Problem Management in SAP Solution Manager 7.1 - Part 2

[prakhar_saxena]

In continuation to my previous blog, Problem Management is the new capability available from Solution Manager 7.1 version onwards.

This helps to identify the real issue behind several incidents corresponding to same major problem. For e.g. we visit a doctor and suffering from cough and cold with fever, doctor performs his analysis, test or finds root cause of it and informs us it’s a Viral Infection.

Thus, Problem Management is a process by which Support Team can identify and then resolve the root cause of the similar incidents.

The SAP standard transaction type for Problem Management is SMPR and it has the same status profile like we have for SMIN or Incidents.

As a process we can integrate problem management with incident management process. Typically, End User post incident incase of facing issues which can be SAP or Non SAP. Support Team is identified to resolve it. In case, if deeper analysis is required and also it is cause of many other incidents, Support Team member or Message Processor can create a problem ticket.

Creation of Problem Ticket as a follow up from incident will also link up the incident to problem ticket. In the below screenshot, we can see if we click "Create Follow-Up" button a pop up appears and allows to create a problem ticket.

Click on the SMPR or Problem, system will create a new Problem Ticket as shown below.

Well we can see here plenty of fields copied from incident automatically to problem message or ticket. This enables the person who is going to work on this Problem with all the details like relevant system, issue reported via incident etc.

In addition system creates a relationship with related incident and this is visible in the Related Incident section for the problem.

There is another great feature here that we can lock the incident so that extra efforts for the other Support Team will be saved and only one concerned person will work on the problem message.

To lock an incident click on Edit List button and choose the incident. Now click on the Lock option and you will notice incident is locked.

Thus now Problem Management Support Team member can work upon the problem ticket and resolves it followed by incident resolution as well.