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Use

Alert Management (ALM) comes into play, when business-critical problems occur. When an alert is triggered in ALM by an application, responsible or interested parties are determined and informed immediately. Examples of critical situations might be an important customer terminating a contract or a budget being exceeded.

The alerts are polled from the UWL of the Enterprise Portal, application-specific display programs, or the alert inbox. These display programs can be personalized due to the user's needs. In addition, the users can receive alerts as e-mail, SMS, and fax, if these external methods of communication are configured in SAPconnect. End users can personalize their alert notifications, for example, create notification variants or determine a substitute.

Alert Management helps prevent delays in the processing of critical situations, because the time between discovering and responding to such situations is reduced considerably.

Getting Started

An easy way to get a fast overview of ALM is to have a look at the following SAP Tutors in SAP Service Marketplace under quicklink /alert ( http://service.sap.com/alertInformation published on SAP site ):

  • Introduction to SAP Alert Management (theoretical introduction)

  • Triggering ALM Alert with Event Linkage (practical introduction)

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites have to be met in order to use the Alert Management (ALM):

  • For using the Alert Inbox (BSP-based display program of ALM), the corresponding service has to be activated in the service maintenance transaction SICF. Open transaction SICF, choose Service as Hierarchy Type and then Execute. In the structure, choose Start of the navigation path Default_host Next navigation step sap Next navigation step bc Next navigation step bsp Next navigation step sap Next navigation step alert inbox End of the navigation path, and Activate in the context menu.

  • For customizing or administration of the Alert Management the corresponding authorization role has to be assigned. The end users do not need any additional authorization. You find more information under Authorization Concept.

  • The central alert server must be maintained as an RFC destination in transaction SM59 in the local system. If there is no suitable user, you have to create a user for the RFC connection in the central alert system in transaction SU01 (see User Administration and Authorization Concept). To make this RFC destination known as the RFC destination of the Alert Management System in the local system, the central alert server must also be selected as the RFC destination in transaction SALRT1 of the local system or in Start of the navigation path Settings Next navigation step RFC-Destination of Alert Server End of the navigation path.

  • If the central alert server is running on the local system in the same client, you do not have to maintain an RFC destination. In this case, you can simply enter NONE in transaction SALRT1.

  • If external communication types, such as e-mail, SMS, and fax are used, these communication types must be correctly configured in SAPconnect, because the alerts are then sent from the central alert system via SAPconnect.

Tools

  • Alert configuration transaction ALRTCATDEF.

  • Alert inbox transaction ALRTINBOX.

Tasks

The following ALM administration tasks describe the process flow from alert configuration to alert display and confirmation:

Task

Description

Defining alert classifications

Alert classifications help to group alert categories. For example, you can create an alert classification CRM that contains alert categories referring to CRM. Alert classifications can also have sub-classifications. This enables you to build up your own classification hierarchy. Especially, if you use the Alert Management (ALM) extensively, classifications and sub-classifications help you to organize your ALM alert landscape and to have a clear overview.

Defining alert categories

For different types of alerts you have to define different categories. The category contains various properties and other specifications that define the alerts within that category, for example expiry date, or the escalation recipient. You can define an alert category to suit your business requirements and assign the category to the corresponding classification. For example, for the alert classification CRM you can create the alert categories Contract Cancelled and Decrease in Sales. When the critical situation defined in the alert category arises, the system recognizes this and sends an alert instance of this category to the recipients determined.

Determining recipients

You have to determine recipients so that the Alert Management knows who the recipients of alerts of a particular category are and that the correct parties are informed.

Executing administration reports

There is a number of Alert Management administration reports that you must schedule according to your requirements. For example, report RSALERTPROC must be executed in order to enable escalation.

Configuring SAPconnect

Recipients can view the alerts assigned to them in the UWL of the Enteprise Portal, in application-specific display programs, or in the alert inbox. In addition, alerts can be received as e-mail, SMS, or fax, if these external communication channels are configured in SAPconnect.

Configuring alert processing

For the general use of the Alert Management, you do not have to change the default alert processing settings. However, if for example you want to send alerts to third-party systems, or to be able to confirm alerts by SMS/Internet mail, or to have logs written, then you have to configure alert processing.

Configuring alert confirmation with inbound processing

If the problem causing the alert is solved by a recipient, the recipient can confirm the alert, this means its status is changed and it will not be delivered, escalated, or displayed anymore. Alerts are generally confirmed by the recipient in the display program, such as the UWL or Alert Inbox. However, if an alert is sent by Internet mail or SMS message, it is also possible to confirm it by sending an Internet mail or SMS message back to the SAP system. Alert Management uses inbound processing for this.

Configuring UWL for viewing ALM alerts

The Universal Worklist (UWL) of Enterprise Portal can poll for ALM alerts in the ALM system and display the alerts.

Further Informationen

You find detailed information in the general online documentation for Alert Management or in the SAP Tutors in SAP Service Marketplace (see section Getting Started above).