I’m just writing some documentation for my current project. I have done a lot of work on documenting the way that I, as a developer would like to see.
One large issue is how much information should be given to the support people in the documentation.
SAP PI/XI is a lot different than monitoring an ERP system that a regular basis consultant does.
- There are multiply areas where a message can fail Adapter Engine, Integration Engine and ccBPMs, all of these areas need. The support personal need to know how all areas work and how to find areas in each tool.
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PI is interfacing up against a lot of different systems, an all of those systems and also be a reason for the error.
To monitor the Process Integration system you need some basic knowledge on how it works and which components it contain. For trouble shooting you will need knowledge on how to browse the Enterprise Service Builder and the Directory. If the support does not know this they will need an extensive amount of documentation of the configuration and used objects. If they know how to browse the ESR and Directory you can use much less information and the document is not as intensive.
I would argue that to monitor a SAP PI system you will need a good understanding on how the PI works and how to browse the objects. That will also make the solving of problems much easier.
It is fairly simple to find all the messages that fail in the integration engine or another place. It is just to search for failed messages. A much more difficult task is to find why an order was not delivered or mapped correctly. First you need to find the time the order idoc/proxy was created, and then find the message in the adapter monitor. This can be a bit difficult and require opening a lot messages to find the correct file. Next step is to validate the mapping of the message and learn that one of the fields in the order idoc was not filled out. This step probably requires a developer there is probably a step in between this two functions where the task needs to be handed over from support to developers. Though it all depend on the organizations size and how it functions.
I will be talking at SAP Teched session PMC233 in Las Vegas
about how to documentation.
I have also created a survey of how people use SAP PI for documentation. The survey is free.