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Author's profile photo Stefan Doktor

Simple IT Request – Focused Build Standalone Extensions Part 3

In this blog series, I would like to describe a few standalone enhancements in more detail, which can be very helpful in special situations and can be used independently from the requirements to deploy process from Focused Build.

In this third part, I want to introduce you to a standalone enhancement which is named Simple IT Request. This extension is particularly useful for you when you have implemented or plan to use IT Service Management with SAP Solution Manager.

The Challenge

The increasing complexity of every IT Organization also results in very complex channels between Business Users and the IT Organization. These channels often are different depending on the device (Mobil or Desktop), depending on the Process that gets triggered (Incident, Change Request, Service Order, etc.) and other criteria’s.

The SAP Solution Manager provides more than three different User Interfaces and more than ten different applications and guided procedures that a business user can use to trigger a specific IT Service.

Simple IT Request

The Simple IT Request solves this complexity for every business user. They do not need to think about what kind of IT Process is required and what type of application is the correct one to trigger this service. There are only one channel and one application a business user needs to know to consume all formal IT Services.

With SAPs UI5 Technology, the Simple IT Request is built to run on any device and allows the creation of all the different Service Types that are used in SAP Solution Manager.

Service Managers

The Service Manager can define what services are available in the Simple IT Request Service Catalog. Therefore, we use the concept of transaction template that is already available in solution manager for all the different transaction types (incident, change request, etc.). A service manager simply creates a new template for the service and prefills all transaction fields that are required to fulfill the service. When the service is consumed in the Simple IT Request Fiori App the System creates a new instance of this Service Template.

The different Transactions Templates give the Service Manager full control on how the Service is displayed in the Service APP and what are the different fields business users will see and has to fill in.

With this flexibility, you can create a small generic IT Service Catalog with just a basic service like Incidents and Change Request as well as complex Service Catalogs with Application Specific Services or even User Group Specific Service Catalogs. This standalone enhancement therefore also provides full authorization control on what Services a specific Business User Group gets displayed in the Catalog.

If you are looking for more information about Focused Build and other Focused Solution’s look at these resources:

Other Articles of this Series:

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      17 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Riccardo Escher
      Riccardo Escher

      Hi, very nice thanks.

      Can you please explain me why this ergonomic aid for end users landed with costs into focused build?

      Is the simple it requirement - ops, request!!! for a new user provisioning as in your example part of an agile software development method? Has it some bond to the requirement to deploy process? Or may be there is a different arcanum?

      Honi soit qui mal y pense...

       

       

      Author's profile photo Stefan Doktor
      Stefan Doktor
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Riccardo,

      to be honest, I don't know.

      I could only generally argue that Focus Build contains more Enhancements then just Requirements to Deploy. Although the R2D Process this is the biggest part of Focus Build many other smaller enhancements are also part of Focus Build. I'll write about them on my blog because they can help in very dedicated cases but might not be relevant for all Solution Manager Customers.

      kind regards

      Stefan

      Author's profile photo Robin Schoenwald
      Robin Schoenwald

      Hi Riccardo,

      Focused Build and Focused Insights will be available with no additional license fees for SAP customers from January 1st, 2020. You can find more information about the Focused Build license update in this presentation.

      Best regards,

      Robin

      Author's profile photo Riccardo Escher
      Riccardo Escher

      Hi Robin,

      yes, I know. A wise decision. Why not right from the start? It would have prevented ugly discussions on influence.sap.com where we customers without focused build created and voted for features which focus build offered as stand alone tools.

      It remembers me of the fortune of the SAP Solution Manager Enterprise Edition.

      I hope that SAP learns the lesson and will never mix up again two different business models (usage rights by service fees and sales product).

      Author's profile photo Maxim Schwarzkopf
      Maxim Schwarzkopf

      Hello Stefan,

      thank you very much for the post.

      We are trying to set up simple IT request on a SP07 environment with FB SP02, facing some issues with missing relationships in WebUI (like “Relation /SALM/BT_ITSM_SSR_FS_REL is not (yet) supported”) and almost empty customizing tables /SALM/ITSM_SSR*. The FB configuration guide unfortunately contains not much regarding this tables.The piece lists activation is double checked and done.

      Can you give any hints on the missing settings?

      Thanks in advance,

      Maxim

      Author's profile photo Chouhaib GHALMI
      Chouhaib GHALMI

      Hello Maxim,

      I have the same problem and I don’t find any Note.

      Have you found an issue to this problem ?

      Thanks in advance

      Chouaib

      Author's profile photo Muhammad Ilyas
      Muhammad Ilyas

      I ran into this and could resolve it with

      https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2872856

      1. Enter transaction code SPRO in the SAP GUI
      2. Follow the path: SAP Solution Manager Implementation Guide (transaction code SPRO) > Customer Relationship Management > CRM Cross-Application Components > Generic Interaction Layer/Object Layer > Component-Specific Settings > Business Transactions > Extend Model for Business Transactions with New Relations
      3. Enter the details for /SALM/BT_ITSM_SITR_TL_REL,  /SALM/BT_ITSM_SSR_AG_REL and /SALM/BT_ITSM_SSR_FS_REL as in the screenshot below:
      Author's profile photo Stefan Doktor
      Stefan Doktor
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Maxim,

      i don't had that issue yet but did you check for Notes ?

      I sound like a software issue, missing customizing in the Business Role that should have come with the piece lists.

      Open a customer message if this is still not solved, my colleagues will take care.

      kind regards

      Stefan

      Author's profile photo Consultants Consultant
      Consultants Consultant

      Hi Stefan,

      Thanks for the blog, I have configured the simple IT request setup and having issue in the fields setup.

      1. I want to bring custom fields into my service request.
      2. Fields are getting disabled when I save the request template, below is the screenshot of the same.
      3. Also in the app, category view is not displaying but the list view is appearing with no fields.

      We are in ST 720 SP07 with OST SP02 version only.

      Check the screenshots. It is weird.

       

      Can you help me with this

      Author's profile photo Lorenz Moehl
      Lorenz Moehl

      Hi,

       

      please see my reply on your other comment: https://blogs.sap.com/2018/12/20/simple-it-request-new-features-with-focused-build-sp02/comment-page-1/#comment-451770

       

      Best regards,

      Lorenz Möhl

      Author's profile photo Aditya Singh
      Aditya Singh

      Hi Lorenz,

      We are also facing the same issue in our Simple IT Request. We are currently on Focused Build SP06 and in the Services Catalogue we cannot see any entries. It says no entries are available. We have activated the piecelist and created the categorization schema.

      Kindly let me know if we missed something.

       

      Regards

      Aditya

      Author's profile photo Chouhaib GHALMI
      Chouhaib GHALMI

      Hello,

      You have to release your incident template.

      Regards

      Author's profile photo Marjan PARSA
      Marjan PARSA

      Hello, is it possible to have 2 different transaction types for simple it request and to custom the actions?

      Best Regards

      Author's profile photo Stefan Doktor
      Stefan Doktor
      Blog Post Author

      Yes you can have as many transaction types as you want... for each transaction type you will need a corresponding "template" transaction type. Also actions can be customized.

      Author's profile photo Bharath Emme
      Bharath Emme

      Dear Stefan,

      I am trying to configure service order through Simple IT Request but I am unable to find transaction type template for service orders.

      I have tried to use standard SMST template but unable to configure.

      Please let me know how to enable service order creation with simple it request.

      Appreciate your support

      Thanks and Regards

      Bharath

      Author's profile photo Lorenz Moehl
      Lorenz Moehl

      Hi Bharath,

       

      there's unfortunately an mistake in Stefans blog post. The Simple IT Request never supported Service Orders by standard. So there's no pre-delivered Template for this scenario.

       

      What you would need to do to achieve a working SO pair would be the following:

      • Copy SMST into your customer namespace
      • Integrate the Simple IT Request Setup Block into the copied template's view configuration
      • Maintain the follow-up document creation customizing (SO Template -> SO) as well as the Event handling for the SITR Setup Block
      • Maintain the corresponding customizing for the SITR

       

      Me or any of my colleagues from SAP consulting can definitely assist on this topic (if necessary). You can contact us via alm.consulting@sap.com.

       

      Best regards,

      Lorenz

      Author's profile photo Bharath Emme
      Bharath Emme

      Thank you Lorenz for your support. It's so nice of you.

      Yes, even I did not find any information about service order in focused build configuration guide. So I raised comment for confirmation.

      I was trying same steps with SMST transaction type. I integrated Simple IT Request Setup Block in SMST and able to add fields. However I am not able to include SIT category block in the SMST. Also not able to assign SMST to categorization in spro at "Assign Transaction Types to Catalog Categories"

      I will contact to your email id with screenshots.

      appreciate your support.

      Regards

      Bharath