AI-driven Process Optimization: Run Machine Learning use cases in SAP Signavio leveraging SAP Build

1. Firstly we need to activate the OData API and Ingestion API that allows us to retrieve and push data in and out of the system. We start with activating the Ingestion API.

2. Logon to SAP Signavio where you will enter the SAP Signavio Collaboration Hub. On the top right corner, click on the dots-icon and select Process Intelligence.

   

3. Once you have enter SAP Signavio Process Intelligence, you can click on Data Integration and create a new Source Data.

   

4. You will find a list of all created source data in your system. As we want to create a new one, click on the create button on the right side.

   

5. Here we need to provide a respective name and select as Connection Type Ingestion API. As I want to consume this API from SAP Build Code, I name the respective source data SAP Build Code.

   

6. Once we have created the Source Data, we can view the respective Connection that was automatically created with it. To view this information, we click on Connection on the top right corner.

   

7. You can view the details of the Connection that is linked to the Source Data. By clicking on it, you can view the details of the Connection.

   

8. Here you can retrieve the details of the Connection itself. This includes the API endpoint that we will need to insert as URL from SAP Build Code and also the authentication mechanism using the token. Note down both infos as you will be using these in subsequent steps.

   

9. You have successfully activated the Ingestion API. More information on how to activate the ingestion API and retrieve URL endpoint and API token can be found in the official Signavio documentation.

1. Then we activate an OData API in SAP Signavio Process Intelligence that allows us to extract data from the system.

2. For that we search for the process where we want to expose data for via OData API.

   

3. Within the process, we need to enter the configuration area via the settings-icon on the top right corner.

   

4. Once we reach the configuration area, navigate to the tab OData views.

   

5. Here we can create an OData view, that details out which data is getting exposed of the event log within the process.

   

6. We create an API token and a respective OData view that defines which data from the event log we want to expose.

   

7. More information on the activation of the OData API can be found in this blog post.

8. When we call the API endpoint using Postman, we can see the data and how the payload is structured. We see that there is a node called value and underneath it multiple records of the actual data of the event log.

   

1. Before we can read data from the OData API, we need to establish a SAP Build Code environment and install the Python and Jupyter capabilities on it.

2. Log on to SAP Build Code - Business Application Studio and create a new dev space.

   

3. Give the dev space a name, in this case I used Signavio, and then click on Create Dev Space.

   

4. Once the dev space has successfully deployed, it will show up as Running and you can enter it by clicking on it.

   

5. Once you enter Business Application Studio, run following command to create a new terminal in the search bar in the top middle area : >create new terminal. Then click on the create new terminal submenu.

   

6. Here we now need to update the pip package. For that, run the following command: pip3 install --upgrade pip

   

7. On the left side, search for Extensions and install the packages Python and Jupyter.

   

8. Once Python and Jupyter are installed, run the command: >jupyter and create a new Jupyter notebook.

   

9. Now you need to initiate your environment using the prompts from the top search bar relating your pip package. A popup on the bottom right corner should appear highlighting you the progress of this initiation. Once it is complete run a simple command to test whether your environment works properly. For more information on these setup steps, you can follow this blog post.

   

10. With that your Python and Jupyter setup in SAP Build Code - Business Application Studio is complete and you can now connect to SAP Signavio Process Intelligence.

1. Now instead of using Postman, we can also use Python in SAP Build Code to call our OData API. For that we can follow this blog post on how to call an OData API in Python.

2. We then need to adapt the code to our API, that means changing the URL, providing the API token and also selecting the specific columns that we want to retrieve. A sample python code of how to call the OData API can be found below.

3. Once we receive the JSON response, we need to loop through the response and select the data we are interested in. In this example we are interested in Case_ID, Country, Order_Amount and Product_Configuration.

4. This basically filters the payload for only these fields and then saves it into a csv attachment. We also added a print command at the end so we can see what the actual data looks like that is being retrieved.

   Python Copy

   import requests 
   import pyodata
   import pandas as pd
   import io
   import json
   from datetime import datetime
   
   # Assign absolute URL to variable SERVICE_URL and call the get request with authentication details with header Prefer: odata.maxpagesize=500,odata.track-changes
   # Header Prefer: odata.track-changes only for delta capable extractors
   
   SERVICE_URL = 'https://api.<region>.signavio.cloud.sap/pi/signal/odata/v1/NPS_Case_Status?$format=json'
   response = requests.get(SERVICE_URL,auth = ("<not-applicable>", "<odata-api-token>"), headers = {"Prefer": "odata.maxpagesize=500","Prefer": "odata.track-changes"})
   
   
   # load JSON response Python dictionary object 
   init_json = json.loads(response.content)
   
   
   # Determine the length of Python dictionary 
   length = len(init_json['value'])
   
   
   # Declare two list l_record to capture individual record & l_output to capture complete output.
   l_output = []
   l_record = []
   
   
   # Create & append header row
   l_record = ('Case_ID', 'Country', 'Order_Amount', 'Product_Configuration')
   l_output.append(l_record)
   
   
   # loop through dictionary to read each record and append it to output list l_output
   i = 0
   while i < length:
       l_record = (init_json['value'][i]['Case_ID'], init_json['value'][i]['Country'],init_json['value'][i]['Order_Amount'],init_json['value'][i]['Product_Configuration'])
       l_output.append(l_record)
       i += 1
   
   
   # Create a dynamic file name: result_YYYY_MM_DD_HH_MM_SS.csv
   file_name = 'result_' + str(datetime.now().strftime('%Y_%m_%d_%H_%M_%S')) + '.csv'
   
   
   # Copy data from output list l_output into data frame df_file and write to file 
   df_file = pd.DataFrame(l_output)
   df_file.to_csv(file_name, index = False, header = False)
   
   
   print(l_output)

   Show all 50 lines Show less

5. Once the data has been extracted successfully, we can see a preview of the dataset.

   

1. Now that we have successfully retrieved the event log data, we can apply any python algorithm on it. In this example we split the event log data into a training (70%) and test (30%) dataset and apply the random forest algorithm to predict a specific column for us, in this case Product_Configuration.

2. We start of by creating a data frame from the selected JSON payload we saved from the OData API call and check for consistencies within the data, such as whether the first row of the data excludes column names and whether Order_Amount is a numeric field. As we also do not need the Case_ID to training the machine learning model, we can also remove it from the data set for the time being.

3. The column Country and Product_Configuration are string fields, with which the machine learning algorithm can’t work with. Hence we need to apply an encoder, which breaks the string outputs into numbers.

4. Once we have defined the matrix of input columns of the model, which is Country and Order_Amount, and our to be predicted column, which is Product_Configuration, we can train this model using the training dataset and test its accuracy using the test dataset. We can also then add a validation column that checks whether the model predicted correctly or wrongly.

5. Once we have trained the model, we also add back the Case_ID column. A sample code on how to enrich the event log by applying a random forest model can be found below:

   Python Copy

   import pandas as pd
   from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier
   from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
   from sklearn.preprocessing import LabelEncoder
   from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score
   
   # Create DataFrame from l_output
   data = pd.DataFrame(l_output, columns=["Case_ID", "Country", "Order_Amount", "Product_Configuration"])
   
   # Check if the first row mistakenly contains column names
   if data.iloc[0].equals(pd.Series(["Case_ID", "Country", "Order_Amount", "Product_Configuration"], index=data.columns)):
       data = data.iloc[1:].reset_index(drop=True)  # Drop the first row and reset index
   
   # Retain Case_ID for later use
   data_case_id = data['Case_ID']
   
   # Drop Case_ID from the data for model training
   data = data.drop(columns=["Case_ID"])
   
   # Ensure 'Order_Amount' is numeric
   data["Order_Amount"] = pd.to_numeric(data["Order_Amount"], errors='coerce')
   
   # Encode "Country"
   encoder = LabelEncoder()
   data["Country"] = encoder.fit_transform(data["Country"])
   
   # Encode "Product_Configuration"
   label_encoder = LabelEncoder()
   data["Product_Configuration"] = label_encoder.fit_transform(data["Product_Configuration"])
   
   # Prepare the feature matrix (X) and target vector (y)
   X = data[['Country', 'Order_Amount']]
   y = data['Product_Configuration']
   
   # Split the data into training and test sets
   X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X, y, test_size=0.3, random_state=42)
   
   # Train Random Forest model
   rf = RandomForestClassifier(n_estimators=10, max_depth=5, min_samples_split=10, min_samples_leaf=10, random_state=42)
   rf.fit(X_train, y_train)
   
   # Make predictions
   y_pred = rf.predict(X_test)
   
   # Convert predictions and actual values back to original labels
   y_pred_labels = label_encoder.inverse_transform(y_pred)
   y_true_labels = label_encoder.inverse_transform(y_test)
   
   # Convert encoded 'Country' back to original names
   X_test['Country'] = encoder.inverse_transform(X_test['Country'])
   
   # Calculate accuracy
   accuracy = accuracy_score(y_true_labels, y_pred_labels)
   print(f"Model Accuracy: {accuracy * 100:.2f}%")
   
   # Create test results DataFrame
   test_results = X_test.copy()
   test_results.insert(0, 'Case_ID', data_case_id.loc[test_results.index])  # Ensure Case_ID is first column
   test_results['Actual_Configuration'] = y_true_labels
   test_results['Predicted_Configuration'] = y_pred_labels
   
   # Add a column to mark correct predictions ("Yes") and incorrect ones ("No")
   test_results["Correct_Prediction"] = (test_results["Actual_Configuration"] == test_results["Predicted_Configuration"]).map({True: "Yes", False: "No"})
   
   # Print test results
   print(test_results)

   Show all 66 lines Show less

6. If our conversion is successful, we will see a preview of the data frame including a percentage of the model accuracy.

   

7. Once we have trained and tested our model, we need to convert the data frame into a csv format so that we can push the updated data back into SAP Signavio Process Intelligence.

8. We also need to add the column names in the first row of the csv file. A sample python code can be found below:

   Python Copy

   [# Convert the results to CSV format with the column names as the first row
   csv_data = test_results.to_csv(index=False, sep=',', header=True)
   print(csv_data)
   
   # Optionally, save to a CSV file without the first row as it is already handled:
   test_results.to_csv('test_results_with_predictions.csv', index=False)]

9. If our csv conversion is successful, we can see our data in csv format with the column name in the first row.

   

1. Now that we have activated the Ingestion API and enriched the event log, we can perform the data push into SAP Signavio Process Intelligence.

2. For that we leverage the official API specification of the Ingestion API in combination with the transformation logic we used in our developer tutorial using SAP Integration Suite.

3. As a result we get a python code that can perform the data push. A sample python code can be found below:

   Python Copy

   import requests
   import json
   
   # Define API endpoint (Choose correct region)
   url = "https://api.<region>.signavio.cloud.sap/spi/ingestions/v1/data"  # Change region if needed
   
   # Access token for authentication
   access_token = "<api-token>"
   
   # Define schema as JSON (adjust fields based on your data structure)
   schema = json.dumps({
       "type": "record",
       "name": "RandomForrestPrediction",
       "fields": [
       {"name": "Case_ID", "type": ["null", "string"]},
       {"name": "Country", "type": ["null", "string"]},
       {"name": "Order_Amount", "type": ["null", "double"]},
       {"name": "Actual_Configuration", "type": ["null", "string"]},
       {"name": "Predicted_Configuration", "type": ["null", "string"]},
       {"name": "Correct_Prediction", "type": ["null", "string"]}
   ]
   
   })
   
   # Define primary keys
   primary_keys = "Case_ID"  # Adjust based on your needs
   
   csv_data = test_results.to_csv(index=False, sep=',', header=True)
   
   # Construct the multipart request body manually
   boundary = "cpi"
   body = (
       f"--{boundary}\r\n"
       f'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="schema"\r\n\r\n'
       f"{schema}\r\n"
       f"--{boundary}\r\n"
       f'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="files"; filename="RandomForrestPrediction.csv"\r\n'
       f"Content-Type: text/csv\r\n\r\n"
       f"{csv_data}\r\n"
       f"--{boundary}\r\n"
       f'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="primaryKeys"\r\n\r\n'
       f"{primary_keys}\r\n"
       f"--{boundary}--\r\n"
   )
   
   # Define headers
   headers = {
       "Authorization": f"Bearer {access_token}",
       "Content-Type": f"multipart/form-data; boundary={boundary}"
   }
   
   # Make the request
   response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, data=body)
   
   # Print the response
   print(response.status_code, response.text)

   Show all 56 lines Show less

4. If the API call is successful, we should receive a HTTP 200 response.

   

1. Once the data push of the enriched event log was successful, we can view the new data model in our source data.

   

2. We can also view the underlying values by previewing a dedicated data view.

   

With that we have successfully implemented a machine learning scenario using SAP Build Code - Business Application Studio by enriching the event log in SAP Signavio Process Intelligence. We were able to:

1. Enriched our dataset that can now enhance our process mining analysis for many use cases
2. We setup the technical connectivity, data transformation and applied machine learning algorithm

Below some useful links relating our API documentation. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me

SAP Signavio Process Intelligence APIs

Ingestion API - Help documentation

Ingestion API - Postman collection

Ingestion API - Business Accelerator Hub

OData API - Help documentation

OData API - Postman collection

OData API - Business Accelerator Hub