Our EBOM synchronization jobs to SAP are failing due to expired API tokens. The integration runs every 4 hours to push engineering BOM changes to SAP, but the API tokens expire after 2 hours, causing the sync to fail.
Error from integration logs:
HTTP 401: Unauthorized - Token expired
SAP sync failed at 14:15:00
Last successful sync: 10:10:00
We’re using OAuth 2.0 tokens from our API gateway. The token lifetime is set to 7200 seconds (2 hours) for security compliance. The EBOM sync job runs for approximately 30-45 minutes when processing large BOMs, which should be fine, but when the next scheduled run occurs 4 hours later, the token from the previous run has expired.
The integration code retrieves a token at job start but doesn’t implement refresh logic. We need to either extend the token lifetime or implement automatic token refresh during long-running sync operations. The SAP integration is critical-BOM sync failures cause production delays. Has anyone implemented token refresh logic for long-running EBOM integrations?
Check if your OAuth provider supports client credentials flow with longer-lived tokens for service-to-service integration. Some providers allow different token lifetimes for user flows versus machine-to-machine flows.
EBOM sync to SAP is particularly challenging because it’s not just about token lifetime-it’s about transaction boundaries. If your sync job is updating thousands of BOM lines and the token expires mid-transaction, you can end up with partial updates in SAP. You need to implement both token refresh and transaction checkpointing. Store the last successfully synced BOM line, so if the job fails, you can resume from that point rather than starting over.
Implement token refresh in your integration layer. Don’t try to extend token lifetime beyond security policies. Use refresh tokens properly and your integration will be more secure and reliable.
I’ve built several SAP-Teamcenter integrations. The key is implementing a token manager that handles refresh automatically. Your sync job should check token expiry before each API call and refresh if needed. Don’t wait for a 401 error-proactively refresh when the token is within 5 minutes of expiry. This prevents mid-sync failures.