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Guided Procedure Planning Management

Starting with SAP Solution Manager 7.2 SP07, the Guided Procedure Planning Management allows to schedule the execution of guided procedures fully automatic in background by creating and maintaining Guided procedure Execution Plans. After the execution, a result report is sent out to defined receivers.

If you want to schedule the fully automatic execution of guided procedures in background, we recommend using Guided procedure Planning Management instead of IT Task management for scheduling fully automated Guided Procedures.

A Guided procedure Plan consists out of the information which guided procedure shall be executed in background for which managed systems and who should receive the e mail with the result report afterwards.

Where to Start?

The Guided Procedure Planning Management has two entry points via the Guided Procedure Browser:

  • The button Display All Plans shows the list of all created plans that belongs to the selected consumer (If the field Application Area is set to <ALL> than the list will contain all the plans of all the guided procedures of all consumers).
  • The link Show Plans shows the plans list of the selected guided procedure.

    The guided Procedure Planning Management can be also opened from the Guided Procedure logbook using the link Show Plans that shows the plans list of the selected guided procedure:

Create A Plan

To create a plan, you should open the Guided Procedure Browser and click on the button Create Plan:


In the create plan drop down list, there are two available modes to create a Guided Procedure Plan:

  • Expert mode: It presents a thorough and detailed guideline to create a plan. Expert mode is more suitable in case you want to schedule the execution of a guided procedure for a high number of systems and want to control the job runtime and how many child jobs shall be executed in parallel. It allows you also to define specific e-mail templates
  • Simple mode: It utilizes the required minimum features to create a plan. You should opt for using the simple mode in case you want to schedule the execution of a guided procedure for some systems and do not need to define e-mail templates.

It should be noted that you can only create plans can for active Guided procedures which contain fully automatic activities.

Expert Mode

The expert mode follows detailed guided steps.

  • The buttons Previous and Next allows the navigation in the plan creation guide.
  • The button Finish is enabled only in the last step and permits to create the plan.
  • The button Preview simulate the execution of the report (Number of resolved systems, Number of child jobs, Child jobs list, etc.).
  • The button Cancel permits to close the pop-up without the creation of any plan.

Regarding the steps, they are described as follows:

Plan Description

In this step, the name and the description of the plan must be specified as shown in the picture above

Job Parameters

In this step, the following fields must be filled as they represent the general preferences of the job configuration:

  • the Job name is the only mandatory field.
  • the Execution Target: use the F4-help which lists all the possible target servers and target groups values available.
  • the scheduling information: can be Immediate or Scheduled. If you opt for Scheduled, then you should enter a valid start date / time. You can also choose the frequency of the job (Once, Daily, Weekly, Monthly).

Job Control

Once in the job control step, users can specify the parameters in controlling the job.

  • Maximum global time duration: maximum duration of the process, 8 hours by default. The time unit can be changed between hour and minutes in the drop-down list.
  • Maximum number of jobs in parallel: to limit the impact of Guided Procedure planning management on the system, to avoid taking too many background resources. the default value is 5, and cannot exceed 15.
  • Maximum number of systems per child job: This parameter is for controlling the size of child jobs, in terms of processing resources and the size of emails to be sent. 
  • Maximum number of systems in total: This parameter is used if you want to globally limit the number of technical systems on which the guided procedure will be executed. The default value '0'  in this parameter will present no limitation. When this number exceed 0, the remaining systems are simply ignored during the creation of the child processes and therefore not processed at all.
  • Copy child jobs logs into master job logs: check this option if you want to have all the child job logs inside the single job entry of the master job.

Scope Details

The section “Scope Details” allows to determine the systems for which the guided procedures shall run. The parameters act as a filter that filter out relevant systems.. The user can specify the Database type, the Extended System SID and the System type.

  • Database Type: types of database used by the technical systems like Oracle, MaxDB, Microsoft SQL Server... A list of all available databases is accessible through the F-4 help button.
  • Extended System SID: It contains a list of long and extended system IDs which are part of the Guided Procedure scope. All the possible long system ID values can be displayed by using the F-4 help icon.
  • System Types:  this filter search field is dedicated to LMDB types of technical systems (ABAP, JAVA, HANADB...).

Press button “Show systems” if you want to get a preview of the systems, for which the guided procedure will be scheduled. All available systems can be displayed by leaving all attributes fields empty and clicking on the Show system icon.

Receiver Email Notification

The following step, Receiver Email Notification allows to customize the content of the result email: 

The link Documentation will show a help text explaining the available placeholders in this step.

The mentioned placeholders for the receiver email template above are as follows:

  •     $GP_TITLE$: The Guided Procedure Title
  •     $MO_IDS$: A concatenation of system IDs
  •     $STATUSES$: The consolidated status for all the Guided Procedure executions on all the given systems
  •     $SCOPE_TABLE$: A table that contains the list of all the resolved system

The Business Partner is the person to whom the Guided Procedure reports should be sent to. Therefore, the ID of the partner who will receive the reports and the execution status must be entered in the field Business Partner ID. The assigned business partners must have a valid e mail address.

You can customize the subject and the mail content fields according to the your wishes by adding texts.

  • Send one mail per technical system: once checked, this option allows to send one mail per system which allows to have one attached report in each mail. Caution must be taken since the number of the emails can soar rapidly as depending on the number of technical systems.
  • Send reports as HTML document: This functionality will give the possibility to attach reports in HTML format.
  • Send reports as PDF document: This functionality will give the possibility to attach reports in PDF format.

Review

In the Review step, a summary of the created plan is presented with all the previously added details:


The preview icon will allow the user to have a simulation of the execution and provide details on the number of systems, the number of child background jobs and a tree table that contains the list of all the resolved systems for each child job:


Whereas the tree table is displayed as follows:


Once everything is verified, click on Finish to create the plan.

Simple Plan

In the Simple Plan mode, only the required minimum features are necessary to create a plan.

There are four major sections:

  • Plan Description:  in this section, the plan name is a mandatory specification.
  • Job Parameters: The user must specify the job name and the scheduling information.
  • Scope Details: contains the same fields as the step Scope Details in Expert mode.
  • Business Partner ID: in this section, the business partner IDs of both receiver and administrator needs to be added.

The button Preview has the same actions as the button Preview of the expert mode. After checking the content of the fields, the user will click on OK in order to create the plan.

Execution Plans Management

The Execution Plans Management presents these functionalities:

The Guided Procedure Planning Management offers the following functionalities:

  • Create Plan: plans can be created for the selected guided procedure with the same options as in the Guided Procedure Browser.
  • Edit Plan: Will open the same guided activity, as in the creation wizard, with all the information of the selected plan and thus allow the modification all the information of the plan.
  • Display Plan:  the guided activity is displayed in read only.
  • Delete Plan:  The plan is deleted physically with the corresponding job.

The job status is displayed in the Master job status column. It can varies as follows:

  • Running: The job is in progress and currently executed
  • Finished: The job has finished its execution
  • Scheduled: The job is scheduled for execution in the queue
  • Canceled: The job has been canceled by the user or due to an unprecedented error
  • Released: The job has been released to execution

Best Practices

  • A plan can not be edited when the status of the master job is running.
  • The plans list needs to be refreshed to get the updated master job status.

  • The job status will be available as long as it is available in transaction SM37. In case a retention period is defined for the job data, deleted jobs will appear in the Guided Procedure Planning Management with an empty status.