ChaRM: Approval Settings - Email Functionality in Change Request

[#1]

Fellow Members,

Would the settings under "Approval Settings" sufficient to receive the email notofocation for Approval Procedure? I performed the activities and what I see is workflow/email coming to my SAP Inbox (So01 txn code) but not to my email inbox (outlook). When I see in SCOT, no email is generated for Approval workflow. What could be the reason behind it? Any inputs are appreciated.

Regards,

Vivek

[Former Member]

Hi  Vivek:

We thought at certain point, we could change in CRMC_ACTION_CONF our action definition.  Below you will see.  We basically added or created a 2nd entries for smart forms, and in the second one we placed the CAB e-mail address, as in principle, CAB is always the same over here.  However, when the action is executed, only one e-mail is sent and the other smart form seems to be never processed.     ,

The other one was left untouched as that is the one that the action itself populates with the e-mail address of the person to notify.

We played a lot with the options in CRMC_ACTION_DEF with the Action Determination and Action Merging, but no entries there forced the processing of the second smart form.

Maybe somebody has an idea about forcing the action to process a 2nd and 3rd sapforms.  Maybe Joyca or Raquel have anything to add.     Excellent Dan's option, but I want to see if there is a possibility of not doing any development, still.

Finally, I have a question for you Vivek:   In your original message, you have 3 approvers:  IT Manager, Business Manager and cGMP Team.  I guess the first 2 are standard BPs, also employees.   What about the 3rd one?  We have our CAB team as a BP group, which we created as BP Organization type, but since it is not employee, never receives e-mails, even if we place an e-mail address in the BP address tab.  The e-mail functionality only works when the BP is also an employee. 

Could you tell me what type of BP you are using for cGMPTeam and if you know how to enforce that a BP organization, not employee can also receive e-mails using the configuration mentioned above?

Thanks,

Juan

[Former Member]

We want to share the fact that we are able to still use BP type group or organization and send e-mails to them automatically through ChaRM.  That BP is not employee.

We connected the two BPs via External BP Name.  Once that reference exists, we are receiving e-mails using the BP type group or organization in ChaRM.

Mails:

Regards,

Juan

[Vivek_Hegde]

Hi Juan,

Thanks for the update. In our original design we used the BP type Employee for the CGMP Team. It was due to the fact that technically, system expects the Partner Function to be of type Employee in CRM UI screen. We got below error when we maintained BP as a Group.

This is due to Partner Function assignment for CGMP Team field.

Since now you mentioned that we can use BP of type Group in the Approval Process, I am interested to know how we can acheive this too. Were you able to overcome  "Partner XXX is not an Employee" errors in the UI ? How did you do this?

Any inputs would be appreciated.

Regards,

Vivek

[Former Member]

Hi Vivek:

I hope to remember all we did.  If I forget something I will add it after.

1.  Our main approver is partner function SDCR0003 (Function Category Service Team).

With these 2 changes, we were able to do the approval part.  That part was not an issue, but we were still missing the capacity of that BP Service Team to receive e-mails and the connection to that was by attaching its BP to an external BP (type employee).  That took us to the next step.

2. Our Org Structure shows we have a OU associated to BP 4000000000.

Vivek, if you want me to attach some other screens to show more details in deep, please let me know. 

Regards,

Juan

[Former Member]

Thanks Juan for your input on multiple email for BP, but I have below doubts-

1. I have generated user name and BP using AI_SDK.. report and end user automatically assign the general role not employee in BP so we are getting Identification tab and assigning all systems from where user can create the incident so how can we map using your below screen.

2. Can we change the BP role to employe for all the users ???

3. We want to use this for multiple support users belongs to OU and notify all the users whenever incident is created and assign to relevant support team.

I have open a separate discussion as well at below link -

http://scn.sap.com/thread/3473428

Saurabh

[Former Member]

Hi Saurabh:

Thanks for your questions.

2. Yes, you can.   If your BPs were created as e.g. Person, then you may create an eCATT  (transaction SECATT), to automate the following actions.

2.1 Launch BP and enter the BP # or name assigned to the Person you want to add the BP role Employee.

2.2 You enter in change mode selecting the pencil.

2.3 Select the field Change in BP role's <F4> select option and choose BUP003 Employee from that list.

2.4 Save it and the BP has been assigned the Employee Role.

Note:  Behind the scenes what happens is that an entry is created in table BUT100 where all the BP roles other than the default one, are stored.

3.  With regards to your item #3, I just came back from vacation, but we are actually working on a Workflow Solution that uses Evaluation Paths, which will help retrieving all the employees with an specific relationship in an Organizational Unit, that become in SAP workflow terminology [Approval] Agents.  Those Agents are the employees that are notified about an item or task that needs their attention.  That item or task for us is basically a new phase a SAP change request or Incident has been moved in, for which a team of people are suppose to act upon.  All are informed, but as soon as the 1st of them acts upon the document, the task or item gets removed from all the rest of the notified users' inbox (business workplace), or Web UI Workflow Tasks list.

The solution may not perfectly match your case, but as SAP delivers both SAP SolMan Change Management and Incident Management with a basic Workflow, the addition we are doing may help you to build your own scenarios.

We started publishing our solution.   It includes:  Workflow Template, Tasks, Function Modules, Rule to Extract Agents using Evaluation Path, Bindings, and BRFPlus working altogether.  You can access  it in http://scn.sap.com/community/it-management/alm/solution-manager/blog/2014/01/21/sap-crmsolman-charm-....

BTW, Happy 2014.

Regards,

Juan

[Former Member]

Hello Juan,

thanks for your hints, I have appreciated. We have the same requirement>send out mail to more than one person. but no approval workflow. So I customized the BP as you do but only the first one get a mail. Last CAB PM is BP CAB PM  Role BUP003 User:CAB PM and connected in Identification to OU CAB PM first entry, as you show in Display group 4000000 and Display Person RLM. The User CAB PM (BP CAB PM) have the 3 entries for the mail receiver.Can you give an advice?

Thanks in advance

Johannes

[Former Member]

Hi Johannes

I think the link that was placed in my last response may give you an idea on how to notify more than one Agent.  We know there are many ways of doing multiple notifications, but we found that using SAP Workflow fulfills any scenario, not because we have explored them all, but because with SAP WF you can basically get yourself into any "home renovation project" you can dream of keeping the foundation intact and free of damages.   

After taking out first baby steps, we do not have to worry that much, any longer.  E-mails or WF tasks are sent to as many Agents as we want.  Our next steps have been fur us to add another challenge to cover more areas of CRM, such as updating Web UI fields in the background, not at the BSP level to deal with the screen objects, but at the table level: Faster and more effective.

Please let me know if the information in the link is sufficient, otherwise if you provide more specific details, we can sit down and see how to make it to work for you.

Regards,

Juan