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Hi all,
in this blog, I would like to share a sample setup for central monitoring of Digital Manufacturing Integration in SAP Cloud Application Lifecycle Management (SAP Cloud ALM).
Note: If you are not yet aware about SAP Cloud ALM, I encourage you to start with the learning journey for Introducing SAP Cloud ALM or to take a look on the overview page.
If you already have a tenant but have not yet started with a specific capability, I recommend you checking out the Welcome section in SAP Cloud ALM.
Introduction
Digital Manufacturing (DM) has enabled application-specific integration with Cloud ALM. One capability supported is SAP Cloud ALM Integration & Exception Monitoring, which provides the message status for all messages which you can find in the DM Integration Message Dashboard. For more details, please refer to SAP Help.
The general purpose of SAP Cloud ALM Integration & Exception Monitoring is to provide transparency for data exchange processes between different systems. It bridges the gap between IT and Business by offering end-to-end visibility in interface calls and message flows across all involved Cloud services and systems.
For Digital Manufacturing, this means we can monitor the entire message flow to and from SAP ERP / SAP S/4HANA via SAP Cloud Integration.
Figure 1: Sample overview solution architecture SAP Digital Manufacturing
Users of Integration & Exception Monitoring can analyze the actual processing of interface calls and message flows, including possible technical or business-driven root causes.
Integration & Exception Monitoring provides the following functionalities:
- Message Monitoring
- Message Search (Tracking)
- Alerting on failed messages or exceptions
In the next steps, I will share how you can take the first step in setting up your monitoring process.
Prerequisite
- SAP Cloud ALM provisioned. If you do not have yet a Cloud ALM tenant, check out the Support page where you can find all the required information.
Note: SAP Cloud ALM is included in your Cloud subscription containing Enterprise Support, Cloud edition, and SAP Enterprise Support.
- User authorization setup completed.
Cloud ALM setup
The central entry point for all information is the Operation Expert portal. Here, you can find all supported capabilities as well as detailed information on supported systems and services, including links to documentation on functionality and setup. For Integration & Exception Monitoring setup, please check out Integration & Exception Monitoring Support page.
In the following sections, I will guide you through the major step. However, for detailed instructions, always refer to the official Cloud ALM pages.
Enable your DM Service in Cloud ALM Landscape Management
As a first step, you must onboard the systems (on premise) and services (SaaS solutions like DM) in Landscape Management so you can select them in the monitoring setup. A convenient feature is the Automatic Import of Customer Cloud Services.
Cloud services subscribed by the customer are automatically imported and updated from SAP's Cloud Landscape Directory. The initial import contains all Cloud services that belong to the same customer number as SAP Cloud ALM. Customers can maintain a Corporate Group (CCC) S-User to also import Cloud services that belong to subsidiaries of the same Corporate Group.
For more information, please visit Landscape Setup.
Switch on Data Collection for Integration and Exception Monitoring
To enable end-to-end monitoring across different systems, you must actively switch on data collection. Once this is done, the supported message types will flow into SAP Cloud ALM.
Figure 2: Digital Manufacturing Cloud – Auto Retry Settings
Please refer to the video How to Configure Integration & Exception Monitoring for a Specific Cloud Service, that will guide you through the steps in detail.
Important fact to consider
Digital Manufacturing has the capability to set auto retry for certain messages. This means a message might have been failed initially but got completed after an automatic retry.
If you filter only for failed messages, the completed messages will not be collected. Therefore, the initially failed message will not get updated, resulting in different statuses in Cloud ALM and the Digital Manufacturing Integration Message Dashboard.
Recommendation: Do not set a filter on the status.
Note: Cloud ALM also let you define Housekeeping Jobs to control your data growth. Details can be found in the Application Settings of Integration & Exception Mentoring on SAP Help.
Grouping Systems into a Business Service
To monitor the end-to-end flow of the messages between S/4HANA, SAP Integration Suite, and Digital Manufacturing, I recommend creating a business service.
A business service is a group of services and systems that represent a business scenario or even a specific target group. You can add filters to these connections and define which messages and exceptions are in scope for a business service and view their status information. The connection of services and systems that are part of a business service is displayed as a topology map in the Managed Component view. For more details on how to set it up, please watch the How to create and monitor a Scenario in Integration & Exception Monitoring. Additional setup information can be found on SAP Help for Cloud ALM.
On the Business Service, you can define filters per system/service and respective events. Filters can be defined using multiple parameters like Plant, Message Type etc.
Figure 3: Filter settings for SAP Digital Manufacturing Messages on Business Service Level
In my sample, I have defined three filters:
- For Plant BLR6 to create plant-specific events.
- For Plant * to create events for all messages relevant cross plants e.g. Class Download.
- One entry to collect all messages.
Figure 4 SAP Cloud ALM Business Services Configuration
For the first filter, Plant BLR6, I have enabled the event Erroneous Digital Manufacturing Cloud Messages Detected (Grouped). We will look at this in details in the next chapters.
Conclusion
The setup of the Data Collection is straightforward. The filtering options at different levels and the the relevant event settings offer significant flexibility, depending on your organization and monitoring strategy.
Filters set at the service/system level will apply to the Data Collection itself and define which data will be transferred to Cloud ALM. It is recommended to start with no filter here. Business Service definitions allow you to tailor the data and events to your target group.
The recommendation is to start simple and optimize the filters over time. Now let’s look at how the monitoring details appear in Cloud ALM.
Monitor Digital Manufacturing Messages in Cloud ALM
Monitoring Digital Manufacturing with Cloud ALM provides an overview of the overall status of your Business Service. You can drill down via the topology view to the service details and get a list of all messages sent during the chosen time frame. Analytics and filtering options help you start your issue resolution.
Figure 5: SAP Cloud ALM - Monitor Digital Manufacturing Messages
From here, you can drill down to the Message Details. A link on the message level to the Digital Manufacturing Integration Dashboard supports issue resolution, e.g., triggering a retry if you believe it was a temporary issue or if you have to fix the data issue.
In the example below, DM has successfully delivered the message to CPI. However, it fails to update on the ERP side. A retry can be triggered from DM.
Figure 6: SAP Digital Manufacturing Integration Message Dashboard - Message Details
Figure 7: SAP Cloud ALM - Message Details
Note: In Digital Manufacturing, we have introduced a new status in the message details:
- Overall Status: Shows the status across the systems.
- DM Integration Status: Status within DM, which we provide to Integration & Exception Monitoring.
One of the significant benefits of Cloud ALM, besides the end-to-end view, is the Intelligent Event Processing and Alerting, which allows flexible configuration of when and whom to inform actively.
Get informed and react to issues
To react to issues, users need to be informed about the exception. An event can be configured in Cloud ALM for this purpose.
An event is any detectable occurrence significant for the management of an IT service, a configuration item, or an IT infrastructure.
In Digital Manufacturing, examples could be:
- Confirmation Message back to ERP failing because the order is currently being changed on ERP.
- Master Download Messages failing because prerequisites in Digital Manufacturing are not set up.
- Order Downloads failing due to missing Master Data
By configuring events, you can set up follow-up actions such as creating alerts, sending email notifications, or triggering an automation procedure when an event occurs so that responsible persons can take follow up actions.
You can define events at the service/system level or as part of the Business Service Configuration by selecting the service/system and the filter you have defined.
In the sample below, I have defined three filters, each with different events and follow-up actions.
Figure 8: SAP Cloud ALM Business Services - Filter and Evente Configuration
The screenshot below shows the detailed settings for the Filter Plant BLR 6 and the Event Type Erroneous Digital Manufacturing Cloud Messages Detected (Grouped).
How to set the parameters could be very specific to your business process as well as different on message level. For example, for messages you want to react fast, you might choose the following settings:
Parameters:
- Number of events per calculation = 1: Every failed message will trigger an event.
- Messages older than minutes = 1: You will receive an event if the failed message stays in Status Error for longer than 1 minute. As DM supports automatic retry, the message could resolve within a certain timeframe.
Grouping:
- Attributes help you to group events into one bucket, so you do not get single alerts.
Event Actions: In the example below, an Alert will be generated and visible in Cloud ALM Alerting, and an email will be sent to a user. For more details on the types of events, specific settings, and supported event actions, please check IM Event Setup.
Figure 9: SAP Cloud ALM Event Configuration
Let’s see how it appears in Cloud ALM Alerting.
Cloud ALM Alerting
In Could ALM Alerting, you can find the different alerts depending on your event setup.
Figure 10: SAP Cloud ALM Integration & Exception Monitoring - Alert Overview
You can use various collaboration features to work as a team on the issue resolution.
Conclusion
In this blog post, you learned how to enable and configure the integration of Digital Manufacturing Integration Dashboard Messages into Cloud ALM, incorporating them into your overall landscape monitoring for efficient operation of the end-to-end integration flow.
In case you want to learn more about the integration of Digital Manufacturing Production Processes into SAP Cloud ALM check out the Blog https://community.sap.com/t5/supply-chain-management-blogs-by-sap/digital-manufacturing-production-p...
Do you like this post? Please let me know what you think in the comments section. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, please visit the SAP Community Q&A Area or comment down below.
And last but not least some additional links to useful information.
- SAP Cloud ALM for Operations Expert Portal
https://support.sap.com/en/alm/sap-cloud-alm/operations/expert-portal.html - Blog: Digital Manufacturing - Production Processes Monitoring with SAP Cloud ALM Job & Automation Monitoring
https://community.sap.com/t5/supply-chain-management-blogs-by-sap/digital-manufacturing-production-p...
Thank you,
Katja
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