What Is SAP Integration Suite?
SAP Integration Suite is SAP's integration platform on BTP — the successor to the old Process Integration / Process Orchestration world. It connects SAP systems to each other and to third-party applications, on-premise or in the cloud.
Its core is Cloud Integration: a visual, message-flow-based tool where you design integration flows (iFlows) that move and transform data between systems.
Your First Scenario: File to Mail
The classic starter scenario moves data from one place to another with a small transformation in between. Say you need to send a daily sales summary from an SFTP folder to a manager's inbox as an email.
It touches the two most common adapters — SFTP and Mail — and it works end to end in under an hour. Perfect first iFlow.
Step 1: Open the Design Workspace
Subscribe to Integration Suite in your BTP subaccount, then open the Integration Suite launchpad and go to Design → Integrations. Create a new integration package to hold your iFlow, then create the iFlow itself inside it.
Packages are just folders with versioning. One package per business scenario keeps things tidy as your landscape grows.
Step 2: Add the Sender and Receiver
Drag a Sender channel onto the canvas and set the adapter to SFTP. Fill in the connection details: host, port, credentials (stored securely in the Security Material section), and the source folder path.
Add a Receiver channel with the Mail adapter: SMTP host, sender address, and the recipient. Set the mail subject to something descriptive like "Daily Sales Summary".
Step 3: Transform the Message
Between sender and receiver, drop a Content Modifier step. This is where you shape the payload — for example, mapping the incoming CSV into a readable email body, or setting message headers the mail adapter needs.
For a first flow, keep the transformation trivial: pass the file content through and set a static subject line. You can add XSLT or Groovy mapping later once the plumbing works.
Get the empty pipe working first, then add transformation. Debugging connectivity and mapping at the same time is miserable.
Step 4: Deploy and Test
Save the iFlow and click Deploy. Deployment takes a minute or two; watch the status change from "Deploying" to "Started" in the Monitor section.
Drop a test file into the SFTP folder and check the message monitoring. A green checkmark means the message flowed through; the mail should land in the inbox shortly after.
Step 5: Read the Monitoring
Open Monitor → Message Processing and click your message. The message processing log shows every step the message passed through, with timings and payload snapshots.
When something fails, this log is your first stop. It tells you exactly which step broke and why — most first-flow errors are wrong credentials or a bad folder path.
Nine out of ten first-iFlow failures are connectivity: credentials, hostnames, folder paths. Check those before touching the flow logic.
You now have a deployed, monitored integration. The same pattern — sender, transformation, receiver — scales up to the complex scenarios.
Questions? Drop them in the comments.