Guided Procedures Runtime

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Guided Procedures Runtime

The Guided Procedures Runtime is the application provided by SAP within the Guided Procedures context area to execute the predefined set of steps and activities of a Guided Procedure instance in your SAP Solution Manager environment.

An instance of a guided procedure execution is the data set of the overall steps and activity results protocolled by the indication status to each activity of steps or sub-steps and corresponding result descriptions with at least time, date and executor (=user) data as log file entries to each activity run.

The execution of a guided procedure instance can be stopped at any time by closing the Guided Procedure Runtime window and can be continued by selecting the guided procedure again and choosing the already existing instance. If there are more than one already existing procedure instances the Guided Procedure Execution Logs application starts in a separate window and let you choose the instance you would like to continue to execute.

The status and the result of each guided procedure instance can also be reviewed with the Guided Procedures Executions Logs application.

Where to be Found?

You access the Guided Procedures Runtime application in the Guided Procedures Catalog by selecting a guided procedure and run the procedure as a new instance or an already existing instance.
There are direct access links to execute content related guided procedure instances in different SAP Solution Manager areas.

The areas are:

Exception Management
Cross-Database Comparison
Business Process Monitoring
System and Application Monitoring
In the details view of the unified Alert Inbox in all Monitoring areas

How to be Used?

The Guided Procedure Runtime user interface is divided into the following sections.

Guided Procedures Runtime application

Step and Sub-Step Selection Section (Header Area)

In this section of a guided procedure instance you can:

see the name of the guided procedure on top.
access the general Personalize (after the guided procedure name) to define how:
- a SAP GUI session would be started (SAP GUI for HTML or SAP GUI for Windows or to prompt each time to choose between the 2 SAP GUI versions).
- the Help Text Section is showing up (always visible or collapsed).
- data will be handled when you are leaving the Edit Mode.
  The options are: To save the data automatically or to revert to last saved data or to be asked always.
- The Log Settings will be defined by how many log lines are displayed and/or for how long log data should be displayed by a period of days.
start the Help Center (via the icon after the Personalize link) and to hide the Quick Help.
Create Incident Ticket (via the link in the upper right corner) in the SAP Solution Manager IT Service Management (ITSM) at any time with the actual guided procedure status/log attached as an HTML document as a follow up to your guided procedure instance run.
Access the Technical System Details stored in the Landscape Database Management (LMDB) via the managed object name of the system in scope (on the left side underneath the guided procedure name) of your guided procedure instance execution.

Header area

Choose, review the overall status of mandatory/optional steps or click on each step or sub-step in the Graphical Steps Illustration.
Hint: An optional step will be surrounded by a dashed border.
Each guided procedure ends with the special ‘Complete' step, which provides you the functionality to:
- Finish the guided procedure.
- Export the results of your guided procedure run as a report in PDF or HTML format.
- Send by Email the results of your guided procedure run as a report in PDF or HTML format.
- Lock your guided procedure run. This finally finish your guided procedure instance forever. You cannot start this instance again in ‘Edit' mode. Only ‘Read only' (='Display') mode will be still possible.
The overall indication status of a step or sub-step is a summary of all step related activities status results following the worst-case rule (= one activity showing an error => the overall status of the step is showing error). The indication status is shown in the upper right corner of each step by icons with different colors. There are different possible status:
- White icon => None of the step related activities is performed so far.
- Green icon => All mandatory activities related to the step were performed successful.
- Yellow triangle => There are mandatory activities of the step performed with a result of a warning, but none with the result error. Or not all mandatory activities have been performed so far.
- Yellow exclamation mark => Since the last run of this guided procedure step the system data of the system in scope have changed and one or more activities of the step need to be re-executed.
- Red icon => At least one mandatory activity of the step performed with a result of an error.
When a step includes sub-steps, you can extend or hide the Graphical Step Illustration of the sub-steps by clicking onto the arrow symbol in the down right corner of the step.
Switch with the toggle button (on the left side underneath the Graphical Step Illustration) between the ‘Read Only-Mode' and ‘Edit-Mode' of your guided procedure execution.
Hint: Changing from ‘Edit' to ‘Read Only' might result in asking you to save the changes, depending on your settings done in the ‘Personalize' options.
Move back and forward between the steps and sub-steps with the buttons ‘< Previous' and ‘Next >' (underneath the Graphical Step Illustration).
Save the status and the steps/activities logs of your actual guided procedure instance run in the Edit-Mode at any time via the ‘Save' button (underneath the Graphical Step Illustration).
Reset your work in the steps/activities of your actual guided procedure instance execution to the last saved status with the ‘Reset' button (underneath the Graphical Step Illustration).

Help Text Section

Within the Guided Procedure Runtime application this section always displays helping descriptions to the active selected step of the procedure.
The help text can also be shown in a separate window by selecting the menu option ‘Open in a new window' of the icon ‘Option for menu tray' in the upper right corner of the Help Text section.

Help Text section

Hint: If you do not need the help text, you can hide it overall for all steps during your actual guided procedure instance run by clicking onto the ‘Collapse tray' icon in the upper right corner of the Help Text section.

Automatic and Manual Activities Section

To each step or sub-step of your guided procedure instance you see in this section all the activities assigned to the active selected step or sub-step.
An activity can be of the type ‘Mandatory' or ‘Optional'.
There can be automatic performed activities and manually to be performed activities. They are divided and grouped in the separate table views ‘Automatic Activities' and ‘Manual Activities'.

Activity section

Automatic activities can be based on SAP defined or customer defined ABAP coding. SAP defined activities can be of the type Guided Procedure Plugins, which are delivered with SAP content ST-CONT200 and can be easily implemented and used for customer designed guided procedure in the Guided Procedure Authoring application. When in use, some specific plugins even showing in an own section before the activity section. For further details please review the Guided Procedure Plugins wiki page.

In the ‘Automatic Activities' table view area you have the following possibilities to work on the activities:

Show all Logs of the selected activity will display all logs of previous activity run. If you do not use this button, the log file area always only shows the ‘Last Run' of the selected activity.
Execute All will start all automatic activity, one after the other, in one run. Complex or long running activities will be executed with one or more background jobs. If background jobs used, the status of the background jobs run will be indicated on top of the Activities section until all jobs finished.
Hint: Activities with the ‘Execution Status' manually set to ‘Postponed', ‘Manually Performed' or ‘Manually Performed with Errors' will not be executed by selecting the ‘Execute All' button.
Execute Selected will only run the selected activity.
Hint: Activities with the ‘Execution Status' manually set to ‘Postponed', ‘Manually Performed' or ‘Manually Performed with Errors' will not be executed by selecting the ‘Execute All' button.
Refresh the automatic activities table view. This button can be used to update the activities status during long running activity executions.

In the ‘Manual Activities' table view area you only have the button ‘Show all Logs' to display all logs of previous activity run.

In each activity table view the following columns do show you information to each activity:

Select
Indicates if the activity is the actual selected activity.
Status
Shows the actual performing result of the activity with a status indicator icon.
There can be the following status results:
- White icon => The activity is not performed yet.
- Green icon => The activity was performed successful.
- Yellow icon => The activity was performed with a warning. See log entry for details.
- Red icon => The activity was performed with an error. See log entry for details.
Activity
Is the name/description of the activity under which you also can find it in the Guided Procedure Catalog – Type search ‘Activity'.
Type
Defines the type of the activity either as ‘Mandatory' activity or ‘Optional' activity.
Comment
In this column icons indicate if there is a manual added comment by you or a former executor of this guided procedure instance run. If a comment exists, it would be visible in the log file section.
Navigation
An automatic activity or a manual activity can be based on the work in a specific application/program/transaction.
To manual execute the work of the activity (Hint: An automatic activity can be executed manually, too.) this ‘Navigation' column can show a link to start up the specific application/program/transaction.
Execution Status
Within this column the execution status of the activity is shown and can be changed by you.
There are different status provided.
- In automatic activities the available status types are:
  - Execute
  - Postponed
  - Manually Performed
  - Manually Performed with Errors
- In manual activities the available status types are:
  - Not Performed
  - Performed
  - Performed with Error

Log File Entry Table Section

To each activity execution at least one entry will be written in the Log file and will be shown in this section.

Log file entry section

You can set up individual Views of the log file entry table via the ‘Open Dialog Settings' icon in the upper right corner of the section.
The actual visible log entries can be exported into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with the ‘Export >'-button.
During an activity run the log file entry table might not be refreshed always. Clicking the Refresh-button will initiate a re-load of the actual and possible new entries of the log.
If you wish to Show not only the latest log file entries of the last activity run you can select the show mode ‘ALL', ‘Last 365 days', ‘Last 30 days', ‘Last 7 days', ‘Last 24 hours' or ‘Last Run'.
You have the possibility to a ‘Add Comment' (link is visible in the upper right corner of this section) to a selected log file entry. If you do so, the comment will be placed after the selected log file entry as a new log file entry and the comment icon in the Comment column of the activity in the activity section will be changed to make anyone aware that there is a comment to this activity in the log file.
With link ‘Archived Logs' (in the upper right corner of this section) you can review already archived logs or archive logs to reduce the database size.
In the ‘[Standard View]' of the Log File entry section every log entry can provide information in the following columns (Hint: Additional fields can be made visible via the ‘Open Dialog Settings' icon in the upper right corner of the section):

The Type of the information.
There can be the following type indications:
- Info icon => Informational log entry to an activity sub-step execution or the activity run itself.
- Green icon => The activity sub-step or the complete activity was performed successful.
- Yellow icon => The activity sub-step or the complete activity was performed with a warning.
- Red icon => The activity sub-step or the complete activity was performed with an error.
The Activity column names the action been taken in the activity run.
The Message column describes the result in a short text of the action been taken.
The Date and Time columns document when the activity action was protocoled.
In the Object in Scope columns the system in scope, on which the activity action was executed, is shown.
The User column shows the user, who has run the activity.
A Long Text of a message can be provided in this column if the activity run shows warnings or ended with an error.
A link to more Details of an activity run can be given, if the activity execution shows warnings or ended with an error.
Additional information via an URL and/or a Log Attachments sometimes are shown, if an activity run shows warnings or ended with an error.
In the Notes Search column, you can check if there are SAP Notes available to the related activity. Clicking the ‘Search link will first search automatically for SAP Notes and if there are notes, they will be provided in an embedded popup window. If no related SAP Note was found an embedded popup window will give you the possibility to manually search for SAP Notes or to create an incident ticket.