Highlights Q4 2022:

Integration

• User experience is an important topic for all our SAP products. As SAP Integration Suite offers many different tools to solve integration needs, we expose many interaction points to our users. With the October release of SAP Integration Suite, we now provide a coherent user experience across all of these touchpoints, bringing these tools together into one single web application. Having a combined navigation there is no need any more to switch between the core capabilities like Cloud Integration, Integration Advisor, or API Management. Furthermore, you now can directly develop cloud and hybrid integration scenarios across all the Integration Suite capabilities. Sounds interesting? Then check out the blog post “SAP Integration Suite – Availability of a common & coherent User Interface to work with various capabilities” of Shruthi M Arjun and enjoy the YouTube video to learn more.
• Talking of user experience, we also took the chance to do a re-design in a specific area: Our API business hub enterprise, a component of API Management, has got a new UI as well as new features. The API business hub enterprise is the customer-owned central API catalog or developer portal for SAP as well as non-SAP API gateways. With an intuitive search, discovery, and consumption of APIs it helps to find exactly what you are looking for. Featuring of content, creating new navigation categories, as well as lot of further flexible customizations provides you now also more flexibility in interactions. Curious about the specifics of the update? Check out the blog post “New Design for API Business Hub Enterprise/ Developer Portal” of Kasturi Kabiraj and the video.
• In Q4 2022 SAP Integration Suite also received important innovations in the area of B2B integration. Our Integration Advisor capability provides you new content such as message definitions and codelist collections for frequently used B2B standards like ASC X12 and UN/EDIFACT. Based on those you can start building your own message implementation and mapping guidelines. The GS1 organization provides international standardized codelists of values allowed in a particular location. With the October release SAP Integration Advisor now offers GS1 global code lists relevant for the EDI domain and used in GS1 EDI messages. Find out more information in the blog post “Integration Advisor – Now GS1 Global Codelists Library available” of Joerg Ackermann.Also, we provided a new powerful feature which helps you with advanced mapping scenarios. By adding a pre-transformation to the mapping guideline, you need to re-order the nodes of a source MIG first before the actual mapping takes place through the Integration Advisor. This is necessary if the mapped structures on source and target side are different in a way that line-based mapping between hierarchy levels are not sufficient. Feel free to have a look at the blog post “New Feature in Integration Advisor: Reordering of Source Structure” of Dirk Ostertag to get more useful information.
• But those are still not all highlights in the Integration area. We released two additional adapters as built-in connectivity options for SAP Integration Suite: Slack and Splunk. With the cloud service Slack our SAP Integration Suite provides a new built-in connectivity for chat and messaging. The new slack adapter provides the possibility to exchange data between the Slack storage and the Cloud Integration capability of SAP Integration Suite. You can either create channels or files at the connected Slack storage or retrieve data. The Slack adapter is connected to a user’s Slack account and performs different operations as supported by the Slack APIs. The second additional built-in connectivity option is the Splunk adapter. Splunk offers the operations to search, monitor, and analyze machine-generated data in a Splunk repository. The adapters are available on SAP API Business Hub and can be consumed directly in the integration flow designer of Cloud Integration. Feel free to take a look at the SAP API Business Hub to get more information.

Application Development & Automation

• As you joined TechEd in October 2022 you´ve already heard the exciting news: SAP Build is out! Our new unified low-code solution provides a unified developer experience to all skill levels. You can start to create and augment enterprise apps, automate processes, or design business sites with drag-and-drop. The unified offering of SAP Build makes it possible. For example, SAP Build Apps, our former SAP AppGyver, provides the opportunity to build enterprise-ready custom software with the help of templates and pre-built business logic without coding. With SAP Build Process Automation, you can leverage robotic process automation (RPA) bots, workflows, forms, embedded artificial intelligence (AI), business rules, and decisions. With this set you are ready for business transformation and automation within your company. Even SAP Build Work Zone is one part of the SAP Build offering. With the evolution of SAP Launchpad, the new called SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition and SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition, formerly known as SAP Work Zone, we bring together two solutions into one. You are already one step ahead? Then become a SAP Builder and get your SAP Certification. Sruti Nayak will explain in her blog post “SAP Build Low-code/No-code Applications and Automations – SAP Certification” how it works. Interested to learn more on the new offering? Then check out the blog post “Learn about SAP TechEd Highlights around SAP Build Work Zone” of Vera Gutbrod and the blog post “SAP Build Apps goes live with full-stack capabilities – TechEd 2022 Recap” of Esmee Xavier  to get more insights. Also join our SAP Build Apps, SAP Build Process Automation and SAP Build Work Zone Community pages for the latest news.
• With the Q4 release SAP Business Application Studio is now using Code-OSS. The Microsoft open source for Visual Studio Code is used as its new platform IDE. With this we are able to offer a richer and better user experience as it is now similar to Visual Studio Code. The Visual Studio extension can be downloaded from the VSX Open registry and should work out of the box. Try it out and check if you find the coding as easy as our developers do. The blog post “SAP Business Application Studio – now powered by Code-OSS” of Liat Borenshtein and the blog post “SAP BTP Innovations for an Enhanced Professional Developer Experience – TechEd 2022” of Anna-Maria Moell will show more details on the move to Code-OSS.

Data and Analytics

• With Q4 release we brought a lot of experience to our end users of SAP Analytics Cloud. They are, for example, now empowered to copy and move their content on their own with the right privileges and, hence, enjoy significantly more flexibility in their report building process. In addition, a new workflow was established to proactively request content access through the Analytics Catalog. To get more information feel free to have a look at the blog post “SAP Analytics Cloud – Analytic Workspaces QRC4 2022 Enhancements” of Mona Walia and the SAP Analytics Cloud community page.
• Q4 was also the time to renovate our SAP HANA Cloud Central in the area of Data and Analytics. With this overhaul of SAP HANA Cloud Central at the end of the year we finally able to provide a single interface where admins can perform all your database administration and monitoring tasks. This also comes with a more intuitive user experience and a big performance boost. Check out the blog post “SAP HANA Cloud Central Gets Renovated!” of Jose Ramos  will provide more details on this topic.
• Speeding up processing time while ensuring master data quality is key for master data specialists. Accordingly, we enhanced data provider integration for more automation with SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition in Q4. Now, you not only benefit from external reference data when creating a business partner record, but also when enriching existing records. Want to learn more? Check out the interesting blog post “More Automation with SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition 2211” of Markus Ganser.

Across BTP

• In the security area Identity Provisioning released a fresh new test job in Q4 2022. Without modifying the target system this innovation enables administrators to visualize results of Identity Provisioning transformation. To test how entities would map between source system and target system the validate job helps and makes your life easier. If you want to learn how to run it feel free to read the blog post “After simulation, try out validation. Identity Provisioning closes the loop with a fresh new test job.” of Ivelina Kiryakova.

SAP TechEd 2022 Recap

Wintertime is perfect to stay at home and do some knowledge training on YouTube. And what could be a better training than having a look at all the virtual sessions of TechEd in 2022? Check out our playlist of lectures, breakouts, and virtual workshops to become an expert on different topics:

Check Out:

1. Follow up with the Roadmap Explorer, which is updated on a regular basis to always stay on top of the latest innovations
2. Missed TechEd 2022? Watch our Replays on our SAP TechEd Youtube Channel
3. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to get all SAP BTP product news
4. Check out the next blog post beginning of Q2/2023 summarizing the highlights of the previous quarter
5. If you want to be up to date on the latest SAP BTP news and innovations check out the new monthly SAP Innobytes video series
6. Mark your calendar for the latest SAP events coming up

Read other SAP Business Technology Platform blog posts and check the SAP Business Technology Platform Topic Page where you can also ask questions. Feel free to follow my profile Stephanie Stang that you do not miss my next personal view of innovation highlights for SAP BTP for Q1 2023.