Agentry Transaction Error Handling

[Former Member]

Dear Community,

Recently we have implemented the Transaction Error Handling for some of the deployed Agentry apps.

Reference is made to the following links:

Transaction Error Handling Steps in SAP Help documentation for SDK 3.0 SP12

Agentry - Transaction Error Handling

SMP 3.0: Agentry Transaction Failure Handling

My understanding is that standard Agentry does not support error handling that elegantly, it will stop the user from continuing his/her daily work activities when an error occurs during the transmit process, expecting to resolve the error first.

Under certain circumstances this behaviour might be acceptable, however, there will be instances where the error is of such nature that it cannot be resolved instantly, for example due to changed configuration in the ERP system (which should not happen, but certainly is not an unlikely scenario).

This is where Transaction Error Handling can play a role, where the failing transaction is stored on the SMP server, and allowing the user to continue his/her work.

But now, there is a (number of) failed transaction(s) living on the SMP server, what is the follow up from there?

There are no tools - at least not that I am aware of - to monitor the failed transactions, let alone be able to reprocess these xml files at a later stage (of course with minimal user interaction).

It raises a number of questions:

1. What is SAP's recommendation here?

2. What tools has SAP made (or will make) available to allow monitoring and reprocessing (especially considering the failed transactions are stored on SMP, and they need to be (re)processed in ERP) ?

3. How do other customers deal with this, or what processes and procedures were put in place to close this gap?

4. In one of the above links I read about inbound transaction management. What exactly does this entail, and when will this be part of the Agentry framework (not just for a specific Agentry app)?

Best regards,

Edwin

[mark_pe · Accepted solution]

Edwin,

Hi. Based on your question:

"My understanding is that standard Agentry does not support error handling that elegantly, it will stop the user from continuing his/her daily work activities when an error occurs during the transmit process, expecting to resolve the error first."

Answer:

• Agentry error handling can be done different ways. There are Agentry error handling steps (uses Agentry libraries) wherein the user will see a warning but allow them to continue but if configured properly an IT admin will get an email that an error occured to do the necessary. This will help the user not to get stuck during his work day.
• This libraries are called if you use the Agentry Eclipse Editor Error Handling. 
• Another technique for Error handling if you are not using the Agentry feature of Error handling is to do all the error handling in JAVA.  Both of these techniques are not trivial and may need SAP consultants experts in Agentry error handling process.  Most of the out of the box SAP Work Manager and Inventory Manager may only use error exception handling in Java but they do not use the Agentry feature of Error Handling as shown in the picture below.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• From the picture above, you can select Fatal with message (make the user know it is really an error for them not to continue) or Fatal without message or No Change or Retry with change (the user will need to modify their selection/answers) or Retry without change.
• This is not trivial because a business unit needs to know what to do if an error occurs. 
• In SAP we only gave a few examples as this is purely configurable or customizable based on user requirements and the type of action that needs to be done is different per business flow.
• This is an advance feature of Agentry and it will need experts in Agentry customization to do the work and we suggest you to either subcontract the work with SAP consulting or partners who worked in this space (this is the answer to most of your questions above)

Best Regards,

SAP Mobile Support Team

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Good day Mark,

Thank you for your prompt feedback with regards to the error handling capability in Agentry, we are very familiar with its features and don't have any questions on that.

My questions rather relate to the second part, what is SAP's recommendation and what tools are being offered by SAP to monitor and re-process the failed transactions that live on the SMP server, in other words how can that loop be closed?

These are not necessarily consulting questions, rather we are exploring the availability of existing tools as well as experiences from other customers.

Regards,

Edwin

[mark_pe · Accepted solution]

Edwin,

As far as I know there are monitoring tools based on if you are using CRM or ERP tied to BDocs that could be used to see if a message failed on the CRM side for example.  I am not sure if this can be used for your purpose (Like retrying the transaction).  But this really depends on the error produced by your user when they pressed transmit, right?  By just re-running the same input parameters in the BAPI does not guarantee that the BAPI will run.

EX:  Input Parameter --> BAPI --> Output Result -- Error.

So if the error occurs on the Client (Parameters/Inputs) -- Transmit --> SMP 3.0 (Error logs) --> Mobile AddOn (SMERP or SCRM) --> RFC --> SAP CRM/ERP

Where did the error come from?  Did it come from the client? Bad input therefore bad output?  So the SAP Monitoring tools that exist in SAP CRM/ERP could be too late already?  So the Error Handling of Agentry needs to be smart enough to know what normally gets nulled or blank during transmit and to either create a dummy or default variable as a temporary solution to proceed, right?  This is where the consulting is needed to understand where to tweak it (i.e. Java, BAPI or Client).

I'll give an example below on at least the CRM part.

Or SAP transaction code (In CRM):

• SMWP (Monitoring Cockpit)
• SMW00 (Error Handler)
• SMW01 (Display Bdoc Messages)
• SMQ1 (Outbound Queue Monitor)
• SMQ2 (Inbound Queue Monitor)
• SMQR (Queue-In Scheduler)
• SMWT (Middleware Trace)
• R3AR3 (Monitor Request)
• SDIMA (Data Integrity Manager)

Those are some ideas but I am not an expert in those level of details on those toolset as I worked in Mobility side.  There may be others who are experts in it in CRM or ERP.  In the picture above it may be too late if the mobile client gave a bad input from the client.  So special configuration needs to be done if you want the fix on the Java side (SAPWM.jar -extend it to do the processing fix in Java - this is where most of the exception handing is done in Work Manager, Service Manager) or if you want the fix to be done by Agentry error handling then design needs to be done there.  But if you are already in ECC ERP then the error is already been made and saving to the ERP is not completed so you may see red marks that it was not processed.

I hope this helps. I am speculating at the SAP side ERP/CRM it may be too late to handle unless you want to further customized the BADIs to improve it.

Best Regards,

Mark Pe
SAP Platinum Support Engineer

[bill_froelich · Accepted solution]

Edwin,

The product team is adding in support for Inbound Transaction Management (available in Service Manager now and planned for the next Work Manager release) to aid in this process.  I would suggest looking into this feature as I think it is intended to address much of your concerns.

--Bill

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Good day Bill,

I am very keen to look into this Inbound Transaction Management. Where can I find detailed information about it?

When you say it is planned for the next WM release, what sort of timelines should we expect? Is there already a target GA?

Regards,

Edwin

[mark_pe · Accepted solution]

Edwin,

From the documentation team on Service Manager: "There is a full write-up about Inbound Trans Mgmt in the Configuration guide, starting on p103." 

http://service.sap.com/instguides -> Select SAP Mobile then SAP CRM Service Manager 4.3

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Mark Pe
SAP Platinum Support Engineer

[former_member430059 · Accepted solution]

As Mark stated above, an Inbound Transaction queue was implemented in Service Manager. It will be available in the next version of Work Manager which is currently scheduled for a Q3 2016 release

[former_member226119 · Accepted solution]

We are currently running Service Manager 4.3, and this option may prove very useful.

Can you point me in the direction of additional documentation around the specific inbound queue functionality? eg. Can this tool allow an administrator to view the inbound data and in special cases manipulate the data?

[bill_froelich · Accepted solution]

Please see Mark's response with a link.