SAP Solution Manager 7.2 as per Market reports, was scheduled to be available in market, by 2015 end, but now has been postponed to probably, 2016 Q2. Looking forward to some large scale changes, to be introduced this time. Here I am trying to put in all the information I gathered from different sources.

Would like to state that this blog is an output of different study materials and sources, and can be a bit different from the planned final delivery.

• 7.1 was IT/Operations focused, so, to balance it, SolMan 7.2 is more “Business Processes Oriented”, with a goal of involving more and more Business Process Experts.

• In 7.1, you can’t use Solution Documentation without a landscape, (you have to maintain logical component in solar t-codes). For 7.2, SAP want to decouple the documentation from the actual landscape.

• Out of several concepts of Solution Manager, for Solution Documentation in SolMan 7.1, we have 2- Project and Solution. You need to create a Project and a Solution (later, if you transfer your documentation, from an Implementation Project to a Maintenance Project), if you want to document anything in SolMan 7.1. Solution Manager 7.2 is expected to remove this issue by integrating Projects and Solution, and introducing One Common directory for Business Process documentation.

• Now, we have something called, RDS (Rapid Deployment Solution) Content to replace the backbone of all Non-technical SolMan functionalities- Business Process Repository. Another way of SAP to lay more stress on Rapid Deployment Solutions.

• SAP has decided to get rid of SOLAR Transactions in 7.2 that form the foundation of Solution Documentation functionality, till 7.1, and are used to create, manage and do some reporting on your documentation project. In their place, SAP is introducing two mains views: The Solution Landscape UI, and the Solution Documentation UI.

• In 7.1, Documentation functionality of Solution Manager offers a 3 levels hierarchy: Scenarios, Business Process and Process Steps. Now, when SOLAR transactions are not there anymore, with 3 levels still there, SAP gives the option to Add as many levels (boxes) to it.

• If you want to maintain your different documentations without affecting your productive solution, even if you don't have the implementation/maintenance projects anymore (Remember the concepts of Project and Solution, explained above?),

• 7.2 adds a new layer of Solution Documentation & Change Request Management, by automatically making your maintenance documentation productive, the moment your ticket turns productive.

• There are some/more Management options going to be introduced in Solution Documentation and Change Request Management, by SAP. We might get some new transactions types for IT and Business Requirements.

• Number of logical components also, might also be getting reduced.

Hi Guys,

We just started using SAP at my company and I'm still getting used to the functionalities.

I was wondering if there's a way to link a Service Request assigned to me in ITSM to a purchase requsition in ME51N?

I'm trying to raise a purchase req. in ME51N and would like to somehow relate it to the service request.

I'd really appreciate it if someone could show me how.

Kind regards,

Paul

Job Monitoring – Notes to be implemented

About Job Monitoring:

The Job Monitoring is used for the proactive monitoring of business critical jobs/ BW Process Chains to ensure the business is running smooth. The following technical objects can be monitored with Solution Manager 7.1 SP12,

• ABAP Jobs
• BW process Chains
• Business Objects Jobs
• Data Services Jobs

The provision of configuring the Jobs/ Process Chains from Managed System as well as from external scheduler (Central Process Scheduler powered by Redwood) is available with SP12. The Job Monitoring is well integrated in the below entry points,

• Technical Monitoring
• Business Process Monitoring
• Job Management

Highlights

Prerequisites

Please make sure the notes that needs to be implemented in Solution Manager and Managed System are implemented. Its MANDATORY to have all the notes.

Notes to be implemented in Solution Manager System,

Please choose any one of the note below based on your Solution Manager SP,

Notes to be Implemented in Managed (satellite) system,

Once all the aforementioned notes are implemented in Solution Manager system and Managed System, the issues in the data collection would be solved.

settings done  action profile solman 7.1 support package 13

 
for information other things required check latest configguide for VAR scenario

For VAR scenario you can find a configuration guide on SAP Support Portal. Go to http://service.sap.com/support, tab SAP Solution Manager -> in left column choose "SAP Solution Manager for Partners -> Information for Service Provider -> VAR Solution Manager Setup -> Setup Documents". Expand "Administrator" area and you will find SAP Solution Manager 7.1 <SP<latest version> VAR Config Guide>

1. tcode SPPFCADM

note action profile ZMIN_STD_SEND_SAP_AUTO is not there by default .you can copy from another action definition say ZMIN_STD_SEND_SAP and adapt it to  ZMIN_STD_SEND_SAP_AUTO.

populate the container as per note 1084744 below.

sap note 1084744

3.1.4 Enter container values for the action definition AI_SDK_SP_SEND_AUTO

Select the application CRM_ORDER.

In the "Customizing and Configuration" section, choose "Define Action Profile and Actions".

Select the action profile "AI_SDK_STANDARD" and double-click "Action definiton" in the tree structure on the left. Select the action definition "AI_SDK_SP_SEND_AUTO" and double-click "Processing Types" in the tree structure on the left. Switch to processing mode.

Under "Settings Method Call", choose "Change Definition".

3.1.4.1 Check the container element TEXT_ID    The initial value has to be SU99.  Change this (if required) by double-clicking the expression on the "Initial Value" tab.  Copy the change.

Create the following container elements if they do not exist already.:

3.1.4.2

Element = DOCU_NAME

Name = DOCU_NAME

Short Description = DOCU_NAME

Select "ABAP Dict. Data Type".

Type Name = DOKU_OBJ

Choose the "Initial Value" tab.

DOCU_NAME  = AISDK_TEMPLATE_AUTO_SEND

Choose "Confirm (Enter)".

3.1.4.3

Element = TEXT_ID_RESEND

Name = TEXT_ID_RESEND

Short Description = TEXT_ID which is transferred by resending

Select "ABAP Dict. Data Type".

Type Name = TDID

Choose the "Initial Value" tab.

TEXT_ID_RESEND  = SU30

Choose "Confirm (Enter)".

3.1.4.4

Element = SEND_STATUS

Name = SEND_STATUS

Short Description = Status executed when automatically sent

Select "ABAP Dict. Data Type".

Type Name = CRM_STAT_RANGE_TAB

Choose the "Initial Value" tab.

SEND_STATUS  = E0004

SEND_STATUS  = E0010

Choose "Confirm (Enter)".

3.1.4.5

Element = USER_STATUS

Name = USER_STATUS

Short Description = Status set after automatic sending

Select "ABAP Dict. Data Type".

Type Name = CRM_J_STATUS

Choose the "Initial Value" tab.

USER_STATUS  = E0004

Choose "Confirm (Enter)".

3.1.4.6

Element = AUTO_STATUS

Name = AUTO_STATUS

Short Description = Additional status set in case of automatic sending

Select "ABAP Dict. Data Type".

Type Name = CRM_J_STATUS

Choose the "Initial Value" tab.

AUTO_STATUS  = E0011

Choose "Confirm (Enter)".

set the conditions

elizabethmuigua@gmail.com

If, for some reasons, you have to change the MetricCollectionDefinition.xml for some agents, make sure, you do not use any XML Pretty Printer (like Notepad++ with XML add-on). According my tests, the SAPControlWSCollector interprets added \n and \r (by the pretty printer), although these characters are outside the CDATA area.

You'll notice gray metrics in technical monitoring as well as following errors within the diagnostics agent's protocol, it a MetricCollectionDefinition.xml was formated using an XML Pretty Printer and uploaded to a Diagnostics Agent.

[MAIJobObserver] ERROR occurred for metric collection 00000000000000000002[com.sap.smd.mai.model.collector.SAPControlWSCollector].
[EXCEPTION]
com.sap.smd.mai.model.collector.CollectorException: [SAPControlWSCollector.collect] Connection to SAPControl Web Service failed. Collector : [SAPControlWSCollector]
Id: 00000000000000000002, SID:
<SID>
, instance number:
<INSTANCE_NR>

at com.sap.smd.mai.model.collector.SAPControlWSCollector.collect(SAPControlWSCollector.java:147)
at com.sap.smd.mai.job.MetricJobRunner.run(MetricJobRunner.java:32)
at com.sap.smd.server.exec.TaskRunner.run(TaskRunner.java:46)
at com.sap.smd.server.util.concurrent.PooledExecutor$Worker.run(PooledExecutor.java:781)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:761)
Caused by: java.rmi.RemoteException: [WSConnectorFactory] Illegal sid
<SID>

at com.sap.smd.agent.plugin.connectors.webservice.WSConnectorFactory.configureSAPStartSrvEndPoint(WSConnectorFactory.java:237)
at com.sap.smd.mai.model.collector.SAPControlWSCollector.connect(SAPControlWSCollector.java:504)
at com.sap.smd.mai.model.collector.SAPControlWSCollector.collect(SAPControlWSCollector.java:145)
... 4 more

This is at leasst valid for any Diagnostics Agent >7.40.

Since June 1, 2015 a new general KPI Catalog is available at (SAP Service Marketplace login required)

https://zkpicatalog-supportportal.dispatcher.hana.ondemand.com/?sap-language=EN

to browse through key figure content that SAP ships out-of-the-box. The catalog uses SAPUI5 front end technology and hence can be accessed by any device with any kind of screen resolution from anywhere in the world with internet connection.

In its first version the current content of the catalog consists of key figures that were developed for Business Process Analytics and Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager, but key figures from other applications shall follow. Today the catalog "only" contains 562 different key figures as several hundred key figures (especially related to SAP APO and industry specific ones) are not yet included. Compared to the MS PowerPoint presentation (SMP login required) that was used so far to list all our key figures, the content in the KPI Catalog is not yet complete...but this will happen over time. Also compared to the MS PowerPoint, the new cloud catalog has many advantages that shall be described in this blog...actually there are so many things to cover that the blog is split into 2 parts to not overload this one single blog. This first blog will describe the different available filter criteria. The second blog will focus on the full text search capabilities and the available detail information.

One big advantage of the KPI Catalog is that you can filter for key figures according to different dimensions/attributes.

Filter according to Application Area

The application areas "roughly correlate" to the traditional SAP modules, e.g. 'Manufacturing' relates to PP or PP-PI. But an application area can also comprise different modules across different products, e.g. 'Sales' relates to SD in ERP as well as CRM Sales or 'Sourcing & Procurement' covers MM in ERP as well as SRM self-service procurement.

Filter according to Business Goal Area

As most of the Business Process Analytics key figure content was designed to support Business Process Improvement for SAP solutions activities, we took the most typical business goals that customers want to improve and used those goals as additional attribute for the key figure content. So if you are trying to reduce the costs in your Financial Shared Service Center and set the filter accordingly you should see key figures that can support such activities based on project experience from previous years.

Filter according to Category

In my blog about the 5 main key figure types, I described in 2013 how we categorize our content. Meanwhile we got a new category about Master Data related checks. All those categories are now available for selection so that you can wuickly find those key figures of a certain type of interest to you.

Filter according to End to End (E2E) business process

Especially if you left behind the thinking in traditioanl SAP modules (application areas) and rather think of a business process from end to end, then this filter possibilty should be to your liking. If you filter for a process like Procure to Pay, then you should see SRM content related to shopping carts, purchase orders, confirmations, invoices as well as ERP content related to planned orders (type NB), purchase requisitions, purchase orders, MM invoices and even FI-AP related open items or payments.

Filter according to Industry Solution

Most of our standard out-of-the-box content is good enough to be used no matter what industry you are working in. But here and there, there are industry specifics that can only be covered in industry specific content. This content is currently not yet in the catalog, but shall be available soon, e.g. for Automotive, AFS, Banking, Retail or Utilities.

Filter according to Product

You can also filter the key figure content specific to the respective SAP BusinessSuite component, i.e. ERP, CRM, SRM or SCM. The later content for Supply Chain Management (SCM) is not yet  in the catalog, but should follow soon.

Filter according to Usage

Perhaps the least interesting filter is about Usage. This filter should only indicate the following. In general all key figures work for Business Process Analytics and Business Process Monitoring (--> usage 'Business Process Analytics'), except a few (often rather technical key figures), which are only available for Business Process Monitoring but not for Business Process Analytics (--> usage 'Business Process Monitoring').

Filter according to New / Updated

Like any nice catalog, we wanted to share insghts what is (relatively) new or which content was significantly enhanced lately (updated). In this first version of the catalog these attributes are related to the latest key figure shipment with ST-A/PI 01R support package 1. The status attributes will then change once the next ST-A/PI 01S will be shipped.

If you have further questions, remarks or suggestions then please post them as remarks in this blog or send an email to bpimp@sap.com.

The second blog about full text search capabilities and the available detail information can be found here in part 2.

Further reading

You can find all necessary information about Business Process Analytics in this document. More information on Business Process Improvement for SAP solutions can be found here.

Frequently Asked Questions about Business Process Monitoring and Business Process Analytics are answered under http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Business+Process+Monitoring and

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Business+Process+Analytics respectively.

In the previous part 1 blog I described the different filtering attributes which are currently available for the newly launched KPI Catalog in the cloud at

(SAP Service Marketplace login required)

https://zkpicatalog-supportportal.dispatcher.hana.ondemand.com/?sap-language=EN.

In this blog I want to mention some other features that are part of the catalog.

Full text search

So instead of starting with some filters on different attributes you can also just perform some full text search. In the screenshot above you can see the search for 2 terms 'delivery' and 'billing'. The search engine will then search according to the following priority:

1. The best search results are those where the search strings can be found in our key figur name itself
2. The 2nd best results are those where the search strings could be found in the text below the key figure name
3. The 3rd best results are those where the search strings could be found in the definition text in the detailed section (not shown in this screenshot, this will be handled further down in this blog)

The search is a fuzzy search, so also slight deviations from your search terms 'deliveries' instead of 'delivery' or typos like 'delviery' should be found accordingly. Once you see your search results, then all the filter attributes are adjusted according the limited set of findings.

Multiple filter

Probably it is self-understood for yourself, but besides the full text search and the single filtering, it is of course also possible to set multiple filters, e.g. filtering on all key figures which are 'backlog' key figures in 'ERP' and belong to 'sales'. If you then click on some key figure of interest, then you get to see some additional details.

Details Overview

If you click on one search result, then you see all the assigned properties/attributes and you still see the (business) text description of the key figure on the next page. This text shall give you an idea what business problem can be realted to the measurement and some key figures even mention a possible business risk/impact.

Details Definition

The details definition section provides a more technical text description (priority 3 for the full text search mentioned above). This text should roughly describe (on table and field basis) the logic of the underlying data collection.

Details Technical

This last detail section describes the technical details, which output fields you can expect in the result list of the data collection ('Fieldlist') and which input parameters are available ('Filters') during the design time when you want to schedule/start the data collection.

If you have further questions, remarks or suggestions then please post them as remarks in this blog or send an email to bpimp@sap.com.

Further reading

You can find all necessary information about Business Process Analytics in this document. More information on Business Process Improvement for SAP solutions can be found here.

Frequently Asked Questions about Business Process Monitoring and Business Process Analytics are answered under http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Business+Process+Monitoring and

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Business+Process+Analytics respectively.

The following blogs (in chronological order) provide further details about Business Process Analytics and Business Process Monitoring functionalities within the SAP Solution Manager.

• New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – ALE / IDoc Monitoring
• New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – qRFC Monitoring
• Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for Manufacturing
• Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for Procure to Pay
• Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for Order to Cash
• Typical Use Cases for Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager
• New key figure catalog for Business Process Monitoring available
• Why SAP offers different tools for Business Process Monitoring &amp; Business Process Optimization
• Create your own auto-reaction messages in Business Process Monitoring via BAdI exit
• Protect your SAP ERP investment &amp; improve your core business processes
• Create your own customer-specific key figure for Business Process Monitoring within 5 minutes
• Best Practice: BW Process Chain monitoring with SAP Solution Manager - Part 1
• New key figures for Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager, especially for CRM Marketing
• New functionality "Business Process Analytics" - how to improve your business processes
• New key figures for Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager, especially Lead Time measurements
• Traditional Business KPI approach vs Business Process Monitoring
• Systematic errors vs real exceptions or improving efficiency vs effectiveness
• Before you get started with SAP HANA...you should also consider cleaning-up your backend system first
• Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for CRM Sales
• Business Process Operations dashboards - ALL AT A GLANCE
• Customer testimonials on Business Process Analytics
• Customer Exit: Create your own key figure for BPMon AND Business Process Analytics
• Heads-up: Setup environment of BPMon & Analytics changes with SolMan 7.1 SP5
• New key figures for BPMon & BP Analytics, especially for working capital improvement
• New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager - BPMon Alert Reporting Analysis
• New Business Process Analytics features with SAP SolMan 7.1 SP5
• New Business Process Analytics - The filter sequence makes the difference
• New key figures: Analyzing/Monitoring exceptions during delivery due processing
• New key figure: Analyzing/Monitoring exceptions during billing due processing
• Enhanced key figures: Analyzing/monitoring SD invoices not transferred to FI
• New key figures: Analyzing/monitoring exceptions in CRM Sales or Service documents, Business Activities or Tasks
• New keyfigures: Analyzing/monitoring exceptions from APO planning runs
• New key figures for BPMon & BP Analytics - new exception and automation rate key figures for ERP plus new content for FSCM, APO and CRM
• New key figures: Analyzing/monitoring exceptions during Period End Closing
• New key figures: Analyzing/monitoring exceptions in Controlling (CO-PC)
• Enhanced key figures: Bridging the organizational gap between SD and FI-AR
• Business Process Analytics: Types of key figures and their respective use cases
• Business Process Analytics: Types of functions and their respective features & purposes
• New key figures for BPMon & BP Analytics - new content for Travel & Expense Management, Banking and Utilities
• SAP Business Process Analytics" available for download in Apple's App Store
• Discrete manufacturing: Mapping BP Analytics key figures to system status
• New key figures for BPMon & Analytics - new content for vendor invoice processing (e.g. Shared Service Center scenarios) and new delta throughput for Order to Cash
• Business Process Analytics: ad-hoc and real time with or without SAP HANA
• New landing page for "Business Process Improvement for SAP solutions"
• New KPI Catalog available in the cloud - Part 1

The SolMan 2 Cloud (S2C) Setup (Transaction S2C_SETUP) is the starting point if you plan to Monitor SAP Based Hybrid Solutions in your Solution Manager 7.10 (starting from SP13):

• DELL Boomi
• SAP Cloud for Customer (C4C)
• SAP HANA Cloud Integration (HCI)
• SAP SuccessFactors
• SAP Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) with SP14

This is the prerequisites to Exception Management (EXM) and Interface and Connection Monitoring (ICMon).

Exception Management will collect errors and exceptions directly from your Cloud Service using HTTPS connections.

Interface and Connection Monitoring will integrate these errors into the Monitoring and Alerting Framework. Notifications and Incidents can be automatically created in case an error is occurring in your Cloud Service.

“Select and unmark group id SM-CREATE”

Dear followers

I would like to post a video that I presented this month regarding LMDB troubleshooting. I made this presentation using the Meet the Experts framework from SAP.

In this video I showed some points that must be checked in case of issues with LMDB, where to look, what are the most important transactions, how to check and ensure the consistency of SLD and LMDB. The link with this video is available below.

https://service.sap.com/sap/bc/bsp/spn/esa_redirect/index.htm?gotocourse=X&courseid=70284599

Best Regards

Mateus de Freitas Pedroso

On July 9th Evan Stoddard will be going over the SAP Solution Manager Road Map Webinar.  Evan will be going over current and future capabilities for SAP Solution Manager.   Register here today: https://sap-events.dispatcher.hana.ondemand.com/#/event=3638

Keep up to date on road maps here: http://scn.sap.com/community/product-and-solution-road-maps

Sir,

  I want to do a Subcontracting process between two plants.

My required scenario is Plant 1000 will send a material to vendor  and vendor process some operations and vendor will send that material directly to Plant 1200.

so how to map this Please guide me.

How many of you remember ASAP, which used to come in a CD format? It had the necessary tools and content (right form QAdb to CI templates, if you remember) necessary for SAP Implementation. It evolved into ValueSAP & which finally evolved into Solution Manager.

Now I know, most of us from the SAP community are aware of SAP Solution Manager (fondly called as SolMan for brevity sake ), but are blissfully unaware of the rich functionality it has & so we end up utilizing it, to maybe, only 10% of its features. 

Don’t believe it?

Ok, let me ask you a simple question. Will you buy a smartphone and use it only for, say, morning alarm?

Absolutely NO!

...But that’s what we’re doing with SolMan (which incidentally comes absolutely free bundled with the SAP licenses you purchased) Most of the SAP customers are using its only one feature of SolMan, and that is to configure the SAP Router as a diagnostic agent connected with SAP and vice versa.

And unlike other freebies, SolMan is a power-packed tool, an integrated online platform to support implementations, operations and optimizations, in short the entire suite of ALM (Application Lifecycle Management). The ALM approach is holistic, because it covers aspects of deploying as well as optimizing your SAP solution.

During the deployment (more popularly called as ‘Implementation’) phase, it helps you in (related ASAP phases mentioned in brackets) are:

• Central maintenance & access to all managed systems  (Project Preparation & On-going)
• Central design & storage of all your business processes (Business blueprint)
• Central definition, maintenance and storage of all business processes & technical documentation  (Business Blueprint & Realization)
• Central creation of storage of test information (Realization)
• Central creation and storage of custom development  (Realization)

Once the Implementation phase is over, Solution Manager comes handy in the post-Go-Live support (popularly called as Sustenance phase) for IT Service management. Solution Manager can easily be configured as a ticketing tool to manage the incidents/tickets. Considering other ticketing tools (like Remedy / Peregrine) come with a heavy price tag, it is worthwhile for customers to explore Solution Manager as a better (& cost-effective) option. 

More importantly, SolMan is very effective for Technical Monitoring during the Sustenance phase. It provides:

• System monitoring – Allows you to access the latest snapshot of monitoring data for systems, databases & hosts
• Jobs & BI monitoring – Allows monitoring of backgrounds jobs or complete BI scenario
• End User Monitoring – Provides you availability and performance information from end user point of view
• Integration Monitoring – Provides central access to monitor interfaces for performance, usage, availability & exceptions
• Alert Inbox – Provides you access to alerts coming from different areas

• Automated reporting – Provides access to view EWA (Early Watch Alerts) & Service Level Agreements
• Interactive reporting – Provides you various pre-built reports about availability, performance, capacity & usage of your systems, scenarios, databases & hosts

Most of the reports are available as a Dashboard, which is a big plus.

For those who follow ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) closely, SAP Solution Manager 7.1 has been also verified as ITIL compliant in following 15 core processes (to name a few ranging from Availability Management, Change Management to Service portfolio management etc.)

Now, again ask yourself the question, “How much functionality of Solution Manager my organization (or, my client) is using?”

This blog will list all the steps to be followed here covering how we can customize the Alert Description in Technical Monitoring workcenter  without any ABAP Development.

There are lot of customers where this requirement pops up so I thought may be I will share the simple steps to achieve this requirement without any development(ABAP) effort.

Requirement - In technical monitoring workcenter, we can see a lot of alerts stating same message like "Oracle Data not Available" or ABAP system not available" for all the configured or monitored systems.

Thus, for  a big list of systems where we need to filter on managed object column or create a custom query to get a system specific alert. So question arises - Is it possible to modify the subjet of an alert and include the ID/SID of the System in the subject of ALERT Itself.

Answer is Yes it is possible and let us know see how it can be achieved.

Step 1 - Create a Custom Template

In solman_setup transaction, kindly choose the Technical Monitoring ->System Monitoring Wizard and then navigate to ORACLE(or relevant database template) for modification of database alerts.

Now Click the button EXPERT MODE.

Click CREATE CUSTOM TEMPLATE button and then provide a name for your individual Production System etc( Please note that we are going to create a system specific template)

Now save it in a Transport Request and Package( here I have used $tmp only without any TR as don't want to transport.)

Step 2 - Adapt the Subject for Alert description.

Choose METRICS,EVENTS, ALERTS HIERARCHY tab and then click on Change Setting Tab

On the above screen, choose the relevant alert for description change etc and then in the Name field we can add SID XXX (e.g.) as per requirement.

Save the changes.

Step 3 - Activate the new Template

Now choose the step 6 - SETUP MONITORING

Further use Apply and Activate button to apply new configuration template.

Done.

Now if we visit our Technical Monitoring workcenter, it is possible to notice alert with respective System SIDs in the subject and no more filtering is required at all.

Also, in the dashboard the specific system, we can see all the Alerts with our custom description.

This is really an interesting standard customizing option which is giving us lot of flexibility to improve the usage of Solution Manager Technical Monitoring and we can also do whole bunch of other things here but restricting to topic here.

We are in the Big Data age, we want to process a large amount of data and provide with enough predictive information to take an executive decision, if possible in a tablet format.

SAP Solution Manager is for sure one of the key data collectors that contain critical information about your IT landscape, system health, KPI’s, SLA’s, etc.

So, here we have the challenge: We need to provide executive dashboards for decision takers, in a tablet format (role based) and take the information from different sources, including the SAP Solution Manager

How to do this? Simple, with SAP Smart Business executive edition

Note: This is valid for on premise SolMan or for hosted editions (VAR’s, SMaMS) in this case, you need to ask your provider to provide you with the information required

Let’s plan it in just four steps:

1^st Step:

First at all you need a SAP HANA System, some of you will stop reading now, but is not than complex, you don’t need a big system, on premise, nowadays with the SAP Cloud Appliance Library you can get a SAP HANA System in less than an hour, just go to http://cal.sap.com and select the cloud provider most suitable and that is all.

2^nd Step:

Define a SAP HANA datamart (in this case your SAP Solution Manager) and connect it to your SAP HANA standalone system, data is transferred into SAP HANA with data services from several sources

3^rd Step:

Install the SAP Smart Business executive edition, it needs no extra license beside the SAP HANA license itself, and you can download it from the SAP Service Marketplace:

Installations and Upgrades >> Browse our Download Catalog >> SAP In-Memory (SAP HANA ) >> SAP HANA Add-ons >> SAP SMART BUS EXEC.ED >> SAP SMART BUS EXEC.ED 1.0

4^th Step:

Start building your Dashboards:

4.1 Select Data Source in SAP HANA

From your datamart you populated some SAP HANA view or table, it become available as the basis for the dashboard. By selecting the view and giving it a talking name, a catalogue of usable views is built up. 

4.2 Define KPIs

In this step the measures, dimensions, hierarchies in the view are identified. “Speaking names” can be assigned. Technical dimensions and hierarchies in the SAP HANA view can be assigned to a logical dimension in the KPI repository to allow global filters. Benchmarks, trends and the information design are defined. Number formatting is specified. Calculated KPIs may be defined. This can be done by business experts in a very simple and straightforward way. 

4.3 Define Visualization

The visualization of KPI's through tiles and charts are defined in this step. However, the information design, semantic coloring and number formatting is inherited from the KPI definition. The same holds for filtering dimensions. So per definition the information design is kept consistent throughout the dashboard and global filters are possible. This again can be done by business experts in a simple and straightforward way.

4.4 Compose Stories and Dashboards

Stories are collections of semantically related tiles, e.g. tiles about a certain topic like “Profitability”. Stories also define the multilevel Navigation between the different tiles. Dashboard can be composed by selecting on or several stories and either using all or a subset of tiles contained in that story. This is easy to do for end users.

Then you can consume the dashboard with your laptop, tablet or smartphone and take informed decisions without delay or need to be "at office"

1. Issue

When configuring solution manager CBTA for test automation related to SAP CRM 7.0x, some CRM services need to be activated.
Services such as UIF_LOGON en TAF_APPLAUNCHER.

example of error message: Service cannot be reached. What has happened: URL xxxxx/sap/uif_logon call was terminated because the corresponding service is not available.

2. Activating service TAF_APPLAUNCHER

In CRM backend, tcode SICF,

Search for service name *TAF* and apply filter.

note that taf_applauncher is not active.

Activate service.

3.Activating service  – UIF_LOGON

In CRM backend, tcode SICF,

Search for service name *UIF_LOGON* and apply filter.

note that service is not active.

First timer blog, any feedback is welcome.

Thanks and with kind regards,

Yee-Tee

You can create CBTA test cases for SAP CRM for test automation.

I had trouble with the configuration, couldn't find any documentation about it and found a way to do so.

One way to launch the CRM WebUI is described below.

*prerequisite: maintain process structure of your project

(tcode Solar02, select process step and the tab `Transactions`)

In a process step; add transaction of the type WebClient Application and select a configured logical component.

Next, the object should be maintained like saprole=Z_BO_OIMKLIC&crm-logical-link=IC_BPIDENT. Notice that it has both the user role (1) as the default screen after login (2).

Both can be determined by the following:

1 how to determine user role

a) within webUI click on the link on the lower right corner for system details. You will find the role.

b) tcode SU01, enter user name, F7, Check Parameter CRM_UI_PROFILE. the value is your user name. If it´s `*´, it means you´ll get all roles and after login you have to choose a role

c) check your org.model object and it´s configuration for the assigned user role.

2 how to determine default screen after login

a) after logon, use F2 to determine the component object name

b) check customizing-tables based on the profile name of the user role

    tcode SE16, table CRMC_UI_PROFILE, enter profile name, F8

    determine the CRMUI_NAVBAR value. This is your navigation bar profile.

     tcode SE16, tableCRMC_UI_NB_A_WC.

     enter profile ID, F8. note that these are the technical names. For the description, check the SPRO customizing of the navigation bar profiles.

     Note down the linkID field.

First time blogger, any feedback is welcome.

Thanks and with kind regards,

Yee-Tee

Earlier version of the Solution manger used to maintain SLD through SMSY transaction code. Since Solution Manger 7.1 on-wards SAP replaced SMSY with LMDB. As of now CR version of SLD should be at least 9.1 to configure LMDB.

I would like to explain you the step by step of solution manager SLD upgrade.

Pre-requisites:

• Check the table space size of PSAPSR3DB ,Please keep at least 10 GB free size if you are upgrade version 4. to 9.1
• Check the SLD service status( service should be in green status)
• Take the backup SLD version before Upgrade.
• Take the backup of the system.

Don'ts

• Don't stop the database or SLD service durning the upgrade.
• Don't closed the web browser during the upgrade.

Minimum  30 minutes to complete the upgrade.

Read the SAPNote: 669669 - Update of SAP System Component Repository in SLD

Download the CR content according to your request.

Note: You cannot Upgrade from version4.0 to 9.1  You have to upgrade one by as per the order.

From 1.x to 2.0:

Support portal entry point: SAP MASTER DATA FOR SLD 1.0

End of maintenance reached; no longer available.

From 2.x to 3.0

Support portal entry point: SAP MASTER DATA FOR SLD 2.0

File name: CRDelta1418_0-10003379.ZIP

Comment: See below. Switch from 2.0 to 3.0

From 3.x to 4.0

Support portal entry point: SAP CR CONTENT UP TO 2007

File name: CRDelta1511_0-10004549.ZIP

From 4.x to 5.0

Support portal entry point: SAP CR CONTENT UP TO 2008

File name: CRDelta41514_0-10006428.ZIP

From 5.x to 6.0

Support portal entry point: SAP CR CONTENT UP TO 2009

File name: CRDelta51509_1-20005942.ZIP

From 6.x to 7.0

Support portal entry point: SAP CR CONTENT UP TO 2010

File name: CRDelta61610_0-20006535.ZIP

From 7.x to 8.0

Support portal entry point: SAP CR CONTENT UP TO 2011

File name: CRDelta71611_0-20008269.ZIP

From 8.x to 9.0

Support portal entry point: SAP CR CONTENT UP TO 2012

File name: CRDelta81612_0-20009730.ZIP

From 9.x to 10.0

Support portal entry point: SAP CR CONTENT UP TO 2013

File name: CRDelta91615_0-20010858.ZIP

From 10.x to 11.0

Support portal entry point: SAP CR CONTENT UP TO 2014

File name: CRDelta101613_0-20012029.ZIP

From 11.x to 11.y (latest version)

Support portal entry point: SAP CR CONTENT UP TO 2015

File name: CRDelta1116*.ZIP

Comment: Use the latest file.

Example: You are using the current CR Content 9.5. Download the latest data model cimsap....zip and the following files:

CRDelta91615_0-20010858.ZIP

CRDelta101613_0-20012029.ZIP

Also download the latest CRDelta1116*.ZIP file.

You must first download the current CIM model. find these under SAP CR Content.....

Go to the service marketplace  download software >>Support Package and Stacks>>> A -to Z index>> select C>>>

Check your CR version And download it...

Example: Your version is 2008.. and required version is 2014.. You need to download all version in between this.

Login to the SLD

http://<hostname.hostname>:<port>/sld

Administration>>> Details> Data  there you can seen the current version of CR content..

Note: Download the cimsapxxxx and correspond crdelta xxxx

Import first Latest cimsapxxxx then crdelta one by one...

Update:

Login to the SLD: Administration >>> content Import:::

Select the proper version of the cissapxxx and import

brows the file and  select the file and import: if the file is not compatible throw an error message (Import anyway) (Cancel the Import..)

cancel the import and select the proper version of CR, otherwise your SLD database is inconsistent mode.

Click the import::; import will start.............

If the below error occur increase the table space of  PSAPSR3DB  and continue the import from the beginning, the same file...

Finished You can see the CR version on  Administration >>> details >> Data..

Thanks

Yoonus

It's the middle of summer and I have to deliver a new solution manager for a customer.

Of course I need to install the latest version (7.1 SP13)... but SAP only provide an export of an SP04 system.

So the process is a little bit slow...

You go through your installation (8 hours)... and then you have the pleasure to process arround 13 Gb of patches with SUM (28 hours of processing).

Then I made a mistake, I did upgrade the SLD CR content to the latest version... 5 hours of processing for loading around 70 Mb of CIM data.

I then start the system preparation roadmap and reach that horrible 6.2 step where SLD and LMDB are synchronized... 8 hours after reaching that point the synchro is not half way yet!

Note 1555955 - SAP Solution Manager 7.1 - Performance Checks for LMDB give some tips that are quite useless, Abap shared memory is big enough, no swap on my system.

As advised I did update statistics on LMDB_P* tables, I have a script running every hour for that

select  'exec DBMS_STATS.GATHER_TABLE_STATS (''SAPSR3'', ''' || table_name || ''', cascade=>TRUE, degree=>8);'

from dba_tables where table_name like 'LMDB_P_%';

I did even create an index for the poor sql request that has already run 1.4 millions of times...

CREATE INDEX "SAPSR3"."LMDB_P_INSTANCE~Z0" ON "SAPSR3"."LMDB_P_INSTANCE" ("DOMAIN_ID", "NAMESPACE_ID", "INST_HASH", "COUNTER") TABLESPACE "PSAPSR3" online parallel (degree 8) nologging;

Thank you SAP for making basis consultant life so funny, and do no try to make your code better.

Real programmers don't eat quiche and are not coding on solman either !

This blog will focus on content customization concept of Technical Monitoring which is not mandatory element but can simplify life for support teams or enhance the usage of Technical Monitoring and Alerting framework in an efficient manner.

The days for choosing the product for SAP Monitoring are almost gone now. The time we are gifted with Solution Manager 7.1 everything is changed and all the credit goes to SAP Development team for making these huge changes in the 7.1 version(of course 7.2 is coming) but yet a year to go for it.

In short, no need to go for procurement of a new monitoring tool as good practice is in place, forget comparing or asking question whether this will work or not. It has brought all the best metrics provided by SAP for almost all well known OS, DB and Applications simplifying the life of implementation experts. I know many people will say its not that easy to implement but yes as compared to CCMS or old concept things are much stable.

At least I have seen all our customer's enjoying this from past several years with continuous support from SAP and part of RUNSAP Implementation Partner's family we are a bit lucky to know things first as well to make things crispy.

In this blog, I will provide the steps to customize the Alert Subject in Technical Monitoring Alert Notifications which are received via Email. e.g. in MS Outlook

The reason for this is that today for large customer/bigger landscape, we always have a big group of system and post enabling the monitoring capability of Solution Manager 7.1 along with Notification setup creates a huge impact over email group/support group ID's.

Thus, if we are performing monitoring for a system and in case it has an issue then system raises an alert and also trigger an email as per configuration.

Many times, I have noticed people just activate standard templates without much of customization due to certain reason but the end result looks below for a support person email inbox.

Today almost every support team member is getting a panic situation by looking above scenario where its impossible to know which system is having issue or where is the problem.

In other words this is a much bigger problem for support people before they can actually solve the real problem.

Yes, this grows more severe with no. of system increases and therefore proper configuration should be planned well ahead as part of implementation before its getting too late.

There is a very simple way to customize the SUBJECT of these emails so that the system name can be added along with the Alert Description.

Let us begin with configuration.

Step 1 - In solman_setup transaction, choose the Technical Monitoring ->Configure Infrastructure – Configure Manually step(make sure proper ID is being used like Solman_admin etc to have necessary authorization)

Step 2– Next, choose the Content Customization and click the Web Dynpro URL link. This will trigger or open the customizing window for us.

Step 3– Now depending upon the requirement and way we would like to have the subject for the email notification. we can change here the header for automatic notification. e.g. Maintain the settings for Email and the Email Subject as below and SAVE.

Step 4– Make sure to change status to Content Customization Step to Performed. I know many people will say what is the need yes it is good way to keep track of the steps you have done or letting others to keep aware of it. further, you can also document it by making a comment of what has been done. in the Comment section.

Steps 5– Last, make sure to perform the Apply & Activate the Templates with this new changes for notification as per relevance.

Result - Yes, we will get a different and much better output in our email inbox now.

It is easier to understand which of the systems are having issue as Alert Notification are stating the names or SID's with specific issues belonging to each of them.

I hope you guys have enjoyed it as again there is no development done and our purpose is achieved.

Kindly check another one recently published in case you would like to customize the alert name in Alert Inbox as well.

How To - Change/Customize Alert Name in Technical Monitoring Workcenter