Application Integration - Biztalk

City of Vancouver Utilizes Biztalk to Integrate Municipal Focused Asset Tracking and Work Order System with SAP

Business Situation

The City of Vancouver (CoV) Engineering Services, required a centralized solution to integrate their back office ERP Solution (SAP) with their Engineering Work Order Management and Fixed Asset System (Hansen). The primary driver for the overall project was the ability to use a municipal focused asset tracking and work order system that is integrated with an asset based geo-spatial information system (Autodesk). This system will enable engineers to review asset information in a three dimensional CAD style format and link the required work orders to the targeted asset records.

Solution

The City of Vancouver (CoV) Engineering Services, required a centralized solution to integrate their back office ERP Solution (SAP) with their Engineering Work Order Management and Fixed Asset System (Hansen). The primary driver for the overall project was the ability to use a municipal focused asset tracking and work order system that is integrated with an asset based geo-spatial information system (Autodesk). This system will enable engineers to review asset information in a three dimensional CAD style format and link the required work orders to the targeted asset records.

The design centered around three distinct solution approaches covering both Scheduled processing and Real Time based event processing:

  • Scheduled Master Data Updates transmitted from SAP to Hansen via a service-based design, employing BizTalk to receive SAP IDOC Messages before transforming and transmitting the data to Hansen Proxy Web Services
  • Real Time Transactional Work Order Creation and updates in SAP from Hansen. For every work order created or updated within the Hansen system, the required create or update was transmitted to SAP via web service calls to BizTalk which in turn integrated directly with Custom SAP BAPI’s
  • Scheduled High Volume detailed Asset Costing information from SAP to Hansen based on BizTalk receiving and assembling SAP IDOC data into targeted files and then raising targeted event processing flags via Web Service calls to the Hansen Proxy web service

Benefits

The BizTalk middleware solution:

  • Provides the principle method of transferring costing data from the Cost Collection system to the Detailed Asset Tracking system
  • Allows users to have the ability to reference SAP materials and resources from an external work order management system (Hansen)
  • Enables the integration of cost planning for large capital and operational project plans across SAP and the Hansen work order system