Business Benefits of Duet Enterprise and Comparison to SAP integration via Biztalk/Custom Solutions - Bringing SAP Business Data and SharePoint Collaboration Features Together and Ensuring a ROI

I've been involved in several SAP-SharePoint integration projects recently. Such projects typically relied heavily on an Enterprise Service Bus (ESBs - such as Biztalk or SAP PI), customizations and code. When you integrate SAP with SharePoint, there are many benefits that are provided when users don't have to use SAP GUI directly:

• Hard benefits such as reduced licensing costs
• Usability benefits such as allowing for a much simplified User Interface (people familiar with SAP GUI and SAP Portal will chuckle at this)
• Supportability Benefits (as SharePoint and .NET skills are more common that SAP Portal skills - at least in the Australian market).

However, since the release of Duet Enterprise 1.0 (http://ddkonline.blogspot.com/2011/01/duet-enterprise-released-and-available.html) at the end of January, another integration option has been thrown into the mix.

When my clients have been considering Duet Enterprise, one of the most often asked questions is

"What does Duet Enterprise offer me that I can't do already with SharePoint, SAP, custom BAPIs, SAP Enterprise Services and SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services?".

Duet Enterprise brings a lot to the table - both on the SAP side and on the SharePoint side - however it's not the perfect solution for all problems. While consistency between systems is a vital principle in enterprise architecture, you really do have to choose the right combination of tools to fit a given problem. Indeed, as with any architectural approach - you have to weigh up the pros and cons.

I see the Duet Enterprise product offering (and the development framework it provides) as having the following advantages over just a custom integration build:

1. Security and Security Best Practices. Through the Duet Enterprise Claims-based Role Provider, it allows you to leverage the SAP security model and SAP Roles in SharePoint. This avoids the duplication of a potentially massive security hierarchy into the SharePoint space. By design, communication channels between systems are encrypted. This is one of the biggest value-adds. This also allows you to keep all your unstructured data (e.g. pdfs/documents) in SharePoint and still leverage the security model in SAP to limit access to these resources.
2. SAP UWL Functionality - It exposes your SAP Universal Worklist (UWL) into the native SharePoint task list - you don't have to do a mashup or WSRP or some other IFrame hack.
3. Maintainability and Reduced Development Efforts -  It provides some out of the box functionality (site creation, business centric collaboration) as a guideline and template for further development.
4. Diagnostic Tool Support - Duet Provides Health Checks that allow you to check your setup, and provides mechanisms (via Correlation Identifiters) to help you diagnose problems if requests are failing. 
5. Official Supportability - It is a product supported by Microsoft and SAP that incorporates their recommended approach for integration. There is also official documentation for this integration approach.
6. It has a Roadmap - It is a platform that has a roadmap (as opposed to a completely custom system) which is something you build and have to take a lot more responsibility for. As Duet Enterprise grows in capabilities, you will regret  going down the 100% custom path.
7. Reporting Functionality - it brings Reporting Functionality out of SAP via the Reporting Request mechanisms and alows you and your colleagues to collaboration around SAP Reports via standard SharePoint functionality (e.g. Social tagging)  
8. The BCS Solution Design Gallery - It provides an enhanced model for the deployment of Office Based Solutions through SharePoint e.g. Administration screens for arranging your solution and for generating your solution from within SharePoint. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff963717.aspx for more details.
9. Entity Collaboration Functionality - Supports creation of collaboration sites surrounding SAP business entities. This however has to be checked against your SharePoint governance strategy and capacity plan.
10. SAP HR Information imported into SharePoint User Profiles - ForeFront Identity Manager is used synchronize SAP User information (HR infotypes) from SAP via a BCS user profile connection, along with role synchronization via the Duet Enterprise Profile Synchronization timer job.

I have also been approached around concerns that it Duet Enterprise doesn't use a full ESB. However that's not true. Duet is a mechanism for providing services on the SAP side (via an ESB on the SAP side e.g through SAP's middleware solution "SAP PI") - and consuming these services on the SharePoint side. Duet Enterprise can live comfortably in an ESB-enabled an ecosystem. 

If you have SharePoint and SAP in your environment, I suggest that you consider Duet Enterprise as part of your enterprise strategy for improving the accessibility and collaboration around your most important business data.

In most circumstances, it will give you a large amount of momentum (and provides all the plumbing) to allow you to provide a solid and supported solution for SAP to SharePoint integration - with an upgrade path.

DDK

Duet Enterprise - [ERROR] - "Cannot Merge Contents of LobSystem (External System) with Name 'Account' as it appears to be different from preexisting LobSystem in the current load context." - Fix

When using Duet Enterprise (for SAP and SharePoint 2010 Integration) you may receive the following exception when importing Duet Business Connectivity Service Models (as per http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg394164.aspx):

"Duet Enterprise - [ERROR] - Cannot Merge Contents of LobSystem (External System) with Name 'Account' as it appears to be different from preexisting LobSystem in the current load context.".

This may occur even after you've used Duet to remove all of the models with the commandline DuetConfig.exe /RemoveBDC.

You can fix this issue by going to:

This may occur even after you've used Duet to remove all of the models with the commandline DuetConfig.exe /RemoveBDC.

SharePoint Central Administration - Your Business Connectivity Services (BCS) Service Application - Manage
Then:

1) Choose "Models" in the "View" dropdown and remove any Duet models if they still exist

2) Choose "External Systems" and Remove any Duet External systems (this is the external system referred to in the error).

You should now successfully be able to import the Duet Enterprise 1.0 out of the box Models.

DDK

Duet Enterprise Released and Available for Download on MSDN!

After a long wait, Duet Enterprise 1.0, Microsoft and SAP's premier framework for SAP integration with SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 has finally been released on MSDN. At Oakton, I've been doing SAP to SharePoint integration for the last 18 months so a framework and guidance like this is quite exciting.

If you have an MSDN subscription, you can get it from here:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/securedownloads/default.aspx
Also note that this is not the ONLY way to integrate and alternatives like just using out of the box SharePoint 2010 BCS (Business Connectivity Services), or the Biztalk SAP Adapters Packs are the way to go. It really depends on your requirements. Duet Enterprise provides a few sample scenarios as part of the framework to get you started as a model for integration guidance.

Here is a high level architecture diagram in case you're completely unfamiliar with the product (it requires and utilizes SharePoint 2010 BCS under the covers) :

Basically, Duet Enterprise gives you a head-start in terms of plumbing when you start a new SAP-SharePoint Integration project. It includes the following:

1. A framework for building SAP-SharePoint-Office Integration Scenarios
2. SAP Workflow Integration from SharePoint (though this is not using SAP BPM)
3. Some Pre-canned Site Templates for certain scenarios like retrieving Customer Information through SharePoint
4. Components to allow retrieval of SAP reports from SharePoint
5. Duet Enterprise Document collaboration functionality
6. Communication Monitoring and Support Components to make troubleshooting easier.
7. A security framework for authorization purposes.

There are a couple of known issues with the release (not absolute showstoppers for my clients, but you should be aware of them):

Known Issue (1):


Aggregator Web Part will not work across the Web Apps having different Authentication
Description: Aggregator Web Part is deliverable of the Duet Workflow Feature. This Web Part will provide a support to view the Task for particular user across the Site Collection and Web App.


Current Limitation to the web Part - This Web Part cannot support the Scenario of Web Part is created in one type of authenticated Web App and the Rootsite Parameter pointing to the different Web App which if different authentication. Eg: Web Part placed in Win Claims based Web App can pull/show the task assigned to the User under another rootsite created in another win claim Web App but it will not work for the rootsite created in Win Legacy Web App and then the Page on which Web Part is placed will not accessible.


Viewing the Tasks from the Cross Auth Web App in aggregator web part is not Supported


Workaround: To Fix the Page which is caused by cross authentication issue in Aggregator Web Part in the Page is to remove the web Part through SPD and then add the Aggregator web Part and point only to the rootsite accessible and same authenticated.


Known Issue (2):
Task with attachments cannot be created and assigned to users in Turkish environment.


The following languages are included in this product: Arabic, Chinese-Simplified, Chinese-Traditional, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish.


Microsoft will be having some official launch announcements soon and I'll be covering Duet in more detail in later blog posts.

DDK