One of the wonderful aspects of being able to attend conferences like ASUG Tech Connect is the opportunity to talk with SAP product experts to really understand the roadmap. The chance to talk with customers and find out what they are confused about or struggling with in their environments is equally valuable. When we can put these two opportunities together in order to clearly answer customer questions … well, we can’t pass that up. One of the most common questions we are hearing at Mindset right now is around SAP’s Joule product and if it can be used with on-premises (non-RISE) systems, which the vast majority of SAP customers are still running.
If you ask SAP this question, the answer will be “no”, and that this is not on the roadmap. Even worse, the set of skills that Joule provides is different for S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition and S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition, both of which are supported by Joule and on the roadmap. But customers should be aware that a very clear and positive answer is coming into focus and should be achievable in Q1 of 2025, based on SAP’s published roadmaps: Customers will be able to deploy Joule and enable it to interact with all types of on-premise systems and non-SAP cloud systems, from S/4HANA through ECC and CRM, through Salesforce and ServiceNow.
But wait, what’s Joule?
Joule is, simply the branded, consistently designed chat front-end for SAP’s AI capabilities across its suite of applications. Joule is available in several different SAP applications, from SuccessFactors to S/4HANA Public Cloud and Build Code, with other instantiations coming soon, like SAP Build Work Zone, Standard Edition (see image).
Meanwhile, multiple SAP applications provide capabilities, or skills, to Joule. For example, S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition might provide the ability to search for and create sales orders, while Successfactors may provide the ability to ask questions about corporate policies.
The vision for Joule is that wherever you see Joule, you’ll be able to interact with it through chat and trigger any of its capabilities. So even if you are in SuccessFactors, you’ll be able to ask it questions about your sales orders in S/4HANA.
The challenge is that SAP can only provide so many skills for Joule, and SAP’s prioritization of skills may not match yours as a customer. So what if you want your employees to be able to do something with Joule that SAP hasn’t thought of, doesn’t prioritize (on-premises systems), or doesn’t control (third-party systems like ServiceNow)?
The Solution
What does a solution to this problem look like? It will be possible to deploy Joule in SAP Build Work Zone, Standard Edition. That Joule deployment can then be extended with SAP Joule Studio in SAP Build to provide additional skills. SAP Build will be able to use Actions that have been configured in SAP Build Process Automation within these skills, and those actions can call services and RFC-enabled function modules within your on-premises systems.
This solution will be easy for developers familiar with the Build tools to implement, especially those who are comfortable with Build Process Automation (BPA), but it does require some pre-work: For this to work seamlessly, you’ll need to ensure that your BTP environment is properly configured and governed, so that you can achieve seamless identity propagation from your Build Work Zone site through BPA, to your backend system via destinations and Cloud Connector.
And, of course, this solution requires the realization of key roadmap items that will enable it.
The roadmap
At Tech Connect, Michael Ameling reiterated the immediate roadmap that was already shared as part of the virtual TechEd in October. You can see the hero slide below (click for more detail).
The key functionality we need to see from the roadmap?
- Joule integrated into SAP Build Work Zone, Standard Edition
- Joule studio in SAP Build (see above – scheduled for Q1 2025)
- RFC consumption through actions in the process editor (in BPA)
By the end of Q1 2025, all of these pieces of the puzzle should be in place.
But what about security?
How do we ensure that Joule can’t access data the user shouldn’t be able to access and can’t execute actions that the user doesn’t? If BTP is set up properly to handle identity propagation as described above, this is a non-issue. The actions the user takes through Joule execute as the user in the backend system, subject to all the security restrictions in the S/4HANA system. It is vitally important to have this BTP setup in place.
If you need help with this, Mindset has a BTP enablement offering where we can get this squared away for you in about two weeks, including upskilling your BTP administrators and a workshop to educate on capabilities. Fill out the contact form at the bottom of the page.
Come See
