Solution Database

Purpose

The R/3 Solution Database (SDB) applications offers customer service organizations a knowledge base component which provides a highly flexible structure to preserve and acquire knowledge. The SDB with the capabilities of various search algorithms and knowledge representations is the foundation of R/3’s next-generation knowledge products for advanced knowledge exploration and knowledge elicitation in the future developments. Currently, the SDB supports an environment for knowledge engineers to administrate the knowledge bases, and an universal interface for agents, field engineers, or other business components to search the knowledge bases. Although R/3 exists rich search capabilities (such as F4 helps, match codes and CSS) in accessing the database, the search functionality of the SDB is focused on the knowledge level, that is, a meaningful integration of databases. Thus, the SDB enables the following functionality that does not exist in the current R/3’s database search

The SDB can be applied to any area where the preservation of expertise is desired. For name a few products linked with the SDB, the Customer Interaction Center (CIC), a call-center product in R/3 uses the SDB for agents to interact the customers efficiently and effectively. The Notification in R/3’s Service Management submits queries to the SDB, so the proper solutions including a list a tasks should be done can be delivered to the field engineers to resolve the problems. In summary, the SDB creates a knowledge framework to delivering efficient, effective and intelligent customer service for various business processes.

Implementation Considerations

SDB requires communication with a general-purpose search engine that can perform fuzzy search as well as exact search based on a pre-compiled ‘corpus’. The corpus is composed by lexicons pre-compiled for the text-indexing. Since the corpus resides in memory, the search speed is significantly improved when compared to conventional database search. For 4.6A release, there is no incremental update for the corpus, so the corpus must be pre-compiled in order to be available for SDB to search.

Different languages should be compiled separated to avoid any possible confusion in construction of lexicons, although, different languages (Indo-European language) can be mixed and compiled technically.

All the attributes (code groups and codes) defined in catalogue can be customized. The accessibility to display different business objects must also be customized. Screen-related customization is implemented by virtue of the User Settings inside the transaction.

SDB uses many improved designs for graphic user interface for SAP’s Enjoy project. Those new screen components including the navigation tree, the screen editor, the HTML control, the dynamic toolbar, the grid control, the combo-boxes, and new icons. All the controls require the front-end installation of SAPGUI 4.6A. Transaction will not be executed properly if the version of controls are not updated.

Features

Primary features of SDB include:

SDB allows definitions of problems (called symptoms in SDB) and solutions in various combinations including free-text descriptions, code groups and codes from customized catalogues, business objects, different file formats (e.g., images, sound clicks, movies) and Internet/Intranet URLs.

SDB allows hierarchy structure and non-hierarchy structure to defines the symptoms using problem locations, problem damages, and problem causes.

SDB can compare the similarities for a fuzzy search from one symptom/solution to another, and match the attributes for all non-free text entries such as codes, business object, Internet/Intranet address, etc. for an exact search. Because the search is based on the pre-compiled text-indexing, the speed is significantly improved without compromising the accuracy.

SDB is designed to build a knowledge base under a multiple-language environment. Knowledge engineers can directly maintain the SDB for different languages in the same transaction.

One symptom can link to multiple solutions, and one solution can also link to multiple symptoms. SDB has n:m mapping between symptoms and solutions. Navigation (focus) among linked symptoms and solutions can be achieved by one mouse click.

SDB allows users to display different business objects if linked with a symptom.

SDB allows users to direct load an existing notification into a symptom or solution depending on the content of the notification.

SDB allows users to direct load an external source as a text descriptions in both symptoms and solutions. If the information source exists as HTML formats or other file formats acceptable under Window environment, it can be directly linked to solution’s attachments.

New controls are used to imitate the user interfaces of Window, Mac and Unix platforms.

All basic functionality can be accomplished by clicking on wizard.

Constraints

This application offers basic administration and search functions for a knowledge base. The 4.6A release will not include archiving, reports, authority checks, complete business object methods, and direct web-access ability, optimization and adaptive learning.