My name is Angelika Salmen and I am the product owner of Situation Handling. With this blog post series, I want to help you to start creating your own situation cases. The first blog post supports you in drafting your use case.
My guidance relates to the extended framework for Situation Handling which has been available since SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2202 and SAP S/4HANA 2021 FPS2.
Can Situation Handling help my case?
Situation Handling detects business situations and automatically informs the right users about issues requiring their attention. Contextual information and solution proposals support the users in solving a situation.
Situation Handling is loosely coupled with application artefacts which come with the following benefits, constraints, and recommendations.
Benefits
- No change is required for business applications
- No change is required for business processes
- Situation Handling can be added at anytime
Constraints
- Observing application data and events is based on separate processes
- The loose coupling might lead to some delays in detecting situations, depending on the system load
Recommendations
- Situation Handling is designed to support humans
- Situation Handling isn't built for high volume processing, such as IoT
- Use Situation Handling as a supportive tool
- Don't use Situation Handling as the primary tool for time-critical, life-critical, or security-relevant use cases
Prerequisites
Business case
Let’s start thinking about the business case. What are the value and risks, and who needs to be informed about a situation?
Scenario
Describe the business case with its benefits and risks.
- Value
- Impact
User story
Also think about the value from the user’s perspective.
- As <user> I want to <goal> so that <reason>
Persona
Provide a short description of the persona that will be informed about the situation.
- Roles
- Tasks
- Goals
High-level situation design
As a next step, think about how a user should be informed about a situation.
User support
Start thinking from the user‘s perspective:
- What is the business situation the user needs to be informed about?
- Which information would help the user solve a situation?
- Which quick actions could solve a situation immediately?
- Which related apps enable the user to solve the cause of a situation or provide further information and support for solving the situation?
Example: Expiring Contract
- Situation text: Contract <contract_number> expires on <date>. Please, extend or replace the contract.
- Supporting information: contract volume, contract type, supplier, target volume, target quantity, currency
- Quick actions: none
- Related app: Manage Contracts
The screen shots below illustrate how the user perceives a situation.
Scenario-specific list view in My Situations - Extended app
Situation Page in My Situations - Extended app
Situation conditions
Now, let’s take a closer look at the conditions that trigger a situation.
Which object is affected by the situation (anchor object)?
Which object triggers the situation?
- The anchor object
- Another object
- Multiple objects: anchor object, one or more trigger objects
What is the situation trigger?
- An event performed on a business object (for example, created, approved, or deleted)
- A periodical check of data by a batch job
- How often should the batch job be executed: monthly, weekly, or daily?
Which data triggers a situation?
- One or more data fields that are relevant for the condition
Under which circumstances is the situation triggered? Define the values of the data, for instance:
- The data matches a value, for example, company code = 1010
- The data has a certain ratio, for example, > 80 %
- The data has a time relation, for example, within the next 14 days
Solution proposals
Is there a quick action that can resolve the situation, for example, the action Assign Contract which assigns a new contract to an open purchase requisition.
- One or more quick actions (optional)
Related apps
Related business apps can help users solve the situation by finding more detailed information or solving the root cause.
- One or more related apps (optional)
Situation recipients
Who are the users you want to inform about situations?
- One or more specific teams
- People with specific responsibilities across teams
- Dynamically identify the recipient such as the creator of a requisition
Now you have the draft design of your situation case.
Let’s move on and detail the use case.
- How to Start with Custom Situations: High-Level Design of the Use Case (1/4)
- How to Start with Custom Situations: Detailed Design of Your Use Case (2/4)
- How to Start with Custom Situations: Design Your Situation Object (3/4)
- How to Start with Custom Situations: Define Your Scenario (4/4)
- SAP Community: Intelligent Situation Handling
- SAP Managed Tags:
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