I’m Arthur Hanauer from the Product Support at SAP,

I am writing this blog to serve as central information for Status related topics in SAP Cloud for Customer Service Requests (Service Tickets).

It all starts when the Service scenario is maintained and scoped in the SAP Cloud for Customer system used, as it is possible to define two ticketing scenario:

• • Tickets for Customer Support

• • Tickets for Employee Support

Once this is scoped, the key user will have access to this activity in the Business Configuration of the system, following the steps below:

1. 1. Navigate to the Business Configuration work center.

1. 1. Navigate to Overview work center view.

1. 1. Search for Tickets for Customer Support or Tickets for Employee Support, depending on the scenario scoped.

1. 1. Open this activity.

This will provide the skill of adjusting the status settings for your service tickets.

On this screen, we will have the below activities which can be determined for the tickets.

Its purpose is to allow you to maintain standard status and additional customized status for service tickets in the SAP Cloud for Customer system.

To access the status dictionary, it is required to click on Maintain Status Dictionary Entries after opening one of the ticket scenarios described above.

After opening the status dictionary, the following screen will be displayed:

In the Status Dictionary, we will maintain records for all possible status which can be used for our service tickets. For each record, we have the following details that can be seen:

• • Status Code: Displays the ID for each record maintained in the dictionary.

• • Description: Displays the Name of the Status.

• • Life Cycle Status: Display which life cycle status the custom status will be related. The Life Cycle Status is the real and true status considered for SAP Cloud for Customer backend transactions and logic that will be executed for service tickets. Each customized status can be assigned to one Life Cycle Status.

• • Assignment Status: This status will determine who is the responsible side that needs to take action, depending on the status that will be set for the service ticket.

To better comprehend the status movement and handling in service tickets, it is required to have a good understanding of the Life Cycle Status and its movement.

Life Cycle Status & Status Movement

The Life Cycle Status comprehends the pre-delivered standard statuses which are considered by the backend and ticket logic in the SAP Cloud for Customer system.

The 4 standard life cycle status are:

• • Open

• • In Process

• • Completed

• • Closed

Every customized status in the system will be assigned to a standard life cycle status, so the logic of the system can handle these during ticket transactions.

Depending on which Life Cycle Status a ticket is assigned to, we have the Reachable Life Cycle Status and the Non-Reachable Life Cycle Status, which is also known as the Status Movement. You can refer to the below table:

Also, there are some points which require attention on regards to some of the status:

• • The Closed Life Cycle Status is Non-Reachable from the In Process status since the system would directly close the ticket, not allowing any further modifications in the Ticket if required later. Hence, the ticket must first be set as Completed and then it can be set as Closed since the Completed status still allows changes to be done in the ticket.

• • A ticket which is in Completed Life Cycle Status can only be set back to In Process if the ticket is completed via the Cloud system. If the ticket is completed via the On-Premise system, the In Process status is not reachable.

• • If a ticket is set to Closed Life Cycle Status, it is not possible to edit or open it again anymore via any tool available in the system.

A recommendation at this point is to map your customized status Closed to use the Completed Life Cycle Status via the Status Schema since it would still be possible to navigate back and edit the ticket if changes are required.

Assignment Status

Assignment Status plays an important role as well. As described above, it will determine who is the responsible side that needs to take action, depending on the status that will be set for the service ticket.

There are several assignment statuses which can be assigned to the customized status, such as:

• • Processor Action: The ticket is created by the requestor and the processor has to react to the ticket. For example, the customer creates a ticket, and the first level of support reacts to the ticket.

• • Planner Action: The ticket is forwarded to a planner or technician who has to do the work, such as repairing a technical issue, or delivering services. This assignment status set’s also the Requires Work flag in the ticket.

• • Requestor Action: The ticket is in process and the support colleague asks the customer to do something on his or her side to solve the issue.

• • Provider Action: The first level of support cannot solve the ticket alone and needs help from the second level support or a third-party provider. You can use this status and the ticket is forwarded automatically to the corresponding destination. For example, an external system. Please notice that once the ticket is set to Provider Action, this is not reversible from the first level support side. If the ticket is wrongly forwarded to Provider Action, a workaround is to create a copy of this ticket and set them back to the desired status and set the affected ticket as Irrelevant.

• • Not Assigned: Can only be used with Life Cycle Status Closed.

As we have seen so far, it is important to set the status in the dictionary accordingly to avoid any issues in the next processes.

Maintaining a Status Dictionary is a pre-requisite to further determine the status which will be available for the service tickets via the Status Schema in the SAP Cloud for Customer system.

The Status Schema is an activity for which purpose is to allow you to define separated schemas and compile status maintained in the Status Dictionary for those schemas, each related to a different business context for example Service Order, Service Request, Resource Request, etc.

To access the status schema, it is required to click on Maintain Status Schemas after opening one of the ticket scenarios described above.

After opening the status schema, the following screen will be displayed:

In the Status Schema section, the SAP Cloud for Customer system lists all available schemas, also providing the possibility of creating customized schemas accordingly to the business need.

In the Assign Status to Schema section, the system provides you the possibility of adding any status available in the Status Dictionary to each schema individually, in a way that each schema will work independent from the others and will have its own combination of status available to be used in the tickets.

Each record is added containing the following details:

• • Sort Sequence: The Sort Sequence defined will be considered only for the sequence the status will be displayed in the status drop-down list inside a ticket.

• • Status: The name of the status that will be displayed in the status drop-down list inside a ticket.

• • Life Cycle Status: Display which life cycle status the custom status will be related. The Life Cycle Status is the real and true status considered for system backend transactions and logic that will be executed for service tickets. Each customized status can be assigned to one Life Cycle Status.

• • Assignment Status: This status will determine who is the responsible side that needs to take action, depending on the status that will be set for the service ticket.

• • Initial Status: By selecting this checkbox, you can define if a specific status will be set as the initial status after a ticket is created in the system, considering the ticket type and schema used for that type.

• • Status Visible: By selecting this checkbox, you can define if a specific status will be visible in the status drop-down list inside a ticket.

After the Status Schema is defined, the business will be able to proceed and assign this status schema to a Document Type in the business configuration work center, which will then define which schema will be used for each existing ticket type in the system.

To complete the status mapping for the service tickets, it is required to assign our newly created status schema to the respective document type. This will ensure that the correct status list (schema) will be displayed in our service tickets, depending on the type of document (or issue) it was raised for.

The first step is to navigate to either Ticket for Customer Support or Tickets for Employee Support activities.

To access the document type, it is required to click on Maintain Document Types after opening one of the ticket scenarios described above.

After opening the document type, the following screen will be displayed:

Once the document type screen opens, you can follow the steps below to create a new document type:

1. 1. Click on Add Row.

1. 1. Enter a Document Type, for example, ZXXX.

1. 1. Enter a Description.

1. 1. Select the Process Variant (either Customer Support or Employee Support). This will determine where in the system it will be available.

1. 1. Enter any additional data as per the business need.

1. 1. Save your entries.

• • Please notice that a customized entry always needs to begin with the letter Z.

After saving the new document type, you will be able to assign a status schema that was previously created to each type maintained in the list.

After that, once you create a new service ticket and choose the document type created, the status list will display all status maintained in the schema assigned to the document type.

Please noticed that all image in this blog post was created by me with sample data. Any resemblance to real data is purely coincidental.

References

For the details covered in this blog, I used the following SAP Knowledge Base Articles as a reference, which were created by me during my work in support: