Support Message Form: What does it look like from SAP's perspective?

[Lukas_Weigelt]

Hello folks,

can anyone describe me or put a screenshot here to show me how the Support Message form looks like from the perspective of SAP? I don't want to blow what I'm looking for yet, but I'm really curious to see whether particular communication problems are based on some... confusing matters or whether SAP is taking the p*** out of me.

For example, the Form looks like this from my perspective (everything loosely translated from German, might not be verbatim):

- Section "Message Administration", showing facts about the message and the affected system

- Section "Impact on Business", describing what problem are brought about

- Section "Detailed Problem Description"

- Section "Communication"

- Section "SAP Notes"

- Section "Contactees and Messages"

- Section "Attachments"

Cheers, Lukas

[former_member184578 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I have gone through the discussion and am sorry about your issue. There is no separate "steps to reproduce" section which you were mentioning, but generally it will be mentioned as a part of 'Long text/Detailed Problem Description' or in the attachments.

Matt Fraser wrote: 
The other one, for a high priority message when we proactively open the service connection and fill in the access data, and then they ask us to open the system and provide access data. 

Apart from production system(s), OSS processor can get the log on data of any system. Customer has to open the connection for production system which will generally be for a limited period. So, if the issue has not been analyzed during that period the Processor might have been requested you to open the connection. And most of the cases OSS Processor(s) won't simply set back the Incident/OSS without proper analysis or checking the details.

As most people here want to see how it looks in SAP's perspective, please find the below screen shots for your reference( I don't know if I can share this!):

Overview screen of OSS/Incident:

And the details screen is here:

And this has now been replaced with CRM system which more or less contains the same details:

Regards,

Kiran

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

Thanks a lot, Kiran! This is indeed quite a bit different from what the customer would expect it to look like. I guess from now on I'll put everything into the longtext field. The one question that remains is, who designed all this?..Must have been several different people who never talked to each others 😕

Cheers, Lukas

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

I am sure the info you entered is somewhere, just not easy to find, because if you are asked for the details and you tell them that you already added it, then they always find it.

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

Jürgen L wrote:

I am sure the info you entered is somewhere, just not easy to find, because if you are asked for the details and you tell them that you already added it, then they always find it.

I made a different experience. Some magically find it after you restate that the information is in the contact section, I give you that. But some others look into the company's contact directory, find over 500 entries and ask "who do I have to contact?" And finally there are those who ignore you and keep asking again until the system is open or you escalate the message -_-

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

isn't it good to know that there are humans at work? At a certain point in your life* you come to the conclusion that everthing is globalized and no other company is better than the one you are already working for. 

*when you are sitting on the balcony instead of the stalls (remember the Muppet show)

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

isn't it good to know that there are humans at work? 

True. That however doesn't mean, that I have to set myself in a state of silent acceptance, I'd rather keep ranting about certain things until I'm as old as Statler and Waldorf.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

When I worked for SAP, I had to use it as well (e. g. when you need to order a new PC). It really was a painful experience, as the old line editor still was used... I think that nowadays, the frontend is a bit more convenient.

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

Talked to somebody from the global support on the phone recently and incidentally asked about how their frontend looked like. The results were pretty spooky; the global support associate was presented only contact information of me, not of the additional contact informations I maintained, nothing new so far, but; the contact information of me that she was seeing and the contact information of me that I was seieng were different to boot,as if polled from different information sources (or messed up and rearranged by the undead living in the systems). Spooky stuff

[RafkeMagic · Accepted solution]

that's what I figured too... when they call us, they always call the number of the "userid" under which the incident was logged (which does not contain phone numbers of external resources)

for a couple of incidents I put my direct line (I'm an external resource) as extra contact information and I never got called, where as the IT manager (his phone number is associated with the userid I use) got quite a few

you may wonder why that functionality is there then?

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

Potemkin villages?

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

Jürgen L wrote:

Potemkin villages?

Had to look that one up. The description fits perfectly °-°

[joao_sousa2]

I share the pain. Nothing is more annoying for me then asking for step to reproduce when I have already provided them, but the first level of support is just ....

Maybe the ticket system should be better, and in sync with the customer, but commited employees will still find the information if they really want to. My experience with SAP Support is basically that after you get past the first level your problem gets solved, but the first level is just an annoying stalling machine that makes me only use SAP Support in the direst circunstances (mission accomplished by the way).

[Jelena]

Well, at least in our [lousy] ticket system we see the information the users enter in the same exact fields. This doesn't seem to be the case here. So at least next time someone asks for "steps to recreate" I'm not going to wonder if they're mentally challenged.

One thing is not clear though - why no one at SAP has asked to bring the customer entry form and the SAP ticket view more in sync? If we had such discrepancies in our ticket system we'd be making some noise. Not to mention it shouldn't have even gone live like this.

Technology should make our life easier, not disconnect and alienate us. (Naive, I know, but still... )

[RafkeMagic]

My 5 cents: they're rated on some kind of "service level". The faster they reply, the better the service level. So, if they reply with "please provide steps to reproduce" or "please open connections this and that" or whatever, they have a fast reply and it (might) take a while before it gets picked up by the customer again... buying them some valuable time.

You can call me paranoid, but I have worked for a customer where we had service level reporting (on a completely different topic, but the idea is the same). After "solving" a really nasty bug in it, I got someone pretty high up in management behind my desk telling me to immediately "undo" my changes (to correct a bug mind you), as his bonus just dropped (significantly) within a couple of minutes.

Service Level reporting is one thing, making sure the service level process is as good as it gets reported is a whole other ball game!

[Colleen]

I got that impression too

When KPIs are set as number of calls closed within a time frame it is easy to get a disconnect with quality a a customer service target is not there as well.

I've known a person to extend this as a black and white rule. His comment was missed deadline is a missed deadline. Once it's over the line it doesn't matter if we fix it today or tomorrow so it goes to the bottom of the pile and they'll keep attention towards the ones that  have not reached deadline.

[Steffi_Warnecke]

Well, but it looks like this time frame starts just at that precise moment, when the ticket is acknowledged by the support, not when the customer creates it. Otherwise I really don't know how it can be, that it took 2 weeks and some emails to our SAP connection and the need to raise the ticket priority to get my last OSS ticket "taken" by the SAP support.

[RafkeMagic]

yup, seems to be correct

we had a ticket that took about 2 months before it got picked up... and then the "ping pong" game started...

[former_member184701]

Lukas, it may depends on where your message is stuck.

I have never got problems with sap china guys - they react fast and suggest good ideas.

No need to repeat everything from the beginning...

[Jelena]

Wow, and I thought we had a lousy ticket system...

Since we keep speculating, I wonder if would kindly shed some light on this.

[krscheffler]

Hi all,

Will check and respond into this.  Out of curiosity, are you looking for what support sees when an incident/message is sent in from a customer?

Thanks,

Kristne

[Steffi_Warnecke]

Hello Kristen,

yes, I think that is the main thing here. What they see or more specific which information are visible for them from this whole bunch of fields we have/can fill out when creating a ticket.

Regards,

Steffi.

[krscheffler]

Ok, so this may be more generic than what you are looking for, but happy to provide further info.

• Incident #
• Short Text
• Long Text
• Priority
• Component
• Customer info (name, customer name, contact details)
• Last update
• Communications ( info to customer, internal info, info from customer)
• attachments
• System details
• Environment related to system
• Remote connection
• Action log/comms summary
• Notes associated
• Response times

Thanks,

Kristen

[RafkeMagic]

so not the "steps to reproduce the issue" part?

[Lukas_Weigelt]

This message was moderated.

[Steffi_Warnecke]

I thought, that was part of this:

Customer info (name, customer name, contact details)

[Martina_Gállego]

I think you are talking about Contacts & Notifications area.

[Lukas_Weigelt]

exactly.

[Steffi_Warnecke]

Yeah, me too. ^^ I guess, a screenshot from the SAP-side would help to clear the confusion here.

[Jelena]

Kristen, thanks for a reply! It seems strange that there is no 'Steps for reconstruction' section that we fill in when submitting the message. Here is an image from my message 343795/2014 (no trade secrets there), the first response was "provide steps and open connection":

By the way, this was corrected recently and all it took was a tirade on the software design principles.

P.S. If you could thank for me the person who resolved it that would be great - unfortunately I forgot to update the comments before closing and din't get a survey either. Thank you!

[Lukas_Weigelt]

Thank you all for your replies, folks. Now I'm even more curious to hear from an SAP Employee which of our assumptions are true and whether there's something a customer can do to improve the communication quality in an OSS Message... or whether it's all wanted to forcefully increase labour cost on SAP's side and frustrate the customers ...

[Colleen]

Hi Lukas

I've never worked for SAP but have been onsite with a few employees with their "C" numbers to the customer messages.

After weeks of struggling to get an OSS incident progressed (the code passed the wrong field that did not exist in the object in an authority check. My analysis included debugging to the error and a screen shot of auth definition and it still took 5+ attempts to stop the L1 person telling me SAP_ALL will work). I started to get a bit frustrating and was not as polite in my messages.

Turns out SAP can leave internal messages about the analysis the the customer that we do not see....I must have a really good internal filter in my head from being frustrated to how I communicate as they didn't have any comments. That or they don't get bothered by frustrated customers.

I just thought they had their form of Solution Manager Incident Management.

Regards

Colleen

[Jelena]

Hi Lukas, I wondered the same many times. E.g. when we enter the message there is a special section "steps to reproduce" and I always fill it in. But every single time the first response is "provide steps to reproduce the issue". Are my entries somehow lost when SAP personnel opens the message or is there some kind of selective blindness epidemic at the SAP quarters?

[Matt_Fraser]

This!!!!  Yes, I am so familiar with this experience.  The other one, for a high priority message when we proactively open the service connection and fill in the access data, and then they ask us to open the system and provide access data.  Hello?

[JL23]

Maybe they use SAP's SolMan as ticket system. There is just nothing in the initial screen telling you that the ticket has an attachment. You have to do some extra clicks to get to another view to see if there is any. Actually a pretty common issue, none of the 3 ticket systems I had to deal with  had this info where the people wanted to see it.

[Matt_Fraser]

True, the ticket system we use (FrontRange ITSM) also doesn't give any indication of an attachment.  So, our Help Desk (who submit most of the tickets to us, the SAP support group) set up a standard of writing "see attachment" as part of the ticket title to bring our attention to it.