Ahem - shouldn't Walldorf send at least an SAPDe coffee-mug when ...

[Former Member]

... a poor laborer in the SAP vineyard logs a customer message that has to go to the developers for investigation (because SAP support can't figure it out) ?

We logged a message a few days ago that has now gone to the developers, and I have never been prouder.

djh

[RichHeilman · Accepted solution]

SAP should send you a coffee mug and a three week supply of coffee when opening the OSS message initially. Three week supply because that is how long it will take to get the issue resolved, and in some cases, a first "Real" reply. Or maybe that is only for small little companies like mine. ;(

Anyway, I don't drink coffee, but I would definitly take a three week supply of iced tea!

Regards,

Rich Heilman

[suresh_datti · Accepted solution]

may be I was lucky.. I have never had to wait more than a couple of days .. there were instances when I got a repsonse within a few hours..unless it is broken in Production, I always open my message under 'Medium' priority..

I must add though that our Development shop is an SAP Certified Competence Center... that means our OSS messages supposedly get a priority response..

~Suresh

[former_member374 · Accepted solution]

Hi Suresh,

Thanks for saving grace here. I was getting worried

Mark

[pokrakam · Accepted solution]

Dunno, my "Low" priority ones always seem to get solved quickest (Yes I DO actually bother to lower prio if it isn't important!).

To balance out the good experience though, the thing that really annoys me no end - and I've had this on a couple of occasions - is when they agree things aren't right but say that the issue is too big/complex/old (tick all that apply) and too many customers would have developed a workaround and thus it would be too disruptive to fix. Ho hum.... and we pay how much for this kind of support? Or when you have conclusive, incontestable proof that something doesn't work as advertised and you are told that's just the way it is.

Support really is very hit-and-miss, I've had both excellent and shocking response, sometimes even from the same people.

[gregorw · Accepted solution]

Hi Rich,

I also got the impression that SAP does not care much about small customers during our CRM Upgrade project. Three weeks where the standard time to find a solution. But there are exceptions to the good and to the bad:

Good: Last week I found a PC-UI Framework bug, opened a message and got a official OSS Note the next day solving the problem.

Bad: On March 19th I've opened a message regarding a problem also described by Stefan Egger in the Topic /thread/281017 [original link is broken]. I'm still waiting for a solution.

Should we implement new releases as soon as they are public available or try to get into the ramp up. Because then you get direct access to the developers creating the solution. When you wait for a higher service pack and you face a problem the developers have to switch from the development of the next release to your "old" version to help you out.

But I had to say SAP support infrastructure is way better then what I've seen now with another software vendor.

Just my 2 cents.

Regards

Gregor

[Former Member]

I managed to get a 24 hour turnaround on my OSS note (as it is a known issue - but the fix broke something else)... I did have to escalate the note (due to lack of intergation testing sign off/delayed go-live)...

Although it is a known Issue, the developer I spoke to hopes to release the fix to me tomorrow... Apparently, I am also a guinea pig in my spare time

Nice to know that some clients are looked after... (if you shout loud enough in the right ears!) Thanks to my SAP Account manager for rattling the right cages! (in a manner of speaking!)

[pokrakam]

Spotted the following rather creative use of mathematics in an OSS note:

"The object year is a number that begins 1975 with 0. Therefore, the object year 30 corresponds to the year 2003."

Opened a low priority message just to let them know. Answered same day

Cheers,

Mike

[Former Member]

Aside to Mark -

Mark - I didn't intend to start a referendum in this thread. Really. Honest. I mean it.

Seriously, I just wanted to report how proud I was to find an actual bug in SAP software that required attention from the "gods".

Regards

djh

[pokrakam]

OK, that wasn't entirely my intent - I gave both positive and negative viewpoints. Though the negative experiences mentioned REALLY irk me.

I fear Walldorf may have to purchase a Coffe Mug Factory according to some ideas in this thread Here's an idea that won't cost anything though: How about crediting a person who reported a a bug in the note? In some ways it is what makes Open Source Software work - a bit like the points system here on SDN.

[former_member374]

Hi David,

I didn't read it as a referendum, nevertheless it is good to hear that people have good experiences with our support organization.

Best, Mark.

[former_member110461]

Altough we had a good one the other day. The note refered to a bug in the code and described how they had fixed it (basically it referred to th wrong message number). We applied the note - it made no change. We looked at the code - they had forgottten to change it!

It was quite nice telling the developers what bit of code they needed to change - and I'm not even an ABAPper!

Paul

[Former Member]

to my experience a majority of messages goes to one or another developer even if the customer doesn't see it because it isn't assigned formally to a developer,

anyway, ther's some saying here, don't know if it's used globally:

<i>You found a bug? Grats! You can keep it.</i>

anton

[suresh_datti]

>>because SAP support can't figure it out

I am not surprised..

the 1st line of OSS support usually looks around for existing solutions for issues of similar nature & only then it gets escalated..

I was fortunate enough to interact with SAP Developers from Walldorf, Bangalore, Singapore,Ireland & Palo Alto on several occasions..

NO coffee mug as yet..

~Suresh

[Former Member]

Hi Suresh -

Always a pleasure to chat with you.

The first funny thing about this one is that there are two patches for the problem in SP14, but when we tried to lift them and "pre-apply" them (we're at SP13), they didn't fix the problem. They didn't make it worse, but they didn't fix it.

The second funny thing is that the reported error in the update termination log is an ABAP "compile" error regarding a program not starting with "report" (and apparently not being a recognizable include.)

Weird.

djh