Solve Your LiveCompare Problem Faster Using These Hints 'N' Tips

Most Common Reason for a Workflow to Fail

The two most common causes of LiveCompare workflows failing with a runtime error are:

1. LiveCompare ABAP transports are not installed correctly.
2. LiveCompare RFC authorization privileges.

To eliminate either issue as the root cause of your workflow failing, download the appropriate templates from iShare.

SAP Errors/Short Dumps

If you see an error message containing the phrase "RFC Call/Exception" this usually indicates something has gone wrong on the SAP side.  If this is the case please interrogate the SAP systems used in the workflow for its system log (transaction SM21) or short dump (transaction ST22).  Please attach a copy of any short dump you find to the incident report you open using the helpdesk.

Searching for Solution

We review each support issue and create knowledge base articles for those that may benefit other customers.  The knowledgebase home page is: http://helpdesk.intellicorp.com/ichelpdesk/kb/

High profile issues are captured on the iShare support blog (http://ishare.intellicorp.com/cs/blogs/support/).  The support blog features an RSS feed.  Outlook 2007 will automatically poll the RSS feed and download new content for you.  Other RSS readers will do the same.  This saves you having to manually poll the blog for new alerts.

iShare is also searchable.  Just about every page has a search option.  Use this to explore community developed solutions to problems.

Raising a Support Issue With IntelliCorp

The IntelliCorp Online HelpDesk system (http://helpdesk.intellicorp.com/ichelpdesk) provides an easy way for customers to report Technical Support Issues.  Each issue is assigned to one of our Technical Support Engineers who will work to resolve the problem.  Once a Helpdesk ticket is opened it will remain open until the customer is satisfied with the resolution.

Some of the advantages of using the Helpdesk are:

1. Multiple Technical Support personnel can review the issue simultaneously
2. Provides a single stream of communication between the Customer and Support
3. Enables Customers to upload large quantities of data (i.e., debug logs, SAP logs)
4. Allows Support to download custom solutions
5. Enables Customer to track issues they have raised

If you are unable to access the IntelliCorp HelpDesk system you can report a problem by sending an e-mail to LiveSupport@intellicorp.com

What to Report

Here is a checklist of information to provide when reporting a problem.  The more information you can provide, the faster your problem can be investigated and resolved.

Run-time Environment:

• What version of LiveCompare are you running (including build number)?
• What OS version is on the LiveCompare server?
• What IE version is on the LiveCompare client?
• How much Disk space is on the LiveCompare server total/available?
• How much RAM in on the LiveCompare server?

SQL Server:

• What version of SQL Server is used with LiveCompare?
• Is the SQL Server Local or Remote to LiveCompare?
• What additional applications are using the SQL server?

SAP Systems:

• What version(s)/kernels are your SAP systems?
• Have all the LiveCompare transports been imported?  See the start of this guide for details on how to check this.

• Does the SAP account have all the correct authorizations?  See the start of this guide for details on how to check this.

Workflows:

• Copy of failing workflow

NOTE: Copy and paste the workflow into a text file (please, do not paste the workflow into, for example, a Word document) and attach the workflow to the helpdesk issue.

Error messages:

• What is the full text of error message? Enter a copy of the error message directly into the helpdesk issue.
• Where does the error message appear? Attach a screenshot of the workflow to the helpdesk issue.

• If it looks like an SAP error, please attach a copy of the short dump.  See above for details.

General questions:

• Is the problem reproducible or intermittent?
• What else is happening on the system when the error occurs?

Screenshots

You can take a screenshot of your whole desktop by pressing the PrntScr key.  If you hold down ALT and press PrntScr only the active window will appear in the screenshot.

On modern computers even a relatively small application window can make for a very large image file.  We recommend that once you've taken the screenshot you use Microsoft Paint (one of the default Windows programs) to compress the image.

This is what we do internally:

1. Take the screenshot.
2. Run MS Paint (find it in the Start Menu or use Start>Run and enter 'mspaint').
3. Make sure the default image is 1x1 pixels in size (if the default image is bigger than the screenshot you've taken there'll be lots of whitespace in the final image).
4. Paste the screenshot from the clipboard.
5. Use the Save As command to save the image as a Portable Network Graphics (PNG) file.
6. Attach the PNG file to the helpdesk issue.

A 1024x768 screenshot weighs in at 2MB uncompressed.  The PNG version is just over 130K.

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