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User Guide for Intelligent Situation Automation (Beta)

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Content

1 Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.1 Example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 Manage Situation Automation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52.1 Creating an Automation Configuration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3 Situation Dashboard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

4 Analyze Situations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

5 Delete Data Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

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Content

1 Overview

NoteThis is a beta feature available on SAP Cloud Platform for subaccounts in trial and enterprise accounts. For more information, see Important Disclaimers and Legal Information.

With Intelligent Situation Automation for SAP Cloud Platform, you can configure rules and automate resolutions for SAP S/4HANA Cloud business situations. This saves time on manual and repetitive mundane tasks. You can also monitor and analyze these situations, which enhances business performance.

Intelligent Situation Automation is available in the Cloud Foundry environment and uses SAP Cloud Platform Business Rules for automation configurations.

When you log on to SAP Fiori launchpad, you may receive notifications about certain business events (situations) that require your attention. You can choose to resolve a situation so that a business process moves forward to completion. These notifications are generated by the SAP S/4HANA Situation Handling framework and can be resolved automatically by Intelligent Situation Automation.

Intelligent Situation Automation comprises these applications to automate, monitor, and analyze SAP S/4HANA situations:

● Manage Situation Automation [page 5]: Create automation rules and action parameters to resolve situations automatically

● Situation Dashboard [page 7]: Monitor the volume of situations and understand the time saved with automation

● Analyze Situations [page 8]: See details about the resolution flow and data context for individual situation instances

● Delete Data Context [page 9]: Delete situation data context records that contain personal information

1.1 Example

Examples of business situations that can be resolved automatically.

Physical Inventory Monitoring

A business that sells goods and materials, needs to take stock of its materials from time to time to compare its inventory system records with what is in stock.

To do so, a warehouse clerk creates a physical inventory document and enters the number of items for each material. If there's a difference between the physical number and the system count, it is reported to the inventory manager. An inventory manager either approves the difference and posts the document or requests

User Guide for Intelligent Situation Automation (Beta)Overview INTERNAL 3

for a recount. Whether this is done depends on the cost of the material and the tolerance limit for the difference in the count.

In an SAP S/4 HANA Cloud system, a situation is raised when a physical inventory document has to be reviewed and an inventory manager is notified. Then the manager needs to open the Post Physical Inventory application and manually post the document or trigger a recount. Usually, this takes 3-4 minutes per document, making it a time-consuming process.

With Intelligent Situation Handling, this manual effort by an inventory manager is eliminated by posting the document or triggering a recount automatically. This is done by creating rules in the Manage Situation Automation application. You can specify for which business condition (either material-based or cost-based) you want to automate document posting. Sample rules are available to help you create the required automation rules.

An inventory manager can use the Situation Dashboard to see the volume of situations generated over the last six months, observe patterns, understand how situations are resolved, and see the time saved with automation.

Contract is Ready as Source of Supply

You want operational purchasers to be informed automatically when a new or updated contract is available for an open purchase requisition.

Usually, operational purchasers do not have information about new or updated contracts and could unintentionally assign open purchase requisitions to outdated contracts. To benefit from new business decisions, a situation can be raised to inform operational purchasers automatically about new or updated contracts. A purchaser can then assign the new or updated contract to an open purchase requisition.

With Intelligent Situation Automation, you can configure rules, so that the system identifies a matching contract and assigns it automatically as the source of supply for a purchase requisition, as soon as a situation is raised.

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Overview

2 Manage Situation Automation

With the Manage Situation Automation application, you can create configurations that include rules to resolve identified situations automatically.

When an automation configuration is active for a situation type, the system checks if the business rule condition is met and resolves the situation automatically.

A situation automation configuration is created for a situation type and can have one of these statuses:

● Inactive: A configuration is created for a situation type.● Activation in Process: The activation process is triggered for an inactive or active configuration that is

edited and saved with an automation rule and action parameter.● Active: A business rule has been activated for a configuration.● Activation Failed: A business rule was not activated for a configuration.● Deletion in Process: The system is deleting a configuration.● Deletion Failed: The system is unable to delete a configuration.● Disabled: The corresponding situation type or the automation flag has been disabled.● Invalid: The corresponding situation type has been deleted.

For more information, see the Administration Guide chapter, "Creating an Automation Configuration".

2.1 Creating an Automation Configuration

Implement an automation configuration using a text rule. A text rule is a collection of rule expressions in an if-then format, which you can use to execute actions on situation data context objects or their attributes.

Prerequisites

Before creating an automation configuration, you need to:

● Configure destinations for the SAP S/4HANA Cloud APIs in your subaccount. For more information, see .● Create a situation type in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system and choose Enable Automation. For more

information, see Situation Handling.

Context

You want to create an automation configuration, which automatically resolves a situation instance.

User Guide for Intelligent Situation Automation (Beta)Manage Situation Automation INTERNAL 5

You can either Copy a configuration delivered by SAP (the Source column displays SAP) and change its rules and conditions, or Create your own configuration.

Procedure

To copy or create a configuration, follow these steps:

1. From the Manage Situation Automation app, choose Create or Copy (a standard SAP configuration).2. Enter a name and select a situation type from the list using the F4 value help.

We support these situation templates:○ Physical Inventory Monitoring

NoteSample rules are available.

○ Contract is Ready as Source of Supply3. Choose Create.

The configuration details page opens in the edit mode.4. Enter a rule condition in the If field.

A condition needs to be:○ A data object of type boolean.○ An expression with a result of type boolean.○ A simple range expression.

NoteFrom the Vocabulary list, you can select situation data context objects and fields. For example, C_PHYSINVENTORYSITUATION.DifferenceQuantityInBaseUnit < 10.

If you copied a standard configuration, you can modify the sample rule as needed.5. Choose an action in the Then Perform Action field.

You can press CTRL + SPACE , expand Fixed Value and use the F4 value help for suggestions.You can either choose a standard action delivered by SAP or a custom-implemented action.When an If condition evaluates as true, the Then operations get executed. Otherwise, the Else If or Else operations get executed, if provided. Else and Else If operations are optional. You can add multiple Else If statements to a condition using the Add Else If option.

6. Specify the parameters for a destination based on the actions chosen for a rule. For more information, see .Automation configuration parameters include additional information that is required to perform the actions chosen for a rule. This information is stored in a destination. For example, the authentication credentials to access an SAP S/4HANA Cloud system.

Results

You've created an automation configuration.

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Manage Situation Automation

3 Situation Dashboard

With the situation dashboard, you can gain insights and automation suggestions about business situations.

These dashboard cards help you understand situations of a particular situation type:

● Time Saved by Automation: The time saved with automation. This card shows the time taken to resolve situations automatically instead of manually.

● Volume: The number of situation instances created in the last six months.● Situation Status: The statuses of situation instances in the last six months. You can choose a status and

navigate to the Analyze Situations application to see details about situation instances with a selected status. For example, all resolved situation instances.

● Open Situations: The number of open situations. You can choose to see individual cards for 20 open situation instances or choose View All and navigate to the Analyze Situations application for details about open situation instances.

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4 Analyze Situations

With the Analyze Situations application, you can see details about situation instances. You can choose a situation instance and navigate to its details page for information about its resolution flow and data context.

These stages help in analyzing the resolution of a situation instance:

● Instance Created● Instance Updated● Automation Initiated● Action Determined● Action Completed● Instance Set to Done● Action Failed● No Action Applied● No Automation Configuration Found● Exception During Action Decision● Instance Displayed

You can see additional details about the data context of a situation instance for a better understanding of the context of a situation instance. For example, the material ID, plant, storage location, and so on.

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Analyze Situations

5 Delete Data Context

You use the Delete Data Context application, to delete situation data context records that contain personal information. If a supplier or an entity is blocked in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system, it may be necessary to delete all data context records pertaining to that entity (from a data privacy perspective) from big data storage.

You can create a deletion request and specify a situation template, the corresponding field name (data subject field), and the field value (ID of the records) you want to delete.

After you create a deletion request, you can see its status in the Deletion Requests list:

● Scheduled: A deletion request has been initiated.● In Process: Data is being deleted.● Completed: Data has been deleted.● Failed: Data could not be deleted due to a technical error. To report this issue, you can create a ticket for

component CA-SIT-ATM.

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Important Disclaimers and Legal Information

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● The content of the linked-to site is not SAP documentation. You may not infer any product claims against SAP based on this information.● SAP does not agree or disagree with the content on the linked-to site, nor does SAP warrant the availability and correctness. SAP shall not be liable for any

damages caused by the use of such content unless damages have been caused by SAP's gross negligence or willful misconduct.

● Links with the icon : You are leaving the documentation for that particular SAP product or service and are entering a SAP-hosted Web site. By using such links, you agree that (unless expressly stated otherwise in your agreements with SAP) you may not infer any product claims against SAP based on this information.

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Beta and Other Experimental FeaturesExperimental features are not part of the officially delivered scope that SAP guarantees for future releases. This means that experimental features may be changed by SAP at any time for any reason without notice. Experimental features are not for productive use. You may not demonstrate, test, examine, evaluate or otherwise use the experimental features in a live operating environment or with data that has not been sufficiently backed up.The purpose of experimental features is to get feedback early on, allowing customers and partners to influence the future product accordingly. By providing your feedback (e.g. in the SAP Community), you accept that intellectual property rights of the contributions or derivative works shall remain the exclusive property of SAP.

Example CodeAny software coding and/or code snippets are examples. They are not for productive use. The example code is only intended to better explain and visualize the syntax and phrasing rules. SAP does not warrant the correctness and completeness of the example code. SAP shall not be liable for errors or damages caused by the use of example code unless damages have been caused by SAP's gross negligence or willful misconduct.

Gender-Related LanguageWe try not to use gender-specific word forms and formulations. As appropriate for context and readability, SAP may use masculine word forms to refer to all genders.

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Important Disclaimers and Legal Information

User Guide for Intelligent Situation Automation (Beta)Important Disclaimers and Legal Information INTERNAL 11

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