Configuration of IDoc Channels

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Background Information

IDocs (Intermediate Documents) are standard containers for exchanging data between applications. Between SAP applications they are transferred using the ALE (Application Link Enabling) layer which again uses either tRFC or File technology as the underlying technique.

An IDoc contains different types of information. It contains the application data to be exchanged (e.g. a sales orders) as well as technical data providing information from where to where the IDoc is supposed to be sent. Furthermore, the IDoc also contains status information that shows which processing step within the data exchange the IDoc is currently in. These statuses can indicate error situations or success situations. Some of them can be intermediate statuses that are indicating backlog situations.

For an end-to-end ALE monitoring it is necessary to monitor the various IDoc statuses in the outbound as well as the inbound direction.

The IDoc monitoring functions in IF Monitoring enable you to restrict the monitoring to specific IDoc interfaces based on the IDoc’s header and status information. The monitoring intends to report on errors and growing backlogs for these specific IDoc interfaces on the one hand (monitoring template “IDoc (Real-time Monitoring)”), and to provide statistical data on the IDoc traffic like the throughput and the performance of IDoc processing on the other hand (monitoring template “IDoc (Analysis)”). If needed the monitoring can also be restricted to certain IDoc contents which enables you to increase the granularity of the monitoring even more.

Interface Channel Configuration

Available Monitoring Templates

The following templates are available to monitor IDoc processing on the managed system:

Monitoring Template	Description
IDoc (Real-time Monitoring)	This template provides metrics to monitor the processing of IDocs, to check whether IDocs in an erroneous or intermediate status exist on the managed system. It is supposed to be run with high frequency, to monitor and alert on critical situations in time.
IDoc (Analysis)	This template provides metrics to measure IDoc statistics on the managed system. It is not supposed to be executed with high frequency, but rather on a regular basis to check the health of the IDoc processing, and to provide input for reporting on IDocs in SAP Solution Manager.

The decision which monitoring template you want to set up is made during the creation of the interface channel.

In the case of IDoc channels you can change the template of the channel later on by clicking on the link for the template. But note that all metric selection will be reset during this selection.

System Requirements

The following technical prerequisites have to be met in order to use this template:

Basis release ≥ 7.00 on all managed systems
Current ST-A/PI is implemented on all managed systems
If you want to use the parameters filtering the IDocs based on their payload (IDoc data records) the system user that executes the data collection has to be assigned the following additional authorizations on all managed systems:

Authorization Object ID Field

S_IDOCDEFT EDI_TCD WE30

ACTVT 03

S_CTS_ADMI CTS_ADMFCT TABL

Authorization Object	ID	Field
S_IDOCDEFT	EDI_TCD	WE30
ACTVT	03
S_CTS_ADMI	CTS_ADMFCT	TABL

Monitoring Template “IDoc (Real-time Monitoring)”

Available Metrics

This monitoring template provides metrics to monitor IDoc errors and IDoc throughput.

Metric Name	Description	MAI Category
Current number of erroneous IDocs (Real-time) (Delta)	Number of erroneous IDocs since the last collector run.	Exceptions
Current number of erroneous IDocs (Real-time) (Total)	Number of erroneous IDocs for a specified timeframe (measured in hours).	Exceptions
Current number of processed IDocs (Real-time) (Delta)	Number of processed IDocs since the last collector run.	Performance
Current number of processed IDocs (Real-time) (Total)	Number of processed IDocs for a specified timeframe (measured in hours).	Performance

The metrics of this managed object can be used for monitoring and alerting. However, the data cannot be used as an input for Business Process Analytics and BPO Dashboards.

Configuration

Configuration on Interface Level

When setting up an IDoc channel you have two configuration levels. The first level is the configuration on interface level. Here you enter selection criteria to select the specific IDocs you want to monitor. These selection criteria can select the IDoc based on header data, but also on information in the data segments. The second level is the monitoring of the status codes for the selected IDocs.

On Interface level the parameters “Direction” and “IDoc Age (in hours)” are mandatory.

For the parameter "IDoc Age (in hours)" the collector will ignore values higher than 2 weeks = 336 hours.

The information needed to maintain header information of the managed objects can be found either by viewing the control record of an example IDoc (BD87), in transaction WE20, WE05, or directly in table EDIDC.

Wildcards can be used in all select-option fields. Click the button "Expert Mode" to display all available parameters.

The following fields are available to define which IDocs are considered:

Parameter	Description	Mandatory	Select-Option	F4 Help
Direction (Inbound / Outbound)	Direction of the message flow from the perspective of the monitored system. If the direction is INBOUND fill in sender information for the parameters below. If the direction is OUTBOUND fill in receiver parameters below!	X		X
Partner Port	Receiver Port or Sender Port e.g. FILEPORT		X	X
Partner Number	Receiver Partner Number or Sender Partner Number e.g. SIDCLNT110		X	X
Partner Type	Receiver Partner Type or Sender Partner Type e.g. LS		X	X
Partner Function	Receiver Partner Function or Sender Partner Function: e.g. Payer in SDOnly available if the managed system is an application system.		X	X¹⁾
Message Type	e.g. ORDERS		X	X
Basic Type	IDoc Type, e.g. ORDERS05		X	X
Message Code	further separator besides Message Type, when you display the Header Data of the IDoc in WE05 this field refers to the field "Message variant"		X
Message Function	further separator besides Message Type		X
IDoc age (in hours)	Ignore IDocs which are older than x hours. Caution: The collector will ignore values higher than 2 weeks = 336 hours!	X
Count Segment	Count the number of all segments with this segment name, e.g. E1EDP01. Please note: You cannot set a threshold on this field and i.e. filter only for IDocs that have a certain segment. The information collected here is only used for the content view in the IDoc detail list.
Segment Field Name 1	e.g. E1EDK01-BELNR
Segment Field Value 1 (case-sensitive)	any field value that should be contained in the specified segment name		X
Segment Field Name 2	e.g. E1EDK01-BELNR
Segment Field Value 2 (case-sensitive)	any field value that should be contained in the specified segment name		X
Header Field Name 1	additional field from IDoc header table EDIDC, e.g. SNDLAD
Header Field Value 1	content of the additional IDoc header field		X
Header Field Name 2	additional field from IDoc header table EDIDC, e.g. SNDLAD
Header Field Value 2	content of the additional IDoc header field		X
Header Field Name 3	additional field from IDoc header table EDIDC, e.g. SNDLAD
Header Field Value 3	content of the additional IDoc header field		X

Additional Information

The input for parameters “Segment Field Name 1/2” has to be in format <segment name>-<field name>. Qualified segment can be monitored, too; the format of the input must then be [segment name]{blank}[value of qualifier]-[field name], for example: 'E1EDKA1 AG-PARTN'.
Two use cases for the “Segment Field Name”/“Segment Field Value” parameters exist:
- Specify a field name that should be monitored, as well as the respective field value: Only IDocs are alerted that contain at least once the specified field value in one of the specified segment fields.
- Specify a field name that should be monitored, but leave the respective field value empty: The field name is only used for the detail display of alerts. That is, all field values which are contained in the specified segment field(s) of the alerted IDocs are listed in the detail display. (See chapter to Detail Info List for details.)
Parameters “Header Field Name 1/2/3” and “Header Field Value 1/2/3” enable you to separate the IDocs further by any IDoc header field as available in table EDIDC which is not yet contained in the standard set of parameters (like “Message Type” or “Partner Number”). Simply enter the name of the EDIDC field in parameter “Header Field Name” which you like to use for selecting the right IDocs, and the needed value in parameter “Header Field Value”. The data collector then dynamically selects the IDocs which match these additional selection criteria, too.

Configuration on Metric Level

Once you have set up the selection criteria for the IDocs you are interested in, you can select the key figures you are interested in.

For each metric you can maintain the following restrictions for the IDoc status segments:

Parameter	Description	Mandatory	Select-Option	F4 Help
Status Number(s)	IDoc Status you want to monitor, e.g. 51 for IDoc in error	X	X	X
Status Message Qualifier	This field identifies the origin of the messages which are transmitted in the status, e.g. SAP messages are identified with SAP.		X
Status Message ID	Status Message ID, e.g. E0		X
Status Message Number	Status Message Number, e.g. 099		X
Minimum Status Age	Defines the time an IDoc has to be in a certain status to be considered. "Minimum Status Age" needs to be specified in minutes.
Status Counter	e.g. 2 (This means, the IDoc has to be at least 2 times in status 51 before being alerted)

Additional Information

Minimum Status Age: Sometimes the status should be at least x minutes old before taking this IDoc into account. Default is 0 minutes. An example is if you want to monitor IDoc backlog. Then you would monitor of intermediate statuses each IDoc goes through. If an IDoc is in an intermediate status for a short period of time, then this is not a problem. However, if an IDoc is in an intermediate status for en extended period of time, this could indicate a bottleneck or a backlog e.g. due to problems in the underlying infrastructure.
Status Counter: If an IDoc runs into an erroneous status, it might be reprocessed automatically. If the cause for the error still exists, the IDoc will encounter this status again. With this parameter, you can adjust the number of times the IDoc can take the specified status(es) before it will be alerted.
The parameters “Status Age” and “Status Counter” are logically linked with OR. This means, only one of the parameters needs to be exceeded to take the IDoc into account for alerting.

Threshold Configuration

The thresholds and the data collection settings are maintained in the next step "Activation" of the IFMon setup. When setting up the thresholds please note that due to historic reasons not all threshold types are supported. The recommended rating strategies for IDoc metrics are “Info Only”, “Numeric Threshold (Green/Yellow/Red)” and “Range Threshold”.

The monitoring works only if the data collection is executed in background. Thus it is essential to keep the default setting for the “Collection Mode”, which is asynchronous. Running in background mode enables the data collector to read IDoc tables which can become very large. Dialog processing of the data collection would impact the performance of the managed system too much. Be aware that the column “Period [min]” determines the frequency how often the measured value is evaluated, not how often the data collection actually runs.

Using the "Detail Info" List

In case of an IDoc alert it is desirable to have direct access to these IDocs without having to search for them in the managed system via WE05 or BD87. For this purpose the "Detail Info" view was developed also for IDocs.

The "Detail Info" function allows you to display IDoc details in different views. “Error View (Alerted IDocs)” is displayed by default when you first call this function. As the name indicates, this view contains information about all IDoc errors that triggered the selected alert. Once in the function you can switch the the "Content View (Alerted IDocs)" which contains information on monitored segments.

IDoc Buffering Period

All IDocs that trigger alerts are stored in a buffer table on the managed system so that they can be displayed later. However, buffering is restricted based on the “IDoc Age” parameter (see above). The buffering time is calculated as follows:

IDocs are stored for at least two days after being created but are not stored for more than 14 days.
If you entered an IDoc age of between two and seven days, the time for which the IDocs are stored in the buffer table is doubled.

Examples:

If you set the IDoc Age parameter to two hours, IDocs are buffered for 48 hours.
If you set the IDoc Age parameter to 72 hours, IDocs are buffered for 144 hours (six days).
If you set the IDoc Age parameter to 240 hours (ten days), IDocs are buffered for 336 hours (14 days).

If you call the detailed display after the buffering time has passed, the display is either called with no IDocs listed at all, or it contains only some of the IDocs for the alert selected. Still you can always trigger a “live” data collection with the “All IDocs” button (see below) in order to get any IDocs that currently match the selection criteria but have not been alerted yet.

You can access the "Detail Info" list via the metric information in the alert details for the real-time monitoring alerts.

Once you have entered the detailed display, you can switch between the “Error View” and “Content View” using the corresponding push-buttons.

Both views show specific IDoc properties. The following columns remain the same in both views:

IDoc number
Message Type
Current Status Number
Status Group (traffic light grouping)
Age of last status change: This column displays the time since the IDoc resides in its current status.
Error Resolution Time: This time indicates how long it took to put the IDoc into an uncritical status after it has entered a critical status for the first time. The typical use-case would be that you monitor failed IDocs (like IDoc status 51), and you like to be informed on the time it took to resolve the error, this means, to put the IDoc to successful status 53. In a more general context, the terms “critical status” and “uncritical status” refer to the status numbers you have configured. Each status number which is part of the monitoring setup is regarded as a “critical status” (although you might monitor successfully created IDocs), and each status number which is not part of the configuration is regarded as “uncritical”. If, after entering a critical status for the first time, the IDoc is not processed any further, the point in time you call the detail info is used to calculate the Error Resolution Time.

Error View

The “Error View” displays the following additional IDoc properties:

Status Message Text of displayed status
Status Message Number of displayed status
Status Message ID of displayed status

Content View

The “Content View” provides information about selected IDoc contents:

Count Segment: <segment name> (as specified in the “Count Segment” parameter during monitoring configuration): displays the number of specified segments per IDoc
Values of Field: <segment name> - <field name> (as specified in the “Field Name 1/2" parameter during monitoring configuration): Content of these fields within the IDoc (either as specified in parameter “Field Value 1/2", or all field values)

Additional Information

If you only want to view the field content of a single IDoc, select the relevant row in the “Error View” and choose “Content View”.
The specific columns of the “Content View” are only filled if the relevant parameters were configured. Otherwise the column names are marked correspondingly (e.g. “Count Segment: not specified”)
In case you specified any field content parameters in the setup tool, but the corresponding segment fields could not be found in the IDoc a generic info message is written into the table fields (e.g. “Specified segment could not be found”).

You can also choose between the modes “Alerted IDocs” and “All IDocs”. As previously stated, “Alerted IDocs” lists all IDocs that triggered the alert from which you called the detailed display (provided that the IDoc Age has not yet been exceeded; see above). The current status of these IDocs is displayed so that you can see whether the problem still exists or whether it was solved between when the alert was raised and the detail display was called.

Example

An alert was raised at 8 a.m. for IDocs with status 51. You call the detailed display at 9 a.m. Within this hour, a batch job was triggered that reprocessed these failed IDocs successfully. This means that these IDocs are displayed with final status 53 and it is clear that no further action is required.

If you switch to “All IDocs”, the database is searched for all IDocs that currently meet your selection criteria. This means IDocs that were reprocessed successfully between when the alert was raised and the detailed display was called are no longer displayed (because they no longer fulfill the “IDoc status” selection criterion). All IDocs that meet the selection criteria but were created after the alert was raised are displayed in addition. This enables you to immediately deal with IDoc errors for which alerts have not yet been triggered in the Alert Inbox.

Additional Push-buttons

In order to display more detailed information on the alerted IDocs, and also to enable error handling, several additional functionalities can be accessed from the detail display functionality.

Display IDocs (WE05): Select one or more IDocs (by highlighting the relevant rows) that are to be displayed in standard monitoring transaction WE05. This function is also offered for single IDocs when you double-click the IDoc row.

Reprocess IDocs: Select one or more IDocs (by highlighting the relevant rows) that are to be reprocessed immediately and choose the push-button to start reprocessing. This will trigger report RBDPROCESS which is the standard tool for IDoc reprocessing

Important

Reprocessing of IDocs should only be executed when the underlying error of the IDoc failure is corrected. You can reprocess IDocs only if your user has assigned the appropriate authorizations, and if the IDoc is not in a final (green) status. The result of the IDoc reprocessing is displayed afterwards.

Display Inbound Queue (WEINBQUEUE): For inbound IDocs which are processed in a serialized manner via qRFC, the IDocs might get stuck during queue processing, residing in status 75. For such IDocs you can display the corresponding inbound qRFC queue to which the IDoc belongs to, and search for the reason the inbound queue is being blocked.
Start Inbound Queue: By pushing this button you can start a blocked inbound qRFC queue using the standard report RSEINBQUEUE_PARTNER. This action can only be performed for IDocs in status 75. Be aware that the root cause for the blocked queue has to be resolved first (e.g. another IDoc might block the queue which has to be corrected first), otherwise the restart of the queue does not affect anything.
Refresh Display: Refreshes the current display and updates the current status of the IDoc, the status age and the error resolution time.
IDoc Statistics: This info box provides a brief summary of the IDocs currently displayed (depending on the mode “Alerted IDocs” or “All IDocs”):
- Number of alerted / all IDocs
- Number of Segments (only visible in case parameter "Count Segment" was configured)
- Age of oldest IDoc
- Age of newest IDoc
- Distinct Message Types with occurrence (the five message types that occur most frequently)
- Distinct Receiver Partners with occurrence (the five receiver partners that occur most frequently)
- Distinct Sender Partners with occurrence (the five sender partners that occur most frequently)

Monitoring Configuration: This info box displays the complete configuration for the parameter set for which you called the detail info.