Yet another plea for help setting up the Service Desk

[Former Member]

I feel really bad for posting this request, but I have spend a whole day trying to configure service desk in 7.1 SP 4 and I am almost nowhere. 

I have filed two bug reports with SAP, which they responded to very quickly - either the Solman guys have nothing to do or there is a lot of them.  The Service Desk IMG definitely has errors in it, so rather than create a new SAP message for every one, I am looking for a document from someone who knows how to do it already.

All this stuff about CRM transaction types, for example, is not obvious to a Basis guy with no CRM background.  And IMG tasks that take you to BP_GEN when they should be going to SMSY_SETUP don't help either.

I checked the installation guide area: I have read the amusing configuration guide for Solution Manager which says (for pretty much everything) - See the IMG.  That's all they wrote.  I guess they were in a hurry.

I have looked at service.sap.com/rkt-solman which seems to have a lot of stuff - but I could not find anything there about setting up service desk 7.1.  Or Incident Management, which seems to be the new name.  After a brief look at the config document for 7.0 I can see that a lot has changed.

I dug around in service.sap.com/solution_manager - could not find anything useful there either - lots of stuff about how good it is and how to use it, but nothing on the setup process.

I have looked at the online documentation - I could not find anything there either.  But that is no surprise - everything seems to live in four different places there too, so if you know where it is hiding then please tell me. 

I am sure that SCN is the place - there must be something here - but how to find it?  For some reason, searching SDN has never worked well for me.  (The only way I can find stuff is by looking at the forums for people who have already asked questions like this, and now I have spent half an hour trying to find the forums - or fora, as they are more correctly pluralled.)

So please, if you know of a nice clear document that tells how to set up the basic service desk application in 7.1, then please tell me how to find it.  Because I have spent at least four hours looking today, and i have got zilch.

(And of course, if you answer this post, it is unlikely that i will be able to find it. 🙂  But please give it a go anyway.)

[Former Member]

Hi Russel,

Have you already explored all the information in SPRO . If Not, Please do so. It will give 95% of the information on config side.

THanks,

Jagadish.

[Former Member]

Jagadish,

Thank you for your prompt answer.  You are right - 95% of the information is in the IMG and most of that is even fairly correct.  The five percent that they leave out, I suspect, is the information that the documentation person was not able to find because every one they asked gave them the "SAP Expression of Concerned Ignorance."  As in "Ja, ja, I see what you mean.  Nein, I do not know.  You should Ask Heinz".  And Heinz says the same thing, except it is "Ask Helga"  and Helga says "Ask Heidi" who says "Ask Horst" ... Helmut, Holger, Heinrik...

I have been working through SPRO.  As I said above - I found two problems already with the IMG, and I have only done about 10 steps.  in one case it was calling the wrong transaction so the IMG documentation made no sense at all.

Example: I have read the help "Information about standard transaction types" under "Transactions".  It says to "Copy the default transaction types, assigned profiles and schemas (for example text schema, action profile, status profile) delivered by SAP into the customer namespace in the activity "Specify Transaction Type".  Presumably we are copying SMIN, SMIT and SMPR to ZMIN, ZMIT, ZMPR for the same reason that we copy security roles.  The first fun thing is that activity "Specify Transaction Type" does not exist.  There is a "Classify Transaction Types" and "Specify Target Transaction Type".  The second option above activates a BaDI, which is easy - so it must be the first option.  Not a big deal, but it gives the impression that the whole thing will be a rough ride.

So by a process of elimination, the activity required is "Define transaction Types".  The documentation for this activity is totally generic CRM documentation, talking about sales activities etc so there is not much help there.  I do the copy, change the name to ZMPR and now it wants me to change the description.  To what?  ZProblem? 🙂  Why?  And what about the profiles and schemas?  I can see no sign of them.

Example: The next step "Specify Several Transaction Types" is documented for solution manager but it does not actually say what I need to do.  It is possible this is an optional step for people who want to do extra stuff...  Perhaps I can ignore it?  Who knows?

The person who dreamed all this up must have had some idea of what we should do - surely they wrote it down.  I am hoping that there is some SolMan Service-Desk-specific set-up documentation that tells me what I need to do in this step, or if I can ignore it.

So you see, it is not obvious at all.

[Former Member]

Hi Russell,

I understood your concern, even most of them here facing the same kind of no way go at one or other time. But we have to get it done, and it will be done.

Regarding service desk, yes it is pure CRM stuffs. But if you just look at the configuration alone it can be done by any one. currently we dont have open document for 7.1, but the things needs to be done is same for both 7.0 and 7.1, Only the transaction type got changed.

Please follow the below guides on 7.0, the same thing you need to do in 7.1 also with out fail,all the same available in 7.1 but in other place, you can use find button spro to get the same action in 7.1

http://scn.sap.com/people/bruyneel.guillaume/blog/2008/05/02/service-desk-implementation-guide-part-...

http://scn.sap.com/people/bruyneel.guillaume/blog/2008/06/13/service-desk-implementation-guide-part-...

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/Service+Desk+Team+Creation

http://scn.sap.com/people/dolores.correa/blog/2007/10/06/service-desk-support-team-determination

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-14688

read the doc for 7.0, map this with 7.1 . All the basic steps are same.

Thanks.

Jansi