- Working With Dashboards and Charts
- Working With Process Graphs
- Showing or Hiding the Menu
- Context Information
- Root Cause Analysis
- Sending Automation Ideas to UiPath Automation Hub
- Filters
- Simulating Automation Potential
- Tags
- Due Dates
- Compare
- Export
- Triggering an automation from a process app
- Starting a Task Mining project from Process Mining
Loading Data Using Theobald Xtract Universal
Introduction
This page describes how to use Theobald Xtract Universal (XU) to load data from your SAP source system into a process app. Refer to the official Theobald Software website for more information on Theobald Xtract Universal (XU).
Theobald Xtract Universal provides fast data access and extractions to SAP ECC and SAP HANA data sources. For general instructions on how to use Theobald Xtract Universal, see the official Theobald Software documentation Getting Started with Theobald Xtract Universal.
Prerequisites
It is assumed that you have:
- a valid Theobald Xtract Universal license.
Note:
The license is provided via UiPath for the purpose of Process Mining.
-
installed Theobald Xtract Universal. See the official Theobald Software documentation for more information on installing an updating Theobald Xtract Universal and customizing the function module for table extraction in SAP.
xu.exe
) can be executed without additional authentication.
Setting up Theobald Xtract Universal
Theobald Xtract Universal is the SAP certified extraction tool used for data extraction from SAP source systems, integrating
with SAP through Remote Function Calls (RFC). Theobald Xtract Universal contains the read-only custom function module Z_THEO_READ_TABLE-transport1
that is to be installed in SAP.
You can use the following link to download the custom module: Z_THEO_READ_TABLE-transport1.zip.
The latest version of the Z_THEO_READ_TABLE-transport1.zip
file will always be included when you download Xtract Universal.
Follow these steps to set up Theobald Xtract Universal.
-
Download the latest trial version of Theobald Xtract Universal from our website, see Download Trial Version. Install Theobald Xtract Universal on a Windows Server / Virtual Machine.
-
Check if the network access to your SAP system is open, see SAP TCP/IP Ports.
-
Grant SAP user rights to access to the SAP instance, see Authority Objects - SAP User Rights for Table.
-
The following components in Theobald Xtract Universal require customization in SAP:
Z_THEO_READ_TABLE
. -
Configure Theobald Xtract Universal for the required app template(s). See App Templates.
Steps 2-4 will require validation from your SAP team.
Shared Access Signature (SAS) Uri
To be able to upload the data to Process Mining Cloud you need to have the Shared Access Signature (SAS) uri of the Azure blob storage to which the extracted data needs to be uploaded. See Obtaining the Authentication Credentials for an App.
Loading Data Using Theobald Xtract Universal
Setting up data load using Theobald Xtract Universal requires several steps to be performed.
- Import the template extractions;
- Configure the source;
- Configure the extraction script;
- Set up the data uploader;
- Run the extraction script.
The steps are described in detail below.
Importing the Template Extractions
Follow these steps to import the template extractions in Theobald Xtract Universal.
-
Go to the App Templates page and open the documentation page for your app template.
Note:You can log in using the default user.
-
Locate the section Loading data using Theobald Xtract Universal and download the
XU_template_extractions.zip
file for you app template. ThisXU_template_extractions.zip
file contains the foldersdestinations
,extractions
, andsources
. -
Copy the folders from the downloaded
XU_template_extractions.zip
file to theconfig
folder of Xtract Universal. The location of this folder is[XU_installation_path]
/config. - Open Theobald Xtract Universal Designer and click on the refresh button to load all extractions.
A list of all extractions that each extract one table from the SAP system is displayed. The template source is named SAP and the template destination is named CSV.
Configuring the Source
Follow these steps to configure the SAP source in Theobald Xtract Universal.
- Go to Server - Manage sources and edit the SAP source.
- Fill in the settings on the General and Authentication tabs to connect to your SAP system.
- Test the connection.
Configuring the Extraction Script
Follow these steps to configure the extraction script.
-
Go to the App Templates page and open the documentation page for your app template.
-
Locate the section Loading data using Theobald Xtract Universal and download the
extract_theobald.zip
file for your app template. Thisextract_theobald.zip
file contains theextract_theobald.ps1
script and theconfig.json
file. -
Unzip the content of the
extract_theobald.zip
file on the server where Theobald Xtract Universal is installed. -
Configure the variables for the script in the
config.json
as listed below.
Variable |
Description |
---|---|
|
The Xtract Universal installation folder. This is the folder where you can find the |
|
Address of the server where Xtract Universal is installed. The default is |
|
Port of the server where Xtract Universal is installed. The default port of an installation is |
|
The SAS uri of the Azure blob storage to which the extracted data needs to be uploaded. See Retrieving the Credentials for the Azure Blob Storage. |
|
The API that is called to start data processing in Process Mining, once all data has been uploaded. |
|
Start date to be used to limit extractions. Only tables where a date filter is applied are filtered on this date. Format is
Note:
extraction_start_date must have a value.
|
|
End date to be used to limit extractions. Only tables where a date filter is applied are filtered on this date. Format is
Note:
extraction_end_date must have a value.
|
|
The language in which data is extracted from the source system. The default is |
|
The exchange rate type that is used for currency conversion. The default is |
Setting up the Data Uploader
The Theobald Xtract Universal extraction extracts data from the SAP system and puts the data in .csv
files in an output folder of the Theobald Xtract Universal installation folder. The data uploader will upload the files to
the azure blob storage.
Follow these steps to set up the data uploader.
- Download the DataUploader.
- Save the file in the same folder as the
extract_theobald.ps1
script.
Running the Extraction Script
To load the data and upload it to for use in Process Mining you must run the
extract_theobald.ps1
file.
The time taken for this task will depend highly on the data volumes loaded.
The output is uploaded to the blob storage which triggers processing in Snowflake.
Starting the file manually
Follow this step to start the data run.
- Run the
extract_theobald.ps1
file to start the data run.
extraction.log
contains the logs of the last data run. For each extraction that failed, a return code is displayed. See the official Theobald
Software documentation Call via Commandline for more information. When something with the setup is incorrect, this is mentioned in the error message.
Schedule a task for the data run
Instead of running the file manually, you can use Windows Task Scheduler to schedule a task that runs the batch script for automated data refreshes.
The output is uploaded to the blob storage which triggers processing in Snowflake.
When the extraction is successful, data ingestion may fails because of some faulty data being extracted. You can filter out this data should using Theobald Xtract Universal using the WHERE clause. Refer to the official Theobald documentation for more information on the WHERE Clause.
If you have a WHERE clause that uses variables (for example the extraction date) you cannot filter via the UI.