crm expert - what to do when you need an alert and the event doesn't exist

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ABAP, CRM, Interaction Center

What to Do When You Need an Alert and the Event

Doesn’t Exist

by Sri Gollapudi, Hitachi Consulting • August 15, 2007

Find out how to create custom events to trigger alerts to specific interaction center agents dealing

with special customer issues, such as ordering hazardous materials. When you complete the process,

you create a hyperlinked alert that takes the agent to documents to send to the customer.

Key Concept

SAP CRM contains standard events, which are activities in the system that trigger the system to behave a

certain way. For example, the standard event InteractionEnded could occur when you complete a phone

call with a business partner. This event triggers an alert to an agent to perform a certain task, such as to

send information to the business partner.

Every customer interaction provides an opportunity to sell, so you should provide your interaction center

agents with the insight they need to cross-sell and up-sell to a customer. A timely alert may help the

agents by providing information they need to turn a service call into a sales opportunity. Creating an alert

for a standard event is a challenging task that requires both configuration and programming. No

documentation exists for creating custom events when a standard event isn’t delivered at a specific

Interaction Center (IC) WebClient interaction point, so I’ll explain how to create the custom event that you

need before you can develop a custom alert.

Imagine that some of the materials that your company sells are chemicals, which are classified as

hazardous materials. As a policy, your company does not ship them via air, so it might take a long time for

them to arrive. Also, customers who order these chemicals must sign a legal document the first time they

order them. In this case, you could set an alert for the interaction center agents to let customers know

about the shipping information. The alert could also let the agent navigate to a content server, pick up the

legal document, and then email it to the customer, all within IC WebClient.

The events that trigger the display of alerts are limited to those that the SAP system defines, such as

BPConfirmed or InteractionEnded. More often than not, CRM implementation teams run into requirements

for alerts for which no standard event exists. In this case, you need to create a custom event to trigger an

alert.

I’ll walk you through the process of creating a custom event and alert when a customer, using the telesales

channel, adds hazardous material PH-2810 to the ERP sales order in IC WebClient. For this example, I used

SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) 6.0 and SAP CRM 2005, although the process also applies to earlier

versions. Make sure that you have the necessary authorizations for remote debugging of the Business

Server Page (BSP) applications.

Prerequisites

Before you can create the custom event, you must perform five steps. The CRM technical team usually

performs steps 1 through 3 and the CRM functional team typically performs steps 4 and 5. I’ll go over steps

1-4 briefly, as documentation exists for these steps. Refer to the IC WebClient cookbook mentioned in the

“Additional Resources” sidebar to find out more details about steps 1-4.

Step 1. Create a new BSP application. This application contains the custom views and the corresponding

controllers. I used the custom BSP application ZCRM_IC with transaction code SE80.

Step 2. Copy the standard views from CRM_IC to the custom BSP application ZCRM_IC. Use the IC

WebClient Workbench transaction BSP_WD_WORKBENCH to copy the views. In my example, you copy the

view ERPCart to the ZCRM_IC application.

Step 3. Implement a custom controller for the view using the original controller as the super class.

In my example, ERPCart uses custom controller ZL_CRM_IC_ERPCART_IMPL, which is a sub class of

CL_CRM_IC_ERPCART_IMPL.

Step 4. Set up the test user. In this step you configure and assign IC WebClient profiles to the test user.

Step 5. Check if a standard event exists that the system triggers when a telesales agent adds a

product to the ERP cart. This step is a little complex, so I’ll explain it in detail in the following section.

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Check If a Standard Event Exists

Before you create a custom event, make sure that a standard event doesn’t exist already. The standard

class CL_CRM_IC_EVENT_SRV triggers events for IC WebClient for all the standard events. I’ll use this

class to determine if the system triggers a standard event when the agent enters a material in the ERP

sales order. This process involves three steps.

Step 1. Set an external breakpoint. Do this in the method RAISE of class CL_CRM_IC_EVENT after the

call to the get_name method of the event. This breakpoint should break whenever IC WebClient triggers an

event (Figure 1). Then start IC WebClient.

Figure 1 Breakpoint in the standard class

Step 2. Follow the inbound telesales scenario and confirm the business partner. To do this, simulate

an inbound telephone call by using the contact center simulation (CCS) tool at http://:/ccsui. Or, you can

enter the partner details (e.g., first name, last name, phone) in the Identify partner area of the IC

WebClient application and click on the Search Account button. If you find multiple partners, choose one of

the partners and click on the Confirm button to confirm the partner.

At this point, the system confirms the caller’s identity. All the subsequent functions the agent performs use

this business partner until the agent clicks on the End button to end the interaction. After you confirm the

business partner, the system triggers the standard event BPConfirmed, which stops at the breakpoint you

set in step 1 of this process (Figure 2).



Figure 2 Breakpoint reached for a standard event BPConfirmed

Step 3. Enter the product in the sales order and press Enter. In this example, I entered the product

PH-2810 on the order items area and a quantity of 1 bottle (Figure 3). If the breakpoint set in step 1 is hit

again, it means that a standard event exists, so you do not need to develop a custom event. If this is the

case, note the name of the event and use that event to create your alert.

Figure 3 The agent enters product PH-2810 on the ERP sales order

However, in my example, because no standard event exists, the execution doesn’t stop and the screen

simply refreshes. In this case, the system doesn’t provide a place to add code to check for conditions

(e.g., if the material entered is a hazardous material) and raise an alert for the agent. So now I must

create a new event.

Create a New Event

The following six steps show you how to create a custom event that you can use to trigger an alert.

Step 1. Define a new alert in the IMG called ZRestrictedProducts. Use transaction SPRO and follow IMG

menu path Customer Relationship Management>Interaction Center WebClient>Basic

Functions>Define Alerts and Alert Profiles. Click on the New Entries button and enter the Alert ID

ZRestrictedProducts (Figure 4).

Figure 4 Enter the Alert ID

You can use the standard SAP class CL_CRM_IC_ALERT_GENERIC for generic alerts. The system displays

the message field as the alert text. Then, click on Events in the Dialog Structure to create triggering and

terminating events. In my example, I used the alert ID as the triggering event and an End suffix for the

terminating event (Figure 5).



Figure 5 Create triggering and terminating events

To provide the agent with additional information about the alert, you can use placeholders that are filled at

runtime with variable data. In my example, the placeholder might be the product ID that triggers the alert.

This lets the agent know exactly which product triggered the alert if the cart contained more than one

material. Click on Placeholders to define them (Figure 6).

Figure 6 Define placeholders

When you’re finished, assign the alert to your alert profile by clicking on Assign Alerts to Profile. Then

activate the alert by selecting the Active check box (Figure 7).

Figure 7 Select the Active check box

Step 2. Define the controller substitutes. The standard implementation calls the default views and their

controllers, so you need to change the IC WebClient configuration so that the system substitutes your

custom views and controllers for the profile. This is a standard process that allows you to replace certain

standard IC WebClient views with customized views based on the runtime profile assigned to the agent. For

more details about this process refer to the IC WebClient cookbook.

Use the IC WebClient Workbench transaction BSP_WD_WORKBENCH to copy the ERPCart view from the

CRM_IC BSP application to the ZCRM_IC BSP application under the same name. Then use transaction

SPRO and follow IMG menu path Customer Relationship Management>Interaction Center

WebClient>Customer Specific System Modification>Define IC WebClient Runtime Profiles (Figure

8). Select your runtime profile and click on Controller Substitutes. Click on the New Entries button to

create a controller substitute. Substitute controller CRM_IC ERPCart with ZCRM_IC ERPCart.

Figure 8 Define controller substitutes

Step 3. Identify the server event that the system triggers when the agent enters the product in the



ERP order. This allows you to make your changes in your custom controller class so the system triggers

the alert only for certain agents who are assigned to a specific interaction center. Agents assigned to the

other run time profiles are not affected.

The server event is the handler for the user action on the IC WebClient screen. Set a breakpoint in the

DO_HANDLE_EVENT method of the custom controller ZL_CRM_IC_ERPCART_IMPL. From the IC

WebClient workbench (BSP_WD_WORKBENCH), enter your custom BSP application (ZCRM_IC) and click

on the execute icon. Expand the Views and double-click on ERPCart to get to the details. Create a new

class ZL_CRM_IC_ERPCART_IMPL as a subclass of the standard SAP controller

CL_CRM_IC_ERPCART_IMPL. Double-click on ERPCart.do to change the implementation class to

ZL_CRM_IC_ERPCART_IMPL (Figure 9).

Figure 9 The ERP Cart view custom controller

Override the DO_HANDLE_EVENT method of the parent class and add a call to the parent method. Put a

breakpoint at do_handle_event and restart IC WebClient (Figure 10). Repeat the process of confirming

the business partner and entering the product on the ERPCart as described in the “Check If a Standard

Event Exists” section.

Figure 10 Set a breakpoint at DO_HANDLE_EVENT

The breakpoint is hit for standard events as well as custom events, so the execution stops when standard

events are hit. For example, the execution stops when the business partner is confirmed. Ignore the

breakpoint until you enter the material on the order and press Enter.

When the breakpoint is reached, the ABAP debugger starts automatically in a new SAPGUI window with a

yellow arrow pointing to the current execution line. Press the continue key (F8) to ignore all the

breakpoints before the ERP sales order is displayed. When the ERP cart is displayed in the IC WebClient

application work area, enter the material and quantity on the cart and press Enter. When the execution

stops again in the debugger, note the name of the server event that the system processes when the

telesales agent enters a material on the order. In this case, the name of the server event is check, which

you can see in the Val. column of Figure 11. I’ll use this server event to raise my application event in the

next step.

Figure 11 Execution stops at breakpoint

Step 4. Raise a custom event when the user presses Enter. Add the code in Figure 12 after the

super->do_handle_event call. By raising the event, the custom event OrderChecked is triggered

whenever the system checks a material entered on the order, similar to the standard event BPConfirmed

that the system triggers when you confirm a business partner.



Figure 12 Code to enter after the super->do_handle_event call

Step 5. Implement the method raise_event_check in the same custom controller class for the view

(ZL_CRM_IC_ERPCART_IMPL). Add a public, constant string attribute GC_ORDERCHECKED to the class

ZL_ CRM_IC_ERPCART_IMPL with the value OrderChecked. This is to avoid hard-coding the string

OrderChecked by declaring it as an attribute of the custom class. The public attribute lets you use the

attribute outside the class; the constant attribute makes sure that this attribute cannot be changed by

any class that uses it. The code in Figure 13 clears the previous alert and raises a new event called

OrderChecked.

Figure 13 Code that clears the previous alert

Step 6. Perform the configuration steps for the alert as you would for a standard event. Refer to the

CRM Best Practices document for IC WebClient that explains how to create an alert for a specific event.

You can find this in the Creating Event section at

http://help.sap.com/bp_crmv250/CRM_DE/BBLibrary/Documentation/C78_BB_ConfigGuide_EN_US.doc.

In step 1 in this section, you defined the ZRestrictedProduct alert with a navigational link attribute, so

the system displays the alert as a hyperlink (Figure 14). Clicking on the alert takes the agent to the

location of the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) documents. The agent can then warn the customer of

the shipping delay and attach the safety datasheet to an email to the customer.

Figure 14 Alert appears on the IC WebClient message area

Additional Resources

Here are two resources that provide additional details about the standard steps mentioned in this process.

The Consultant’s Cookbook for IC WebClient: http://service.sap.com/crm-inst. Click on CRM Core

and Standalone Components.

The CRM Best Practices document for IC WebClient: http://help.sap.com. Follow menu path Best

Practices>Cross-Industry packages>CRM>V2.50>Technical Information>Building Block

Library>C78: CRM Interaction Center (WebClient) >Configuration guide.

Sri Gollapudi is a senior architect with Hitachi Consulting, specializing in CRM IC WebClient customization,



CRM Internet Sales, CRM Middleware, and SAP Portals. He has more than 15 years of IT experience,

including 10 years in SAP technologies. You may contact him via email at [email protected].

20 Carematrix Drive, Dedham, MA 02026, USA.

Sales and Customer Service: 1.781.751.8799

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crm expert - what to do when you need an alert and the event doesn't exist

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