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ICYMI: A recently released Analysys Mason study in collaboration with Huawei entitled, ‘Digitalization reshaping operations: a new digital operational model for the future’ has illustrated how digitalization is fundamentally reshaping the way businesses are being operated, and how in order to remain competitive a new operational model for the future operational environment is necessary. As such communications service providers (CSPs) are embarking on their own digital transformation journey to increase service agility and operational efficiency through infrastructure evolution and operations transformation. http://bit.ly/2DvROkj #Huawei #BigData #AI

* Wechat development series 1 – setup your development environment
* Wechat development series 2 – development Q&A service using nodejs
* Wechat development series 3 – Trigger C4C Account creation in Wechat app
* Wechat development series 4 – Send C4C Data change notification to Wechat app
* Wechat development series 5 – embedded your UI5 application to Wechat app
* Wechat development series 6 – Retrieve Wechat User info via oAuth2 and display it in UI5 application

In previous blog Wechat development series 5 – embedded your UI5 application to Wechat app we have successfully embedded one UI5 application within app. Now we go one step further: suppose in our UI5 application we need to retrieve some basic information of current user who has subscribed our Wechat account, for example the nick name of Wechat user, we should follow some special process defined by Wechat, as those user information is sensitive and should never be returned by Wechat API unless Wechat users have explicitly approved that it could be retrieved, that is, the operation to access Wechat user information must explicitly be authorized. From Wechat official API document the authorization process is defined according to oAuth2 protocol.

Implemented feature

My Wechat account has nick name: “null”. When I subscribe the test Wechat account below using my Wechat account and access the same UI5 application used in the fifth blog of this series, I can see my nick name is successfully retrieved and displayed in this UI5 application: Here below is implementation detail.

Implementation detail

1. Go to the development work center of your test Wechat subscription account, click “modify” button to configure a string to represent the site name of the url which acts as oauth2 callback. In my example my oauth2 callback url is https://wechatjerry.herokuapp.com/tokenCallback so I must maintain wechatjerry.herokuapp.com here. 2. The initial step is to guide Wechat user to access the url with below format to get the necessary code. This code is used to get the access token in next step. https://open.weixin.qq.com/connect/oauth2/authorize?appid=&redirect_uri=&response_type=code&scope=snsapi_userinfo&state=1#wechat_redirect In my example, since my callback url is https://wechatjerry.herokuapp.com/tokenCallback, so the final url is: https://open.weixin.qq.com/connect/oauth2/authorize?appid=wx73b49bfe02fd3a17&redirect_uri=https://wechatjerry.herokuapp.com/tokenCallback&response_type=code&scope=snsapi_userinfo&state=1#wechat_redirect When a Wechat user clicks this url in his/her Wechat application, the following dialog will popup, which notifies current user that the third party application is trying to access your public information such as gender, nickname and avatar. If the Wechat user accepts such access, he/she could press “确认登录”(Accept) button. Once the button is clicked, the code will be generated by Wechat platform and send to the page specified by the callback url, in my example it is https://wechatjerry.herokuapp.com/tokenCallback. So two tasks needed to be done in this step: (1) guide Wechat user to click the hyperlink https://open.weixin.qq.com/connect/oauth2/authorize?appid=wx73b49bfe02fd3a17&redirect_uri=https://wechatjerry.herokuapp.com/tokenCallback&response_type=code&scope=snsapi_userinfo&state=1#wechat_redirect (2) Implement the logic in https://wechatjerry.herokuapp.com/tokenCallback to react to this code.

Implementation for task one

So far you should know how to implement a custom menu in Wechat app, which is described in Wechat development series 5 – embedded your UI5 application to Wechat app. Now create a new menu for Wechat user and once it is pressed, send out a html tag with corresponding url. When this menu is pressed, Wechat user will see the tag is rendered as a hyperlink within Wechat app: This hyperlink is replied to end user via below code: app.route(’/’).post(function(req,res){ var _da; req.on(“data”,function(data){ _da = data.toString(“utf-8”); }); req.on(“end”,function(){ var msgType = formattedValue(getXMLNodeValue(‘MsgType’,_da)); if( msgType === “text”){ // handle text message, detail source code see previous blog } else if( msgType === “voice”){ // handle voice message, detail source code see previous blog } else if( msgType === “event”){ var event = formattedValue(getXMLNodeValue(‘Event’,_da)); if( event === “subscribe”){ // handle subscribe event, detail source code see previous blog } else if( event === “CLICK”){ /* < “ : & & */ var redirect = "https://open.weixin.qq.com/connect/oauth2/authorize?appid=wx73b49bfe02fd3a17&redirect_uri=https://wechatjerry.herokuapp.com/tokenCallback&response_type=code&scope=snsapi_userinfo&state=1#wechat_redirect”; var reply = “<a href=”“ + encodeURI(redirect) + ”“>” + “OAuth2 test to read User info in 3rd application” + “<” + “/a” + “>”; var eventtext = replyMessage(_da, reply); res.send(eventtext); }; } }); });

Implementation for task two

If user has pressed “Accept” button, the code will be send to the callback url, whose value is stored in req.query.code. app.route(“/tokenCallback”).get(function(req,res){ if( req.query && req.query.code) { authorizeAndRedirect(req.query.code, res); } else{ res.send(“no code”); } }); The function authorizeAndRedirect is implemented in nodejs module with below source code: var config = require(“../../config.js”); var request = require(‘request’); function getAccessToken(code) { var url = “https://api.weixin.qq.com/sns/oauth2/access_token?appid=” + config.testAccountAppid + “&secret=” + config.testAccountSecret + “&code=” + code + “&grant_type=authorization_code”; var getTokenOptions = { url: url, method: “GET”, json:true, headers: { “content-type”: “application/json” } }; return new Promise(function(resolve,reject){ var requestC = request.defaults({jar: true}); requestC(getTokenOptions,function(error,response,body){ if(error){ reject({message: error}); return; } resolve(body); }); // end of requestC }); } function getUserinfo(tokenResponse, res){ var userinfourl = “https://api.weixin.qq.com/sns/userinfo?access_token=” + tokenResponse.access_token + “&openid=” + tokenResponse.openid; var userOptions = { url: userinfourl, method: “GET”, json:true, headers: { “content-type”: “application/json” } }; return new Promise(function(resolve,reject){ var requestC = request.defaults({jar: true}); requestC(userOptions,function(error,response,body){ if(error){ reject({message: error}); return; } var url = “https://wechatjerry.herokuapp.com/ui5?nickname=” + body.nickname; res.redirect(url); }); // end of requestC }); } module.exports = function(code, res){ getAccessToken(code).then(function(tokenResponse) { getUserinfo(tokenResponse, res); }); }; This module basically finishes the highlighted two steps in Wechat document. The following tasks are done in this module: (1) get access token via code ( input parameter of this module ) (2) get user information via API plus the access token got in previous task (3) redirect to the UI5 application with url https://wechatjerry.herokuapp.com/ui5?nickname= http://bit.ly/2D36oPv #SAP #SAPCloud #AI

Smart Vending Machine : the “right now ” difference for wholesale distribution

Every CEO of Wholesale I have met are obsessed about one thing : that a market place like Amazon could eat into his volume turn over and squeeze him to death, and what is keeping him  awake at night is how to resist positively.

Here we can summarize the different strategies we often hear :

* Be flawless at execution and offer new free services to pre-empt customers who may consider shifting to a marketplace

* For E-commerce Push on volume product content rather than Product volume with little content

* Keep the  sales reps very  knowledgeable so that they can give some high value added advice that a large Marketplace like Amazon is unable to provide

* Use technology to find new ways to delight the customer and this is exactly  where Smart Vending Machines present  a real opportunity

At SAP offices we installed lately a Smart Vending machine where one can get IT stuff like Headsets, power supply, Lightning cable,…  you choose the product, pass the badge and pick the item up.

The product is automatically charged to their cost center. People are just delighted because they get the stuff “ right now “. Whereas before it was an order to raise on the portal and receive the item 2 days later.

This is even better than the famous 2 hour premium delivery. This is “right now “.

In this example The Smart vending machine is directly connected to ARIBA, so the process is  the same when the employee orders on the portal to the wholesale distributor, just the front end interface  is changed into a smart vending machine delivering the most wanted products immediately.

But we could have also examples of Smart vending machines on a building site delivering some key goods for their job of plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and all craftsmen of any kind so that they could get “right now “ instead of going to pick it at home or to returning to the agency to buy it.

These people consider time as golden and would be delighted to find the items they need on site, immediately.

More than the SVM , you can also think about a smart container that would be more relevant for larger products, recognizing the credit card, monitoring the pick up by Video and self-scanning,  triggering an “Uber payment “

All these kind of Smart vending Scenarios will need in addition :

* A strong predictive algorithm to suggest the best product to set in the building site among the thousands in the catalog

* A price elasticity  algorithm to estimate the value of the immediate delivery. What money a plumber would pay to avoid loosing time.

* Check the technical status of each machine to keep maintenance at the expected level by craftsmen.

* Check of the Sales figures, to supervise that the suggested articles meet the expected success.

This will bring to wholesalers

* A positive resistance to Marketplace delivering a service they do not propose.

* Increased margin as price is less of a problem when time is saved

* A new customer base as they  will enter their name and details without questioning it as long as they get the stuff they need “right now”.

 

So what are you waiting for Mr. Wholesale Distribution ?

 

FM

  http://bit.ly/2DvlFJM #SAP #SAPCloud #AI