How to effectively search BPC note?

Sometimes, you raised an incident to SAP, but soon issue is solved finally by applying a BPC note(The one can be applied by snote). You may wonder how I can find the right BPC note for my issue. If you have experience of searching notes, you may have a feeling that there are so many notes searched out, which note is the correct one or most likely correct one to apply.  Let me introduce some tips of searching BPC note.

**This blog only introduces the best way of searching for Note. For KBA searching, you can use key word SAP KBA + Error message to search with Google because SAP KBA is being indexed by Google.

Where is the note searching?

1. Open https://support.sap.com/notes and click button “Select notes using the Expert Search“. ( Or directly open https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/mynotes?tab=Search)

How to search note effectively?
1. Limit component and select Document Type to SAP Notes. If you search BPC NW note, type EPM-BPC-NW in “Components(start with)” field. Otherwise, you will get many non-BPC notes. (As of BPC embedded,  there is a new component BW-PLA-BPC introduced. If you search for the note fix for BPC embedded, use BW-PLA-BPC component).

2. Limit the component as possible as you can. If you know exactly what the issue is, such as the currency conversion issue, limit the component by extending the component to EPM-BPC-NW-TDL-CT.

3. Use the keyword to filter the BPC version.  If you are using BPC NW 10.0, put 800 or 801 in the Search Term. (BPC 10.1: 810 or 750, which means BW 750).You can also use 10.0, but highly recommend using 800 or 801, which gets more accurate result. One thing to add, even we limited the component,  just in case any note is missed, recommend adding keyword in Search Term as well, e.g. currency

4. Recommend using Note number descending order to display. Why? Because the bigger the Note number is, the release date is more recent and it’s more relevant especially when your system is quite new.

Well, which note should I apply?

1. Check the support package information. Open the 1st note and at the bottom of the page, you will find support package information. Take note 2122890 as the example, it’s delivered in 800 SP17 and 801 SP10. If your BPC version < 800 SP17 or 801 SP10, normally, you can apply this note on your system in most cases. (However, sometimes the note can only be applied from certain SP to certain SP. If your BPC is our of the scope, the note cannot be applied).

2. The note can be applied, but the symptom is not the same. Should I apply?

The symptom may not be the same as yours, but still recommend applying them, because the code fix delivered in the note may impact other functions/parts and cause different symptoms)

3. Still got many notes. Should I open each of them and check the support information one by one. The answer is NO. So HOW? Pick up one note in the middle. Open it and see if the note can be applied. If YES, open the next note, of which the note number is bigger(No need to open the next one. You can jump to two or three), until you find one note(e.g. Note123456) that cannot be applied. Then all the notes larger than note 123456 can be applied on your system. If the answer of the beginning is NO, open the previous note, the smaller one.
Is there any other way to find the note?

Yes. That is the central note. If you are using BPC 10.0 SP14 and the latest is SP16, open central note SP15 and SP16.  You can find what note fixes are delivered in this SP. If your BPC is quite old, e.g. SP10, well you have to take more time to check each central notes. 😐

In the central note, sometimes there are almost 100 note fixes. You may don’t want to check one by one.  You can use search function in the browser by pressing Ctrl + F. Then search the keyword, e.g. currency. Then all the notes related to currency will be highlighted with color.

Some other keywords I often use:

• SQE,MDX for report display issue, e.g. error, wrong result, etc.
• Slow, Performance for performance issue
• HANA for HANA related issue.

But there is limitation here. The central note only will be released when the SP is ready, which means you can download SP installation package from SMP. Before the central note is released, almost all of the notes in the central notes are already released. As a result of this, you cannot find the note through the central note way.

Besides BPC note, any other notes that worth checking?

Yes. That’s the BW MDX related notes. As you may know, BPC uses BW MDX notes if you’re not on HANA or model parameter ENABLE_HANA_MDX is not enabled. To search BW MDX related note, you can use component BW-BEX-OT-MDX to search with the same way introduced above.