SAP's predictive and preventative support features and functionalities help resolve problems before they even occur. In our blog we will give further insight into some of the most recent customer tailored real-time interventions such as trending and hot solutions exposed at the customers point of need, cloud health from SAP Ariba which analyses performance and error data for every user action and on-demand subscriptions which provide our customers with the latest updates on relevant critical cloud outages.
1. What are trending & hot KBAs and why do we need them?
In support we want to make it easier for our customers to be aware of known issues which are specific to their product, to reduce or avoid a business impacting events. Our customers now have real-time information detailing which support content (KBAs and Notes) are trending at that moment while also highlighting hot KBAs/Notes for problems considered as critical.
Trending content indicates in real-time which KBAs/Notes are popular with our customers and takes the following into account:
Hot KBAs/Notes are categorized by support experts and are marked as hot when they are related to urgent or critical problems. For example, regression issues, critical bugs, legal changes, or any topics that are considered "hot" at that moment and for which reviewing of the content can help our customers avoid creating new cases. The hot content appears in real-time from when the support expert categorizes it and has an expiry date so it will only be displayed for customers for a determined period until a workaround or fix has been made available.
Why do we want to display trending and hot content to customers?
Trending content can alert customers to known issues while hot content can alert our customers to known urgent issues for their products, reducing the need to go through the incident creation process, saving time for our customers and allowing them to reduce business impacting events.
How do I access Trending & Hot content?
Our customers can expect to see trending and hot content when reporting an incident in SAP ONE Support Launchpad once they choose the product area. The window will display content linked to the chosen product Area.
Trending: In the example below, we see three trending KBAs related to the product area Netweaver-> Application Server ABAP. The content is showing due to a high number of customers viewing these KBAs for this product on that day.
Hot: In the example below, we see one hot KBA related to the product area SAP S/4HANA Cloud – Sourcing and Procurement. The hot content is showing first in the list due to its heightened urgency and has been entered by a support expert to alert customers to this known urgent issue. The view below is within the support assistant and the hot KBA is followed by the trending content for that day.
2. Cloud health from SAP Ariba – proactively improving the customer experience through data
The mission of cloud health is to identify and resolve issues that impact the end user experience before they are reported by our customers. We use a set of tools and patented algorithms that take the application logs our users generate to get a clear picture of their experience. We strive to listen to our customers even when they are not “talking” and continually seek ways to improve their user experience.
Why was cloud health created?
The model for customer experience improvement is in a constant state of flux. Using surveys or submitted customer cases can represent a small sample of the customer experience which can be inaccurate and/or misrepresentative of the larger customer user base. Cloud Health solves this problem by taking the data our customers generate simply by using SAP Ariba applications and turning it into views of customer experience. We then work to improve the experience for all users, not just those who report issues. Cloud health is a collaborative effort across support, engineering and operations teams and acting on data to drive efficiency, reduce case volume and reduce escalations is how cloud health answers that challenge. And it’s all based on seeing and proactively improving our customer’s experience.
How do our customers benefit from cloud health?
Cloud health tools are used internally to detect issues that impact our end users in real time and generate alerts that engage teams that can resolve the issue. This leads to quick and accurate root cause detection, faster resolutions, and reduced customer frustration. In many cases the problem is resolved before customers are aware and certainly before they submit a case. Cloud health can see issues at the hardware level, the product level, the customer level and even the user level. This unique level of granularity, which is all focused on the customer experience, allows us to provide a level of support beyond our competitors.
Beyond our proactive value, cloud health can also be used to support customer reported issues. Through data analysis we can provide a clear and accurate data picture that shows the severity of the problem and scope of impact. These same views can be used to pinpoint a root cause and measure improvement after a fix.
Cloud health continues to develop at SAP Ariba and across all SAP lines of business. We are striving to increase visibility and proactive improvement not just for software issues but workflow improvement, adoption planning, 3rd party system issue detection, feature development and beyond. We are striving to empower our customers and our internal teams by seeing and acting on behalf of our most important stakeholder – you!
3. Subscribe to outage is live
When an outage event occurs, SAP must minimize the impact to our customers through rapid investigation and resolution but also clear and comprehensive communication. We have created a new experience for customers where we provide appropriate instructions for the situation faced.
How it works:
Our customers can expect to see subscribe to outage when creating an incident in SAP ONE Support Launchpad. Selecting the cloud system triggers a validation check for any planned and unplanned downtimes that currently affect the selected cloud system/tenant. Should a downtime be detected, you are provided with real-time information and offered a one-click subscription which ensures you receive all relevant downtime updates, removing the need to create a case.
What are the advantages of subscribing instead of creating a support case?
The benefit of subscribe to outage means regular updates about the event and its resolution will be sent directly via email until the outage has been resolved. Once resolved the subscription automatically ends with no further actions are needed from our customers.
Within the popup text there is a direct link to the Cloud Availability Center where you can get the status and all relevant information about the cloud outage event immediately. Any subscription created via this feature can be edited or deleted via the Cloud System Notification Subscriptions (CSNS) application in the SAP ONE Support Launchpad at any time.
Summary
While still in the early stages of predictive & preventative support we are laying the groundwork for future features and functions so we can expand and automate our support use cases. Hot & trending solution data is available and positioned to our customers at critical support touchpoints. Cloud health from SAP Ariba has been identifying and resolving issues before they become business impacting events for our customers and subscribe to outage is provides our customer with real-time information for unplanned downtimes that currently affect your selected cloud system/tenant.
More enhancements to existing features are planned for the near future, for example:
The predictive and preventative support journey is only beginning with more significant features planned in the first half of next year to further transform the user support experience. Stay tuned!
Related Links:
1. What are trending & hot KBAs and why do we need them?
In support we want to make it easier for our customers to be aware of known issues which are specific to their product, to reduce or avoid a business impacting events. Our customers now have real-time information detailing which support content (KBAs and Notes) are trending at that moment while also highlighting hot KBAs/Notes for problems considered as critical.
Trending content indicates in real-time which KBAs/Notes are popular with our customers and takes the following into account:
- Which content our customers and support engineers are using the most
- Which content has a big increase in use (a spike) within recent days
Hot KBAs/Notes are categorized by support experts and are marked as hot when they are related to urgent or critical problems. For example, regression issues, critical bugs, legal changes, or any topics that are considered "hot" at that moment and for which reviewing of the content can help our customers avoid creating new cases. The hot content appears in real-time from when the support expert categorizes it and has an expiry date so it will only be displayed for customers for a determined period until a workaround or fix has been made available.
Why do we want to display trending and hot content to customers?
Trending content can alert customers to known issues while hot content can alert our customers to known urgent issues for their products, reducing the need to go through the incident creation process, saving time for our customers and allowing them to reduce business impacting events.
How do I access Trending & Hot content?
Our customers can expect to see trending and hot content when reporting an incident in SAP ONE Support Launchpad once they choose the product area. The window will display content linked to the chosen product Area.
Trending: In the example below, we see three trending KBAs related to the product area Netweaver-> Application Server ABAP. The content is showing due to a high number of customers viewing these KBAs for this product on that day.
Trending
Hot: In the example below, we see one hot KBA related to the product area SAP S/4HANA Cloud – Sourcing and Procurement. The hot content is showing first in the list due to its heightened urgency and has been entered by a support expert to alert customers to this known urgent issue. The view below is within the support assistant and the hot KBA is followed by the trending content for that day.
Hot
2. Cloud health from SAP Ariba – proactively improving the customer experience through data
The mission of cloud health is to identify and resolve issues that impact the end user experience before they are reported by our customers. We use a set of tools and patented algorithms that take the application logs our users generate to get a clear picture of their experience. We strive to listen to our customers even when they are not “talking” and continually seek ways to improve their user experience.
Why was cloud health created?
The model for customer experience improvement is in a constant state of flux. Using surveys or submitted customer cases can represent a small sample of the customer experience which can be inaccurate and/or misrepresentative of the larger customer user base. Cloud Health solves this problem by taking the data our customers generate simply by using SAP Ariba applications and turning it into views of customer experience. We then work to improve the experience for all users, not just those who report issues. Cloud health is a collaborative effort across support, engineering and operations teams and acting on data to drive efficiency, reduce case volume and reduce escalations is how cloud health answers that challenge. And it’s all based on seeing and proactively improving our customer’s experience.
How do our customers benefit from cloud health?
Cloud health tools are used internally to detect issues that impact our end users in real time and generate alerts that engage teams that can resolve the issue. This leads to quick and accurate root cause detection, faster resolutions, and reduced customer frustration. In many cases the problem is resolved before customers are aware and certainly before they submit a case. Cloud health can see issues at the hardware level, the product level, the customer level and even the user level. This unique level of granularity, which is all focused on the customer experience, allows us to provide a level of support beyond our competitors.
Beyond our proactive value, cloud health can also be used to support customer reported issues. Through data analysis we can provide a clear and accurate data picture that shows the severity of the problem and scope of impact. These same views can be used to pinpoint a root cause and measure improvement after a fix.
Cloud health continues to develop at SAP Ariba and across all SAP lines of business. We are striving to increase visibility and proactive improvement not just for software issues but workflow improvement, adoption planning, 3rd party system issue detection, feature development and beyond. We are striving to empower our customers and our internal teams by seeing and acting on behalf of our most important stakeholder – you!
3. Subscribe to outage is live
When an outage event occurs, SAP must minimize the impact to our customers through rapid investigation and resolution but also clear and comprehensive communication. We have created a new experience for customers where we provide appropriate instructions for the situation faced.
How it works:
Our customers can expect to see subscribe to outage when creating an incident in SAP ONE Support Launchpad. Selecting the cloud system triggers a validation check for any planned and unplanned downtimes that currently affect the selected cloud system/tenant. Should a downtime be detected, you are provided with real-time information and offered a one-click subscription which ensures you receive all relevant downtime updates, removing the need to create a case.
Subscribe
What are the advantages of subscribing instead of creating a support case?
The benefit of subscribe to outage means regular updates about the event and its resolution will be sent directly via email until the outage has been resolved. Once resolved the subscription automatically ends with no further actions are needed from our customers.
Within the popup text there is a direct link to the Cloud Availability Center where you can get the status and all relevant information about the cloud outage event immediately. Any subscription created via this feature can be edited or deleted via the Cloud System Notification Subscriptions (CSNS) application in the SAP ONE Support Launchpad at any time.
Notification
Summary
While still in the early stages of predictive & preventative support we are laying the groundwork for future features and functions so we can expand and automate our support use cases. Hot & trending solution data is available and positioned to our customers at critical support touchpoints. Cloud health from SAP Ariba has been identifying and resolving issues before they become business impacting events for our customers and subscribe to outage is provides our customer with real-time information for unplanned downtimes that currently affect your selected cloud system/tenant.
More enhancements to existing features are planned for the near future, for example:
- Expand the reach of trending and hot content to other customer touchpoints.
- Extend the reach of cloud health to other products.
The predictive and preventative support journey is only beginning with more significant features planned in the first half of next year to further transform the user support experience. Stay tuned!
Related Links:
- SAP Managed Tags:
5 Comments