Configuring the SAP Connector for Purchase-to-Pay Discovery Accelerator

Introduction

To configure the settings to load data into the SAP Connector for Purchase-to-Pay Discovery Accelerator, you must specify the Connector Settings in an external configuration file in .csv format. You do not need to open the SAP Connector for Purchase-to-Pay Discovery Accelerator in your development environment.

Connector settings file

SAP_Connector_for_Purchase-to-Pay_Discovery_Accelerator.settings.csv

Important: This file is provided as a template and contains some default values. You must specify the setting values according to your needs.

Configuring the SAP Connector for Purchase-to-Pay Discovery Accelerator

Follow these steps to configure the SAP Connector for Purchase-to-Pay Discovery Accelerator.

Step	Action
1	Download the SAP_Connector_for_Purchase-to-Pay_Discovery_Accelerator.settings.csv.
2	Go to the Superadmin Server data tab and upload the file. Important: Make sure you use the exact name of the file (SAP_Connector_for_Purchase-to-Pay_Discovery_Accelerator.settings.csv).
3	Edit the file and enter the configuration settings.

Note:

The SAP_Connector_for_Purchase-to-Pay_Discovery_Accelerator.settings.csv file:

uses ; as delimiter and “ as quotation character.
must contain two lines: a header line with predetermined field names, and a line containing all values.

Connector_settings table

The Connector_settings table in the SAP Connector for Purchase-to-Pay Discovery Accelerator uses the SAP_Connector_for_Purchase-to-Pay_Discovery_Accelerator.settings.csv to load the data. See the illustration below.

Note: If you use a different name for the SAP_Connector_for_Purchase-to-Pay_Discovery_Accelerator.settings.csv file or save the file in a different location than the default location in the Server data tab, you must make sure that the connection string in the Connector_settings table points to the correct filename and/or location.

Configuration fields

Below is a list of the fields in the .csv that can be used to configure the SAP Connector for Purchase-to-Pay Discovery Accelerator, with a description and expected or example values. Not all fields are mandatory, e.g. if you specify SAP as input type, you can omit the fields that start with CSV or ODBC.

Setting	Description	Value
Input type	Define the input type that is used to retrieved the data. Possible values are `SAP`, `CSV` or `ODBC`. See Loading data.	"SAP" / "CSV" / "ODBC"
Use credential store	Define whether the credential store is used. If this setting is set to true, the password field must contain the identifier for the credential store password field you are trying to use. See Use a Credential Store.	true/false
SAP Host	The hostname or IP address of the SAP application server.	Example: "yourserver.domain:1234"
SAP Systemnumber	The two-digit number between 00 and 99 that identifies the designated instance.	00-99
SAP Username	Username of the account that is being used to log in to the SAP instance.
SAP Password	Password of the account that is being used to log in to the SAP instance, or the password identifier from the credential store. In case the credential store is used, Use credential store should be set to true. See: Using a credential store for password storage.
SAP Client	The client that is being used. (000-999)	000-999
CSV Data path	Data path to where the `.csv` files are located in the server data.	Example: "P2P/"
CSV Suffix	A regular expression containing the file extension of the file to read in. May contain a double suffix (up to 2 digits) which are added to the name of the table e.g. a count of a table export when multiple exist. Is the example suffix is too strict, `".*\)\).csv"` can be used, but use this with care as it is possible that unwanted .csv files are loaded. If you have files `table.csv`, `table1.csv` and `table-debug.csv`, all are loaded.	Example: "(\))\))d{0,2
CSV Delimiter	The delimiter separating the different fields.	Example: ","
CSV Quotation character	In case fields are wrapped within quotes, specify the quote character used.	Example: "'"
CSV Has header	Specify if the first line of the `.csv` file is a header line.	true/false
ODBC Driver	The name of the ODBC driver.	Example: "DSN"
ODBC Username	Username of the ODBC account.
ODBC Password	Password of the ODBC account, or the password identifier from the credential store. In case the credential store is used, Use credential store should be set to true. See: Using a credential store for password storage.
ODBC Schema	The name of the database schema which needs to be pre-padded to the database tables.	Example: "dbschema"
ODBC Connection parameters	Extra parameters for the ODBC connection string, next to driver, username and password. Format: `param1=value1 (;param2=value2)`.	Example for SAP HANA (Driver="{HDBODBC
Reporting currency	The currency in which the price related values are converted to and displayed in the Discovery Accelerator. See: Defining the Reporting Currency	Example: "USD"
Exchange rate type	The exchange rate type which is used for currency conversion (KURST).	Example: "M"
Language	The language that is being used for descriptions extracted from the data, based on the SPRAS (Language key) field. (E = English).	Example: "E"
Accounting document type	The accounting document type (BLART) which is used to filter the accounting documents to get the payment documents.	Example: "KZ"
Extraction start date	Set the start date of the extraction period of the data, the specified date is included in the date range, format: `d-m-yyyy`. See: Limiting the number of rows.	Example: "1-1-2021"
Extraction end date	Set the end date of the extraction period of the data, the specified date is included in the date range, format: `d-m-yyyy`. See: Limiting the number of rows.	Example: "31-12-2021"

Loading data

The input tables are used to load data into the SAP Connector. The following options are available to load data in an SAP Connector.

Connecting Directly to the SAP Database Using the Native SAP Connection

When you want to use an SAP Connector with data loaded directly from the SAP database you must set up a Native SAP Connection, and configure this in the SAP_Connector_for_Purchase-to-Pay_Discovery_Accelerator.settings.csv file.

See Set up Native SAP Extraction for a detailed description on how to connect directly to the SAP database using the native SAP connection.

Note: Also the custom Function module Z_XTRACT_IS_TABLE must be installed on your SAP system.

SAP account

To load the data from the SAP database you need an SAP account to be used to retrieve data. For reasons of compliance and data protection, you must make sure that this SAP account used to retrieve data has limited access to SAP and only has the appropriate authorizations. See Set up Native SAP Extraction.

Note that it is possible that the user who performs the actual data load from SAP has access to more data in Process Mining after loading the data than this user has in SAP, depending on the SAP authorizations of the user.

Using a Credential store for password storage

A Credential store allows you to use passwords without showing the actual password. For the connection from the SAP Connector to the SAP database, it is also possible to use a Credential store to store the actual password of the SAP account in a secured way. For more information see Use a Credential Store.

Loading .CSV files that contain specific SAP data

When you want to use the SAP Connector with data loaded via .csv files you must configure this in the SAP_Connector_for_Purchase-to-Pay_Discovery_Accelerator.settings.csv file.

To access the csv files from the SAP Connector you must upload the files in the Superadmin Server data tab in the path specified in the settings (CSV Data Path).

Loading data via an ODBC connection

When you want to use the SAP Connector with data loaded via an ODBC connection you must configure this in the SAP_Connector_for_Purchase-to-Pay_Discovery_Accelerator.settings.csv file.

Important: All databases that have a 64-bit version can be accessed using an ODBC connection. The required 64-bit ODBC driver must be installed on the UiPath Process Mining server, and the server must be able to access that specific system.

Using a Credential store for password storage

A Credential store allows you to use passwords without showing the actual password. For the ODBC connection from the SAP Connector to the SAP database, it is also possible to use a Credential store to store the actual password of the SAP account in a secured way. For more information see Use a Credential Store.

Defining the reporting currency

It is possible that your input data contains price-related values that are in different currencies. In Purchase-to-Pay Discovery Accelerator all currency values are displayed in the same currency. This may require input values to be converted. In the SAP_Connector_for_Purchase-to-Pay_Discovery_Accelerator.settings.csv file, you can specify the currency to which the price-related values are converted and displayed in Purchase-to-Pay Discovery Accelerator.

Limiting the number of rows

In cases where only a subset of the data is needed for analyzing or monitoring, it is recommended to limit the amount of data loaded, while this may improve the loading times. The number of rows that are extracted from SAP can be limited based on a date range. You can specify a start date in the Extraction start date setting and/or an end date in the Extraction end date setting in the SAP_Connector_for_Purchase-to-Pay_Discovery_Accelerator.settings.csv file.

Note: By default, the Extraction start date applies a date filtering to only get data from the current year (starting at January 1st).

See Input Data of the SAP Connector for Purchase-to-Pay Discovery Accelerator. In the Filtering column it is indicated which tables are filtered by the Extraction start date and the field that is used to filter (Date: fieldname).

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