SAP Task Center - Add tasks from partner applications

[gregorw]

Hi ivan.vasev,

according to the anwer you've posted here it seems you know about the direction for SAP Task Center. We're currenly building a partner solution on SAP BTP Cloud Foundry. The application does also need an approval process. To avoid the creation of another Inbox for the users I would like to ask the following questions:

1. Will the SAP Task Centerallow also give SAP Partners or Customers the option to feed their own tasks to it?
2. Do you plan for a push or pull mechanism?
3. What's the roadmap to be able to integrate into SAP Task Center?

Best regards
Gregor

[Ivan-Mirisola]

Hi vbalko_effiis,

The solution previously known as “One Inbox” was rebranded into SAP Task Center to better reflect its value proposition. My Inbox is the name of the Fiori inbox app. My Tasks was the name under which the SAP Task Center Fiori app has been known. That name has been retired and replaced by SAP Task Center. The names My Tasks and One Inbox should no longer be used, as they have both been replaced by the name SAP Task Center.

Also, the previous link had a filter that included BTP's Portal Service. Please try the following link which is not filtering by product.

Hi gregorw,

The information on the roadmap is public. However, the web site does require authentication with an SAP user. Sorry I didn't mentioned it in my post.

I didn't quite get the first part of your question. BTP's Workflow does work in conjunction with My Inbox UI:

https://help.sap.com/viewer/e157c391253b4ecd93647bf232d18a83/Cloud/en-US/5c47c43784b646ffab1d8cc8c9c...

So, what would you like to accomplish? Use a TCM compliant OData adapter in the BTP's Workflow (to me it doesn't really make sense)? However, if you are looking for information on how to use a TCM compliant provider in My Inbox, then there is a documentation here:

https://help.sap.com/viewer/f85276c5069a429fa37d1cd352785c25/Cloud/en-US/649c509d78f2496ea81e77b9b39...

Regarding your questions on SAP Task Center:

It will support push and pull mechanisms, but its usage will highly depend on each provider's implementation. Furthermore SAP Task Center integration with SAP solutions will focus on SPI compliant providers. So chances are that when SAP Task Center reaches GA it will integrate with BTP Workflow and S4/HANA on-prem using this specification. But then again, this decision, dates and plans belongs to the product team (which I am NOT part of) and thus subject to change without prior notice.

As already mentioned, the roadmap explorer is your best place to research for the future plans on SAP Task Center. As of today SAP Task Center was only available to early adopter care program (EAC). If the project you are on is for an EAC customer, then I'd suggest you approach the SAP contact that has been assigned for such engagement to get more details on the product.

The initial shipment of SAP Task Center and supported SAP products will be listed on the below SAP Note:

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2977611

Best regards,

Ivan

[gregorw]

Hi Ivan,

thank you for the further details.

Regarding the "My Inbox UI" you point to the SAP Workflow Service. My question is regarding the My Inbox Fiori App running in the S/4HANA on Premise Launchpad.

Do you have any pointers to the mentioned SPI specification? A quick google search didn't got me in the right direction.

Best regards
Gregor

[Ivan-Mirisola]

Hi gregorw,

The integration path going forward is to have services in BTP that allows federated content to be displayed centrally for different providers. AFAICT this is the plan for Launchpad as well as Task Center. Having an on-prem solution such as S/4HANA pulling Tasks from BTP Workflow Centrally is not something I believe SAP would work on. However, you could have a tile in a on-prem Launchpad that calls a Launchpad on BTP. From that tile one could open the Inbox that is connected to the BTP Workflow. The instructions show you how to open the entire BTP Launchpad. You can define different Actions for the same Semantic Object “cloud_portal” so it automatically opens the Inbox UI tile directly. Please check the following SAP Note:

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/0002914393

Here is a link for SPI definition on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_provider_interface

In general lines the SPI concepts are:

Service: is a set of programming interfaces and classes, that provides access to a specific application functionality

Service Provider Interface (SPI): is the set of public interfaces and abstract classes, that the service defines

Service Provider: implements the SPI

Service Provider Infrastructure (also referred to as SPI): This acronym is more used for ABAP systems, where an infrastructure is in place for SAP Netweaver Gateway to support SPI integration scenarios. Here is the documentation:

https://help.sap.com/viewer/68bf513362174d54b58cddec28794093/202009.001/en-US/897822518bc72214e10000...

In other words, SPI defines the REST endpoints that are to be implemented by a system or application to integrate with the Task Center Service. Main motivation is uniformity across the whole landscape and the easier implementation of consumption by the Task Center Service. You will only be able to take a look at the SPI definition for Task Center once it gets GA.

I'm not sure if you are able to open DRAFT documentation, but if you can, here a link you might like:

https://help.sap.com/viewer/DRAFT/0f18dddf28764f5b807ecd80549044cc/2021.000/en-US/5117f21ef28f4e698d...

If you can't open it I am sorry there is a reason for it. 😞

Best regards,
Ivan

[Ivan-Mirisola]

Hi gregorw,

To the best of my knowledge the plans are to have a federated inbox service that is able to display tasks from different sources (please see Ivan's answer here - One Inbox is the former name of SAP Task Center). One of its planned sources will be SAP Workflow Service - but I don't have any information as to when this will be available to customers and partners. The plans are shared publicly via Road Map Explorer (link below)

You can check the public roadmap on features related to Task Center here.

If you click on the first tile (entitled: Easy access to tasks through integration with SAP Task Center --> Capability View), you will see that most of the features you inquire are planned for Q2.2021 - but as always with regards to roadmaps, they are subject to change without prior notice.

Best regards,
Ivan

[vbalko-claimate]

Hello ivan.mirisola

Does SAP Task Center changed its name? Because roadmap explorer does not show anything (except concur and success factors inboxes).

Does it exists some Outbox (approved tasks) functionality in BTP?

[gregorw]

Hi ivan.mirisola Hi vbalko_effiis,

@Vladimir: seems only searching for Task Center directly in the Roadmap Explorer works.

@Ivan: The Roadmap Explorer isn't public. You need an S-User to access it. And I now found an option how I can integrate in the S/4HANA on Premise Inbox application: By implementing a TCM (task consumption model)-compliant OData adapter as described in the blog post How to implement an OData provider for My Inbox from lena.grothaus and the SAP Note: 2304317 - How to implement an OData provider for Task Gateway/My Inbox. Do you know if such a provider can also be used in the SAP BTP Workflow Service Inbox or in the upcoming Task Center?

Best regards
Gregor