SAP for me

SAP for me is an alternative to the SAP support marketplace.

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

  • What functions does SAP for me offer?

Start of SAP for Me

You can easily start SAP for Me with the URL me.sap.com.

SAP for Me versus support.sap.com

SAP for Me provides some extra functions that are not offered yet by support.sap.com. The general overview of functions is listed in the chapters below.

Highlights:

  • Calendar function
  • Financial invoices and licenses
  • Statistics on open SAP messages

Calendar function

In the calendar function you can quickly see which upcoming maintenance activities there are for your cloud products, planned expert sessions, software release dates, and security patch days:

Portfolio and products overview

In the portfolio and products overview you can see the products (both on premise and cloud) that you are licensed for. You need authorizations to view this page. Authorizations are taken from the rights of your S user.

Finance and legal

In the finance and legal overview you can see the products (both on premise and cloud) that you are licensed for, the invoices and for cloud the current usage. You need authorizations to view this page. Authorizations are taken from the rights of your S user.

Services and support

The services and support overview page is a different view on your tickets open at SAP. It provides quick insight into which tickets are with SAP, and which ones are at customer action (which do require your attention):

Systems and provisioning

Systems and provisioning provides an overview of both on premise and cloud systems:

Users and contacts

Users and contacts page gives overview of your important contacts.

SAP support portal security: mail filtering

SAP support portal is used in your company for many items: EWA’s, reporting issues, downloading software.

Protection of the accounts on SAP support portal for your company is required.

This blog will explain the setup of the security feature for mail filtering.

If you don’t set this up, your user overview will continuously show this warning:

Setting up mail filtering

Go to the support page for mail filtering:

Use the Add Domain button to add a new domain.

Domains to add:

  • Your company mail domain(s)
  • sap.com domain (for support from SAP)
  • Domain of your supplier maintaining your SAP system, in case they use their own mail ID

Background

Background of this feature can be found in OSS note 3025172 – How to add or remove email domains for my customer number – SAP ONE Support Launchpad.

SAP support backbone update

The SAP support backbone update is live per 1.1.2020. Blocking started as of 8.1.2020. If you did not prepare your systems for it, you might loose support functions.

Per 31.07.2020 the sending of EWA’s via RFC towards SAP will no longer work. See OSS note 2923799 – Final Shutdown of RFC Connections From Customer Systems to SAP. At the same date OSS notes downloads via RFC will be fully blocked. Also the RTCCTOOL will stop to work (see oss note 2934203 – ST-A/PI 01T* SP01 – 01U SP00: SAP backbone connectivity for RTCCTOOL on basis 700-731 after RFC shutdown).

You can get or will already get messages like:

Access denied

SAP note 2847665 – OSS RFC Connection fails will refer you to the SAP Backbone connection update site.

Also on the main SAP support site there is this warning message:

Which refers to first-aid kit OSS note: 2874259 – First Aid Kit for Problems Related to SAP’s Support Backbone Switch-Over Starting on 8 January 2020 .

Questions that will be answered in this blog are:

  • Where can I find more background information on the SAP support backbone update?
  • Why can I find first aid support?
  • Do I need to upgrade SAP solution manager?
  • How to switch to digitally signed OSS notes?
  • Do I need to change my OSS RFC’s?
  • What else do I need to do?
  • How to check the correct setup in the SAP EWA report?
  • Where can I find a checklist to see if I am completely done?

Background information on SAP support backbone update

The landing page for SAP support backbone update can be found by following this link.

The webinar recording explaining all the highlights can be found by following this link.

The official OSS note is 2737826 – SAP Support Backbone Update / upcoming changes in SAP Service and Support Backbone interfaces (latest) in January 2020.

2 important OSS notes for quick start of actions:

And the new first aid kit OSS note:

2874259 – First Aid Kit for Problems Related to SAP’s Support Backbone Switch-Over Starting on 8 January 2020

Quick overview of all your systems in SAP service marketplace

SAP now provides the overview of your systems which are not ok in a special online overview. Follow this link. Your result can look like this:

What will change per 1.1.2020?

Basically the connection from SAP solution manager and the on premise SAP systems connection to the SAP backbone will change. This will impact many areas like OSS notes, EWA’s, landscape planning etc.

What do you need to do if you don’t want to loose any functionality?

Solution manager

If you don’t want to loose any functionality in SAP solution manager you will need to upgrade to Solution manager 7.2 to support package 7 or 8. If you are on 8 you have to do less manual work than on 7. On solution manager support packs 5 and 6 some functions will work, but with manual work and limitations. On solution manager 7.1 and solution manager 7.2 up to support pack 3, the connection to SAP support backbone will be lost on 1.1.2020. You can already upgrade to SP8 now and prepare solution manager.

For the automatic configuration of the connectivity follow the instructions in OSS note 2738426 – Automated Configuration of new Support Backbone Communication.

OSS notes

For OSS notes there are 2 changes: the RFC to SAP and digitally signed OSS notes.

For the RFC connection read and follow the instructions from OSS note 2740667 – RFC connection SAPOSS to SAP Service & Support backbone will change (latest) in January 2020.

OSS notes via SNOTE must be switched to digitally signed OSS notes. How to do this: see blog.

Next to this, you will need to change the OSS note RFC destination. The generic user will no longer work. You will need to change it to named technical user, or change to the connection from RFC to https connectivity.

If you setup digitally signed OSS notes there is an option for fallback to insecure.

Attention: this fallback will no longer work after 1.1.2020.

ANST

ANST is a great function to help you find OSS notes relevant for your issue. For more explanation on ANST look at this blog. The ANST reaches out to the SAP support backbone to check for recent notes. To keep the function working you need to setup a new webservice in SOAMANAGER (if the SOAP runtime is not active follow instructions in this blog). To setup the specific webservice follow the instructions in oss note 2730525 – Consuming the Note Search Webservice. Then apply OSS note 2732094 – ANST- Implementing SOAP Based ANST Note Search and 2818143 – SEARCH_NOTES- Implementing SOAP Based Note Search.

While switching to new SAP support backbone you might get a connection error. Follow the instructions from OSS note 2781045 – ANST / ST22 note search “Connection cannot be established” to solve it.

Other calls

See OSS note 2722027 – Certain OSS RFC APIs calls replaced with corresponding web service calls.

Online checklists

SAP has now published online checklists, based on your solution manager version. You can find the checklists on this link.

Support backbone configuration check in EWA report

If you install ST-A/PI 01T sp02 or higher in your system (see OSS note 2827332 – Service Data not Complete due to ST-A/PI not Up-to-date), the EWA report of that system will give information about the correct connection to SAP support backbone and correct use of technical user for the communication.

Example:

In the process OSS note 2802999 - SDCCN activation fails without errors or red icons in Migrate tab might need to be applied as well to solve an SDCCN error.

All background information can be found in OSS note 2823658 – EWA Checks for SAP Backbone Connectivity.

SDCCN error notes

SAP is having some issues with the SDCCN coding for the backbone connectivity. If you experience issues there, check out the following OSS notes: