Unavailable SAP Notes

There are a few cases when SAP Notes or Knowledge Base Articles (KBA) are not available to be viewed on SAP for Me (formerly ONE Support Lunchpad (OSS)) site.

 

1. SAP Note/KBA XXXXXXX is being updated. This happens when there is a new version of particular Note being prepared. As usually the Notes has initially a version in its master language it can be that, there is a few days delay when the Note is translated (e.g. from German to English). The translation part can cause that delay. If the Note is still not around for a few days, you can approach the SAP via e.g. social media and ask for the Note. That usually helps to speed up the updating process.

What makes it a bit unfortunate and frustrating too is that during the updating the former version of the Note is not accessible either. This issue was raised many times to SAP however it is not solved yet. SAP claims that sometimes the old version is not correct (even it can be harmful) thus they decided to take the whole Note offline for a while.

 

2. Sorry! You are not entitled to access SAP Note/KBA. This message is so called a maintenance terminated status. The message is present when customer number to which your support site user is linked to lost an access to the software component which the Note is related to. Means that e.g. license to that software is not provisioned or wasn’t provision to your customer number. In this  case you need to raise this issue to your SAP representative (account manager).

More information:

3233516

SAP for Me and SAP Support Portal vs ONE Support Launchpad

In my post, I do mention supports sites of SAP a lot. They are quite useful to search for an information about SAP products, issues, how-tos, also to request license keys, support or to download SAP software.  As there are many names for those sites I recon it can be useful to mention the latest ones.

In past we normally referred to these sites as SAP Support Portals either as OSS (Online Support System) or later as SMP (Service Market Place). Nowadays we can distinguish between two main support landing pages:

 

SAP Support Portal is one stop for all support and service related needs of SAP customers. It can be used to access the software, download the software, request license keys, get technical support, get an information about the software solution and find the documentation. Link: support.sap.com

 

ONE Support Launchpad is the new version of the Service Market Place (SMP) for all SAP customers. Link: launchpad.support.sap.com the site will soon transaction to SAP for Me that will be single entry point to all support site of SAP. Right now, the SAP for Me serves as a place to improve SAP customer experience throughout all touch-points with SAP. A list of all product’s portfolio, finance and legal stuff with customer relation to SAP is available there, other areas are service and support and systems and provisioning among other things are available via the SAP for Me site.

More information:

OSS

SMP

SAP Support Portal

SAP ONE Support Launchpad

SAP TCI Notes - Transport based Correction Instructions

While searching on SAP support site one may encounter type of SAP Notes having a Transport-Based Correction Instructions (TCI). Normally the SAP Notes are delivering a fix (correction) of some issues within SAP software. Software correction within SAP Note can be delivered via following channels:

·        SAP Notes automatic correction instructions

·        SAP Notes manual correction instructions

·        Support Packages (SP)

Since 2016 SAP offers one more type of the correction delivery. The TCI corrections are a new type of a channel to ship ABAP corrections with SAP Notes. On top of either manual or automatic correction instructions the TCI correction are having a set of additional attributes.

ABAP transport associated with a TCI Note has set of attributes needed for its installation like software component version, minimal SP, languages etc. TCI has its validity that restricts it to restricted to a certain SP range. Dependencies to other corrections and SPs can be defined. It is created out of correction code line and integrated into standard correction and upgrade process. The TCI is dedicated functionality affected only.

All these are enabling faster consumption of the TCI comparing to regular SAP Note with either manual or automatic correction instructions. Person who does the correction implementation does not need to have developer skills as all normally manual activities performed by the system during installation process. The TCI can be de-implement or rolled back. It supports of all transport enabled ABAP objects such as DDIC, table Content, MIME objects etc. No need for manual adjustment activities unlike during SP import and upgrade for SAP standard objects (t-codes SPAU and SPDD).

The TCI are available for NetWeaver system starting from SAP NetWeaver 7.00 SP09 and above. This type of correction is not activated in the SAP NetWeaver by default. It needs to be enabled. See SAP Note 1995550 for details on how to do it.

 

More information:

Online docu

Central Note about TCI: 2187425 - Information about SAP Note Transport based Correction Instructions (TCI)

1995550 - Enabling SNOTE for transport based correction instruction

2543372 - How to implement a Transport-based Correction Instruction

2764122 - How to check if a TCI note can be de-implemented or not

2489679 - How to identify TCI Note

Difference between SAP notes

Difference between SAP Note and KBA article

SAP Universal ID (UID)

User accounts used for SAP support sites (like SAP Support Portal, SAP ONE Support Launchpad, sap.com, community.sap.com, OpenSAP, etc.) that used to be individual for each of the sites are finally becoming consolidated.

It was a matter of critique for many years that there were many different users to be used for particular SAP sites. Mostly each site was acting like a silo application for which user had to register separately. As of July this year, SAP came up with a solution. It is called SAP Universal ID. While creating the UID it allows you to link existing S* or P* users into one universal ID that can be used to login for multiple SAP sites. Currently following sites are being supported by the UID:

    SAP for Me

    SAP.com

    SAP ONE Support Launchpad

    SAP Support Portal

    OpenSAP

    SAP Help Portal

    SAP Training / SAP Learning

    SAP Customer Experience Wiki

    SAP SuccessFactors Community

    Service Now

    SAP CX Microlearning videos & SAP CX DOJO

    SAP Store

    SAP Best Practices Explorer

    SAP Ariba Connect

    SAP Customer Influence Center

See SAP Note 2948407 - Which SAP sites/platforms support SAP Universal ID login? For an up2data list of the supported sites.

Main advantage I see in here is that I could link many different SAP users I have for example to SAP Support Portal into one account. As it is normal, that an independent SAP consultant is working for multiple clients then the consultant has many different S* or P* users belonging to these clients. The SAP UID make the usage of the accounts easier as they can be linked into the one ID. The UID SAP hosted at address me.sap.com can manage all these different S* or P* users by adding/removing them from the UID.

More information:

SAP for Me

SAP Universal ID

Create SAP UID

Support component: XX-SER-UID