Best practice before reporting an incident to SAP

[syedarif]

SAP offers a wide range of resources to help you. Let’s have a closer look at options available before we report an incident and make the best use of them.

Today, we are going to look at a brief overview of all the options available to search for an answer as a self-guide before reporting an incident.

• SAP Community 


• SAP Help Portal 


• SAP Notes & KBAs  


• Guided Answers


• ISM (Incident Solution Matching) 


• Expert Chat 


• Schedule an Expert 


• Customer Influence tool 

 

SAP Image Library (sapbrandtools.com)

 

SAP Community:

SAP Community is a social network platform for SAP professionals, which allow to change the way for thousands of SAP users work every day. SAP community is an inclusive and receptive environment where all individuals are welcome to seek help and exchange knowledge about SAP software and solutions. 

Explore the Questions and Answers page the get answers quickly or the SAP Blogs page to read professional blogs. Tagging your questions with the right tags increases searchability and findability and therefore the chance that the proper subject matter experts can see your question and provide answer. See the tag browser for all available tags. Discover the various features of SAP Community, familiarize yourself with community guidelines, how to get the most out of your membership, and earn the Tour the Community badge.

SAP Community can help in:

• Basic, pure How-to questions


• Clarifying cases using public official documents


• Cases that can be tested without system access or screen sharing


• Cases that can be solved by providing screenshots or traces (allowed for upload in a community thread)


• Cases that require no debugging

SAP Community can help resolve a large number of issues via existing documentation, especially if it's consulting query or common issues. 

To get Started, please follow the Tour for SAP community 2022

Reference KBA: 2973358 - SAP Community: Preferred Support Channel for How-To Questions - SAP ONE Support Launchpad

 

SAP Image Library (sapbrandtools.com)

 

SAP Help Portal:

The SAP Help Portal is SAP’s platform provides access to product documentation as well as related information, such as SAP Notes, product availability information and links to community content. 
 
The site consists of over hundreds of overview / landing pages for each SAP product that bundles links to all related information like release notes, installation and upgrade guides, release information and of course the actual SAP product documentation. 
 
One of the important features to help customize and enhance your SAP Help portal Experience is by Adding your favorite product 
 
To mark a product as a favorite, just select the star ☆ next to the product name on a product page or from the search results page

 

Reference blog: Customize Your SAP Help Portal Experience | SAP Blogs

 
Checkout the link to Explore more: SAP Help Portal

 

SAP Notes & KBAs

In the SAP ONE Support Launchpad, search a variety of repositories: including SAP Notes, SAP Knowledge Base Articles (KBAs), SAP Community content, documentation and more. Or use Expert Search, which retrieves SAP Notes and Knowledge Base Articles based on advanced selection criteria.

SAP Notes: 

• 80% of SAP Notes contain coding corrections 


• Solve complex technical issues 


• Most SAP Notes contain the description of the issue from a business perspective as well as the technical solution 


• Implementation tool for the coding corrections is available to help customer to implement SAP Notes 

My SAP Notes & KBAs Help

 

Knowledge Base Articles: 

• No coding corrections, therefore, these cannot be downloaded using Note Assistant 


• Enriched content (such as embedded screenshots & videos) 


• Provide ratings on the quality of a KBA


• Previews are available on search engines such as Google 


• Incident-specific documents

 

Guided Answers

Guided Answers help you troubleshoot and find solutions to your technical problems using a step-by-step guide. SAP experts document exact steps for analyzing issues and make that available to you.  Guided Answers will grow over time to accommodate new solutions and troubleshooting scenarios.
 

• Guided Answers guides you towards the right solution  


• The more often Guided Answers is used, the smarter Guided Answers will become
  


• Guided Answers provides you the ability to provide real-time feedback

To begin log on to Guided Answers (sap.com)

1. Access the ONE Support Launchpad with your S-User ID


2. Perform a search of the Knowledge Base
   


3. You can then select the Guided Answers icon


4. Then navigate through the Guided Answer


5. Clicking the "Give Feedback" button allows you to provide feedback on the current action, the Guided Answer as a whole, or the Guided Answers application


6. If the Guided Answer brings you to a solution, please click on the icon below.  This will help us to understand which content is useful versus which needs to be modified or archived

Reference Blog: Guided Answer – A New Way to Troubleshoot Your Product Issues | SAP Blogs 


Reference KBA: 2492603 - How to use Guided Answers - SAP ONE Support Launchpad

 

Incident Solution Matching:

Incident Solution Matching is a service based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies that helps you get relevant answers to technical questions faster.

In One Support Launchpad the ISM suggests solutions (Notes, KBAs, Wiki, etc.) based on AI.

Incident Solution Matching is embedded in the incident creation form accessible via the SAP ONE Support Launchpad.

To use Incident Solution matching, simply use the same search environment or incident creation form.

While filling the incident form, including the following information in your problem description will significantly improve your search results.

 

1. Describe your issue in Subject and Description as briefly as possible, “Incident Solution Matching” automatically recommends solutions from SAP Notes and SAP Knowledge Base Articles in the right panel and the results are ranked in order of relevance.


2. Select a component from Component field and “Incident Solution Matching” will refine the results even more

Please note: The more detailed and concise information you provide, the more matching results you will get.

 
Reference Blog:  
 
Get faster technical support with Advanced Incident Solution Matching – Know Tips and Tricks | SAP B... 
 
For faster resolution, SAP launches an AI enabled incident wizard in SAP ONE Support Launchpad | SAP...

One of the most commonly used option is Expert Chat and Schedule an Expert for a real time support.

 

Expert chat:

In today's digital economy, enterprises become ‘live businesses.' As a result, they require the same level of real-time availability from their essential supporting functions. Long wait times or reaction times between problem and solution are cost prohibitive.

SAP Expert Chat provides our customers with instantaneous access to our top product experts, significantly reducing the amount of time it takes to get answers to SAP product-related questions.

Anyone can now get real-time product support anytime and anywhere, helping to resolve customer’s mission-critical upgrades in less time than the past.

Expert Chat support channel is best suited for new* Medium or High priority issues.

There are three main approaches to begin an Expert Chat session with a technical expert. Read the following steps in detail:
 

• Using the "Expert Chat" tile on the SAP ONE Support Launchpad provides fast access to Expert Chat. 

• Before sending a new incident to SAP using the "Find a solution" tile, you can also start an Expert Chat with SAP Support to get a quick answer to your question.

• From S/4HANA Cloud products you can open a chat directly via Built-In Support.

Before you get started:  You must have a S-User ID with Report an Incident and Send Incidents to SAP authorizations. Contact an administrator at your customer number if your ID needs to be updated (see KBA 1271517).


Reference KBA on Expert chat and how to get stated: 2213344 - Starting an Expert Chat with SAP Support - SAP ONE Support Launchpad

To Initiate Expert chat: Expert Chat - SAP ONE Support Launchpad

Help portal link: Product Support (sap.com)

SAP Image Library (sapbrandtools.com)

 

Schedule an Expert:

Schedule an Expert offers a new way to connect and share your screen if needed with an SAP Support engineer in a live, one-on-one 30-minute call. The main benefit of using it is that it will contribute to a much quicker resolution compared to an average Low/Medium incident.

The scheduled appointments require 3 days’ notice to allow engineers to prepare for the session. Tell us your support-related question, and the product area that you want to discuss. We will find an available expert to assist you, at a time of your choice. It's that easy. 

If you want to try the service, book an appointment with an engineer, and discuss new or open incidents and technical issues you can easily access the service via SAP’s support portal, directly via your SAP ONE Support Launchpad or from your SAP Cloud for Customer/ SAP Business ByDesign systems (which will again take it to the launchpad). 

Please note that you need to have a valid S user id to access the launchpad to book a Schedule an Expert session. In case you want to know more about S-User authorizations click here.

Reference KBA: 2476729 - How to book a Schedule an Expert session - SAP ONE Support Launchpad

 

Customer Influence tool:

To request a new feature or product enhancement, SAP has defined a process and tool called Customer Influence. The platform allows customers and partners to submit an Improvement Request (IR) for future product releases, and to comment and vote on other requests.


The IRs with the most votes will be evaluated for adoption; their desirability will be evaluated along with their viability and feasibility.


Get Started

• Go to SAP Customer Influence home page 


• Login with your S-User and accept the Terms of Use 


• Navigate to SAP Continuous Influence – SAP Asset Manager home page 


• Search if your request has been submitted by another customer
   


• Submit idea: If you cannot find a request like your own, use the Submit Improvement button to create a new request and complete the template providing as much detail as possible


• Wait for review: Once your improvement has been submitted, other customers can see and vote for it

• Review Requests Open for Voting for improvements that you wish to support and plan to adopt in your organization
   


• Voting threshold: Ideas that reach the voting threshold of 10 votes will be reviewed for prioritization by the product team


• Review result communication: A blog post will be published to communicate the accepted and delivered requests


• No/low votes: Suggestions that have few or no votes are automatically closed after 24 months

• Use the Follow button to be notified of new requests and announcements when available

Reference Blog: Influence SAP Now – How to Submit a New Improvement Request | SAP Blogs

Reference KBA: 3033176 - SAP Asset Manager – How to Submit Improvement Requests and Influence Future Releases - SAP...

 

SAP Image Library (sapbrandtools.com)

Thanks for reading! We hope you found this helpful and that it will help you avoid any more roadblocks on your support journey!!!!!

Please leave a comment if you have any questions or require clarification. Follow for more similar content.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask us in the Q&A   All Questions in Customer Experience | SAP Community and

Read more #CustomerInteractionCenter blogposts Here!