The latest release of SAP Service and Asset Manager continues the progression to a multi-persona application centered on those involved in maintenance execution. We add the Safety Technician persona with support for the important work of locking out and tagging out (LOTO) equipment, creating a safe environment for maintenance technicians.
Additionally, we deliver new features for the inventory clerk, maintenance technician, and field service technician personas and continue to deliver on the requests from our customers.
Please read on to learn more.
Table of contents
- Key features delivered in the 2305 release
- Safety Technician persona
- Maintenance Technician features
- Field Service Technician features
- Inventory Clerk persona features
- Cross-application features
- Configuration details
- Release available now
- Explore other SAP mobile applications
Key features delivered in the 2305 release
Safety Technician persona*
The safety technician ensures the safety of workers when working with machinery or equipment that could pose a risk of injury or accidents during maintenance. Integrated with SAP Work Clearance Management†(WCM) on SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA, the initial release focuses on the safety lockout-tagout (LOTO) process.
The persona has a custom user experience optimized to easily find operational items and certificates on the home page and see all objects on a map. The technician may also access details about work approvals, permits, work orders, equipment, and functional locations. The map and list pages include relevant filters letting the technician quickly home in on the exact information needed.
Learn more about the Safety Technician Persona in SAP Service and Asset Manager
Tag/lock and untag/unlock isolation points
The LOTO process is a set of procedures that involves identifying energy sources associated with the equipment, shutting the equipment down and cutting power, and then isolating devices such as switches, valves, or circuit breakers to prevent accidental or unauthorized re-energization of the equipment.
The mobile application shows the operational items grouped by certificate. These are the individual isolation points that must be secured. The technician may view tag details including number, item and location, and tagging type and sequence. Once complete, the status is updated to tagged, the lock number is confirmed, and signature and attachments can be included.
When the maintenance is complete, the equipment will be re-energized and be untagged and unlocked.
View certificates and work permits
Work permits are most often created from work orders and serve as a formal authorization to proceed with the work, provided that all safety requirements and conditions are met. A permit may have one or more safety certificates indicating that it has been inspected and deemed safe for operation.
These include important information that the safety technician will reference during her work, such as the work type, requirements, and approvals. Lists for both document types are available from the home page and the side menu and include quick filter and advanced filter options.
View catalogs
Catalogs are another crucial source of information for the safety technician, providing details related to safety procedures, equipment, materials, and other relevant resources. In the mobile application, catalogs can be accessed from the work permit or safety certificate pages.
There are tabs for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and Safety Job Analysis (SJA) catalogs, respectively listing all the equipment that is available and approved for use and the safety requirements and hazards associated with the certificate.
Maintenance Technician features
Follow-on notification from work order
It is common to find additional issues during maintenance execution so the technician will raise a new notification. If the notification is related to the current work order, it is important to maintain a link between the two.
When a technician creates a new notification from the work order detail page, he can now indicate whether this is a follow-on notification or a new maintenance request.
Supervisor functionality for phase model*
Customers using the phase model — an alternative to system and user statuses — can now enable supervisor capabilities. The supervisor may assign and unassign operations to technicians, edit maintenance orders, and create and edit operations and sub-operations.
Support phase and non-phase model order and notification types
Phase model has been supported since our 2110 release, but customers had to choose one approach. Now both phase and non-phase model are supported in the same application.
When enabled, reactive (YA01) and proactive (YA02) orders and notification types are listed along with other supported types. When executing a phase model order, the conforming statuses will be shown.
Field Service Technician features
Support for S/4HANA Service
We now support the service-code module in SAP S/4HANA for customer-service scenarios. SAP S/4HANA Service builds upon the foundation of the SAP Customer Service module and offers a more modern, integrated, and intelligent service management solution.
We introduce a user experience optimized for the S/4 Service process. As with the existing Customer Service experience, the field technician may view orders on a map, view order and equipment details, raise new maintenance requests, and create service, expense, and mileage confirmations.
Additional support for FSM Smartforms‡
We introduced Smartforms integration in the last release, a solution from SAP Field Service Management with a drag-and-drop interface to build interactive scripts for field technicians.
In this release, we add support for three template elements available in FSM Smartforms — safety label, attachment picker, and calculation.
Inventory Clerk persona features
Support purchase requisitions
Ordering materials is a common activity, either to replenish stock or get materials for an urgent order. The inventory clerk can now view details of open purchase requestions and create new ones on the mobile device.
Purchase requestions are shown in the list of documents on the home screen with a quick filter option to quickly narrow the list.
A new purchase request can be initiated on the home page or from the side menu, with the clerk adding the needed materials along with quantity, pricing, and supplier details.
Support for transfer posting movements
Material withdrawals for consumption must come from unrestricted-use stock. To withdraw goods from blocked or quality inspection stock, you must carry out a transfer posting into unrestricted-use stock first.
Stock transfer movements from quality inspection stock to unrestricted stock (321) and from blocked stock to unrestricted (343) are now supported.
Cross-application features
Annotate image and PDF documents and save modifications*
A long-requested feature is the ability to markup images and PDFs inside the application. A typical scenario involves attaching a photo of the work completed or when submitting a new notification. Annotations on the image allow a technician to be more precise and add context.
A technician may now open an image or PDF document attached to a maintenance request, order, or operation and enable the edit mode. She can set the color and pen thickness and access predefined shapes, e.g., rectangle, circle, arrow, or use the freeform drawing mode to annotate the PDF. The edited document can be saved to replace the original or saved as a copy.
Note, that editable PDFs, those with form fields, are supported in iOS and may be filled using the keyboard, however, this is not possible in Android.
Resize image uploads*
Our modern smartphones have wonderful built-in cameras that produce gorgeous, high-resolution images, but these also can be large files. Now when viewing attached images, a slider lets the technician downsize the image. The original and estimated new size are shown for comparison.
Reducing the image file size reduces upload time when syncing and saves storage space on the backend.
SAP Product Model Viewer integration*
The new SAP Product Model Viewer is an innovative augmented-reality mobile application that enables manufacturers to deploy 3D product data into interactive service instructions to upskill frontline workers.
Our mobile client now supports deep links into Product Model Viewer to support service and maintenance tasks. An equipment detail page can include a link to the 3D model to view part attributes and step-by-step maintenance instructions.
This integration is only available for users of SAP Enterprise Product Development, and the mobile app is currently only available for iOS/iPadOS.
About page*
From the Profile Settings page, the user can view an About page to view system and user details. We include data like the application version and mobile services app ID, as well as user information like system client and ID and user parameters.
This information can be helpful when troubleshooting user issues, and is useful for customers and partners when doing quality assurance testing on custom client applications.
Feedback button
A new Feedback survey is also available on the Profile Settings screen, letting users provide important feedback to our team on their experience and satisfaction with the application.
All responses are anonymous and will be used to improve the product.
Language support
The application now supports 31 languages, adding Bulgarian and Indonesian in this release.
Configuration details
Many of the new feature described above are optional or subject to additional licensing, and are not enabled by default.
Please refer to the updated blog post Configuring Features and Personas in SAP Service and Asset Manager to learn about assigning personas and supported features for each persona.
Release available now
The application is publicly available and includes an offline demo mode for viewing and testing the extensive functionality with maintenance technician, field service technician, safety technician, and inventory clerk personas included.
The application metadata is now available on the SAP Support Portal Software Center and the mobile client may be downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Explore other SAP mobile applications
SAP has a powerful suite of SAP native mobile applications. Follow the SAP Mobile Experience Community for the latest updates.
* SAP Customer Influence request
† SAP Work Clearance Management is required for the Safety Technician persona and is licensed separately
‡ SAP Field Service Management is licensed separately; Smartforms is not included with SAP Service and Asset Manager
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