WLF_IDOC + ServiceNow = Advanced IDoc monitoring

I've recently made a poll asking what tool SAP customers use for monitoring failed IDocs. More than half of the votes were for the standard SAP transaction WLF_IDOC:

Considering this, we've made an integration between WLF_IDOC and our ITSM Connector for SAP add-on product.

This allows an automatic ticket creation in external ITSM platforms (ServiceNow, Jira, 4me, Cherwell, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus etc.) whenever you have failed IDocs.

Option 1: manual ticket creation

We have added an extra button to WLF_IDOC that can trigger the ticket creation:

It will create a ticket for the selected IDoc and display a success message:

It also updates the ALV with this data:

The ticket number is a link to the ticket in ServiceNow, so you can immediately check it out. By default, it displays the ticket in the self service portal:

If you check out the details of the incident, you can see that it is automatically categorized and routed to the relevant team. You can do this per IDoc type, Message type etc. or simply by SAP module (application component):

Naturally you can set defaults for any field like impact, urgency etc. separately for each IDoc type.

The IDoc data is attached as an XML file, so you can immediately check it out (this can be turned off completely or per IDoc type):

Also, the WLF_IDOC list line contents are attached too as an XML file:

Additionally, the ITSM Connector adds a hyperlink as a Work Note, so you can quickly navigate to SAP using WebGUI:

The IDoc is displayed in your browser:

Multiselection - separate tickets

If you'd like to create separate tickets for multiple IDocs, this is possible, simply select the IDocs and press the same button:

Here you can see that 5 tickets were created for the 5 selected IDocs:

Multiselection - grouped

You can define a grouping logic in a configuration table. It is possible to group your IDocs and create one ServiceNow incident per message type, IDoc type etc.

In this case, I've selected 6 IDocs in total, 4 having MATMAS and 2 having CLFMAS types:

Now the ITSM Connector has created two ServiceNow incidents:

In this case, the XML files are zipped together and attached to the incident:

You still have the content and the WLF_IDOC ALV output for each IDoc covered by this ServiceNow incident:

Option 2 - Automatic ticket creation

Naturally you can set us a background job that runs periodically (every 5 minutes, every hour, daily etc.):

You can see the job log: in this case the ITSM Connector has created 4 incidents for 8 IDocs (having 4 different IDoc types):

Again, these incidents are routed to the relevant support group automatically:

Conclusion

This smart integration with WLF_IDOC is one more reason to implement our ITSM Connector for SAP product. It can automate the ticket creation and also cut ticket resolution times by routing the tickets to the relevant teams and attaching all relevant data, so the support experts can take action immediately.

The ITSM Connector can also:

• Let your SAP users create ServiceNow tickets from SAP GUI (LINK)
• Let your SAP users create ServiceNow tickets from Fiori Apps (LINK)
• Let your SAP users create ServiceNow tickets from RF devices running EWM (LINK)
• Create ServiceNow tickets for Focused Run alerts (LINK)
• All features work with Jira too (LINK) and other ITSM platforms

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