Microsoft SharePoint is generally well accepted, and becoming much more common as the corporate Portal. Knowledge workers or specialist collaborating in this product is a simple, basic and pleasant experience. Why not integrate some SAP data into this space? The question will probably come down to the technical architecture. However, one of the advantages of SharePoint BCS (Business Connectivity Services) or SharePoint’s basic strategy for connecting to external data sources and SAP’s Enterprise Services is that they are two standards that should work together without any 3rd party components. Shouldn’t the goal or aim be to simplify this solution?
One of the core concepts of Business Connectivity Services (BCS) for SharePoint is the external content types. They are reusable metadata descriptions of available data and practices applied to external data. SharePoint offers developers or designer several ways or approaches to create external content types and integrates them into the platform. The SharePoint Designer 2010, for instance, enables you to create and manage external content types that are stored in supported external systems.
In this article, let’s discuss the different approaches or methodologies accessible to provide SharePoint SAP integration.
#1. There are a few different ways that SAP business processes can be exposed in SharePoint.
#2. Providing a link from SharePoint to SAP portal or giving an iView-based Web Part in SharePoint. This sort of the integration option does not really solve the problems or issues.
#3. Programming to connect or associate a SharePoint form page or a list page to retrieve, recover or push data or information into a SAP process via the SAP .Net Connector, or the Microsoft BizTalk Adaptor for SAP. This is a substantial way to approach to solve problems or issues mentioned above; however it requires the availability of many different skill sets such as .Net Development, SAP technical skills, SAP functional skills, and SharePoint skills. This kind of a programming methodology should be considered for complex or highly interactive scenarios or for scenarios where the interaction performance is critical.
#4. Using Duet Enterprise: This is a product that Microsoft and SAP explicitly designed to permit SharePoint and SAP integration and can be a decent choice for a deep integration between SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and SAP Enterprise Services. It also provides excellent or brilliant single-sign-on and reporting capabilities. Duet Enterprise again requires the accessibility or availability of wide range of skill sets – .Net, SAP technical, SAP functional, and SharePoint. As before, this ought to be considered for a complex, highly or exceptionally interactive, or high-performance uses.
#5. Using a non-programming business-driven approach.
This is a solution that is offered by Katpro Technologies, allowing someone with SAP functional skills and basic SharePoint knowledge to build solutions that expose SAP functionality in SharePoint. The solutions built via this approach may not cover all possible scenarios, but would rather enable many low to medium complexity scenarios to be built, manufactured and deployed very quickly and cost-effectively.
Katpro technologies is a leading SharePoint Consulting Services Provider. Our SharePoint Experts can help you implement an effective strategy in order to increase your company’s efficiency.
Contact us or get in touch with us to know more.
