Notification

An object that allows you to record, process, and manage different types of information. This information, for example, may consist of simple inquiries to complex, specialized problems.

You can use notifications to process all types of information or problems that might be encountered in the business processes of your company. Among other things, you can use notifications to carry out the following activities:

• Process complaints
• Process maintenance requirements
• Document malfunctions or exceptional situations in your company
• Process inquiries or problems in the IT area (for example, when using the SAP System)
• Process inquiries by or needs of individual employees over the Intranet

VSS notifications are based on the SAP standard notification.
You can create notifications from the transactions Create Order (/DBE/ORDER01) and Change Order (/DBE/ORDER02). The notifications are assigned to the VSS order.
You can create notifications from the vehicle master, the customer master, and transaction Order Processing (/DBE/ORDER). In these cases, the notification is not assigned to a VSS order.
In VSS, there are three notification types:

• D1 S Sales Activity
• D2 C Complaint
• D3 D Vehicle Damage Report (only used for the trade-in process)

Structure

A notification consists of the following:

• Subject
  You can enter a long text, start and end dates and organizational data for the notification

• Notification history
  You can viewthe historical overview of the notification regarding available activities, tasks and items

• Reference objects
  You can enter information on the affected vehicle, for example.

• Tasks
  You can enter tasks to be completed either in the notification header or with reference to an item.

• Actions
• The following five actions are linked to the notification tasks:
  • Internal note
  • Send letter
  • Send brochure
  • Log telephone call
  • Send e-mail

In Customizing, you can specify your own tasks. You also have the option of setting follow-up tasks for a specific task type; the system creates these follow-up tasks automatically when this type of task is created. You can add further details to a task by defining outcome types that can be selected for the specified task type.
The action box is linked to the tasks; by clicking on an item in the action box, a task of the same type is either created under Tasks or changed if there was already one in an incomplete status.

Integration

From the notification, you can branch to the following objects:

• VSS Order
• Memo Pad
• Fact Sheet
• Customer Master
• Vehicle Master

You can use the Notification function for the following:

• Integration with other standard business objects. For each VSS notification type, you can define the possible outcome types and outcome codes and then assign these outcome types and codes to the notification tasks. You can do this in Customizing for Vehicle Sales and Service (VSS) under Customer Data Management > Notification > Define Outcome Type and Outcome Code and Assign Outcome Type to Task Code.
• Creating, changing, displaying, and deleting sales activities, customer complaints and maintenance requirements (by using notifications). To access this function, select one of the following transactions from Vehicle Sales and Service > Customer Management > Sales Activities and Complaints on the SAP Easy Access screen:
  • Create Notification (IQS1)
  • Change Notification (IQS2)
  • Display Notification (IQS3)

If you want to link your notification to the VSS order, you can also create and change VSS-type notifications by using Create Order (transaction /DBE/ORDER01) and Change Order (transaction /DBE/ORDER02).

You can also create notifications in the Vehicle Master (transaction /DBE/VM) by choosing Goto and then Notification.

• Documenting malfunctions, exceptional circumstances, and alerts (by using notifications)
• Generating notification and task worklists. To generate these worklists, select Vehicle Sales and Service > Customer Management > Worklists from the SAP Easy Access menu (IQS8 for notifications and IQS9 for tasks).
• Updating the VSS order document flow and the vehicle history with the VSS notification data

The following five actions (task codes) are linked to the notification tasks:

• Internal Note
• Send letter
• Send brochure
• Log telephone call
• Send e-mail

You can define your own actions (task codes) in Customizing for Cross-Application Components under Notification > Notification Creation > Notification Content > Maintain Catalogs > Edit Catalogs. VSS uses catalog 2 tasks and code group VSS Vehicle Sales and Service.