life cylce of a ticket

The life cylce of a ticket can be described a s below.

Stage  Call/ticket loggin- The SAP FI user faces a problem and loggs the ticket for the resolution of the issue. The call loggin mechanism could be on a tool like remedy etc or it could be even a voice call. Some organization even use the traditional email. The latest tool for this could be SAP solution manager helpdesk

Stage (ii) Ticket analysis- Based on the the hierarchy set up in the project, the ticket automatically goes to level 2 users or core team members for analysis. These people analyse the ticket and try to get the solution based on their experience or from the repository if any. If they are not able to find a solution for it it is assigned to the organization or team which is providing SAP support.

Stage (iii) Ticket assignment- The SAP support organization PM or FI team lead assigns this ticket to the relevant team member who works on thsi to find out the solution and provides the solution to the user who raised this ticket.

All these above stages have a SLA (service level agrrement in terms of time spent) associated with it during which the responsilble person has to act and take the ticket to next stage or its closure.

Ticketing tool & tickets in SAP

Ticketing tool vary from client to client. SAP also provides SAP Solution Manager, which is also used as Ticketing Tool.

General concept of Tickets:

Handling tickets is called Issue Tracking system. The errors or bugs forwarded by the end user to the support team are prioritized under three severities High, Medium and Low. Each and every severity has got its time limits before that we have to fix the error based on the SLA(Service Level Agreement).

The main job of the supporting consultant is to provide assistance on line to the customer or the organisation where SAP is already implemented for which the person should be very strong in the subject and the process which are implemented in SAP at the client side to understand, to analyse, & to actuate and to give the right solution in right time. This is the job of the support consultant.

     

The issues or the tickets (problems) which are arise are taken care of on priority basis by the support team consultants.

     

The work process in support projects are given below for your reference.

    

1.  The customer or the end user logs a call through any tool or by mail (RADIX).

     

2.  Each one of the support team is a part of support group.

     

3. Whenever a customer logs a call he /she  has to mention to which work group (by name).

     

4. Once the calls came to the work group the support consultant or the team need to send an IR (Initial Response) to the user depending upon the priority of the calls. (Top, High, Med, Low, None)

     

5. Then the error is fixed, debugged by the support consultant or the team. Then after testing properly by generating TR(Transport Request through the basis admin)

     

6. Then it is informed to the end user/customer/super user about the changes which have moved to the production server by CTS process.

     

These are the process.  In summary, what I understand is that if any configuration or customization is required to solve the issue, then the consultant have to work on DEV Client, then the end user will test it in the QA client and after approval the BASIS consultant has to transport it to the PRODUCTION client.

An example:

Tickets in SD can be considered as the problems which the end user or the employee in the company face while working on R/3.  Tickets usually occur during the implementation or after the implementation of the project.  There can be numerous problems which can occur in the production support and a person who is working in the support has to resolve those tickets in the limited duration, every ticket has the particular deadline alert so your responsibility is to finish it before that deadline.

To begin with , we should give "TICKET" to you for not knowing it. 

Here is an example of a ticket raised:

End user is not able to 

1. Create Sales order for a customer from a New plant, since shipping point determination is not happened. (Without Shipping point the document becomes INCOMPLETE and he will not be able to proceed further like DELIVERY, BILLING).  

He raises a ticket and the priority is set in one of the below:

1. Low  2. Medium & 3. High.

Now you need to solve this ticket. You would analyze the problem and identify that the SP configuration has to be done for the new plant.

You would request a transport for DEV CLIENT to BASIS. You do the change and Request one more Transport to BASIS for QA client. The End user will test the same by creating a sales order for the new plant and approve it.

Finally, you request a transport to move the changes to PRODUCTION. Once the change is deployed in production the TICKET is closed.  What I have given is a small example. You would get some real issues with severity HIGH in your day-day support.

To get a company wide tools list of ticket handling tools is difficult, cause only a person working in that company would know. also to share that information here is not advisable as it goes against company tools. the most widely and commonly used is Outlook. Here in we can assign a task/ticket, generally the lead does the same. if you work on outlook for a little while with task you would get familiarize with the same.

You should resolve trouble tickets reported on the application functionality. Work on trouble tickets on both the technology used to develop system interfaces as well as application functionality. Work with end users to obtain additional information to help resolve tickets. Document the resolution in trouble ticket systems. Document resolutions to develop a knowledge base for other team members. Conduct knowledge transfer sessions for production support team members if necessary. Participate in design sessions to identify and understand enhancements being developed for the system.