Situation Handling: How do I configure situation t...

angelika_salmen · ‎2020 Sep 04

This is the third of a five-part blog posts introducing Situation Handling in SAP S/4HANA. I will give you a tour of how you can use situation types and adapt them to your own requirements—see how you can easily refine conditions and modify the information that selected users will receive. If Situation Handling is new to you, visit the initial blog post Situation Handling: What is it and why do you need it?

Now let’s get started and see how you can adapt a situation type to your requirements. Open the Manage Situation Types app, select Go, and you will see a list of situation templates provided by SAP. The templates describe use cases from various business areas like Finance, Procurement, and Manufacturing.

Take this for example, I look for a use case in Procurement, specifically one where operational purchasers are automatically informed when a new contract for open purchase requisitions is available. This ensures that orders are placed with best prices and payment terms.

I enter proc in the search field and select the situation template called Contract Is Ready as Source of Supply. It also links to a detailed documentation of the template in SAP Help Portal. Very nice! Then, I copy the template, and a new situation type is created.

After entering an ID, I rename the type Contract Is Ready for Office Supplies as I want to activate Situation Handling in this specific business area. In case there should be multiple situation instances for a purchase order item, the app lets me define in which sequence they are displayed to the user. Medium works for my use case.

In the Condition section, I check Send Notification so that the situations are not only displayed in the apps, but also pushed to the selected users in SAP Fiori launchpad. As I do not want to create situations for all open purchase requisition, I adapt the filters to my use case by selecting Purchasing Organization 002 in Plant 1710 that corresponds to the team responsible for office supplies.

The Situation Display section allows me to specify the information displayed to end users when a situation occurs. First, I adapt the in-app texts to the use case: New contract for office supplies. The new text is directly visible in the preview which gives me a good look at what the users will see. I can also add a link to additional information, e.g. a process handbook, that is helpful for the user when solving a situation.

Second, I define the notification text that pop-up in SAP Fiori launchpad. Here, I want to provide a summary for the user adding some specific information. By typing a curly bracket “{“, I get all the variables that are available for this situation type.

Notifications can also be sent through public channels such as email. Users can choose this option in SAP Fiori launchpad settings. However, since channels outside SAP are considered less secure, I can only enter a generic text. The preview shows the email to be sent to the user.

What’s more, I could choose to aggregate notifications, but this does not fit my use case. I want a notification for each single situation. Rather, I choose to resend notifications when there is an update on the situation instances.

Next, I define who will be informed about the situation. These users will see the situations in the My Situations app, and as I checked Send Notification in the Condition section, they additionally get the notification in SAP Fiori launchpad via integrated Responsibility Management. In the app Manage Teams and Responsibilities, you can define teams that are responsible for certain tasks and business areas. The Team Category links the teams to the situation type. In this case, it is Procurement (PROC).

To identify the right people within the teams, I can use filters. Responsibility Definition narrows down to specific areas, from where I select Purchasing Group and Plant. Using the same filters for teams and for conditions makes sure that people are only informed about situations in their area of responsibility. I can also specify a role in case the group responsible has different skill sets. Choosing Operational Purchasing narrows it down to precisely the people that will take care of the situations.

Last but not least, I want to get an understanding of the lifecycle of situation instances to further optimize my business processes. I want to learn about the frequency of the situation occurrence, the actions taken, how the situations were closed, etc. Selecting the check box Monitor Instances will automatically push all this data to the Monitor Situations app.

Now, I save the template and enable it. And, I am all set.

Now, you know how to adapt a situation type to your use case. To find out more, checkout SAP S/4HANA Situation Handling and SAP S/4HANA Responsibility Management in SAP Help Portal.

Stay tuned and visit us again next week when we talk about Tracking, Monitoring, and Data Context. Experience how to get an understanding of the life cycle of situations to further optimize your business processes.

And keep an eye on the five-part blog posts.