Operations Automation for System Management

"Operations Automation for System Management" provides an easy way to document and optionally automate reoccurring operation flows as guided procedures.

They help the user to execute reoccurring operational activities  in a guided and reproducible way. In addition, it is possible to automate the activities inside guided procedures and to execute them automatically with or without minimal manual involvement.

Operations Automation helps 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 of one or several steps. Each step has one or multiple activities. The following different activity types are supported:

  • Manual activities consist of a description, a documentation text that describes, in detail, 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 and 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 the background. Once executed, they return a log message indicating success or failure of the activity and, optionally, a table or other graphic with more details. Automatic activities can be triggered by a user. Guided procedures with automatic activities can be executed fully automatically in the 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 your own guided procedures.

The result of a guided procedure execution can be exported into a result report and sent via e mail. For the result report the following formats are supported: HTML or Microsoft Word.

Usage of Guided Procedures

The "Operations Automation System Management" tile is the central entry point to create, edit and run guided procedures. You can execute  guided procedures either manually or plan them for automatic background execution.

Under the view "Guided Procedure Catalog" you can see the guided procedures available for Advanced System Management.

For each of them you have the following options:

You can customize the content of the guided procedure  per your needs. For example, you could add HANA database checks or include measured system availability and outages from Service Availability Management. For some plug-ins, you can change their behavior, for example, if they should check for the last day instead of last three days or that the result should be displayed as a bar chart instead of a table.

The following describes how to create and adapt a customer specific guided procedure based on the example of the System Health Check for ABAP Systems. The description is applicable for other Guided Procedures as well. 

How to create a customer specific guided procedure using the System Health Check for ABAP systems as a template

  1. Open the SAP Focused Run launchpad
  2. Select tile "Operations Automation System Management" ("System Management Guided Procedures" in older releases)
  3. Select "Guided Procedure Catalog"
  4. Select the System Health Check for ABAP Systems guided procedure
  5. Select Create Guided Procedure then Create by Copy
  6. Enter the following data:
    1. Specify a meaningful name and description for the guided procedure or keep the existing one.
    2. Specify a customer-specific ABAP package with the right transport layer if you want to transport the guided procedure from a SAP Focused Run development system to a QA and production system. The package is required to know in which transport route the guided procedure will be released. If you do not want to transport the guided procedure, you can choose Temporary Package.
    3. Set the Productive flag if the guided procedure is to be transported to a production system. If the guided procedure is for testing purposes on the local system or will be imported into a test system manually, do not set the flag.
    4. Select OK to open the Guided Procedure Maintenance 

How to edit a customer specific guided procedure

  1. Open the SAP Focused Run launchpad.
  2. Select tile "Operations Automation System Management" ("System Management Guided Procedures" in older releases)
  3. Select "Guided Procedure Catalog"
  4. Select the guided procedure name to open Guided Procedure Maintenance.
  5. Guided Procedure Maintenance provides the following options: 
  • Add a step: To add a step, click New, and select the step type in the menu. Enter a name and a description for the step.
    You can also reuse an existing step. A new step will be inserted below the selected step, in the Steps tree. 
  • Create help text: The step help text provides detailed information about each step, such as what is checked, and what will happen in the background. The New button in the help text section opens the Create New Document pop-up window which allows you to define documentation for a step or an activity. You can create a new HTML document or upload a PDF. Please note: If the HTML result report needs to also show the documentation in line, choose HTML as it cannot show pdf documents embedded.
  • Remove a step: Select the step and click Remove to remove obsolete steps.
  • Add activities. Each step must have one or more activities. The following activity types are supported:
    • Manual: Manual activities consist of a description and either no navigation link, or a navigation link to a UI in SAP Focused Run, in the managed system, or an external link. The navigation link can be configured.
      As of Focused Run 4.0 FP03 you can define optionally manual activities where a user is requested to fill predefined input. 
    • Automatic: Automatic activities are activities that can be carried out in a guided procedure without user interaction or manual steps. If you have developed a suitable automatic activity, you can include it in your own guided procedures.
  • Plug-In: Plug-ins are automatic activities that can be customized during guided procedure creation time. SAP delivers many plug-ins that can be easily customized and included in your own guided procedures.
    Add plug-in activity: Guided procedures executed in background schedule such as System Health Check for ABAP Systems should contain only plug-in activities or customer specific automatic activities. The following describes how to add plug-in activities to the guided procedure:
    1. Select the relevant Standard step
    2. Select Automatic Activity then click New.
    3. Choose Select a Plug-in and select the required plug-in from the value help
    4. Rename the activity
    5. Maintain the plug-in attributes per your requirements
    6. Click OK
    7. With the new activity selected, click Help Text then click New
    8. Enter a name for the documentation
    9. Enter suitable documentation text
    10. Click Save
    11. Use the Move up or Move down button to change the order of activities in the step
  • Remove activity: Select the relevant activity then click Remove to remove the relevant activity if it is obsolete.
  • Change activity: Select the relevant activity then click Edit. Change the plug-in attributes per your requirements.
  • As of SAP Focused Run 5.0 SP00 you can optionally define that certain steps or activities will be visible and can be executed only if certain conditions are met.            
  • Set the guided procedure HTML report configuration:
    • In the Guided Procedure Maintenance UI, click the Report Configuration button.
    • Here you define which options are visible to the end user when creating the result report and you define which options are selected by default: GP Structure, Include Step and Activity Status Information, Include Help Documentation, Include Navigation Links, Include Log Messages, Include Summary and Statistics.
    • Click OK then click Save.
  • How to activate a customer specific health check guided procedure:
    • Click the Check button then fix any errors reported by the check.
    • Click the Activate button.
  • How to transport the customer specific health check guided procedure:

    Proceed as follows If the health check guided procedure was edited in a development system and needs to be transported to QA and production systems :
    • Click the Transport button.
    • Add the guided procedure to a new transport request or choose an existing transport request.
    • Release and import the requests per your transport rules.

 

How to schedule guided procedures automatically in the background

Guided procedures with automatic activities such as System Health Check for ABAP Systems can be executed automatically in regular intervals. After the execution, a result report is sent out to defined receivers.

Prerequisites:

  • Create service user FRN_BTC_GPA or similar per the Focused Run security guide. The user needs to have a valid e-mail address to be able to send out e-mails. Define that user FRN_BTC_GPA should be used for guided procedure background processing as explained in the Focused Run Master Guide. This activity needs to be carried out only once.
  • The guided procedure that is running automatically in the background needs to consist primarily of automatic activities. Manual activities will not be executed. The guided procedure property "Can be executed automatically in background" must be set.  The guided procedure must be active. 
  • Define recipient lists in Central Notification Management. The recipient lists shall contain the e-mail ids or FRUN user ids of the recipients who shall receive the guided procedure execution reports.

To plan the automatic execution of a guided procedure in the background, proceed as follows:

  1. Open the SAP Focused Run launchpad.
  2. Select tile "Operations Automation System Management" ("System Management Guided Procedures" in older releases)
  3. Select Guided Procedure Planning
  4. Select Create Plan
  5. Select the guided procedure to be planned. For example, System Health Check for ABAP Systems. Overwrite optionally the default plan name
  6. Select Step 2 "Scope"
  7. The Scope section allows you to determine the systems or hosts for which the guided procedures shall run. The parameters act as a filter that filter out relevant systems. Fill the section as follows:
    1. Object type: Whether the guided procedures shall be scheduled for systems or hosts. If you have selected systems, specify the following data:
    2. Customer ID , Data Center, Customer Network: If you want to restrict the execution of the guided procedures to systems assigned to certain customers and data centers, fill the data accordingly. If this restriction is not required, leave the customer network and data center empty.
    3. Extended System ID: If the guided procedure shall be executed only for certain systems and the systems cannot be filtered otherwise, enter the system ids of these systems here. Otherwise you can keep this empty.
    4. Lifecycle Statuses: Here you can restrict systems that have a certain life cycle status. For example, choose Active if you want to schedule the guided procedure only for active systems.
    5. IT Admin Priorities: Here you can restrict systems that have a certain priority. For example, choose Very High if you want to schedule the guided procedure only for systems with Very High priority.
    6. IT Admin Roles: Here you can restrict on systems that have a certain role. For example, choose Production System if you want to schedule the guided procedure only for production systems and not for QA and Dev. 
    7. System Type: Choose the system type that fits the guided procedure. For example, if you want to schedule the System Health Check for ABAP Systems guided procedure, choose the ABAP system type.
    8. Database Type: If required, choose the database type so that the guided procedure shall be scheduled only for systems with a specific DBMS type.
  8. If you have selected hosts, specify the following data:
    1. Customers , customer networks: If you want to restrict the execution of the guided procedures to hosts assigned to certain customers and data centers, fill the data accordingly. If this restriction is not required, leave the customer network and data center empty.
    2.  Host names: If the guided procedure shall be executed only for certain hosts that have a common host name prefix or suffix  , enter the host name prefix or suffix here . Otherwise you can keep this empty.
  9.  Click the Preview button if you want to get a preview of the systems or hosts for which the guided procedure will be scheduled. 
  10.  Select Step 3 "Processing Parameters" 
  11. Select whether the background processing should stop at the first manual activity in the guided procedure or whether all automatic activities inside the guided procedure should be executed .
  12. Select whether the guided procedure plan  should be processed only once  or recurrently at  specific times
  13.  Under Advanced you can specify how many batch jobs should be used in parallel and some other parameters. This is only required if you want to execute the guided procedures for every high number of managed objects.
  14.  Select Step 4 "Notification (optional)" to define whether e mails with attached result report shall be send out after the guided procedure execution or not. Specify the following:
    1.  Select the notification type: 
      1. None - No email is send after the execution of the guided procedure. 
      2. One Mail per Job - Multiple attachments - After  a guided procedure processing job is finished it will send out 1 mail . Attached to the mail are multiple result reports. One report per managed system for which the guided procedure has been executed .
      3. One Mail per  System - After  a guided procedure processing job is finished it will send out 1 mail per system with one attached result report.
      4. One Mail per Job - Single attachment - After  a guided procedure processing job is finished it will send out 1 mail . Attached to the mail is one  result reports that clubs together the results for all managed systems for which the guided procedure has been executed .
    2. If the notification type is not "None" then you need to configure additional parameters:
      1. Customization Class: Select a customization class if you have the following needs:
        The e-mail body of the result e-mail should be generated in HTML format and contain graphical elements.
        You need to determine the recipients for the result e-mails per custom rules.
        SAP delivers the CL_CUSTOM_EMAIL_BODY customization class that overwrites the e-mail body with a preview of the guided procedure activities and their status. Using this customization class, you can see the status of the different activities directly in the e-mail and need to open the attached result report only if you are interested in the details. With ABAP knowledge you can also create your own customization class. It needs to inherit from the CL_GPA_PLAN_CUSTOMIZATION class. You need to redefine the GET_EMAIL method if the guided procedure e-mail with the result reports attached must contain special html content like graphics, tables or logos. You need to redefine the GET_RECIPIENTS_FOR_SCOPE method if you have advanced needs to determine the right recipients for guided procedure reports for specific systems.
      2. Select the corresponding receiver recipient list containing the e-mail recipients that should receive the e-mail with the guided procedure result report. Recipients in the Customer independent recipient lists will receive the e-mail in all cases. Recipients in the Customer network specific recipient lists will receive the e-mail only for systems which are assigned to the same customer network. The recipient lists must be maintained in Notification Management.
      3. Select an e mail template that was previously defined in Central Notification Management. If you have chosen a customization class that takes care of the email formatting, then no e mail template is required .
      4.  Select the attachment type. The result report can be generated either in html format or in Microsoft Word format. 
  15.  Select Create. This will save the plan and depending on the timing create and release the required batch jobs.

If you would like to execute an already defined and processed guided procedure plan again, proceed as follows:

  1. Open Guided Procedure Planning
  2. Filter on guided procedure name and all job status
  3. Select the existing plan.
  4. Select Process Immediately. This will create and release the required batch jobs immediately.

 

  1. Open the SAP Focused Run launchpad.
  2. Select tile "Operations Automation System Management" ("System Management Guided Procedures" in older releases)
  3. Select Guided Procedure Catalog.
  4. Select the Perform (or Run) icon of the guided procedure you want to perform
  5. Select the scope (system or host) for which you want to perform the guided procedure.
  6. Select Perform Manually if you would like to execute all activities in the guided procedure manually
  7. Select Perform in background (if available) if the guided procedure should be scheduled in background.
  8. In both cases the Guided procedure runtime UI opens.
    If the guided procedure is running in background, a popup informs you that the guided procedure batch is still running.

    Navigate through each step. Read the step and activity information. In case of automatic activities select Perform. Check the log section for log messages and detailed information. In case of manual activities, follow the instructions and set the activity  status per your findings. You can optionally add a comment or upload an attachment to each activity. Some activities provide a context-sensitive navigation link to an external tool, for example to the alert inbox or to the file system browser. Select the navigation link to open the external tool.
  9. Once you have completed all activities you can use the download button to generate a result report containing log messages and status for each activity.

When adding attachments or entering comments ensure not to expose confidential information

  1. Open the SAP Focused Run launchpad.
  2. Select tile "Operations Automation System Management" ("System Management Guided Procedures" in older releases)
  3. Select Guided Procedure Instances.
  4. Use the scope selector on the top right to restrict on the systems or hosts you are interested in.
  5. Optionally: Use the time frame selection to restrict on the interesting time frames
  6. Optionally: Select a guided procedure name to display only processed instances of a particular guided procedure .
  7. 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
  8. You can download the result report by clicking on the report link
  9. You can continue processing the guided procedure by clicking on the guided procedure line
  10.  You can process a new instance of the guided procedure by selecting the guided procedure and pressing the "+" icon.
  11. You can download the guided procedure instances list to excel.

Press the Display Execution Logs button to get an overview of the past executions of the selected guided procedure.

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

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. The default is the last seven days.
  • Review the status of steps, logs and comments.
    Select a guided procedure execution to see its status, related log messages and comments.
  • Generate an HTML result report:
    Click the Report Download  button and select one of the available options.

Release Notes

SAP Focused Run 5.0 SP00

  • Information about the managed object (like system type and database type are written into the "Guided Procedure Context" at the start of the guided procedure.
  • Introduced "Execute Conditions" for steps and activities so that they become only visible and can be executed if certain conditions are met.

SAP Focused Run 4.0 FP03

  • Introduced guided procedure instance specific storage so-called "Guided Procedure Context" where guided procedure activities can store data and other activities can read the data and react accordingly.
  • Provided APIs so that customer developed activities or plug-ins can store data in the "Guided Procedure Context"  or read data from "Guided Procedure Context".
  • Introduced manual activities with predefined input similar to a questionnaire. During design time the questions  can be defined. During runtime, a user executing the activity can answer these questions. The answers are stored  in the "Guided Procedure Context".

SAP Focused Run 4.0 FP02

  • Provided option to send out mails with one result report for multiple systems
  • Provided APIs to schedule the execution of guided procedures from external tools. See here.

SAP Focused Run 4.0 FP01

  • Added sorting and free text search in Guided Procedure Instances View

SAP Focused Run 4.0 SP00

  • Guided Procedure tiles were renamed to Operations Automation.
  • The guided procedure result report can be send or exported also in Microsoft Word Format. Previously only HTML Format was supported
  • Guided Procedure Plans (Background execution of Guided Procedures) supports hourly recurrences. previously only daily recurrences were supported .

SAP Focused Run 3.0 FP03

  • From GP planning you can suppress the sending of e mails for Guided Procedure Reports if all the activities inside the guided procedure have a green rating.
  • The table of contents in the guided procedure result report shows a rating per step/chapter.