Introduction of application specific SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM) Checks in SAP EarlyWatch Alert

Beginning of March 2021, the SAP EarlyWatch Alert service was enhanced to reflect application checks for SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM).

This new functionality was initiated via collaboration between the SAP Mission Control Center, SAP TM experts, and SAP Customer Success targeting all SAP TM customers who send data to SAP.

The automated service analyzes the essential administrative services of the customer systems, alerts on any critical situations and offers recommendations/solutions to improve performance and stability .

These alerts can be viewed in the SAP EarlyWatch Alert Solution Finder by selecting the Category -> Application → Transportation Management .

The SAP TM specific checks are introduced as part of the ST-SER release 720 with the aim to fulfill the following aspects:

• Proactively update customers on issues and provide recommendations
• Customers can react on issues, such as bottlenecks before they become critical
• Minimize risk of critical down time
• Minimize risk of critical data inconsistency issues
• Providing information about critical fixes and service packages required for optional system operations
• Ensuring system performance and product stability

Prerequisite: Allow Online Collectors in your system with the report RTCCTOOL.

Checks which are already released to the customers are as follows:

1. Important SAP Notes for SAP TM
2. Unprocessed Post Processing Framework (PPF) actions (older than 2 weeks) for SAP TM
3. Failed Post Processing Framework (PPF) actions for SAP TM
4. Aged open Transportation Order and Freight Settlement Documents (open more than one year)
5. Freight Settlement Documents with inconsistent Lifecycle Status
6. Archiving in SAP Transportation Management
7. Recommendation on latest Support Package for SAP TM
8. Failed inbound bgRFCs for SAP TM
9. Recommended Background Jobs not set up in SAP TM
10. Side Effect Solving SAP Notes recommendation for SAP TM

Important SAP Notes for SAP TM

The SAP TM check is introduced to pro-actively alert if any important SAP Notes is missing and provide a list of the missing notes. Currently, the 50 most important SAP Notes for SAP TM is recommended by SAP TM development team, and the list will be updated regularly.

Unprocessed Post Processing Framework (PPF) actions (older than 2 weeks) for SAP TM

PPF actions which are scheduled but never executed and long running PPF actions are one of the key contributors in degrading the system performance. It is necessary that customers are aware of this well in advance to mitigate and fix such issues. Reference SAP Note 1423066, see “Deactivation of PPF action definitions that are not used”.

The check will be rated ‘YELLOW’ in case of unprocessed PPF actions. Ten example entries of these unprocessed PPF actions are retrieved and displayed on the EWA report.

Failed Post Processing Framework (PPF) actions for SAP TM

Failed PPF actions in SAP TM can have a serious business impact as they can prevent certain follow up actions and communication failures which are dependent on the execution of these PPF actions. It is necessary to alert the customer to check these failed PPF actions and fix the errors.

The check will be rated ‘YELLOW’ in case of failed PPF actions. Ten example entries of these failed PPF actions are retrieved and displayed on the EWA report.

Aged open Transportation Oder and Freight Settlement Documents (open for more than one year)

A Large amount of open Transportation Order (TOR) and Freight Settlement Documents (FSD) can have serious impact of SAP TM system performance. It is necessary that customer is aware of these open documents and close them promptly.

The check will be rated ‘YELLOW’ if any TOR’s and FSD’s are open for more than one year. Ten example entries of each type of documents are retrieved and displayed on the EWA report.

Freight Settlement Documents with inconsistent Lifecycle Status

The lifecycle and confirmation status of Freight Settlement Documents become inconsistent in some cases. These documents may be blocked from further processing. The detailed description of the issue and the recommendations are explained in SAP Note 2772098.

The check will be rated ‘RED’ if any Freight Settlement Documents are found inconsistent. Ten example entries are retrieved and displayed along with the total number of inconsistent documents in the EWA report.

Archiving in SAP TM

It is recommended to define a proper archiving strategy in SAP TM system.

The check will be rated ‘YELLOW’, if archive execution is not within residence time for archiving object SCMTMSTOR and if the number of completed and canceled TOR documents is more than 40% of total TOR documents.

Recommendation on latest Support Package for SAP TM

The check will be rated ‘YELLOW’, if the customer is on a support package which is 5 levels lower than the latest version.

The customer will be informed to evaluate the relevance of the newest support package and upgrade the system.

Failed inbound bgRFCs for SAP TM

Failed bgRFCs could lead to data inconsistency and performance issues. If any inbound bgRFCs for destination ‘TM_BGRFC_INBOUND’ results in an error the check will be rated ‘YELLOW’.

Ten example entries of the failed SAP TM bgRFCs are retrieved and displayed on the EWA report.

Recommended Background Jobs not set up in SAP TM

This check is introduced to alert Customer with a ‘YELLOW’ rating in case there are some of the recommended background jobs for SAP TM missing.

The program names for the missing jobs and recommended frequency will be listed on the EWA report.

Side Effects Solving SAP Notes recommendation for SAP TM

This check alerts customers with a ‘YELLOW’ rating when they are missing SAP Notes which solve/fix side effects in the system due to already implemented SAP Notes.

Currently the SAP Notes with priority ‘High’ are checked for and recommended. This will be extended further for the ‘Medium’ and ‘Low’ priority SAP Notes in future.

Recommendation for this check is to implement the missing SAP Notes which solve the side effects. In cases where there is already an impact present, oss incidents may have to be created.

SAP EarlyWatch Alert also provides application specific checks for SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM) which are available since July 2021, please refer to this blog post for detail.

For SAP EarlyWatch Alert activation details please refer to this blog post.

To get a comprehensive overview about the customer landscape SAP offers, check  SAP EarlyWatch Alert Workspace in the SAP ONE Support Launchpad. To view the latest alerts that have been raised in your system, you can access the SAP EarlyWatch Alert Solution Finder

Please also feel free to explore the SAP Community topic page for SAP Transportation Management for more information about SAP TM and post questions here.