SAP's John Krakowski (pictured to the right) invites you to the ASUG SAP TechEd Pre-conference Session on Monday, October 19th:

One key topic many customers are interested in is the upcoming new SAP Solution Manager 7.2 release.

The new release – the central IT management platform for on-premise, hybrid, and cloud scenarios – powers successful implementations and eases communication with the business while continuing to maintain and support smooth operations for cloud solutions from SAP and SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA applications.

The good news and an important takeaway is that SAP recommends you can already start preparing for SAP Solution Manager 7.2 today!

Source: SAP

Attend this valuable session to learn in detail, from those responsible for SAP Solution Manager, about the major enhancement planned for the new release. There are three major improvements:

1. New first class business process management capabilities to power implementation and ease the communication between IT and the business. For example, a terrific easy-to-use graphics modeling interface that fulfills customer requirements for process modeling, plus offering as many business process layers as you want to have.
2. You will have the option to run SAP Solution Manager 7.2 on SAP HANA which is especially great news and the perfect environment for customers implementing SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA.
3. More value with a continued focus on IT operations with the management of hybrid solutions that is the clear answer especially for customers who are adopting the many SAP Cloud products so they can best manage the cloud solutions in conjunction with their existing on-premise environment on SAP Solution Manager 7.2.

Our objective is that you’ll be the first to learn about the unique SAP best practice tools and relevant material we have been piloting with customers. Takeaway how to best prepare your current content to more quickly transition to the new SAP Solution Manager 7.2 on your current 7.1 release. You’ll gain a clear understanding about the benefits of the preparation to leverage the new business process management capabilities by enabling your solution documentation via a process we call ‘activation of existing solution documentation’. Today, in SAP Solution Manager 7.1, see how to easily identify which of your current projects and solutions are candidates for activation in SAP Solution Manager 7.2. Preview how you will be able to test drive the SAP Solution Manager 7.2 content activation in the SAP Cloud Appliance Library (CAL). Experience the best-in-class SAP Fiori UIs, and walkthrough how the new documentation will be accessible in the browser-based interface, with searchable libraries of elements such as process steps, executables and diagrams of process flows.

In summary, don’t hesitate to attend this ASUG pre-conference seminar (and tell others!) to discover the value proposition and explore how to benefit now, reduce your upgrade downtime and minimize the impact on your journey to the new SAP Solution Manager 7.2. Join senior SAP product management experts, and engaged partners for this highly interactive networking session to share the best knowledge available, discuss and answer your critical questions, and demo the next SAP Solution Manager 7.2 release to ensure your upgrade road to success.

To register and obtain more details register here.

Thank you and see you at the TechEd 2015.

Also consider adding these ASUG SAP TechEd Las Vegas sessions to your agenda:

For other hands-on ASUG pre-conference sessions please see Jump Start SAP TechEd Las Vegas with ASUG Pre-Conference Hands-on Sessions

STAY TUNED!

REAL TIME SUPPORT IS COMING TO SOLUTION MANAGER!

Cut the waiting times and immediately get connected to one of our SAP Support Engineers!

You are only a click away from that!

Disclaimer: Real Time Support is a new service that is being offered to some of our areas, stay tuned next time you see the Chat button available!

Hello,

As you can see in this Blog Chat Support has finally come! | SCN SAP Support is providing a new channel to report incidents, you can chat with a SAP Support Engineer to report an incident.

I want to make clear that for the moment this is available for SolMan topics:

• Incident Management
• Change Request Management

The plan is to rollout the chat support to all SolMan areas.

Please see where the chat button is in the SAP Support Portal (in Report an Incident):

Thanks for using! :-)

Dolores

Hi All,

I am happy to write my first blog on this wonderful community which has helped me configure and resolve Solution Manager issues. I will be sharing a fix made for Gray Metric in Techmon Dashboard limited to landscapes using Extended SID like DEV_XXX

Yesterday Evening while I was finishing my day, I happened to see Gray Metrics for System Response Time for one of the newly configured systems. Packed my bags thinking that the value may take some time to popup.

Today Morning, when I had a quick look from the overview screen, it was showing all green. Did not bother to check further and carried out with the next system to setup Technical Monitoring.

By the time I activated the monitoring for second system I felt something wasn't right and it needed attention.

Looking at the error, I straightaway logged into my managed system and ran ST03N to check if the performance related data is visible. Also checked the SAP Performance collector job which did not show any failure. Now, it was evident that the issue lies somewhere in Solution Manager. But the biggest question was "Where?"

In our Solution Manager system, ran transaction RSA1 and searched for infoprovider "0CCMAW". Displayed Data for the specific managed system and to my surprise, the data was visible for the Managed system.

Now only thing to look at was the Data collector running for this piece of information.

I entered Technical Monitoring under Solman_Setup Tx and selected Template Maintenance(Step 4). Opened my custom template and searched for the Performance Metrics dealing with System Response Time.

The same was identified as Average Response Time(Last Hour), making use of ASR Perf Data(per hour) collector.

On step 2.2, there are 5 tasks, which need to be run manually. Out of the 5, I clicked on Data Collector Maintenance

Within Data Collector Maintenance, I searched for ASR Perf Data(per hour) and selected the same. Clicked on Simulation tab to test the functionality and here it was the same error i was getting in dashboard.

I wasn't expecting this to fail, So had a good look at the parameter value and voila, there it was.

The result in RSA1 showed 0SMD_LSID as Extended SID but while performing simulation, it took 0SMD_LSID as SID only.

Started my search for SAP notes related to this problem but could not find much so decided to make a fix as in our landscape we have over 100 systems connected to Solution Manager and have Extended SID's as identifiers.

I made a copy of this collector and put input parameter for 0SMD_LSID as $T_LONG_SYSTEM_SID$ and triggered simulation again. The data was available this time.

Assigned the custom made collector to my template.

After Apply and Activate, within 5 min the data was visible under System Response Time for both the systems.

I hope you enjoy the post

Feel free to post questions and I will try to answer.

Aditya Khorana

SAP and Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) have jointly conducted pre-conference sessions at the U.S.A. TechEds in recent years. These knowledge transfer sessions have been extremely well received by the audience, so SAP has decided to export them to Europe in 2015: Pre-conferences @ SAP TechEd Barcelona

One key topic many customers are interested in is the upcoming new SAP Solution Manager 7.2 release. This will be covered in the full-day session Get Ready Today for SAP Solution Manager 7.2.

Source: SAP

The new release – the central IT management platform for on-premise, hybrid, and cloud scenarios – enables successful implementations, and eases communication with the business, while continuing to maintain and support smooth operations for cloud solutions from SAP and SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA applications.

The good news and an important takeaway is that SAP recommends you can already start preparing for SAP Solution Manager 7.2 today! Attend this valuable session to first learn in detail, from those responsible for SAP Solution Manager, about the major enhancement planned for the new release. There are three major improvements –.

1. New first class business process management capabilities to power implementation and ease the communication between IT and the business. For example, a terrific easy-to-use graphics modeling interface that fulfills customer requirements for process modeling, plus offering as many business process layers as you want to have..

2. You will have the option to run SAP Solution Manager 7.2 on SAP HANA which is especially great news and the perfect environment for customers implementing SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA.

3. More value with a continued focus on IT operations with the management of hybrid solutions that is the clear answer especially for customers who are adopting the many SAP Cloud products so they can best manage the cloud solutions in conjunction with their existing on-premise environment on SAP Solution Manager 7.2..

.

Our objective is that you’ll be the first to learn about the unique SAP best practice tools and relevant material we have been piloting with customers. Takeaway how to best prepare your current content to more quickly transition to the new SAP Solution Manager 7.2 on your current 7.1 release. You’ll gain a clear understanding about the benefits of the preparation to leverage the new business process management capabilities by enabling your solution documentation via a process we call ‘activation of existing solution documentation’. Today, in SAP Solution Manager 7.1, see how to easily identify which of your current projects and solutions are candidates for activation in SAP Solution Manager 7.2. Walkthrough how the new documentation will be accessible in the browser-based interface, searchable libraries of elements such as process steps and executables and diagrams of process flows. Experience the best-in-class SAP Fiori UIs and preview how you will be able to test drive the SAP Solution Manager 7.2 content activation in the SAP Cloud Appliance Library (CAL).

In summary, don’t hesitate to attend this session (and tell others!) to discover the value proposition and explore how to benefit now, reduce your upgrade downtime and minimize the impact on your journey to the new SAP Solution Manager 7.2. Join senior SAP product management experts, and engaged partners for this highly interactive networking session to share the best knowledge available, discuss and answer your critical questions, and demo the next SAP Solution Manager 7.2 release to ensure your upgrade road to success.

Please refer to the pre-conference page for further information.

To register for the pre-conference seminars, please go to the general SAP TechEd Barcelona registration.

Hallo All,

Hereby I would like to share the BPMN model I created to highlight how the Change Request Management functionality performs the import to a target system client from the required TMS Infrastructure, User, and Authorization Role perspective. The model is based on the information that can be found in the following knowledge article: "1908411 - Harmonizing RFC communication infrastructure: how it works". The text is clear enough, but I find it difficult to get the complete picture from the text. I hope this model is useful for you as well!

Link:

https://websmp230.sap-ag.de/sap%28bD1ubCZjPTAwMQ==%29/bc/bsp/sno/ui_entry/entry.htm?param=69765F6D6F64653D3030312669765F7361706E6F7465735F6E756D6265723D3139303834313126

Please keep in mind the following:

• Creating models in BPMN is not my core business, so please be gentle if the model is not completely semantically correct. Since SAP Solution Manager 7.2 will be using BPMN as a modelling language, it seemed like a good exercise to create the model.

Please let me know If the model is not an actual representation of how the import works. I did my best to capture the information as noted in the knowledge article.

Kind Regards,

Guido Jacobs

hmb

AUDIENCE:-

• One who executes the CBTA test scripts
• One who is tracking CBTA script execution
• Anyone who wants to know this functionality

USE-CASE FOR COLLECTIVE EXECUTION:-

     Test manager has created Test plans and test packages. One round of execution is completed with few test scripts Passed and few Failed.

     After resolving the script/data issues for the failed test scripts, tester wants execute all failed scripts.

     Intention is, end of the day tester should select all failed test cases and give for execution and go home.

Options

1. Execute the complete test package -->This will execute even the already passed test cases. So not a desired option  
2. Execute each script one by one through test package -->Time consuming option
3. Create new test package of failed test cases and then schedule execution --> It’s not allowed as Test Plan is released and Test Manager does

                       not want to modify it

                  4.  Execute selected failed test scripts Collectively Described Below

HOW TO PERFORM COLLECTIVE EXECUTION OF CBTA SCRIPTS:

1. Go to Test Management work center --> Tester Worklist
2. Select the Test Package which consists of failed test case you want to execute collectively.

C. Select Goto --> Status Overview

      "Status Overview – Test Organizer" screen opens up.

  D. Select the required test package and click on “Status Analysis”:

  E. Then click on “Tabular Display” button:

F. Click on “Select All” button. All objects will be selected:

     Deselect the Folders from the selection by pressing Ctrl button.

     Now only selected items are Test Scripts.

G.   Click on “Automatic Test” button:

  H.  All the test scripts from the selected Test Package are available.

       Select only the failed test scripts to be executed in Collective Mode.

       Click on Copy button:

I. “Start Options” screen comes up.

     Check that Perform Test is set to <Collective Execution>.

     Select the required Test option and click on Execute:

All selected test script will be executed one after the other automatically. This will be the unattended execution for multiple selected test scripts.

This is how Collective Execution will work!!

On Friday I attended ITM219, what is new with ITSM and ChaRM.  I wished I watched this recording first

Figure 1: Source: SAP

Solution Manager 7.1 SP15 will be a correction package; not much new functionality

“New shining star” is Solution Manager 7.2

Ramp-up version is end of year

End ramp-up Q2 2016

Solution Manager 7.2 is here to stay – main code line

Figure 2: Source: SAP

Figure 2 shows the development priorities, with renewal of all UI’s

SAPUI5 and Fiori, and provide API’s based on these

Plan to replace native mobile apps – will be retired and replace with SAPUI5 capabilities to make device neutral

Dashboard topics – have dashboards based on classical web templates in 7.1

Figure 3: Source: SAP

If you see 7.1, had workcenters

Then had navigation of workcenters

Now more efficient with a Fiori Launchpad

Translate workcenters to Launchpad

A special shell/frame to unify applications

Not blindly transfer application to UI5 – try to unify applications

WebDynpro will contain configuration

Display like functionality will be in SAPUI5

Plan to offer hybrid support, with footprint in cloud increasing with customers

On-premise innovations are supported, including S/4 HANA

Figure 4: Source: SAP

OCC is Operations Control Center

Provide functionality at the same position in the screen to ensure a unified user experience

On the left, is a toolbar – create incidents, notifications, alert inbox, guided procedure

On the top, tabs

Breadcrumbs help navigation

Figure 5: Source: SAP

Figure 5 shows personalizable views

You can define your own tabs/views

You are given a library of views and you can arrange however you like

You can hide standard tabs

Figure 6: Source: SAP

No separation between alerting, monitoring and reporting

In 7.1 did not have a unified UI

In 7.1 monitoring used flash, reporting in Web templates

Now using SAPUI5 and can embed

Analytics are still in BW

Figure 7: Source: SAP

All the applications will be migrated

Dashboard Strategy

Figure 8: Source: SAP

Access to data and customers are building their own dashboards

SAP tries to come up with answers that you do custom development

Embed analytics in the applications itself

Before it was separated using web templates

SAP provides predefined views that you can configure yourself

Cross application dashboard – see alerts with tickets – for this they built dashboard builder – KPI’s from different areas to build a dashboard

SAP Design Studio dashboards can be built as well

Can download KPI catalog information from the cloud portal

For Max Attention customers there is a dashboard factory

Data is available by BEx queries or OData Services

Can use standard BI tools to build dashboards

To learn more about hybrid features, please watch the rest of the recording

My CCTS Implementation experience:

I implemented CCTS in a landscape with ERP, F&R, BW, PI, BO landscape. Here are a few learnings I made in my journey of CCTS implementation and usage:

1. Make sure that the tp installed on all managed system is latest. SAP recommends specific minimum required tp version but since improvements are delivered by SAP in newer tp versions, latest tp is always preferred
2. Since uneven logical components cannot be added in the same ccts enabled ChaRM project – it is a challenge to keep the projects minimum in a large landscape. Few tips for project creation
   1. Add landscapes with even logical components in one project (i.e. three system landscapes in one project, four system landscapes in another project)
   2. Any landscapes for which CCTS cannot be used should be kept in a different ChaRM project. It could be possible because you are not on the minimum required version for CCTS usage for that landscape
3. Make sure the RFCs are setup correctly for all the Managed systems, especially the Trusted RFCs. The Trusted Connections in SMT1 should be properly maintained between SAP Solution manager and Managed systems
4. For non-ABAP systems TP parameters, make sure that parameter NON_ABAP_WBO_CLIENT is added only for dev systems. There will be issues with Project creation if parameter is added for Test/Quality/Prod.

A few issues I encountered:

1- Issue : Error encountered while activating ChaRM Projects - Error getting configuration of systems

     Resolution – Implement SAP Notes 1650265, 1731806 on Managed systems

2- Issue : Error while creating TR for ERP in ChaRM with cCTS

     Resolution – Implement SAP Note 1794405 on managed system

3- Issue : Dump in Managed system while creating TR in ChaRM with cCTS

     Resolution – Implement SAP Note 1818804 and 1731806

4- Issue: Non-ABAP TRs cannot be found for assignment in Change Document

     Resolution – Implement SAP Note 2235737 in Solman

5- Issue : Error while closing Maintenance Cycle for ERP system

     Resolution – Implement SAP Note 1487329 on Managed system

6- Issue : Transport status for TRs shown incorrectly in Transport Management block

     Resolution – Implement SAP Note 2111903  on Solman system

7- Issue : Error while creating user using BP_USER_GEN

     Resolution – Implement SAP Notes 2109854 on Solman

Hope it helps!!

Thanks and Regards,

Neeti

There was a request in my site asking to display the level of the category id assigned to ITSM/CHARM documents in reference of Multilevel Categorization hierarchy (MC). Unfortunately, SM 7.1 stores them as an unique GUID in a single field though ITSM webui is displaying separated fields for each different category level. Methods in  CL_CRM_ML_CATEGORY_UTIL didn't give any result with the CAT ID & ASP ID from CRM_ORDER_READ. which made me confused but figured out soon. 

If you cannot get result values from CL_CRM_ML_CATEGORY_UTIL~GET_CATEGORYFIRST with 1Order  GUID, you might need to have a look at below codes

Here is the logic that worked for me on the environment of Solution Manager 7.1 SP  13 + BBPCRM 7.01 SP13.

First, You need to get SUBJECT data  either from the function module ' CRM_ORDER_READ' or from the CRM*READ*.  Usually, will get two lines in the subject tab, one for the header, the other for the item and schema GUID and category GUID can be read from table CRMV_ERMS_CAT_CA withASP_ID  & CAT_ID from subject data. One thing need to remember in selecting data from the table is to make sure whether the data entry status is 'R'(released) and the language key is correct because multiple schema can be assigned but only one of them is to be released .

SELECT SINGLE ASP_GUID CAT_GUID

                 FROM CRMV_ERMS_CAT_CA

                  INTO (LV_ASP_GUID, LV_CAT_GUID)

             WHERE ASP_ID = LS_SUBJECT-ASP_ID

                  AND CAT_ID = LS_SUBJECT-CAT_ID

                  AND ASP_STATE = 'R'

                  AND LANG = SY-LANGU.

Now it's time to use utility class CL_CRM_ML_CATEGORY_UTIL for MC

CALL METHOD CL_CRM_ML_CATEGORY_UTIL=>GET_SELECTED_CATEGORY_TREE

             EXPORTING

               IV_SELECTED_CAT_GUID = LV_CAT_GUID

               IV_SCHEMA_GUID              = LV_ASP_GUID

             IMPORTING

*             ET_CAT_TREE                 =

               EV_SELECTED_LEVEL    = LV_SELECTED_LEVEL.

Now you will get the category level of category id in your ITSM/CHARM documents.

In certain circumstance, probably depending on configuration or on package kind, you cannot use order guid directly in  CL_CRM_ML_CATEGORY_UTIL and It needs to get ASP GUID & CAT GUID from table CRMV_ERMS_CAT_CA  before use CL_CRM_ML_CATEGORY_UTIL. 

Hope this article helps you guys .

Jin

One week from now, I'll be standing in front of the networking session booth, talking to a number of readers of this blog post and to attendees who probably didn't see this post but saw the session name in the schedule and decided to give it a go.

I'll be talking about the SAP Solution Manager 7.2. What about the architecture, what does that look like, what needs to happen, what about migrating to SAP HANA, where is the impact etc. What about the ability for SAP partners to test drive the SAP Solution Manager 7.2 once ramp-up starts, I'll touch on what SAP Cloud Appliance Library can do and about Amazon AWS in this perspective.

Will I have a fancy slidedeck? I might not . This is all so new that it might not be covered by existing slideware and that I might not have time to still create fancy looking slides but in the end that's not really important in my opinion. What is important is that we can openly talk and discuss about what is already known, what is happening, what is coming and that you get added value out of this session, get some questions answered and get an idea about where things are going.

I'm currently at SAP Rot / Walldorf (Germany) for a whole week of SAP Solution Manager 7.2 so I'm all excited and brainwashed already in what's new, what's coming, what's changing and I'm willing to share some of that information (all is not possible since it's just too much) during an expert networking session at SAP TechED Barcelona.

Don't believe me? Check out the twitter hashtag #sapsoled2015 for some impressions .

So I invite everyone to join in, the session EXP28842 takes place at SAP TechED Barcelona on Tuesday, 17:30 - 18:00 CET Lounge 7, Showfloor

You can find it in the session catalog to add it to your calendar.

You should join in because this session wasn't prepared months up front so you'll get brand new information, it's still smoldering hot, you'll feel warmth by just being there and sitting down.

You'll get passionate speakers in front of you because I'll be joined by Boris Zarske and Jan Kresser so I'll have SWPM experts with me as well to discuss around dual stack split / migration steps (current state).

Purpose

It’s had been a request in my organization of adding Attachment function on to Service Request Guided Procedure WebUI since my Solution Manger project kicked off. I was very confident in adding the attachment function because the edit mode version of Service Request as BRole SOLMANREQU has the attachment assignment block, well…but it turned out that the attachment view is not built-in view of AIC_SRVREQ_G and couldn’t find any patch making a change of AIC_SRVREQ_G to get the attachment Assignment Block or whatsoever.

After some survey and tests, I realized that UI enhancement is the only option in my situation, so I did enhance AIC_SRVREQ_G with the reference to AIC_INCIDENT_G - Incident UI objects. AIC_INCIDENT_G has GC_CM an attachment view not like AIC_SRVREQ_G and is also guided procedure UI as  AIC_SRVREQ_G is. Fortunately, the Attachment object GC_CM is a reusable component, so plugging in GC_CM to AIC_SRVREQ_G like other reusable objects was not impossible.    

For my case, I added the GS_CM assignment block on ViewSet AIC_SRVREQ_G/vStep2OV, but you can assign it as a separate step or as a view in a ViewSet. 

Here are the steps

     1. Build 2 component usages for GS_CM, one for edit mode and the other for GS_CM overview mode in the Runtime Repository Editor

     cf > ComponentUsage CUGSCMEdit , ComponentUsage CUGSCMOverview

     2. Add the interface view CUGSCMEdit.MainWindow under the main Window AIC_INCIDENT_G/MainWindow

      3. Build Navigation links and tide the in/outbound plugins(ADDxxx, URLxxx, etc) between main views ofCUGSCMEdit andCUGSCMOverview . you can refer Navigation links in AIC_INCIDENT_G

     4. Assign View CUGSCMOverview.MainWindow  to ViewSet AIC_SRVREQ_G/vStep2OV

     5. In Component Structure Browser, enhance the Component Controller ~ WD_USAGE_INITIALIZE and register comp. usagesCUGSCMEdit &CUGSCMOverview as below, You might not need to enhance this part depending on Solman version. In Solman 7.1, I didn't have to. I recommend that you better to check the same method in the super classes    

when 'CUGSCMOverview' OR 'CUGSCMEdit'.

       iv_usage->bind_context_node( iv_controller_type = cl_bsp_wd_controller=>co_type_component

iv_target_node_name= 'BTADMINH'

iv_node_2_bind     = 'PARENTNODE' ).

     6. Finally, add the GS_CM Assignment Block to AIC_SRVREQ_G/vStep2OV  via View configuration tool

Result

Option

You can use the IMG configuration for global activity to assign a new step for AIC_SRVREQ_G. but in that case you should enhance the interfaced methods of target UI component after IMG configuration and have to enhance some more other objects. It was no point to me using such tedious way instead of using a simpler way of just enhancing UI that already exists. However, which way suits to you is totally up to your situation and up to design of your project and, of course, up to your preference.   

Conclusion

Solution Manager 7.1 is a much improved and more user friendly version in comparison of previous ones, Especially, ABAP Webdynpro UI parts look bit loaded with new features but still depending on CRM UI in many ways. Therefore, it’s inevitable to have to use CRM WebUI anyway which requires CRM background technically and functionally. If your organization needs to implant own process into SM, it means you might need CRM guys on that. Hope this article helps your “Solution Manger life” easier ….  

Whatever is written and explained in this document is not new and is being used by industry since quite a while but still I did not find a step by step method to compile a simple HTML based notification which can be easily used as notification template.

Screenshots and configuration are captured from a solution manager 7.1 SP12, but will approach remains the same. Most of the configuration also use-able for CRM systems. For easy use and readability document is dividend in a few sections as below:

Configuration Flow

Activate SFW5 Switch

Activate SQM Service Request Management Functionality

Create an Email form

Define Action  and assign the email form

Assign Start and schedule Conditions (definition of the condition is not covered in this document)

Step # 1 Activate or verify that SFW5 Transaction and activate following switch to make the needed framework functionality activation. It is assumed that the basic configuration of  the solution manager is completed and user have the SOLMAN_ADMIN or equal access privileges in sap solution manager

Step # 2  Activate SQM Service Request Management Functionality (SPRO CRM)

In Customizing under Customer Relationship Management -> Marketing -> Marketing Planning and Campaign Management -> Personalized Mail -> Maintain Attribute Contexts for Mail Forms, you have selected the following:

Attribute Context Marketing Attributes Type

SERVICE REQUEST All Marketing Attribute Sets        SQM Service Request Management

In this activity, you can adjust the HTML mail forms you want to use for e-mail notifications.

For more information on the configuration of mail forms, see SAP Help Portal at http://help.sap.com/crm-> <SAP CRM 7.0 and above> -> Application
Help -> Marketing -> Campaign Management -> Personalized Mail.

Might possible that this needed configuration is already there in the system if you are on SP08 or higher, but still validate :

Step # 3 This document / section describes how we created a Client specific HTML form

Now create an Email form (New or Existing, if one is already created. Launch transaction SM_CRM, you need the access and CRM_UI_PROFILE=SOLMANPRO or equal to complete this scenario.

Click on Service Operations and search / create Mail forms.Follow instructions on the screen to define the basic HTML form.

Once you are done with the HTML form definition, please do not forget to validate or update the hostname and port of the sap solution manager server. You can fix the IP/ hostname or FQDN based on the DNS server you your organizations system name policies.Please refer blue highlighted section for the hostname and port.

Reference : - OSS note # will b helpful here, 1751307E-Mail Notification when Information from SAP sent to SM 7.1

Your HTML form will look like this:

Step # 4 Define Action (or change if already available) and assign the email form

Now as your notification form is ready, this is time to get this form circulated in the CRM transaction workflow. As this is a template so this form cane be used freely in the multiple CRM based transaction or where-ever said method is supported. In following set of the screenshots, I use a copies transaction type SMMJ to ZMMJ (normal change for ChaRM) for using notification template(form)

Transaction: CRMC_ACTION_DEF

Make Method Call action type default.

MAIL_FORM_TEMPLATE name will be the form name created in step # 3

Step # 5 Once email form is generated and action profile definition is completed you need to work on the conditions

1. Create Action Definition for the transaction type (ZMMJ_SEND_MAIL_EXAMPLE-XXX)
2. Start conditions to trigger the action (not covered in this document)
3. Schedule condition to schedule the action (not covered in this document)
4. Assignment of the Start and schedule conditions to the action profile (not covered in this document)
5. Assign the method and Email template to the method call.

But still a few screenshots will help to give a fair idea about the configuration :

Transaction: CRMC_ACTION_CONF

Now feel free to assign schedule and start conditions on the action profile, you can also design, create schedule and start conditions as appropriate.

Once conditions are assigned you are set to test your newly created HTML notification template with CRM transactions like ITSM, ChaRM etc.

Maintenance Planner can be integrated if you are using Solution Manager 7.1, the traditional Maintenance optimizer is going to be replaced my Maintenance Planner.

Besides this if you are using Solution Manager 7.1, you can still integrate to Maintenance Planner, since SAP is providing such feasibility, i think it shouldn't be a constraint to integrate Maintenance Planner into your existing Solution Manager 7.1. The LMDB still has to be updated though, as it sends the managed system information to the SAP Portal and Maintenance Planner retries this information and pushes the XML to our download directory.

With MP, there are also other advantages, pool you systems on MP and have one XML stack file, no need to keep change the SIDs of the XML file from the Solution manager using the transitional report RPT_MOPZ_COPY_STACK_XML.

Many Thanks,

Sebastian

Overview

Business Process Monitoring (BPMon) is an out-of-the-box solution offered by SAP, using Solution Manager to monitor your entire landscape as well as business processes. In short this functionality helps in keeping Techno-Functional side business up and running efficiently with minimum time and efforts.  SAP Solution Manager Tool led towards automation of the business operations and functions in a standardised way.  Based on extensive research and client feedback, SAP has provided standard Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the Business Processes which are Assets for the clients.

BPMon – as one essential aspect of Business Process Operations, means the proactive and process oriented monitoring of a company’s core business processes, i.e. the related documents and corresponding dialog transactions and background jobs as well as interfaces. BPMon is intended to create alerts for detected problem as early as possible, so that, the problems can be solved before they become critical for the business. With BPMon in SAP Solution Manager, you can also provide specific error handling procedures in case of alerts and to enable the Solution Support Organization to solve problems without any need to involve the experts. Additionally, BPMon can support the process owners to improve the processes by detecting backlog situations with the help of Business Process Analytics. Improvement means cleaning up old and open business data, close process design gaps, adjust customizing and/or configuration.

In general, BPMon includes the process oriented cross system observation of:

• Business process performance
• Background processing
• Business application logs
• Data transfer via interfaces between software components
• Data consistency
• Technical infrastructure and components required to run the business processes
• Backlog situations for application related key figures

SAP Business Process Monitoring is not only a tool for configuring the monitoring, but additionally comprises detailed procedures for error handling and problem resolution, the precise definition of contact person and escalation paths, and the tight integration into  customer’s Solution Support Organization.

Phases involved

To simplify the operational model of BPMon, let’s see following four phases of this functionality:

It starts with Business Process Implementation phase where we design, configure/customize customer’s business specific processes as per requirement. This phase leads to initial plan and investment of customer where we design the KPI’s based on their business requirement.

(Note: We can use the standard business blueprint generation standard program provided by SAP. This will reduce the time and efforts in creating baseline blueprint. We can modify this blueprint at any point of time as per requirement.)

Business Process Stabilization phase where we focus on justifying the initial investment done by customer. By monitoring the landscape and business processes using SAP Solution Manager, BPMon focus is to minimize the manual efforts and stabilize the entire landscape in both Technical and Functional aspects. This phase also improves the  system and service availability.

Business Process Improvement directs towards achieving optimum results according to the implementation plan. This can be achieved by cleaning old business data, providing sufficient end user training, closing process design gaps, adjusting customizing and/or configuration. This phase also showcases ROI done by the customer by improving the business process operations.

Business Process Optimization & Innovation phasehelps in getting better outputs compared to the initial planning and implementation. Re-engineer business processes (BPE/BPR), Process Innovation Minimize process cycle time, Maximize process availability and efficiency are few of the areas where we can focus in this phase.

Governance Model

BPMon will have focused outcomes according to designation and work demand of the involved person in the process. I have tried to create a generalized governance model of this process. This may differ case to case and as per customer requirement.

In the following diagram, based on the person’s responsibility in the entire business process, he/she will get desired reports/outcomes from BPMon functionality.

• Customer’s Global process owner    
• Business Stakeholders
• Business Services Teams will be getting an Alert notifications from system for issues in the landscape or business process. If the issue(s) are known and can be easily managed/resolved, these teams will resolve the same on their own and will make sure systems and business processes are up and running. In case more clarification on the issue is required, only then will these teams interact with the Customer’s front office.

You can clearly see that Solution Manager and BPMon can create a scenario where Customer is involved in the entire process only when more information or clarification is required, related to issue reported. Else the entire process is automated and respective service provider teams are taking care of operations for customer with minimum efforts. This is the big value gain from customer’s point of view as they are saving huge amount of time and efforts in these operations.

Interaction with other SAP Solman tools

This diagram will showcase how SAP Solman and BPMon helps entire business operation as a whole. BPMon will interact with other functionalities to keep the business operations up and running. Solution Manager will act as a Single source of truth in this case and will help in having E2E Integrated Business Services for customer.

Journey towards E2E Integrated Business Services

Following approach will help in achieving maximum gain from Solution Manager and BPMon. It again, is a generic approach that I chose and similar to the standard implementation approach SAP suggest to follow. This approach helps customer in decision making related to implementing the functionality as well as the related tasks and governance involved in the entire process.

Following are few pre-requisites for BPMon functionality:

• Setup of system landscape and logical components
• SAP Solution manager 7.0 Ehp1 or higher with the latest ST 400, ST – SER and ST-A/PI add-ons
• Business Process defined at the Blueprint phase

This blog is based on the EXP session I gave at SAP TechED Barcelona. On request of SAP TechED attendees and community members who couldn't be present at the session this blog post provides the information I have shared.

The week before SAP TechED Barcelona, I've spent a week at SAP Rot / SAP Walldorf to learn and discuss around SAP Solution Manager 7.2. Thanks to SAP for organizing this event to bring partners who focus on SAP Solution Manager up to date. You can find tweets and screenshots on twitter on hashtag #solman and #sapsoled2015. You can have a look at a condensed storify with screenshots here.

Product versions

Source: https://service.sap.com/roadmaps "Solution Manager roadmap"

SAP Solution Manager 7.1 will reach end of maintenance at 31/12/2017 due to the fact that the AS ABAP stack is running on an old SAP Netweaver version (7.0 EHP2) and the AS JAVA stack is using an old SAPJVM 4.1 version. Those old versions run out of maintenance so an upgrade is needed.

SAP Solution Manager 7.2 will run on SAP Netweaver 7.40 (both AS ABAP and AS JAVA) and has the capability to run on AnyDB (Sybase ASE, Oracle, MS SQL, ...) or on SAP HANA. The CRM component goes from CRM 7.0 EHP1 to CRM 7.0 EHP3.

SAP HANA capabilities

SAP HANA can be placed under SAP Solution Manager 7.2 withoutthe need for a SAP HANA license. Ofcourse customers still have to pay themselves for the appropriate hardware. This is a really nice incentive from SAP if you ask me. It can help introduce SAP HANA into organisations that do not yet run SAP HANA and provide the opportunity to get used to it. That way the organisation can prepare to support SAP HANA also for Business Suite and beyond.

It's not yet an S/4 HANA like solution so the data structures are not yet simplified in scenarios that were already existing. It's more like Suite on HANA if one would compare the current state of capabilities and what is leveraged out of the box to the ERP side of town.

This means SAP HANA brings data size reduction comparable to moving from ERP on AnyDB to SAP HANA which is somewhere between factor 4 and 10 (if the source database was uncompressed. Factor 4 is more common) depending on what kind of data is stored (unique entries versus recurring entries which can be compressed to a larger extent).

Further, you can leverage search capabilities of SAP HANA so customers who have a SAP TREX in place for SAP Solution Manager could simplify their landscape and no longer need to use SAP TREX for search capabilities.

In terms of speed, you'll notice it most in reporting capabilities since that selects data rather than scenarios where lots of inserts take place. However, the non optimized embedded BW is still present so in the end the system doesn't unleash SAP HANA performance out of the box. Lots of inserts (for example in Technical Monitoring) is typical for non optimized / simplified scenarios and therefor you won't notice a big performance difference there.

So far, standard SAP scenario's do not specifically require SAP HANA so you could also run on AnyDB (Sybase ASE, Oracle, MS SQL,...) without missing out on scenario's and features at this point in time (SAP HANA specific scenario's might be on the horizon though).

Celonis, a SAP HANA start-up has created a process mining application on top of SAP HANA. This can be leveraged by ITSM to check the process flow of incident tickets. This can help the customer identify where time is lost and where tickets are ping-ponged in between different teams. This can then lead to further optimizations of support provided. I didn't get lots of details on this yet but I assume this does comes with a pricetag since it's created by a start-up company and can be used on top of standard SAP

More scenario's that leverage SAP HANA will come afterwards. SAP has also started work on a next generation SAP Solution Manager (S/4 HANA principals being applied to simplify data, do direct operational reporting, get rid of indexes etc). but that's in a really early stage still.

Moving from SolMan 7.1 to SolMan 7.2 - technical

Upgrade using SUM / Dual Stack split using SWPM

From a technical point of view, an upgrade and dual stack split takes place. This means that you'll end up with two SID's, one for the AS ABAP part and one for the AS JAVA part.

What is AS JAVA still used for?

AS JAVA is still used by SolMan 7.2 for diagnostics agent connectivity and root cause analysis. In theory and probably also practice you could leave it out of the CHARM Solution Manager landscape if you've got two Solution Manager landscapes, one for Technical Monitoring and one for ITSM and CHARM which is not uncommon for large customers.

AS JAVA could also serve the purpose of local SLD for SAP Solution Manager although in general many administrators seem to prefer a central SLD nowadays with a higher Netweaver stack version and seperated maintenance cycles.

Sometimes AS JAVA of SAP Solution Manager is used for Adobe Document Services (ADS) to serve the ERP landscape. I've seen this mostly at smaller customers who do not create a seperate AS JAVA instance for that purpose.

Database options

When you look at the database you also have multiple options:

One database, with two schema's, one schema for AS ABAP and one schema for AS JAVA where both have AS stacks their own SID or a dedicated database for each.

Moving to SAP HANA

When you also move to SAP HANA you perform an OS/DB migration (can be done using SUM DMO for the ABAP stack) and also here you have the above options available. In the HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) at SAP, most customers who have been testing SolMan 7.2 SP0 have AS ABAP running against SAP HANA and AS JAVA running against Sybase ASE. However, as noted in the previous "chapter", you could run both instances against SAP HANA using a separate database schema.

Moving from SolMan 7.1 to SolMan 7.2 - functional

There are a lot of changes in SolMan 7.2 so this means SAP partners and customers need to have an understanding of these conceptual changes. These are discusses already in other blog posts and video's that you can access through the SAP Solution Manager space on SCN.

Timeline

Timing wise, SP1 is the first ramp-up version, SP2 is expected around March 2016 and SP3 (General Availability) around July 2016.

User experience

Source: https://service.sap.com/roadmaps "Solution Manager roadmap"

In SAP Solution Manager 7.1 there was a big mixture of different UI technologies: SAPgui, WebDynpro, Flash, Silverlight etc... Not exactly what one would expect or enjoy in general.

This has been improved a lot from what I was already able to access in SolMan 7.2. The start point for the end-user is Fiori launchpad. You'll notice that you different functionality or scenario's are available as tiles there.

Someone asked me the question how handy that really is and asked me what if you want to switch to an ABAP transaction? I found it enjoyable to work through Fiori launchpad and new UI's. It felt rather refreshing. If you want to combine the ability of calling up ABAP transactions and accessing Fiori or SAPUI5 apps, you can leverage Business Client 6which has just recently released and can handle multiple UI types in a single front-end client.

This new user experience also has some effects on the architecture. If you would also utilize SAP HANA specific applications (running on XS for example) and you would want to combine tiles you need a Web Dispatcher to dispatch to the correct application server.

Test drive SAP Solution Manager 7.2 in the cloud (coming soon)

SAP is planning to release an image of the SAP Solution Manager 7.2 ramp-up (SP1) to SAP Cloud Appliance Library (SAP CAL). This will allows customers / partners to test drive the different SP stacks of SAP Solution Manager 7.2 ramp-up versions (on SAP HANA even) in cloud environments that are provisioned through SAP CAL (Amazon AWS for example).

Another great initiative of SAP if you ask me, I personally very much like SAP CAL / Amazon AWS capabilities to test drive products of SAP. Expected delivery would be in December.

SAP Solution Manager and SAP Mentors

The SAP Mentors are SAP's knights of the round table if you would express it in Camelot terms. We gather up around the table with SAP to discuss where SAP is going in all product area's of SAP. SAP Mentors are elected through the community (by community members, SAP, SAP Mentors and externals even).

We've got really close connections to the SAP Solution Manager executives and teams so we continuously provide feedback and collaboration on new products and services. We also represent the community at large so we value SAP Community Network and welcome feedback from community members as well as other sources like User Groups. We notice trends through our engagements and bring those forward to SAP.

Overview:

Work Mode settings can be maintained for Technical Systems, Technical Instances, Hosts and Databases. The configuration is possible at various levels within the Technical Monitoring set up steps. You can maintain Work Mode Specific settings for monitoring on custom template level, alert level, metric level and at the managed object specific settings level.

Purpose of the blog:

There are various options available for Incidents, Notifications, Third-Party, Auto-Reaction which can be selected for each workmode. The focus would be on explaining what each option is about in detail. Note:  The functionality mentioned in this blog is applicable to Solution Manager 7.1 SP08 and above SPs and to Solution Manager 7.2 release.

Level 1: Custom Template

1. Navigate to Step 4 of System Monitoring scenario on SAP Solution Manager Configuration work center.

2. Select a Custom template.

3. Select the “Template Settings” tab. Options shown in the table below are available for the fields “Automatic Incident Creation”, “Automatic Notification”, and “Third-Party Components” under section “Default Settings”.

The behavior mentioned in the table above is same for Automatic Notification Creation and Third-Party Components.

Note: Global level settings can be viewed on Step 2.3 Default Settings.

4. Options shown in the table below are available for the fields “Automatic Incident Creation”, “Automatic Notification”, and “Third-Party Components” under section “Work Mode Functions”.

The behavior mentioned in the table above is same for Automatic Notification Creation and Third-Party Components.

Level 2: Custom template Alert level

5. Select the Alerts tab and select an Alert. Options shown in the table below are available for the fields “Automatic Incident Creation”, “Automatic Notification”, “Third-Party Components”, and “Auto Reactions” under section “Work-Mode-Specific Alert Settings”.

The behaviour mentioned in the table above is same for Automatic Notification Creation, Third-Party Components and Auto Reactions.

Note: The option Template Settings (Active/Inactive) will not be available for Auto Reactions.

Level 3: Managed Object Settings - Template level

6. Navigate to Define Scope step.

7. Select a managed object and navigate to Setup Monitoring step.

8. Select the managed object in the table and click on the link “Maintain MO-Specific Settings”.

9. Select the tab “Managed Object Settings”.

10. Options shown in the table below are available for the fields “Automatic Incident Creation”, “Automatic Notification”, and “Third-Party Components” under section “Default Settings”.

14. Options shown in the table below are available for the fields “Automatic Incident Creation”, “Automatic Notification”, and “Third-Party Components” under section “Work Mode Functions”.

The behaviour mentioned in the table above is same for Automatic Notification Creation and Third-Party Components.

Level 4: Managed Object Settings - Alert level

12. Select the Alerts tab and select an Alert. Options shown in the table below are available for the fields “Automatic Incident Creation”, “Automatic Notification”, “Third-Party Components”, and “Auto Reactions” under section “Work-Mode-Specific Alert Settings”.

The behaviour mentioned in the table above is same for Automatic Notification Creation, Third-Party Components and Auto Reactions.

Note: The option “Managed Object Settings (Active/Inactive)” will not be available for Auto Reactions.

Further explanation related to the option “Source Template Settings” .

Assuming the component “SV-SMG-MON-ALR-CFG” is used at the Alert level for the work mode Planned Downtime in the source template.

When the option “Source Template Settings” is used for the workmode at the alert level on the Managed Object template, then the value which would be used by the alert for the Planned Downtime would be SV-SMG-MON-ALR-CFG.

During this years SAP TechEd season there is also one session ITM104 about "Business Process Improvement for SAP solutions". The session of my colleague Sabine Schmitt in Barcelona got recorded. So if you were not able to attend SAP TechEd, then you can watch the 41 minute session here at

http://events.sap.com/teched/en/session/26544.

In this session you

• learn about the basic ideas behind "Business Process Improvement for SAP solutions"
• get to see a system demo for Business Process Analytics as root cause analysis tool
• get a system demo about the newly launched Dependency Diagrams, where you can visualize KPI dependencies
• get an idea how a new application "Progress Management Board" could look like in some future release.

For more information on Business Process Analytics you can access the following document http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-48233. The Business Process Improvement landing page can be found here http://discover.sap.com/germany-business-process-improvement.

Yes, that's right, automatically updating a system after a product upgrade is possible in SAP Solution Manager since a while now. Unfortunately many customers do not yet have this in place and are still doing everything manually where some automation is possible (not saying it's perfect in other words but the automation can help reduce efforts).

So here goes a small blogs post to hopefully inform more customers, partners, community members that this option exists.

I'm talking about the customizing that can be set in SAP Solution Manager by following the instructions of SAP NOTE 1832868 - Automatic Managed System Adjustment after Product Upgrade

An example:

You've got ERP 6 EHP6 and you update it to ERP 6 EPH7. If your system is well maintained and you don't run into an exception which is not covered (see SAP NOTE 1832868 mentioned above), the LMDB will automatically update the system so it's reflected that it has been updated to EHP7.

Figure out what went wrong

To figure out what went wrong when it doesn't work, you'll need to check the job log of SAP_LMDB_NOTIFY_LDB*

If you don't see much detail in there, you might not yet have SAP NOTE2211344 - Enhancement of the SAP_LMDB_NOTIFY_LDB job log by detailed error descriptions

CR Content consistency (important)

One of the most common reasons why it would not work are CR content inconsistencies so to avoid those, you should read this blog post  by SAP Mentor Matt Fraser so you know how to check the content so you can keep it consistent.

!!! Great News from SAP Solution Manager !!!

SAP Solution Manager 7.2 has started Ramp-Up successfully.

Watch the ramp-up video on YouTube.

Please refer to the SAP Help Portal for more information.

Early Knowledge Transfer (formerly known as Ramp-Up Knowledge Transfer) will be available soon at http://support.sap.com/ekt-solutionmanager.