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Guided Procedure Overview

The guided procedure framework in SAP Focused Run provides an easy way to document and optionally automate reoccurring operational activities in guided procedures. These guided procedures help the user to execute reoccurring administrative activities or alert reaction procedures in a guided and reproducible way. In addition, it is possible to automate the activities inside guided procedures and to execute them automatically without or minimal manual involvement.

Guided procedures help to reduce TCO and improve IT operations quality through:

  • Step-by-step execution
  • Detailed activity description
  • Central access to required managed system functions
  • Automation
  • Logging of every activity
  • Predefined content that can be customized

A guided procedure consists out of one or several steps. Each step has one or multiple activities. The following different activity types are supported:

  • Manual activities consist out of a description, a documentation text that describes detailed what the user must do and optionally a context sensitive navigation link into the relevant application in SAP Focused Run or the managed system. The user processing manual activities can read the documentation, open the navigation link to jump into the relevant application to execute the activity. Once the activity is executed the user needs to document this by changing the status and optionally writing a comment.
  • Automated or Plug-In activities. Automated activities execute certain predefined tasks automatically in background. Once executed they return a log message indicating success or failure of the activity and optionally a table, or other graphics with more details. Automatic activities can be triggered by a user. Guided procedures with automatic activities can be executed fully automatic in background. SAP delivers a set of plug in activities that can be customized and plugged into customer defined guided procedures. It is also possible to develop customer specific automated activities in ABAP and plug them into own guided procedures
  • Custom step activities or Plug-in Step activities are WebDynpro applications that can be reused in guided procedures to execute complex tasks which require user input.

Guided Procedure Catalog

The "Alert Management Guided Procedures" tile in Advanced Event & Alert Management is the central entry point to create, edit and run alert resolution procedures.

Under the view "Guided Procedure Catalog" you can see the guided procedures available for the single use cases.

For each of them you have the following options:

  • Execute guided procedures
    Alert Reaction Procedures are supposed to be executed automatically or manually from alert management in the context of an alert. Some activities inside the Alert Reaction procedures depend on the alert context and will not return meaningful results if triggered from guided procedure catalog. Normally there is no reason to execute them from guided procedure catalog except if you want to test activities inside the guided procedure and you can't trigger the relevant alert. In this case proceed as follows 
    1. Switch to the system for which you want to execute the guided procedure in the scope selector on top (default is the SAP Focused Run system)
    2. Select the Guided Procedure you want to execute and select "Execute new instance if you want to start a new execution from the beginning or "Existing instance " if you want to continue a previous execution. Navigate through each step. Read the step and activity information. In case of automatic activities select "Execute ". Check the log section for log messages and detailed information. Some activities might return a log message that the alert context is missing. If the guided procedure is executed from the guided procedure catalog. This is as expected.
    3. In case of manual activities, follow the instructions and set the execution status per your findings. You can optionally add a comment to each activity. Some activities provide a context sensitive navigation link to an external tool (for example to alert inbox or to the file system browser). Select the navigation link to open the external tool.
    4. Once you have completed all activities you can go to the complete step and generate a result report containing log messages and status for each activity.
  • Create or edit guided procedures
    You can create new guided procedures or customize the contents of existing guided procedures. Please refer to the Guided Procedures for Event & Alert Management for more details.
  • Transport guided procedure
    Include one or several guided procedures into a transport request if they need to be moved to the production system.
    1. Click on the name of the guided procedure you want to transport
    2. Click on the 'Transport' button
    3. Choose a transport request
  • Display past execution instances
    This opens the guided procedure reporting for the selected guided procedure.
    1. Select the view "Guided Procedure Instances".
    2. Use the scope selector on the top right to restrict on the systems or hosts you are interested in.
    3. Optionally: Use the time frame selection to restrict on the interesting time frames
    4. Optionally: Select a guided procedure name to display only processed instances of a particular guided procedure .
    5. The status overview on the top shows how many guided procedure instances were processed with successful erroneous or warning state. You can use the status overview to filter for example the guided procedure instances that were processed with successful overall status.
      The guided procedure instance list shows the following information:
      1. Name of the guided procedure
      2. For which host or system it has been executed
      3. last change information
      4. overall status
      5. Number of activities inside the guided procedure with successful, warning and error status and number of unprocessed activities
    6. You can download the result report by clicking on the report link
    7. You can continue processing the guided procedure by clicking on the guided procedure line
    8.  You can process a new instance of the guided procedure by selecting the guided procedure and pressing the "+" icon.
    9. You can download the guided procedure instances list to excel.

Guided Procedure Reporting

Guided procedure Reporting provides an overview how many guided procedures have been executed for the selected systems in the selected time frame, about their statuses and log messages.

By default, it shows the guided procedure instances that were executed in the last week for the selected system scope.

You have the following options:

  • Change the scope:
    Switch to the system for which you want to show guided procedure reporting by using the scope selector on top. The default scope is always the SAP Focused Run system itself.
  • Switch time frame
    Change the time frame of displayed guided procedure executions. Default is last 7 days
  • Review the status of steps, logs and comments
    Select a guided procedure execution to see its status, related log messages and comments.
  • Generate HTML result report
    • Press button “Report Download”.
    • Choose which element should be included in the report. Select OK.