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Former Member
SAP CRM service module is an integral part of SAP. Among the many roles of a manager in a business which relies on providing services to their customers, one of the most important subject is scheduling the service engineers on a proper way. It’s vital that you put thought into the scheduling process and treat your staff and customers professionally. Proper scheduling allows a manager to determine how well the work gets done and by whom. He could team up workers of equal strength, or put a superior worker with a weaker one. It all depends on the company’s objectives. But resource Scheduling in the Service environment is an area that has been a tough subject for companies that are running SAP. The reason for this is most of the time the lack of understanding regarding the different options a company has regarding resource scheduling when they run SAP.

 

In a SAP ERP environment, the options for resource scheduling are limited, whether the customer chooses for Project System and Work Force Planning or using Customer Service or Plant Maintenance. It becomes more complicate when the customer has more than one ERP module in their IT landscape to serve the needs of the service organisation. Therefore most of the companies decides to use a third party scheduling tools. The most common one with a proven record with SAP is MRS (Multi Resource Scheduling). This is a SAP Netweaver / SAP ERP based planning tool and can be used to manage resources across systems from multiple sources (SAP CS, SAP PS, cProjects, SAP PM and SAP CRM). The biggest issue using MRS are most of the time the additional licensing which needs to be acquired and the extra implementation/maintenance effort that should be invested.

 

For companies that implement SAP CRM Service, and do not have other sources of demands to consider as part of their resource planning solution, it really worth to evaluate the functions and features available in the Resource Planning Application in SAP CRM 7.0 (Work Force Management or WFM). Workforce Management Core (WFM Core) is a central planning service and could be used as an add-on to SAP CRM. It finds and manages assignments of personnel requirements to personnel resources. The assignments can be created manually or generated automatically. WFM Core also contains all data relevant to planning, such as the resources, their availability, and qualifications, and the personnel requirements.

The WFM Core has two tasks:

  • It is the central data basis of the following data relevant to planning:

    • Personnel resources and their availability and qualifications

    • Personnel requirements and their qualification requirements and time-related requirements of the resources



  • It finds and manages assignments of personnel resources to personnel requirements by comparing the following data:

    • The requirement's qualification requirements with the resources' qualifications profile

    • The requirement's required capacity and period with the resources' availability




 

Let’s take a deep dive and highlight the most important customizing steps to get WFM Core working as an add-on to your SAP CRM system:

 

First of all you require software component WFMCORE 200 with the latest support package level. At this moment this is SP23 and I strongly recommend to install always the latest SP.

 

Check if the item categories being used for service items have been defined as resource planning relevant in case you are using the Resource Planning Application Tool. Check the fields Resource Plng Relevance and Conf. Relevance:

 

SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Transactions  Basic Settings  Define Item Categories

 

 

  1. Define the parameters for qualification requirements at header level, with regard to inheritance for the entire document:


 

SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  General Settings for Service Resource Planning  Qualifications  Define Parameters for Qualification Requirements in Transaction

Select your transaction type and create the next Trans. Type Parameters:

  1. Define the parameters for qualification requirements at item level:


SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  General Settings for Service Resource Planning  Qualifications  Define Parameters for Qualification Requirements for Item Category

 

Select the relevant item category and Choose New Entries and select the following parameters using the input help:

 

  1. Define which Scheduling Engine functions are active:


 

If appointment scheduling is active, you can use this functionality in the Interaction Center. Also check the settings under Appointment Scheduling.

SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  General Settings for Service Resource Planning  Scheduling Engine  Select Active Functions for Scheduling Engine

Check if the following functions are activated: Appointment Scheduling: „Active“

  1. Check the RFC connection: In this scenario we’re using the WFM Core as an add-on in SAP CRM, so we do not need to establish a RFC connection.


 

SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  General Settings for Service Resource Planning  Scheduling Engine  Select RFC Connection

  1. Define the scheduling engine:


SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  General Settings for Service Resource Planning  Business Add-Ins (BAdIs)  Select Scheduling Engine

Filter WFDS is used for connecting to the WFM Core Add-On.

 

 

  1. Defining Time Allocation Types: The time description of a resource consists of individual time specifications. Each time specification can be of a particular type, such as "WORK" for working time, "ILL" for illness, and so on.


 

SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  WFD Server  Business Settings for WFD Server  Resource Settings Define Time Allocation Types

The next time allocation types are created in for this scenario:

8

Checking application status: An assignment's application status controls the functions that are possible for that assignment. This is needed to specify which WFM Core statuses correspond to the status from the application.

 

SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  WFD Server  Business Settings for WFD Server  Define Application Status

  1. Transferring Status to the WFM Core:


Transaction code: CRM_LRP_STATUS_WFM

 

 

  1. Defining Service Area:


 

SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  WFD Server  Business Settings for WFD Server  Resource Settings  Define Service Areas

In this activity we defined two service areas by the combination of postal code(s) and country as an example.

  1. Defining Job Functions and levels:


SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  WFD Server  Business Settings for WFD Server  Resource Settings  Define Job Functions and Levels

  1. Defining Availability template:


An availability template consists of one or more availability rules. Each rule is a periodic occurrence of some availability type, such as working schedules, fixed breaks, etc. These templates may be assigned to any service arrangement for a specified time period. Assigning an availability template to a service arrangement defines its availability for the specified time period.

 

SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  WFD Server  Business Settings for WFD Server  Resource Settings  Define Availability Templates

 

 

  1. Setting Time zone for BW application: The purpose of this activity is to define the time zone to which time data should be converted when it is transferred to a Business Warehouse (BW) system.


 

SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  WFD Server  Basic Settings  Set Time Zone of a BW Application with WFD Server

  1. Maintaining Service Arrangements for Employees: In this step you should maintain manually the qualification profiles for each service employee or service technician. This could be done in the web UI within the assignment block “ Service arrangements”. This step should be for all service arrangements.

  2. Defining Appointment Interval Groups: The purpose of this activity is to define the appointment interval groups and appointment intervals, which are required for arranging appointments in a CRM system.


SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  WFD Server  Business Settings for WFD Server  Define Appointment Interval Groups

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Checking Parameters for Appointment Scheduling: The purpose of this step is to define how the management of appointment scheduling parameters is controlled for each channel (Internet Customer Self-Service and Interaction Center). You can specify for each parameter whether it is used (Active flag), whether it relates to a mandatory field, and whether the field is displayed. You can also define a default value.


Parameter '1' for the WFM Core relates to the scheduling strategy.
Parameter '2' relates to the appointment interval group.
Parameter '3' is not used (the Active flag is not set).

 

SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  General Settings for Service Resource Planning  Appointment Scheduling  Manage Parameters for Appointment Scheduling

  1. Specifying Event Handling for the WFD Objects: 


SAP CRM IMG menu: Customer Relationship Management  Workforce Deployment  WFD Server  WFM Event Handler  Specify Event Handling for WFD Objects

Highlight the newly created application connection and double-click on node Generic Subscription Objects. Choose New Entries and maintain the following values:

 




























Application Cat Subscr. Cat. Event Cat.
CRMSV Assignment New
CRMSV Assignment Deleted
CRMSV Assignment Modified
CRMSV Personnel Resource

Modified

 

 


  1. Hint: When a dump is raised with a message “Function module "DPR_SWFM_GET_PROJECT_ACTIONS" not found.” Check wether in table “WFDSC_SYSTEM_RFC” your logical system is entered properly:


 

Open the WEB UI and start the resource scheduling in SAP CRM.