SAP Build Process Automation – New Product Enhancements (Timer Event)

At SAP Tech Ed 2022, SAP Build was launched, which is a unified low-code offering. It empowers users of all skill levels to create and augment enterprise apps, automate processes, and design business sites with drag-and-drop simplicity. SAP Build Process Automation, previously known as SAP Process Automation, is its process automation component.

In this Blog, I will show you what a Timer event is and how it can enhance the capabilities of the process build automation.

Timer Event

Adding a timer event as a step in the process builder editor will help the user to suspend or put the process on hold for a certain amount of time before continuing with the next set of steps.

Practical Example

Let us assume that a business process is designed as below, where the citizen developer runs an Action project (Get Order Status) as one of the steps in the Business process to get the status of a sales order, i.e., whether the order is placed successfully or not.
When the order is placed successfully, then the process moves forward with other activities, else the control goes back to get the details from the Action again.

A process without a timer event

What is the problem?

The Action (Get Order Status) will be triggered constantly creating a bottleneck on the external API endpoint causing the external application’s performance to degrade.

Solution:

To prevent the continuous triggering of the Action (Get Order Status), the citizen developer can introduce a delay of  5 minutes by using a Timer event.  In this case, at the end of 5 minutes, the control goes back to the Action (Get Order Status) and the same flow would run until there is a positive response.

If a positive message code or status code is received, the process will move to the next step and sends an email to the recipient specified about the status update of the order. Else the process will wait for 5 minutes and redo the status check.

A process with a timer event

Various ways to define Duration for Timer Event:

Defining the duration for the Timer event is possible from the side panel of the timer event.

1. Static Duration,
2. Dynamic Duration.[Coming soon]
3. External TimeStamp.[Coming soon]

1. Static Duration

If the duration to suspend the process is known already, then static duration helps in defining it for the timer event. Duration can be set in the following time units:

• Minute(s)
• Hour(s)
• Day(s)
• Month(s)

The default static duration for every Timer Event added into the process is  1 minute.

2. Dynamic Duration [Coming soon]

When the duration to wait needs to be dynamic, based on one of the fields from the previous activity, then this option can be chosen.

Once the value is selected, the citizen developer can use the respective unit from the dropdown provided (possible units would be the same as shown when defining static duration).

This feature is yet to be released for consumption.

Timer event setting for Dynamic Duration

3. External Timestamp Duration [Coming soon]

If the duration to wait needs to be dynamic but depends on a date timestamp, then this option can be chosen.

This feature is yet to be released for consumption.

Timer event setting for External DateTime stamp

Conclusion

To summarize, a timer event is used when any automated process needs to be suspended for a particular amount of time, in which the duration can be specified either in a static or dynamic manner.

We just started our journey with SAP Process Build Automation and you can see how the product is evolving. With a fully packed roadmap you can expect a lot of new features in the next month and beyond.

You are curious now but do not how to start? Try it out now using our Free Tier offering.

You are interested in the bigger picture of LCNC?

To see LCNC in action, check out the SAP Low-Code/No-Code Learning Journey – designed to increase low-code/no-code skills and teach citizen developers the basic concepts of software development including SAP AppGyver, SAP Process Automation, and SAP Work Zone and learn how to build mobile apps for free. Check out LCNC and plus much more free learning for developers at SAP Learning site.

For more information on SAP Process Automation, please refer to the following sources:

• Exchange knowledge: SAP Community | Q&A| Blogs
• Explore: SAP Product Page | Product Demo
• Learn more:  SAP Help Portal | SAP Learning Journey
• Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube  

Please do leave your feedback, suggestion or any queries in the comments section of this blog.

Original Article:
https://blogs.sap.com/2023/02/20/sap-build-process-automation-new-product-enhancements-timer-event/