New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – ALE / IDoc Monitoring

Introduction

In this blog, we will report regularly on some of the new functionalities of Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager. We will cover the following topics, which are all part of the concept of Business Process Integration and Automation Management:

• Business Process Monitoring (BPMon): comprises the proactive and processoriented monitoring of the most important or critical business processes. This includes the observation of all technical and business application specific functions that are required for a steady and stable flow of the business processes.

• Interface Monitoring (IFMon): aims to check for errors in the interface processing and for growing backlogs to make sure their technical correctness.

• Data Consistency Monitoring (DCMon): identifies inconsistencies within each system of a distributed landscape, determines the root cause of the inconsistency and corrects the inconsistent data including dependent data. Proactively monitoring the data consistency allows early detection and fast response times to critical situations.

If you wish to obtain detailed information on the new functionalities immediately, see the Media Library of Business Process Management on Service Marketplace. You will find Setup Guides to all monitoring functionalities as well as Best Practice documentations on how to setup Business Process & Interface Monitoring on your systems. 

For basic questions on business process related topics in SAP Solution Manager we can recommend the FAQs also to be found in the Business Process Management content on Service Marketplace.

Further issues of this blog 

You can find an introduction to Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager in the SAP Business Process Monitoring within SAP Solution Manager of this blog. There, all further blogs dealing with various aspects of Business Process Monitoring are linked. The blog will be updated regularly.

Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for Manufacturing

ALE / IDoc Monitoring

Today’s blog deals with the new ALE / IDoc monitoring functionality available as of ST-A/PI 01K since beginning of this year. IDoc Monitoring using SAP Solution Manager was already possible in earlier releases, but rather by reusing an unflexible standard CCMS content in the SAP Solution Manager. Now, IDoc Monitoring is completely integrated into the application monitor functionalities of SAP Solution Manager. That means: different monitoring objects (e.g. outbound and inbound IDocs within one business process step) can be handled separately, as each monitoring object can be customized with its own own selection criteria, its own data collection frequency, and its own alerting thresholds, which would not be possible using CCMS content only.

Setup in SAP Solution Manager

Only a few steps have to be carried out to setup the new IDoc Monitoring. A detailed setup procedure can be found in the Setup Guide – Interface Monitoring.

Prerequisite: SAP Solution Manager optimally as of 4.0 with ST-SER 2008_1 SP 1  

On monitoring object level, the following complementary key figures are available:

• Delta Monitor: In this key figure the data collector will evaluate the number of suitable IDocs since the last collector run. This can be IDocs that either newly turned into the monitored status(es) or IDocs whose status has changed since the last data collector run.
• Total Monitor: In this key figure the number of suitable IDocs for the last x days is evaluated. (Last x days depends on the parameter ‘IDoc age’ on object level).

It is recommended two use both key figures in parallel. However, it could also make sense to select only one of the key figures (depending on the business requirements of your monitoring concept).

All monitoring objects can be specified using the following parameters which are related to the well-known IDoc properties:

• Port
• Partner Number
• Partner Type
• Partner Function
• Message Type
• Basic Type
• Message Code
• Message Function
• IDoc Age (in hours)

Both key figures can be specified further on key figure level using the following parameters:

• Status Number(s)
• Status Message Qualifier
• Status Message ID
• Status Message Number
• Minimum Status Age (in min) [Sometimes the status should be at least x minutes old before taking an IDoc into account for alerting]

For each key figure, different counters can be deposited. Each counter forms an independent entity where different thresholds can be specified for alerting purposes:

For each of the above defined counters a measured value is rated and reported to the Solution Manager’s Business Process Monitoring Session. From there you can select an alert and directly navigate to the erroneous IDocs on the connected satellite system that have been responsible for this alert (TA WE05). This way, you are enabled to resolve the error immediately (e.g. by reprocessing the IDoc).

In order to detect arising problems immediately, incoming alerts can be propagated either to your email inbox, to your mobile phone by SMS, or via creation of a Service Desk Message. 

Next Blog

In the next issue of this blog, we will describe the new Data Consistency Monitoring functionalities available as of ST-A/PI 01K. The blog will be available next week.