Discussion on how to turn your ERP from the old view, where you have to search for information, to the new method where your ERP becomes an integral part of the community, pushing the information in the community. Bringing together an Exceptional Digital Experience, where WebSphere Portal and Connections, become the dashboard where the information managed by SAP are integrated. SAP comes to you, bringing the information when you need it, where you need it.

1. Socialize your ERP, and
collaborate with him!
Andrea Fontana
Daniele De Laura

2. 2
Agenda
• Introduction – persons, company
• A new way to look at your ERP
• Meet SAP and Connections
• SAP vs Digital Experience using DDC
• BRS Solution (SAP, DX, CNX)
• Examples

3. 3
About us – Daniele De Laura
•I started selling software in 1996
•I started selling IBM software in 2001, in Sowre
•I started using GPP in 2004
•Sowre TCI champion 2002 & 2004
•Premier Partner since 2008
•Beacon award 2008 for Portal area
•Beacon award 2012 for BRS Retail solution
Currently I work as Sales Executive at Sowre SA in Switzerland
[ of course, that's not my country :-) ]
I’m a graduated management engineer from Karlruhe’s Technical
University

4. 4
About us – a weighty colleague in ICS
Andrea Fontana
•began working with Lotus Notes in 1992
•began working with WebSphere in 2002
•is an IBM Champion for WebSphere since 2012
•is an IBM Champion for ICS in 2015
•is an IBM DeveloperWorks Contributing Author since 2012
•is an BM developerWorks Accredited Author in 2015
Currently he works as CTO - ICS & WebSphere Architect at Sowre SA
in Switzerland [ but it's also not his country :-) ]

5. 5
About us – Sowre’s customers

6. Socialization is
according to a Dictionary:
a continuing process whereby an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the
norms, values, behaviour, and social skills appropriate to its social position.
according to Philosophy:
the process by which human infants begin to acquire the skills necessary to perform as
a functioning member of their society; it is the most influential learning process one
can experience
What’s Socialization?
6

7. Enterprise Resource Planning is
according to a Dictionary:
accounting-oriented information systems for identifying and planning the enterprise wide
resources needed to collect, make, distribute, and manage accounting for customer orders.
ERP systems were originally extensions of MRP II systems
according to Wikipedia:
Is a business management software, typically a suite of integrated applications, that a
company can use to collect, store, manage and interpret data from many business
activities, including:
• Product planning, cost
• Manufacturing or service delivery
• Marketing and sales
• Inventory management
• Shipping and payment
What’s Enterprise resource planning (ERP) ?
7

8. What’s Company management
Company management involves identifying the mission, objectives, procedures,
rules and management of the human capital of an enterprise to contribute to the
success of the enterprise.
Management does not need to be seen only from an enterprise point of view,
because management is an essential function to improve one's life and
relationships.
This implies effective communication.
8

9. The typical use of ERP System in decision process is based on the fact that humans must
search each information they need for that specific process.
Humans must run inquiries in the ERP System to collect a large part of the information.
Usually an employee each morning must connect to the ERP, and execute some activities to
extract reports and prints, and use them in its decision processes
A typical decision process.
In other words, the standard use of ERP
is in PULL mode, the ERP contains the
information.
But you must pull data from it.
9

10. A typical decision process.
•each actor must search and extract
information
•many information will be shown in a
report or a document
•only human can extract data and
analyze it to make a decision
The most important "actor" is
a Document.
10

11. What’s the link ?
Between Enterprise Resource Planing and Company Management, each
component involved in running your business, produces finally documents; but
this need also to pass through human activities, to achieve the goals.
“Human” is also a main focus in your Business Activities
Why don’t try to shift the focus from Documents to Persons ?
11

12. Evolution
Imagine this scenario:
I am a Member of a set of Communities
These Communities work to define a new strategy to sell a new product.
In this Communities we have some Actors like:
Project Managers
Product Managers
Marketing Experts
Designers
Each actor is working together with the
other associates to join a goal, and
sometime they need to find some data in
the company ERP or CRM
12

13. We have a new Actor !
The new concept is: enable the socialization process of your ERP
The leading idea is: SAP can send some information to the communities, to help
members to complete decisional process.
So you have a new
colleague: Mr SAP.
13

14. The new Scenario is ready
Human are the main focus in a new decisional process where my ERP
collaborates with them in Decisional Communities.
We have completed in this way our transformation to :
Social Enterprise
Collaboration
14

15. Behind the scenes, First Step (to CNX)
Some SAP function have a special workflow step to publish some alert in the
Connections Activity Stream or Blog post using a specific SAP-Bapi:
The basic idea is: the SAP-BAPI, when a specific situation happens, create a
json/xml data set and POST it on Connections, like an alert to a user
15

16. Behind the scenes, Next Step (from / to CNX)
One module creates an Interface gateway with SAP Bapi (cnx Bapi) and uses Cnx
API to publish information to Connections.
This Module receives a request from SAP and via Cnx API publishes on Activity
Stream or Blog Post that information;
it can also receive requests from Connections and invoke SAP Bapi.
16

17. Semantic Role
Used in the Connections Activity Stream API
“Duke Ellington posted a new song to iTune”
actor: Entity performing the activity (for instance, “Duke”)
verb: Action of the activity (for instance, “post”-ing)
object: The primarity object of the action (for instance, “song”)
target: Target of the action (for instance, “iTune”)
Activities/events can be represented in 2 formats:
─ JSON document
─ ATOM document
JSON is the primary format supported by Connections.
Atom is only supported on retrieval – not to post events
17

18. Use of Template keywords
IBM Connections allows two kinds of Template in the event title:
Object substitutions - where an appropriate representation of a known object within
the event is substituted into the title.
Title template substitutions - these use the above object substitutions, providing a
full title that is appropriately resourced.
Object Substitution. Substitution values are supported within a submitted event.title:
${Actor} - this is converted into appropriately marked up HTML which displays the
Actors name and links to a Business Card corresponding to the Actor
${Object} - if this is a person we display as with the Actor above, otherwise the
displayName with a link to the url
${Target} - if this is a person we display as with the Actor above, otherwise the
displayName with a link to the url
18

19. Sample to post an ActivityStream
19

20. Semantic details
20

21. Semantic details
21

22. Semantic details
22

23. Semantic details
23

24. Semantic details
Filed Type: Activity Object
Describes the primary object of the activity, for instance, in the activity: “Duke
Ellington posted a new song to iTune”, the object activity is “Song”. An Activity
SHOULD contain an object property whose value is a single Object
24

25. Semantic details
25

26. …and the result is…
26

27. …and the result is…
27

28. The new Json will be
28

29. @mention
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30. Where can I send my Json?
Now we have a Json ready to publish on our Connections but how can we do it?
<ctxRoot>/opensocial/basic/rest/activitystreams/@me/@all/@all
<ctxRoot>
is the context
root of the
Connections
FQDN
Authentication scheme
Specify the auth. Scheme
intendend to be used:
“basic”: basic authentication
“form”: form based authentication
“oauth”
User id
The stream returns all events
that are related to the given
user.
@me is an alias representing
the currently authenticated
user.
CommunityUUID
representing specific
Community
Group Id
Events for the group
related to the user id.
@all (wild card) in most
cases.
@friends – events from
user network
@following – events
from people followed
@self – own events
App id
Events for a given
applications.
@all corresponds to
top level view
Application name:
“activities”, “blogs”, …
30

31. Integrating with IBM Digital Data Connector (DDC) for DX
You can use the IBM® Digital Data Connector (DDC) for WebSphere® Portal framework
to integrate data from external data sources on your portal pages by using IBM Web
Content Manager presentation components. External data means that the data does
not need to be stored directly in IBM Web Content Manager or must use live data.
With Digital Data Connector, your website
designers can use Web Content Manager
presentation components to generate the web
page markup for your external data. They can use
all the Web Content Manager data management
facilities for managing your external data
visualizations
31

32. The Digital Data Connector is a secret weapon from IBM! It gives you the possibility
to use WCM and WCM design components to render any external data, with little-
to-no java coding or deployment. A DDC profile is used to define the transformation
from your specific XML into a generic list data structure and enumerate the data
attributes available in your list items.
Integrating with IBM Digital Data Connector (DDC) for DX
32

33. One module creates an Interface gateway with SAP Bapi (xdx Bapi) and can answer
via WebServices with a json/xml data, This data can be rendering via WCM
presentation template in our Portal Experience.
It can also receive requests from Portal and invoke SAP Bapi, to perform an Action,
as confirm an Order or similar.
Integrating with IBM Digital Data Connector (DDC) for DX
33

34. The major benefits of this approach include the following:
• Your Web Content Manager designers can fully control the visual appearance of the
integrated data.
• They can visualize the external data in the same way in which they visualize data that is
stored in Web Content Manager.
• As a result, they can visualize the external data in a way that is consistent with the
corporate design of your overall website by reusing existing Web Content Manager
components.
• To quickly adjust existing visualizations of your data or create new visualizations for new
kinds of external data, you no longer need the help of software developers or the IT
department. Your website designers can start working on the presentation templates
directly from your portal pages that show the data. They use the inline editing capabilities
of Web Content Manager.
• Your website designers make updates to the Web Content Manager design components in
project scope. This way, they can keep updates in draft stage until all updates to the
project are completed, approved, and finally published.
Integrating with IBM Digital Data Connector (DDC) for DX
34

35. Use Digital Data Connector in the following ways:
• You can code a Java plug-in, a so-called DDC plug-in, that hooks into
the DDC. The plug-in loads the external data and transforms it into a
generic DDC data structure, so-called bean lists. You can then have
the bean lists rendered on your portal pages by using standard Web
Content Manager rendering methods.
• You can use the generic XML DDC plug-in that is built into Digital Data
Connector. You can use this plug-in to integrate remote XML data
without writing or deploying extra Java code.
• You can also use a combination of the two approaches.
Integrating with IBM Digital Data Connector (DDC) for DX
35

36. Use Digital Data Connector can be integrate remote data in two format:
• .
•
DDC plug-in that is ready to use for integrating external
JSON data of your choice. You can use this plug-in to
render external JSON data on your portal pages without
having to write custom Java code.
DDC plug-in that is ready to use for integrating
external XML data of your choice. You can use this
plug-in to render external XML data on your portal
pages without having to write custom Java code.
CF06(required)
Integrating with IBM Digital Data Connector (DDC) for DX
36

37. Integrating wit IBM Script Portlet (SP) for DX
The IBM Script Portlet enables a script developer to create portlets for IBM® WebSphere®
Portal with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
The Script Portlet is designed for front-end developers to make porting applications to
WebSphere Portal easy.
You can import an application that you developed already. The components are saved in
Web Content Manager.
You can also edit the HTML, JavaScript, and CSS in the Script Portlet.
The Script Portlet makes it easy to develop
portlets
with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, without Java
or the JSR 286 portlet specification.
37

38. The following key WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager features are
available with the Script Portlet:
• Content targeting based on devices or locations
• Access to user login information
• Adaptive design that uses conditional rendering
• Access to shared render parameters, portlet preferences, and live text
The Script Portlet has the following advantages:
• Users have more autonomy and less dependence on central IT for portlet
development, which decreases the time to market.
• Users need less skill to be productive WebSphere Portal developers.
• Users control access and workflow processes in enterprise settings.
• Users can create reusable assets and contents.
• Users can render existing portlets, such as those developed with IBM Web Experience
Factory or IBM Rational Application Developer
Integrating wit IBM Script Portlet (SP) for DX
38

39. Integrating wit IBM Script Portlet (SP) for DX
39

40. Biometric Recognition Solution (DDC & SAP & BRS)
BRS is the solution dedicated to Retail and traffic analysis
Significance and quality of the information BRS is designed to provide high
quality
measures and data:
Precision counts of the inflowing visitors and their
demographic profile;
• Gender
• Age
• Ethnic group
Store personnel is not counted.
Attention time is calculated exactly, with no distortions or errors Multiple
passages of a customer are detected and managed
No pictures and no personal data are stored; traced and closed processes
avoid any
possibility of misuse
40

41. Biometric Recognition Solution (DDC & SAP & BRS)
All experience data will be combined with Business transaction.
Usually we combine data collected using BRS with the cash transaction data (receipts), as
registered e.g. in SAP.
We can identify which type of user have purchased and how much spent divided by
• Gender
• Age
• Etnia
41

42. Example: Mr Sap sends to me an ActivityStream
42

43. 43
Example: Mr Sap sends to me an ActivityStream

44. Mr Sap with BRS show me my Store KPI’s
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45. Mr Sap with BRS show me my Store KPI’s
45

46. 46
Andrea Fontana
CTO – ICS & WebSphere Architect
afontana@sowre.com
Michele Buccarello
------
mbuccarello@sowre.com