Firefighter login into GRC system or plugin system and using GRAC_EAM or /GRCPI/GRIA_EAM transaction respectively.

After SP21 Log Off button is explicitly provided to end the FF session. This helps in recording the exact time of FFID log off. Also, one can mix Web based and ABAP based firefighting in one single session. User can re-logon to the backend without need to initiate another session, hence less session needs to be controlled.

From Sp14 onwards the LOGIN_STATUS field in GRACFFLOG table is getting extensively used to set the different status of FFID session.

If a session is just created, it will be set a value ‘A’ (New Login).

When a Session ends, the status is changes to ‘B’ (Logged). A particular session’s end can be determined in two places: if the Logon Pads refresh button is clicked or an EAM Firefighter Synch Job is started.

After a successful Log collection, if the status was ‘B’ before the log collection, it will change to ‘C’ (Collected). Synch job will always collect logs for sessions which statuses are ‘A’ or ‘B’.

When the Workflow sync started (if SPRO parameter 4009 is set to YES), or you schedule a Workflow Sync it will collect all logs which status ‘C’ and determine whether Workflow is required or not for that session (based on SPRO parameter 4007, 4020 and Controller settings).

After the workflow sync, the status is modified to an empty field (Completed).

Refer to Note 2978499 and 3341898 (for Suspended (S) status).

Session Maintenance:

The Firefighter Sessions ends when the user clicks on the Logoff button in the Firefighter Logon Pad. Another user can only use the same Firefighter ID after the previous user is logged out. In case someone forgets to logout from the Firefighter Session a background job can be scheduled to force logout these Firefighter Sessions. You should schedule report GRAC_SPM_MAINTENANCE to run regularly (our suggestion is to run it every 5-10 minutes). There are three optional parameters. One is a connector where you can narrow down which connectors you would like to maintain and logout the Firefighter Sessions. The second parameter is timeout value. In default, the report retrieves the value of profile parameter rdisp/gui_auto_logout and use that value. If this value cannot be retrieved 36000 seconds will be used as a default. You can override these values with the timeout parameter and all sessions will be force logged out which last Activity Timestamp was older than the timeout value (in seconds). The Firefighter Session Activity Timestamp is updates, when the Firefighter User made any action in the Logon Pad or there is an active Firefighter ID user session in the backend. The third parameter is a checkbox which always checked in default. This will only take effect if Decentralized Firefighting is used (SPRO parameter 4015 is set to YES). If the checkbox is checked, then a maintenance job will run in the backend systems as well and will maintain the Decentralized Firefighter Sessions as well. If a timeout parameter is explicitly set, then the value will be sent to the backend system, otherwise the same rule applies in the backend for determining the logout time. If you would like to schedule different timeout for different plugin systems, you can untick this checkbox and schedule report /GRCPI/GRIA_SPM_MAINTENANCE in the backend systems.

Log Collection and Workflow generation:

The Firefighter Log Synch job will collect the logs based on the executed Firefighter sessions, instead of what logs were generated since the last successful execution of the Synch Job. The Firefighter login and log off time is considered while collecting logs. After SP19 one can schedule the Firefighter Synch job for multiple connectors at once (even all the connectors with *) and the sessions will be collected based on the start order.

As a side effect you will observe more RFC connection which takes less time and resources.

Please Note: Do not use FFID for Mass update or Background scheduling. This can lead to memory issues and inconsistent FFID sessions.

Firefighter Session maintenance (GRAC_FFSESSION)

Report to check the major information of a Firefighter sessions and to (re)collect the logs, (re)initiate workflow, force logoff the session and to set the status of them.

Refer to Blog- Firefighter session maintenance (GRAC_FFSESSION)