SAP on IBM i – Got a quick question? Try the Expert Chat!
About a year ago, SAP has introduced the Expert Chat to allow real-time conversation with an expert in case of technical questions. In order to get the best possible expert for your question, you can choose from a list of areas of expertise, among them also experts for the operating system IBM i and the database Db2 for i. You can start an expert chat easily from the ONE Support Launchpad at https://launchpad.support.sap.com:
If you don’t see the icon Chat With an Expert on your launchpad, you may have to click on the Personalize button in the upper left corner and add the icon from the Miscellaneous section to your launchpad. Alternatively, you can go to https://support.sap.com and select Report an Incident. You will then see Expert Chat on the bottom left half of the screen.
After you click on the icon Chat With an Expert, you must select the area of expertise. To ask a question about SAP on IBM i or Db2 for i, you can select the Expert Area SAP Netweaver Databases & Operating Systems and then IBM DB2 for iSeries (AS/400). Alternatively you can select the tab Component and then start typing the SAP support component that is most likely associated with your question, e.g. BC-OP-AS4, BC-DB-DB4, BC-INS-AS4 or BW-SYS-DB-DB4.
After that, you need to select the SAP system that is related to your question from the list of systems that is linked with your SAP user profile. In the last step, you can provide your question, so that the expert is already prepared when he or she is picking up the chat:
At the end, you need to push the button Start Chat at the bottom of the screen. Based on availability, you may now have to wait a few seconds until an expert is available to chat with you try to answer your question. Please note that you will chat with a real person, not with a chat bot. If your question turns out to require a more in-depth analysis, the SAP support will turn the chat transcript into an SAP incident, so that no information from the chat is lost and the SAP support can continue to work on your problem through a regular SAP incident.
Don’t hesitate to give it a try next time you are having a question for SAP on IBM i or any other area of SAP.
Thanks for this Blog post. I tried this several times, but by now I always got the following message:
"We are sorry, there is currently no expert available to live chat with you in the area you have selected. You can continue to submit this question to SAP and someone will contact you as soon as possible."
Dear Mr Schlosser,
thank you for your comment. We are sorry that your first experience with the Expert Chat was poor. As I stated in my blog post, the Expert Chat is handled by real people, not an automated chat bot. SAP is trying their best to cover all time zones around the world with experts being located in Ireland, the USA and China. However, it is still possible at a certain point in time that none of the experts is online, or that all available experts are busy with critical customer issues. In your case, the holiday season may have played a role, too. I would hope that you will try the Expert Chat in the future again, and that your experience will be better next time.
Kind regards,
Christian Bartels.