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Function documentationScheduling and Generating Follow-Up Transactions

 

The system calculates the planned dates, that is, the dates on which a service should be carried out, for the services defined in the service plan, such as quotations, activities, or service orders.

Using date rules (scheduling rules), the release dates can be derived from the planned dates. The release dates are the dates on which the system creates corresponding release objects, such as a service order or contract quotation.

Prerequisites

  • You have created and maintained interval templates in the system.

  • You have assigned a date profile and date rules in Customizing to the item category that you use for service plans. To do this, make settings in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management (CRM), by choosing Start of the navigation path Customer Relationship Management Next navigation step Transactions Next navigation step Basic Settings Next navigation step Define Item Categories End of the navigation path and proceed as follows:

    • Choose the item category intended for the service plan items.

    • Choose the date profile in the detail screen of the view Definition of Item Categories.

    • Choose Service Contract in the view Assignment of Business Transaction Categories and then change to the view Customizing Item, where you can define the date rules for time-based and counter-based service intervals.

Features

Planned Date

The system calculates the planned date, on the one hand, on the basis of the interval templates that you establish in the service plan item, and on the basis of the interval values defined in the interval template. On the other hand, the calculation takes date profiles and date rules (scheduling rules) into account. You can display and edit the scheduling rule in the service plan item in the Interval: Details assignment block.

The planned date is calculated on the basis of the start of planning. This is by default the current date when the service plan item is created, since the date rule Current Date is assigned by default to the date type Planning Start in Customizing.

Planned dates can be determined for counter-dependent scheduling by means of a consumption prediction or a calculated consumption value. For time-dependent scheduling, the planned date is calculated using the service interval that was defined in the service plan.

Release Date

Follow-up transactions can be created before the planned date. The date on which a follow-up transaction is created before the planned date is defined by the date type Release Date.

Using an established interim period, you can determine when the release date is, that is, when a transaction is automatically generated in the system and is visible to the service employee.

As soon as the transaction has been generated in the system, the service employee can confirm and process the transaction.

Generating the Transactions

The Post Processing Framework in CRM, which can be carried out either manually or automatically, allows the interaction of the dates and actions of the individual service plan items to be monitored, as well as the generation of the follow-up transactions.

A background job can be set up for the automatic monitoring that checks at regular intervals whether all the scheduled actions comply with the start condition, and generates the follow-up transactions, if necessary.

The data from the service plan item is first copied to the item of the new business transaction in the service during the generation of the follow-up transactions. Additional data, such as price agreements, can be imported from the service contract. The planned dates are recalculated in the service plan and the service plan is updated accordingly.

If more complex services are to be used on a planned date, then you can predefine a business transaction template that contains the detailed services and their scope, such as a service order template.

You can assign a business transaction template to a service interval either within a service interval template, or in the contract during the maintenance of a service plan item.