I am ramping up on SAP Cloud for Customer product and I need to access to the demo/community/trail system of SAP C4C.

Can anyone help me that how can put up a request for this?

The new SAP Cloud for Customer Extended Edition applications (iOS, Android and Windows) give you granular control over the data that is downloaded to a user's device for offline usage.

As a key user, you can configure the rules for this. These rules can be company-wide (valid for all roles) or for specific-roles (Sales Rep, Field Service Agent etc.)

Rules are basically queries which select a set of data that is relevant for the user.

In Cloud for Customer, we have a concept of queries, like 'My Accounts', 'My Open Visits' etc. - the same concept is relevant for offline data distribution as well.

This means that the same queries you are used to working with online, can now be used by the synchronization engine to bring data offline.

This simple solution provides powerful capabilities:

1. Different rules can be setup to bring down different data sets for different user roles (e.g. My Accounts for a Sales Rep, My Team's Account for a Sales Manager)

2. As a key user, you can create queries for all users which are available to them online when they are viewing a list of objects.

3. These same custom queries can then be reused as custom rules which determine what data is downloaded and stored for offline usage!

As a key user, you can maintain these rules under Administrator > Offline Settings.

To get started, you can quickly define rules that are valid for all business roles (common business data valid for everyone in your organization):

and rules that are valid for specific business roles:

A few points to keep in mind:

1. The data downloaded for a user is a union of the data brought down by rules valid for all business roles and her specific business role.

2. The maximum limit for each object is 5000 entries.

3. In certain cases, we bring down related data for objects being downloaded automatically with them - e.g. The Account of a Visit (or Task or Ticket) would be downloaded automatically even if no rule was set up for bringing down Accounts specifically.

We're working on making this concept more 'intelligent' over releases. At the moment, you can set up rules for all objects to make sure their data is downloaded.

More advanced capabilities will come over the next few releases.

With 15.11, we are enhancing the Offline Settings maintenance to enable key-users to setup the rules quicker.

Mass user on-boarding is quicker via the 'Quick Add' feature - you can select a role, and then using 'Quick Add', you can multi-select the rules for all objects in one shot.

Note that apart from business data, data such as code-lists and page layouts etc. are automatically downloaded by the applications. You do not need rules to be configured for them.

SAP Cloud for Customer  Professional Services solution is a “Lead-to-Bid” solution for Professional Services companies which can be used to arrive at  much more accurate opportunity value which will result in more reliable bids and eventually, more profitable projects. This solution offers a seamless integration* between SAP Cloud for Customer Opportunity & SAP Commercial Project Management Master Project and, enables searching for easy identification of previously profitable customers and successful opportunities for them, projects related to these opportunities, their status, issues & profitability. These projects can then be referred for detailed value calculation for similar new opportunities, which will result in more accurate bids

The 1511 Professional Services Industry solution gives the user more control on Status Synchronization between C4C and CPM. User can also include the Past engaged contacts from the previous projects. Using KPIs the Account Manager can also assess the KPIs needed for the Project.

Below are the "What's New for Professional Services from 1511"

1. Status Synchronization : The status of the Opportunity/Project can be changed automatically by making either the Project or Opportunity as the Leading Object.

2. Attributes Synchronization : The Opportunity Key attributes are now available in the CPM Project

3. Past Engagements : Add Contacts from the previous engaged Projects

Below is a DEMO video which gives an overview

Configure data segregation by Territory

The territory structure is defined in the scope of Sales scenario, but can also be used as a criteria to drive Service scenarios. For example it can be used to perform ticket routing or to manage data segregation (e.g. restrict visibility of tickets or customers by country, brand, etc…)

Provided that Territory Management is active in the Tenant, sales administrators can create sales territories and organize them into hierarchies, which are used to delegate responsibility for each sales territory to the appropriate sales representatives. Sales administrators perform all associated tasks under Sales  Territories.

1. 1. Configure automatic assignment of customers to territory

The assignment rule table must be configured to define which customers (accounts or individual customers) should be assigned to territories and how the territory must be chosen. Once the assignment rules are configured, the assignment (realignment run) may be triggered in the following ways:

• Running the mass realignment run.
• Triggering the Derive Territory button on a specific customer.
• Creating a workflow rule that derives territory at every customer creation or save.

To configure assignment rules, perform the following activities:

1. Click Sales, then choose Realignment Runs to open the Realignment Runs editor.

2. Click the New tab, define the following rule:

1. a. In the Select Accounts section, choose Initial to extract all accounts/individual customers or select Accounts to define a pre-filter.
2. b. In the Define Rules section, select Maintain Territory Rules, and insert the list of rules that trigger assignment to each territory defined in the system and activate them from the left top button: Actions. For example in the image below, all customers with country value “Germany” and account category “Person” (individual customers), will belong to territory 176: Germany. The same applies to France, Sweden and other territories.

1. c. Save the Realignment Run and close.

Option 1: Mass realignment run

Run the mass assignment job (realignment run) to perform the initial assignment to all customers. The job can be scheduled to run once, but cannot be scheduled periodically.

Option 2: Derive territory

1. Select the specific Individual Customer, click the tab Actions and Derive Territory, the territory will be updated based on country.

Option 3: Configure Workflow Rules

You can assign the territory automatically also by defining WorkFlow Rules. Select Workflow Rules under Administrator work center:

1. Select the tab New to define a new workflow rule. Enter Basic Data as follows, and the territory will be updated upon each save for every individual customer.

2. Define Actions: select Action: derive territories.

3. Activate, and Finish.

Option 4: Manual assignment of territory to customers

Users can also manually assign territory to each customer as follows: select Individual Customers under Customers work center, go to Sales Territories page, manually Add territory data.

1. 2. Configure Business Roles Restricted by Territories

The last step is to configure the business roles to have restricted access to individual customers information based on assigned territories. This require to configure a business role and to assign Employees to the role and the relevant territories.

1. 1. Go to General Settings page under Administrator work center, select active User Role: Service Rep Territory (which has been created for Service Representative by Territory User Role), and click Edit tab:
2. 2. Select Access Restrictions page, set Read Access and/or Write Access as Restricted, and select Restriction Rule: 3 – Assigned Territores.

Add Employees to Territory

1. 1. Go to Territories under Sales work center, select the territory as below:

1. 2. Click Add tab to add employees to the territory:

From now on, the Employee will only see customers assigned to territories to which he is authorized. Note: if a customer has no territory, then all Employees will be able to see it.

Bohu SHU

Massimo Morandi

Hi,

Over the years, we have created loads of information to help you with integration topics through presentations, videos, blogs, and documents. They are spread across various channels: SAP Help Portal, SAP Service Marketplace, and SAP Community Network. We have received feedback that even though they are helpful, it is difficult for you, our customers and partners, to filter out these resources required for a specific integration topic.

In order to tackle this problem, we have treaded on the path towards:

• Simplifying documentation– For example:
  • No more huge integration guides
  • Documentation is available while performing an activity in the on-premise system
  • More topics in quick start guides to help with functional information
• Creating a single point of reference for each integration topic –
  One page with all resources for each integration topic is now available on the SAP Help portal.
  

Leave a comment on this blog with your feedback.

Let us make things as simple as possible, but not simpler!

Thank you,
Sapna

This feature was introduced in 1508 and is a really neat control to have.

It basically allows you to have ONE field, but support MULTIPLE values for the same. Much like Sports(=field), and Cricket, Hockey, Soccer being the multiple values. Without this, one would have to create separate fields for each value, and possibly indicate them as individual Indicators/checkboxes on the UI

This blog gives you a look into how this feature can be used in C4C:

1. To create an MVC(Multi-Value-Codelist), go to the Adaptation Mode in HTML5 and create an extension field, of type Multivalued list. You can now maintain the different values.. In the example below I have a field called ProductsAllowed, and the values possible are SAP ERP, Ariba and Bobj.

2. In the properties of this field, you can specify the further usage eg: if you want to extend it to certain Data Sources or Services for Integration

3. You can also enhance the Advanced Search of the OWL to be able to search on specific values (the values specified are interpreted as 'OR' as of 1511).. hence searching for SAP ERP, Ariba would search for any record which has either of these specified. Having the AND condition is also in the backlog for a future release

That's it !!

Now, you can maintain values for the transaction or master data

Eg: On the Account TI, i have maintained the following values

MVC is also Supported in Code List Restrictions -list of allowed values for a code list can be thus specified based on a control field : Eg:

Other capabilities of MVCs include the following:

• Supported in A2X and A2A Apis as well as oData APIs, and in migration as well
• Can be used in Rule Engines like Territory Rules
• Can be used in Workflows
• Can be defined and transferred using Page Layouts

For Integration, it may be required to do some logic to do the mapping of values between the values in C4C and ERP/CRM.. Just to know, the values that are stored would be comma separated, so the logic should ensure that the separator can be considered to identify individual values.

Eg: Though from a different use case, this is just to show how the values are ultimately stored in the backend:

Hope this helps !!

Cheers !

Vinita

This Blog is like a quick reference to the Sales Features that have been provided with 1511 - based on the Webinar from Product management that you can navigate to from here: Get up to speed with the latest information and news on SAP Cloud for Customer

You should anyways check the 'What's New' and http://help.sap.com for more details

• Business Partners ->
  • Change History  for BP
    • for Employees, Partners, Partner Contacts, competitors and filters for Who, When, Old and New Value
    • Change History OWL available for Admin in the BetaAdmin WoC -> Operations
  • Duplicate Check for Competitors
  • Instance restrictions in mixed BP Value help -> Eg Value Help of Involved Parties will only list BPs as per the access restrictions applicable
• Leads and Opportunities ->
  • Reporting on Lead Item is possible now
  • Notes History available apart from Notes. Use either one of them - controlled by a scoping question. If set to In Scope, the notes control behaves like a Notes History, else behaves like a Text Edit Control
  • Opportunities -> Revenue Scheduling at Header -> Schedule Revenue Checkbox -> Specify Revenue Split Partners. Use Expected value or Negotiated value, monthly quarterly or yearly. The data sources, A2X and Migration Templates have also been enhanced to reflect this
  • Opportunity Hierarchy
  • Approval Action available within Opportunity TI as well
• Activities
  • On Behalf of can be removed in scoping
  • Phone Call now has involved parties
  • Workflow Rules and notification rules can be defined for phone calls
  • Visits and Appointments - Completed and Cancelled available for both
  • Sales Area available for Searching in Appointments
  • For Phone calls and Emails, the preceding Lead information is now available for reporting
  • Offline -> Involved Parties, Follow-Up Items and Global and Facet level actions available
• Visits
  • In the Accounts TI, new facet called Visits by Sales Area available, with possibility to specify frequency, duration and visiting Information
  • Notes also available per Sales area
  • Visits belonging to the Sales Area available in this facet above, other visits that don’t belong to any Sales Area visible in the Visits facet of the Account TI
  • Visit facet on contacts
  • Involved Parties/Other Parties available in the Visits TI - eg Non-Contacts can also attend and other parties in defined roles can attend these
  • Reporting -> Can report from Routes now, and also have planned vs completed visits summary
  • Contacts and Attendees of a visit can now receive a notification
• Routes
  • Sales Area supported
  • Visits generated from that Route will have the same Sales Area information as the route
  • Sales Area considered in Advanced search queries
  • Visit Proposal -> proposal generated based on Account's Visit By(date) information. Considers the number of recurrences within a date range based on visit frequency and adds recurring visits to the routes
  • Query/Search enhancements -> In the Routes while looking for the accounts, one can search by the territory, also an 'Owner's Accounts' query is available which lists all the Accounts belonging to the Route Owner
  • Route Owner's Schedule flag: in QC and Overview -> Routes can then display the route schedule and honor the existing appointments and visits when visit planning within that route
• Sales Quotes
  • QC-> Fast Product entry -> Add products button -> to add All Products, Products from Past orders, from Product Lists and Promotions. Quantities can be adjusted then and there (personalization)
  • In QC -> per product, discount can also be maintained
  • Notes -> External and Internal Notes are available already at both header and item level. Now these notes can be entered as formatted text. Can be pushed to printing as well and has to be enabled via scoping. Form templates would have to be adapted to switch to the data type formatted text. Available in HTML5 only
  • On a touch enabled device, it is now possible to sign directly using the Sign function and sign is also added to the Sales Quote Print form -> scoping question for this
  • Date profile configuration for default of 'Requested Date' now available for Sales Quotes and Sales Orders as well
  • Pricing Date on Sales Quote can be defaulted by Fine Tuning - for each document type you can define the pricing date to default to either Today's date or Requested Date(header)
  • Notifications -> Additional recipients Account Team and Territory Team now available. Also on SO
• Company Settings -> Possible to
  • Disable User Personalization features
  • Enable Horizontal Scrollbar
  • Disable Flags
  • Disable Follow
  • Disable Go to SAP Store
  • Disable Download button
  • Disable Favorites
  • (Key users will still have access to these in SL UI)
• Surveys
  • Possibility to create a SO based on a survey response to a question - valid only for Surveys of Product Types. Quantity proposal can also be linked to the response of a question in the survey
  • Product Lists ->
    • The product lists defined at the Account Hierarchy level would be available to all the child accounts as well at runtime.
    • These product lists can be filtered based upon the sales area of the Account in the Visits and Surveys
    • Final products listed on the surveys of the visit will be determined at runtime based upon the products maintained at design time, plus products determined from the relevant product lists
    • Questions can be added from the Survey to a glossary which can later be re-used (fetch questions from glossary)
    • Possible to Create Target groups from Survey Reports -> From the Business Partner Survey and Visit Survey reports, based upon the responses obtained from the set of accounts -> these accounts can be created as a target group
• Promotions
  • Search fields for promotions -> Actual and Planned From and end dates
  • Within the Account TI -> Promotions facet -> a new query to show the promotions that are available for the child accounts is available
• Products
  • Products TI -> GTIN(Global Trade Item Number) Facet -> For diff UoM, GTINs can be added now. Also available as a search criteria in value helps and advanced search
  • Rounding values and Threshold values can be maintained for products
  • Per Sales Area you can define which Rounding profile should be used
• Sales Orders
  • General Enhancements
    • SO available for Territory Realignment
    • Cross Sell and Upsell like in Quotes
    • Pricing Date and Requested Delivery Date in Fine Tuning
    • Custom Involved Parties at Order Item Level
    • Create order from Opp
    • Follow up Activities from an Order
    • A2X service/API for SO is available
    • oData Read Service
  • Enhanced Order Entry
    • Past Five Orders information for each Order Item
    • Internal Order Support -> With Internal Order Pricing and approval workflow
  • Offline Order Entry
    • Addition of products from product Master, product list, past orders and promotions
    • Offline validations
    • Defaulting of Ship To based on Sold To and vice versa
    • Calculation of prices
    • Account Block Check
    • MOQ check
  • Offline Pricing
    • Upload prices from third Party system to use in Offline Price Calculation
    • Support for Base Price and Customer Specific price at Sales Area level
    • Manual discounts and absolute discounts
• Territory Management
  • Territory Team -> start and end dates of employee assignment. Default is current date to 9999
  • Only active assignments are considered when determining members in a sales or service transaction as well as for authorizations
  • Delta Upload of Territory Team using excel -> you can specify create or delete as action against each line of the territory team and also start and end dates(optional)
  • Change History available
  • Territory Header is now extensible, also new facets can be added to Territory TI, and reports can be embedded using Key User Adaptation
• Analytics
  • Restrict who can edit Analytical Objects - reports, Key Figures, Data Sources, Relative selections, Key figures
  • Reports can be assigned to Sales Units. Only those admin users that are part of the Sales Units can then edit the object
  • Custom Fiscal years can be created in Fine Tuning for reporting on these fiscal years -> you can define custom periods, custom quarters
  • Additional relative selection for fiscal years are available on dates - eg: Current Fiscal Quarter, current FQ+1, current fiscal yea, etc
  • New charts for Dashboards and KPIs like Bullet and Heat Map in HTML5
  • Key User Analytics -> Cloud Data Source Template along with its header and sample data can be downloaded
  • Analysis Pattern now added to RUI under Analyis WoC
  • New dashboards comparing Target vs Pipeline vs Opportunity
• Target Groups
  • Contacts without Accounts can be added to Target Groups -> campaigns can be executed for these members
  • Employees can be added to Target Groups. Employees can also be added to the Target Groups using export and import of employees. Also supported in migration template. BUT, currently campaign cannot be executed for employees
  • Complete address can be viewed in member list as well as query result. Helpful when multiple contacts with the same account are available, and it aims at choosing the right contact based on the address
  • You can search and add members based on Marketing Attributes
  • Individual customers can also be selected an added to a target group from the IC OWL
• Custom Object Builder
  • Auto number generation for Identifiers
  • For the Accounts TI only for now, if a Custom Object has a unique relationship with the Account,  (Relation to Thing Type Account) then it can be used to generate a tab for the Custom Object within the Account TI(flag 'Add as tab to Account')
• KUT
  • For Date fields across C4C, a relative select is available in the Advanced Search- to select by Current/Next/Last Quarter, Month, Week, Year, 30 days, 90 days, 365 days etc
  • You can define and publish a query like my Opp -> current Quarter
  • Workflow Rule to configure eg: send email on completion of import of Page Layout
  • Workflow Rule with conditions for the business Object 'Content Transfer' -> eg when Upload status = Complete, send mail to named employee
  • Formatted text available in pdf forms
  • You can re-orders panes and sections within a facet -> by changing the Row, column posn and span or using drag drop in html5
  • Multi Value Code List ->
    • Search enabled(OR condition),
    • supported in A2X and A2A Apis as well as oData APIs, and in migration as well.
    • Can be used in Rule Engines like Territory Rules and
    • in Workflows as well.
    • Can be defined and transferred using Page Layouts
    • Supported in Code List Restrictions -list of allowed values for a code list can be thus specified based on a control field
• Code List
  • Multi Value Code list restriction Supported in Code List Restrictions -list of allowed values for a code list can be thus specified based on a control field
  • Default values can be specified for specific control field values

• Multiple values that are Comma Separated can be specified in the Advanced Search for text fields like ID and name.

This blog discusses how the 'Group' feature of JAM can be used in C4C - in Accounts, Opportunities, Service Tickets

A JAM group is essentially a collaboration room that has many features like collaborating through discussions and staying updated via feeds, having documents, folders in an organized manner and so on. C4C leverages its capabilities to provide an Integration to JAM and being able to collaborate in the context of business transactions like Opportunities and Service Tickets and in the context of Accounts..

A deal room scenario where people collaborate to get a deal from an Account, by checking all the details of the Account and related Opportunities and Service Tickets would be a typical example

Individual groups can thus be created to discuss and participate for Individual Accounts, Opportunities and Service Requests, but also to feature the same Opportunity/Service Ticket in other groups as well - eg: Where the opportunities of a particular Account should feature in the group created for the Account

Pre-requisite is that JAM Integration has been set up and

1.    In case of basic authentication, the user used to login to C4C need to have access to Account, Customer Service and Sales WoC.
2.    In case of OAuth 2.0 authentication, the user who is logging into JAM needs to be mapped to a user in C4C who has the access to Account, Customer Service and Sales WoC.

The flow that we would follow in this blog is as follows:

- (C4C) As a business user create a Group for an Account in the Account TI (Groups can of course be created directly in JAM as well) but here, we are creating this in C4C

- (JAM) Navigate to the newly created Jam Group from C4C to Jam

- (JAM) Explore the group to see the details of the Account, Opportunities linked to it and the Service Tickets

- (JAM) from JAM, select a Business Record like an Opportunity to feature in this group

- (C4C) Open the Opportunity in C4C and check that this is now featured in the group that was originally created for the Account

- (C4C) Be able to feature an Opportunity in a recommended group from within C4C (Note that since this was not working as of today, there is no data that I could show here)

1. Create a group for an Account

2. Navigate from the newly created Group link to the JAM site

3. Within JAM, you now come to the Account Overview page. The structure of this group that is Overview/Opportunities/Service Tickets, Documents etc comes from the template that was specified during the creation of the group as in 1) above. If this template wasnt specified, it would create a normal Jam group. Using the communication setup that was specified between C4C and JAM, Jam uses it to pull in information from C4C and display it within JAM itself

4. Navigate into the separate tabs above eg Opportunities to see the information that was assimilated from C4C

5. Now, (from JAM:Scenario 1), one might want to go to individual Opportunities (irrespective of whether they belong to this Account or not) and feature that Opportunity in this Jam Group. To do this, go to the Main Menu in Jam and select Business Records -> Cloud for Customer ->Opportunities

6. The view now lists all the Opportunities that you have access to -> you can search for the specific Opportunity now and choose to 'Feature' this Opp in a specified group.

Note that when searching for the group, there is no Value Help available, but if you type in a few characters, the auto suggest works to show you the options

This Opportunity has now been featured in the Caterpillar Inc group

7. You can also associate the same opportunity in another group as well

8. Once done, you can go to C4C and check the groups that this Opportunity has been featured in, as well as the Group (if any) that was created for this opportunity specifically

9. Within C4C as well, there is a possibility to feature this Opportunity in another group (Scenario 2) and to do so, you need to choose the filter Option 'Recommended Groups' from the dropdown, and the system proposes a list of groups on its own based on matching names, etc.. this logic cannot be changed though. Based on the recommended groups, one can select a particular group and choose to feature this Opportunity in that group.

(The recommended list part was not working as of today and I shall update this information as soon as its there)..

Hope this was useful

Cheers !

Vinita

Here is a list of inbound web services related to Installed Base Management.

1. “Installed Base Replication from External System” - Communication scenario for Installed Base and Installation Point A2A Services.

          The two services in this scenario are:

• Installed Base Replication
• Installation Point Replication

You can download the WSDL and the Documentation for these.

Migration templates are also available for Installed Base and Registered Product:

• Migration of Installed Bases
• Migration of Installation Points

     2. The A2X services are also available for Installed Base and Registered Product.

          NOTE: these interfaces support limited features only (the A2A services given above are the latest). The information about A2X is included here so that you are aware of what exists and do not get confused with the multiple services if you come across them.

          “Installed Base Integration” – Communication scenario for the A2X services with following interfaces:

• ManageInstalledBaseIn
• QueryInstalledBaseIn
• ManageRegisteredProductIn
• QueryRegisteredProductIn

NOTE: The migration template available under the activity “Migration of Registered Product” supports limited features only. Instead use the template provided with activity “Migration of Installation Points” for Registered Products which provides all the features.

Question:

if a customer has multiple service contracts (with or without covered products), and there are default SLAs for generic ticket attributes, in what sequence will the SLO get applied?

Answer:

SLO Determination Sequence in general :

1. SLO in Contracts from ticket attributes
2. SLO from ticket attribute

Example :SLO usage in Contract/ ticket

Given:

I Contract ´A´ (with Contract SLO ´B´on Header), which is determined/ selected if account ´C´ [with/without covered products] was entered in ticket -`

II Ticket `E´, ´G´, ´H´, ´I´ and  ´L´ are created which allow

    usage of SLO ´B´ derived from a contract ´A´ ... and/or ...

    usage of a `Standard´ SLO ´F´ derived from ticket attribute or independent from ticket attribute the SLO ´K´

1) If both SLO´s  ´B´ and´F´ can be applied related to the entered values in the ticket ´E´:
-> then system will automatically determine/ calculate with contract SLO ´B´ 

2) If only the Standard SLO can be applied related to the entered values in the ticket ´G´:

    -> then system will automatically determine/ calculate withstandard SLO ´F´

3) If only the Contract SLO can be applied related to the entered values in the ticket ´H´:
-> then system will automatically determine/ calculate withcontract SLO ´B´

4) If none SLO can be applied related to the entered values in the ticket ´I´:
-> then system will automatically determine no SLO

5) If the user overwrites the automatically determined SLOs ´B´ or ´F´ or ´no SLO ´, manually in the ticket ´L´ ...by a different SLO ´K´

    -> then system will use this SLO ´K´ and won´t process an automatic [re-]determination 

Dear Community,

We crossed another extremely important milestone on the community in the past few weeks and wanted to take a moment to acknowledge you, our dedicated community participant and say THANK YOU!!!

The milestone we crossed was that we now have more than 1 MILLION views on the content of this community.

The traffic per month and the cumulated traffic number is outlined below

We are well over 2500 pieces of content on the community

The monthly growth in content and cumulative growth are outlined below

The top 10 Blogs/Documents as of the moment are

The Top 10 Discussions as of the moment are

The following are some of the superstars who have helped along the journey

Community interactions really took off in 2015 and monthly interactions are outlined below

We have had the time of our lives in 2015 enabling you to be successful with SAP Cloud for Customer SaaS via the community and would like to THANK everyone that chose to visit, stop by and, most importantly, contribute on the community.

You know who you are and you are special and awesome.

The C4C SCN Community team offers you our heartfelt THANK YOU!!!

GENBAND Inc. provides real time communications software solutions. The Company offers element management systems, cloud services, client platforms, session border and call controllers, and media and wireless access gateways. GENBAND serves customers worldwide

Genband chose SAP over competitive SaaS offerings to enhance customer engagement business processes.

Objectives

• Increase collaboration across a global workforce
• Drive faster time-to-market for new solutions

Why SAP

• Ability to go live quickly and easily worldwide
• Global access to company data through the cloud

Benefits

• Provides employees with an efficient way to share knowledge and best practices with colleagues around the world
• Enables employees to create forums for faster, better communication
• Provides channel partners and service contractors with a single repository for asking questions and finding technical information

Check out the video below to understand some of the factors that went into moving to C4C as the customer engagement platform.

GENBAND ensures a smooth migration to next-generation networks. The company provides carrier-class networking gear that telecommunications providers use to deploy voice and multimedia services. Designed for fixed, wireless, and cable operators, its products include media gateways, controllers, and application servers. Communications service providers use GENBAND's products to build and upgrade their networks.

The topic of the C4C tenant strategy has been coming to the forefront in many customer discussions. 

There is an excellent blog already covering this topic, but wanted to take the time to provide the consulting perspective, based on the numerous inquiries we have received from customers and partners.

http://scn.sap.com/community/cloud-for-customer/blog/2015/06/29/sap-cloud-for-customer-tenant-landscapes-tenant-landscape-use-case-examples

It also look forward to some more recent feedback and experiences from the field.

While our roots with C4C are rooted in the "keep it simple" approach, the need to integrate into existing system landscapes has made it necessary to expand our approach to accommodate those landscapes.   From a subscription perspective this is an important consideration since each tenant added to the integrated landscape requires a subscription to a test tenant.

From an implementation perspective the tenant strategy can be a key effort driver, especially in lean projects, where the setup of new tenants can have a significant impact on the overall effort.  The tenant strategy should ideally be covered in the sales cycle to make sure the order form has the correct number of tenants and that the implementation partner includes the appropriate effort to setup, integrate and maintain those tenants.

1 tenant strategy

From a platform perspective a single tenant strategy was originally part of the vision.  A customer could configure the system and go-live.  While this seemed like a good idea from a competitive perspective, SAP isolates the productive tenants in exclusive production environments.  It quickly became evident that customers willing to take this approach were very few and usually very small.  Most customers required an established test environment. Once a customer decided they needed a test tenant it required added effort and human intervention to move the tenants to a test environment.

We have since eliminated this option.  SAP currently provides an initial test tenant with every subscription.  If this initial test tenant is used as the sandbox, it is not to be placed in the permanent integrated landscape.  This test tenant or sandbox can be used to establish the baseline configuration and perform testing.  Once testing is completed and signed off, the production tenant can be requested in the Service Control work center using the Test tenant solution profile as the source.  The production tenant should only be requested once you have completed testing to minimize the amount of dual maintenance required in each tenant.

Once live, the test tenant/sandbox can be decommissioned if the desired end state is a single Production tenant. A new test tenant can be requested as part of a change project, to support ongoing configuration changes.

This approach works well with standalone implementations.  However, if integration and/or customization with the SDK is part of the project scope, at least one permanent test tenant needs to be on the order form, to form part of the permanent integrated landscape.

2 tenant strategy

The 2 tenant strategy links a C4C Test tenant to the OnPrem QA environment. All testing and training is performed in this tenant.

Since there is only 1 test environment, you need to be aware that the initial data load will be performed in this tenant.  While you want to give your key users access to the system as soon as you can, you also need to make sure you are not creating any issues that will affect the data load through the interfaces.

Example: if you are planning to integrate the organizational structure, you may consider creating a 'dummy' org structure for the initial setup, so that the full org structure load is properly tested and you are not creating any conflicts.  For master data and transactional data we generally recommend using separate internal (automatically internally assigned) number ranges in C4C to minimize number range conflicts. C4C handles the mapping of the external ID, in the ID mapping tables automatically.

The 2 tenant strategy assumes that the integration is fairly standard and that you are not expecting to do any interface testing in the OnPrem DEV environment. Changes in DEV need to be transported to QA before they can be tested, so in implementations with extensive custom work in the OnPrem environment, the 2 tenant strategy hits its limitations since it may require a lot of iterative transports to perform testing in QA.  In these cases it becomes necessary to integrate a C4C tenant to the OnPrem DEV system.

The Test tenant can be used for minor SDK development.

In some cases customer have connected their Test tenant to the DEV OnPrem system, customers usually prefer to performing user acceptance testing (UAT) in their OnPrem QA system.

While it's tempting to want to attach the C4C test tenant to the OnPrem DEV system and subsequently disconnect it and connect it to the QA system, we strongly recommend against this approach.  There are various issues with this approach, most notably the issues that the mapping IDs are mismatched for all master and transactional data.  In addition most of the integration work has to be reconfigured, which argues towards just integrating separate tenants anyway.

3 tenant strategy

This is becoming the more common C4C tenant strategy based on our customer's OnPrem landscape, mirroring the DEV, QA, PROD concepts we are so familiar with in the OnPrem world.  The DEV tenant is used primarily by consultants and key users, whereas the QA tenant is used for user acceptance testing and training. It allows you to perform unit testing of the integration in a DEV tenant, and allows you to perform a 'clean' initial data load in the QA environment. Wherever possible, the QA tenant should be populated with the complete data set from the OnPrem system, similar to the planned production tenant cutover plan.  It does require more effort, since each tenant requires setup tasks, which include the org structure, foundation data, field extensions and reports.

It also requires more ongoing maintenance post golive, since the changes need to be propagated manually through the tenant landscape, which calls for strong configuration change control processes.

The benefits of this approach mainly relate to the fact that the process of building out and populating the QA tenant acts as a dress rehearsal for the production cutover, giving everyone a higher level of confidence in the process steps and time needed to perform the productive cutover.  It also provides a cleaner environment for integration testing and training, with less junk data.  DEV tenants may also have stranded or in process solution design attempts such as extraneous field extensions, which should be cleaned up in the QA tenant, so that testing and training activities are isolated from ongoing solution design activities.

3 tenant strategy + SDK

Generally for major SDK work we recommend an isolated tenant for the development to avoid destabilizing the DEV tenant.  It is also recommended that when requesting this SDK tenant it be provisioned in a separate system.  This can be achieved by logging a ticket for the new tenant request and specifying the need for the tenant to be provisioned in a separate system.

1+N strategy

Many customer employ a 1 + N strategy in their OnPrem landscape.  This approach provides multiple paths to production.  Example:  They have a sustaining path used for support and patches, and an 'project' path used for major upgrades or implementation projects.  Based on our experience we try to keep it simple and not to mirror every OnPrem system.  Generally we would recommend connecting to one of the paths to production, such as the 'project' path.

This blog does not cover every possible tenant landscape option, but should cover the most common ones.  Depending on the customer you will encounter more complex environments, but I think many of the justifications described above will help guide you to an appropriate landscape strategy.

Refreshing landscapes

Customers often want to see more recent data from the production tenant in their test tenants and want to refresh their tenants.  SAP does not provide the option to 'refresh' a C4C tenant, so you basically have to decommission and request a new tenant as a copy of PROD.  This includes all the data and communication arrangements and ID mapping.  While the communication arrangements can be reconfigured to connect to the OnPrem QA system, the ID mapping of the master and transaction data will most likely not match QA unless the OnPrem environment is 'refreshed' at the same time.  We would recommend that any requests to refresh the data be a coordinated project across the landscape and that the frequency of these requests be limited.  This is ultimately a question of cost and effort to coordinate and execute a complete landscape refresh.  Many customers do not refresh their landscapes regularly.

Migration template for installation points can be used to create multiple installation points at the same time. This can also be used to create a hierarchy of installation points. However when this is done, sometimes the hierarchy is not created correctly. When we try to create parent and child installation points at the same time, if the child installation point gets created before the parent then this issue happens. This blog explains how to use the migration template to create hierarchy in a consistent way.

There are two approaches which can be used to create a hierarchy of installation points.

Approach 1)

This approach is straightforward. In order to create a hierarchy, make sure that the parent installation points are created first and then the children.

a) Execute migration with migration mode "Add new records" for parent installation points

b) Once above migration is completed successfully, execute migration with migration mode "Add new records" for lower level installation points.

This approach can be used if the levels of hierarchy are 1 or 2 because with each new level we have to run migration template again to create the installation points at that level.

Approach 2)

This approach can be used to create installation point hierarchy with any level of hierarchy by running migration template exactly 2 times.

a) Create all installation points ( parent and children ) in the same level using the migration mode "Add new records". Leave the parent installation point column as blank and execute migration.

After the completion of the above step the installation points will be created at level 1 as shown below

b) Copy the migration template file to a new file.Choose the migration mode as "Replace Already existing records".

Keep all the data same as before, don't modify any data. Add the data in the column "Parent Installation Point ID" as per hierarchy requirement

Execute migration completing all the steps

After migration is complete the hierarchy will be created as per requirement.

As you would have observed using this approach any level of hierarchy of installation points can be created by executing migration exactly 2 times. Hope this information is helpful.

It’s only been six months since we launched SAP’s first digital native offering at SAPPHIRE and the response has been nothing short of amazing.  We received over 2000 sign-ups, ramped up early customers and also managed to win the TMC Labs Innovation award for 2015 in our first attempt.

Come November, we will introduce a major product update and I am excited to talk about the key features that will come in this version of the product. To register, go to www.sapstore.com/D4C to get you free trial today.

But first, a short re-cap if you missed the launch party

What is SAP Digital for Customer Engagement (D4C)?  D4C is an all-in-one Customer Engagement solution built for teams. Designed with a cloud and mobile first approach, it has the simplicity to get you up and running in minutes, while still offering the robustness and performance as the enterprise edition of SAP Cloud for Customer.

Why all-in-one? We think the CRM market has reached a tipping point where point solutions no longer cut it for teams. Companies need to think beyond traditional CRM solutions as they spend way too much time and money integrating these solutions rather than getting value out of each of the solutions.

So why go with SAP anyway?  With SAP, you get much more value with an affordable, all-one solution that not only spans seamlessly from marketing, sales and service but offers the robustness and enterprise grade capabilities that we use for some of our largest customers . If you are running a business or leading a team, you know the sum is greater than all the parts.

What if my team’s needs grow? Can I upgrade to SAP C4C?

SAP D4C is designed exactly for customers who want a low-risk standalone solution that they can go live within weeks and eventually upgrade to C4C as their needs grow.

So how do I get started? What is so unique about the trial?

Go to sapstore.com/D4C and register for the 30 day free trial. It does not require credit card upfront and is designed to easily on-board your team members.  Moreover, SAP D4C is the first solution in SAP to offer a private live productive instance for a trial. You continue to use the same instance once you switch to a paid subscription. It is this unique part that makes the trial to paid experience completely frictionless.

Now let us take a look at the key capabilities of the solution,

1. Sales force automation (SFA): comprehensive capabilities to track customer interactions, improve your forecast and close more deals.

2. Marketing: E-mail marketing automation and anlytics to offer closed loop marketing experience for teams.

3. Service: Quickly respond and manage customer inquiries with email & social ticket management.

4. Integration: Import your data from your existing legacy CRM systems using CSV files or Google contacts. Groupware integration with Microsoft Outlook is also supported.

5. Simplified team, data and access management: Data access restrictions using public, private and team access.

6. Enhanced on-boarding experience: Get started with guided product walkthroughs in a pre-loaded sample data tenant

7. Collaboration: Use feeds to communicate with your team on deals, accounts, leads and in general to keep the team on the same page

8. Personalize and Extend the Solution: Easily customize and extend the solution in the adaptation mode.

9. Native Mobile Applications for iOS and Android: SAP D4C is a mobile first application. Now your sales reps can access customer data on the go anytime, anywhere.

10. Rich Analytics powered by SAP HANA: Real time standard out-of-the-box reports at the fingertips of your team, delivering information when and where is needed

Connect with the product team directly & share your feedback on the SAP D4C Idea Place !

Dear C4C Academy Community Member,

This letter is addressed to the members of the C4C Academy community on SAP Jam to turn on email notifications to stay on top of all the invaluable material that is being shared via the C4C Academy as regards SAP Cloud for Customer.

You can conveniently choose a frequency at which you would like to receive email notifications from SAP Jam from among the options shown in the screen grab below:

Immediate notification is the selected option in the screenshot below:

You can potentially choose a daily summary of email notifications

You can potentially choose a weekly summary of email notifications

A lot of you have "None" as your chosen option at this time and we would love to see that change to one of the options above

Please make it a point to actively subscribe to email notifications to stay on top of all the invaluable material that is being shared via the C4C Academy as regards SAP Cloud for Customer.

Thank you for your time and attention to this important matter.

Sincerely,

Your SAP C4C Academy Team

Check out the following video to see how easy it is to build and embed SAP Lumira reports in SAP Cloud for Customer.

3 Simple Steps to achieve the desired end result:

1. Build an Excel Data Repository
2. Build a Lumira Story
3. Mash Up teh story above in SAP Cloud for Customer

Check out the short video below to conveniently make these reports for yourself as well

Thank you for your time and attention.

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Make a story public in SAP Lumira Cloud and embed in a web page

SAP Cloud for Customerfor Automotive is a next generation sales solution built on cloud platform for Automotive  Dealers and Importers enabling them to consistently sell more vehicles, services, parts and accessories at better margin using best-in-class sales methodologies and optimize inventory to drive revenue, reduce costs, and increase customer loyalty.

The solution covers

• Account & Contact Management
• Lead, Opportunity and Activity Management
• Email & Calendar Integration
• Automotive specific capabilities like – Vehicle Model, Additional Services & Accessories Sale, Quote Generation
• Custom Integration with SAP Dealer Business Management (DBM) ( Partner can integrate to existing DBM Solution using service exposed)

Automotive Sales Scenario

Automotive Service Scenario

Solution Overview of C4C Automotive

Expert On-Demand

Defintion

The idea of an expert on-demand is to have a 10-day time and material assignment of an experienced implementation consultant who can be consulted for project related questions. For all new C4C partners we highly recommend to use this service for the first implementation projects. This approach is established across all our partners and became a kind of best-practice.

Please find here details regarding the potential support areas.

Project management                                                                                                         

• Support of project management and cloud methodology related questions (Project planning, Solution Review, Key-User Enablement, Test Management, Tenant Management, Upgrade Management, Release vs. Project planning)

Functional

• Support of questions related to the implementation of Cloud for Marketing
• Support of questions related to the implementation of Cloud for Sales
• Support of questions related to the implementation of Cloud for Service
• Support of questions related to the Groupware-Integration with C4C (except questions to the individual add-in distribution policy)
• Support of questions related to the C4C analytics

Integration

• Support of  conceptional questions to the integration of C4C and SAP ERP/SAP CRM via SAP HANA Cloud Integration (HCI)/SAP Process Orchestration (SAP PO)
• Support of technical questions to the integration of C4C with SAP ERP/SAP CRM via SAP HANA Cloud Integration (HCI)/SAP Process Orchestration (SAP PO)
• Support of conceptional questions related to C4C APIs (A2X-interfaces) for 3rd party integration
• Support of technical questions related to C4C APIs (A2X-interfaces) for 3rd party integration
• Support of analyzing communication errors during the technical connection of C4C

Extensibility

• Support of conceptional questions regarding custom implementations or adaptations of the C4C system (KUT/SDK)
• Support of technical questions regarding custom implementations or adaptations of the C4C system (KUT/SDK)

Prerequisites and Exceptions 

• The expert on-demand works together with the partner consultant and not with the customer
• The expert on-demand is no additional project resource who is setting up the customer system
• The partner consultants have successfully attended the trainings C4C10 and C4C50 or C4C30 before requesting support in the respective area

How to request an Expert On-Demand

For requesting and officially booking an expert on demand you need to provide us the following information:

• partner name,
• contact person plus email/telephone
• location
• in which area do you need support (see list above for reference)

Please provide the information either

• to your Partner Manager
• per mail viathis link.