Guided Procedure Authoring (GPA)

You can create guided procedure to support processes which are performed periodically.

Guided procedures provide, for example, the following benefits:

Processes are speeded up.
Less experienced users are provided with expert knowledge to perform complex processes.
Business-critical processes can be executed with minimized risk.

In your guided procedure, you can use SAP-delivered or custom manual or automatic activities.

A Guided Procedure (GP) is a set of steps and sub-steps in an application area. Each step has one or more activities. The activities can be either manual (maintain a logical system, for example), automatic (activate services, for example) or custom (create a project, example). Each activity is linked to a log entry that contains a message, status and other details.

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text.

Guided procedures: A structural overview

Integration

Guided Procedure Authoring (GPA) is available in the following application areas:

Application Operations
Business Process Monitoring
Cross Database Comparison
Message Flow Monitoring
Exception Management

Prerequisites

You have SAP Solution Manager 7.1 SP10 or higher.
You have Flash Player version 10 or higher.
For more information about the roles required to create/change, display and execute guided procedures, see the SAP Solution Manager Security Guide on SAP Service Marketplace at http://service.sap.com/instguides SAP Components SAP Solution Manager <Release 7.1 or higher> Operations .

Activities

To compose a guided procedure, do the following:

Specify the process which is to be supported by your guided procedure.
Optional: Create custom manual or automatic activities (calling a function module, for example).
To define a sequence in which activities must be performed, divide the process into steps (and sub-steps if necessary) and group the activities into them.
For each step, define the manual or automatic activities to be performed.
Add a help text to a step or to an activity assigned to a step.
After having tested the guided procedure, transport it in your production system.
To edit the guided procedure, create a new version.
If multiple guided procedure are delivered, use the guided procedure log book, to monitor the status of executions, and locate errors.

Example

The following examples indicate how custom guided procedures can ensure that certain routine activities are performed completely and in the correct sequence:

Technical Administration
- To monitor business-critical systems and processes manually, perform guided procedure-based daily system checks. You must not rely solely on automatic monitoring and alerting.
- Monthly or yearly period end closing activities require complex procedures to prepare them technically. Create a guided procedure which allows you to perform, for example, the following steps, regularly:
  - Lock users
  - Log off the users from the systems
  - Block background jobs
  - Send a predefined e-mail to the business team and request business-relevant period end closing activities
  - Unlock users when the business team has finished the activities
- Stop systems, to perform maintenance activities (upgrade the database or operating system, for example) and restart them in the correct order:
  1. Ensure that all background jobs are performed correctly
  2. Stop jobs
  3. Ask users, via e-mail or telephone for example, to finish work
  4. Lock the users
  5. Ensure that there is a current backup
  6. In the SAP Management console, stop the SAP system
  7. Shut down the database
  8. After the maintenance, restart the database
  9. Restart the SAP system
  10. Unlock the users
  11. Schedule the background jobs again
  12. Inform the team, via e-mail or telephone, that the downtime is finished
Exception Management: A business process is carried out in various systems and fails repeatedly because a system does not respond in the final step (a central management system has frequent downtimes, for example). Exceptions are generated. To revoke the posted documents, custom function modules must be called with specified input parameters, in each of the systems supporting the business process, and the business process owner must restart the business process.
To simplify the error handling, set up the following process:
1. When the error occurs, SAP Exception Management sends an automatic notification to the business process owner, containing a link to a guided procedure.
2. To perform the rollback activities, the business process owner performs your guided procedure containing the following steps:
  1. Check the availability of the central management system, manually (by calling the System Monitoring, for example)
  2. To revoke the documents, call the function modules in the corresponding systems, with the correct input parameters, automatically.
For an example in SAP NetWeaver Process Integration, see Message Flow Monitoring.
Cross Database Comparison: To check the consistency of customer master data using the Cross Database Comparison (CDC), you have created a comparison check between an SAP CRM system and an SAP ECC system. To provide guidance to investigate the potential root causes of inconsistencies reported, create a guided procedure.
To create a sample guided procedure step by step, see Example: A Guided Procedure for Cross Database Comparison.