Happily, as a Canadian servicer you are able to enjoy fully-automated dispatch reception. This is because, simply, your division of Samsung is willing to provide such GSPN Web Services connection credentials as are essential to this purpose.  However, you must first acquire those credentials from Samsung (the entire set will be at least moderately different from what you use to login to the GSPN web-browser interface).  The contact person to use for your request, of these special credentials, is as follows:

    Stephan Lefebvre
    s.lefebvre@samsung.com

It's likely best if you email Stephan, tell him you wish to use Rossware's utility as designed to integrate with Samsung's GSPN Web Services, and you need credentials setup for the purpose.  Give him your Samsung servicer ID, so we can work with that. 

Once you received this enhanced credential set back from Stephan, please assure you have the utility configured as instructed here . . .

. .. though of course with each credential as appropriate to your company. At that point, the utility is ready to automatically receive dispatches, plugging each into a ServiceDesk Callsheet.                                                                  

Until 2022, Samsung U.S. was not authorizing its U.S. servicers to use such GSPN web services as are essential to full automation of this utility. However, (and most happily), they finally began allowing select servicers to do precisely that.

Yahoo!

If you are a servicer that has been so selected, you should mostly follow the same instructions as are above-provided for Canadian users, but with two important differences.

First, there is no need for you to obtain special credentials. Please make no effort in such regard.

Second, there is small difference in  how you should fill-in information. In particular, in the box labeled "Samsung WsUserID," please insert as text "ROSSWARE", like this:

If you are not a servicer that Samsung has selected for access to automated web services (and if you cannot persuade Samsung to add you to its selection), you'll need to use the substitute, only-semi-automated method that we developed to cope as best as possible with that situation.

How it works is a human must periodically download a file that contains new dispatches.  You can setup so it just requires a simple click each time you want to do that download.  The SSDL utility will on its own accord see that new file, parse the contents, and perfectly insert each new dispatch into ServiceDesk Callsheets. 

Here are detailed instructions:

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1. Setup to download the file. 

To do so, login to your GSPN web interface, and click on “Business” within the navigation bar at top.  Then, on the left, click on “Service Order Excel Download.”  In the “Status” box, be sure to select “ST010Assigned to Service Center.”  If you are setup with multiple branches, be sure to select “—ALL—” from within the “Ship-to-Branch” box.  With all this done, click on the “Search” button, and the system will proceed toward the download:

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2. The above description says “proceed toward” because in fact (and depending on which browser you are using) there will likely be an intermediary dialog box.  If using FireFox, for example, you will in the first instance see a dialog box that looks like this:

Definitely, you want to “Save” the download as opposed to opening it.  We recommend you also check the box that reads “Do this automatically for files like this one from now on.”  That way, you won’t have to deal with this dialog box each time going forward.

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3. Determine where within your file system the downloaded file is located. 

You might notice, the dialog box does not offer you opportunity to specify where you want the downloaded file to be saved to.  This system decides on its own.  But you need to know the location, because you’ve got to tell the SSDL utility where to find the file that it will be opening.  In FireFox, it’s easy to find that saved location.  Just click on the FireFox open-downloads button (it shows with a downward-facing arrow), then right-click on the downloaded file.  You’ll then get a little popup menu that offers the option (among others) to “Open Containing Folder.”  When you pick that option, you’ll see exactly where the file is located. 

Other browsers may have different methods by which to expose the saved location.  If you are using a different browser, you may need to determine the needed method (by which to discover the downloaded location) on your own. 

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4. Setup for SSDL utility to read your downloaded file.

In the bottom-left of the utility is a pair of radio buttons under the heading “Dispatch Source to Use.”  You’ll need to select the second option, labeled “Downloaded File.”  Then, in the top-center area, you’ll need to click on the “Browse” button, locate the downloaded file (i.e., at the location that you determined in Step-3 above), and select it.  This will insert the full-file path into the needed box: 

Now the SSDL utility knows where to find your downloaded file. 

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5. For initial testing, you can click on the “Do immediate update” button to immediately process the file as previously downloaded.  If it indeed contained dispatches, you’ll see them appear within ServiceDesk Callsheets. 

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6. For ongoing use, you’ll need to adopt a particular routine.  In this “for-U.S.-servicers” mode, the SSDL utility simply looks, with each of its update events (set on its timer, and also potentially triggered manually via the “Do immediate update” button), to see if there is a newer copy of the downloaded file than what it prior processed.  If so, it processes it.  Otherwise, it does nothing but reset the timer and wait for the next update cycle.  Anyhow, suppose you did a download, the SSDL utility processed each of the several dispatches within it, and you download again without doing anything else in the interim.  Guess what?  You’re going to get all those prior dispatches again. 

To assure that with each download you only get new, not-prior-received dispatches, you must add something else to your routine.  After reception of dispatches in one cycle, you need to use Samsung’s web interface to manually accept those dispatches.  Once accepted, they won’t come again in the next download (at least assuming you’ve specified Status of “ST010Assigned to Service Center,” as above instructed). 

So (and to be clear), your ongoing rhythm must be this: (a) click to download the file; (b) check to see what dispatches have appeared within ServiceDesk, and assure you manually accept them; then (c) after an appropriate time has passed (e.g., maybe once per hour), repeat the cycle. 

To be clear, once it’s setup, you don’t have to do anything directly within the SSDL utility itself.  In each instance it will see your newly-downloaded file, and will automatically process it. 

As another element of clarification, it’s our expectation that you will keep open the particular GSPN browser window and configuration that accommodates the needed download.  So, each time you wish to re-trigger a download, all you must do is Alt-tab to that window, and click on its “Search” button. 

Uploading of inventory data is a feature that, among the various DispatchLink utilities, is unique to SSDL. We added it per request from Samsung in late 2021.

To use this feature, you need to add a further Samsung identifier, beyond what's needed for downloading of dispatches. Specifically, you need to provide the "ASC Code" that identifies your inventory location. If you multiple inventory locations as recognized by Samsung, you'll need to provide a table that indicates such codes, and equates them with your ServiceDesk-recognized inventory locations. Here we'll further explain.

If you're a U.S. servicer it's possible you've not filled-in, within SSDL, your Samsung credentials. This is because you've likely set to use the "Download file" method, and, when in this mode, the credentials section is covered up, and not needed. For uploading of inventory data, however, there are two credential/identifier that will need to be provided. To provide the first (and potentially the second) of these added credentials, you'll need to temporarily switch the SSDL interface to use the "GSPN Web Services" method, so as to expose the credentials fill-in section (after such fill-in, you'll definitely want to then switch back into the other mode).

For uploading of inventory data (whether U.S. or Canadian), two credential elements are needed. First is your company's ASC Number:

Second, you must provide the ASC Code that identifies your inventory location. If you have multiple inventory locations as recognized by Samsung, you'll need to provide a table that indicates each such code, and equates them with your ServiceDesk-recognized inventory locations.

If you have only one ASC Code, you can simply fill it in here:

If you have multiple ASC Codes and for varying inventory locations, you'll need to create a simple table that equates each code with corresponding ServiceDesk inventory location, and save as particular file, which we'll here describe.

First, please open Excel or similar. In the first column list the two-letter identifier for each applicable ServiceDesk-recognized inventory location, and in the second list the corresponding Samsung ASC Code for that location. Similar to this (but of course with values that pertain to your company):

Save this file to your \sd\netdata folder, in comma-delimited format, under the name "SdLocToAscLoc.csv" (when SSDL runs in a cycle to upload inventory data it will look for such a file; when it sees it there it will know pull and use the data you've put into it).

Once you have done the above setup, you can check the enabling checkbox in the "Uploading of Inventory Data" section of SSDL:

You may then click on "Do immediate update" to verify that the first upload goes perfectly.

If you're curious, the automated inventory uploads only happen once each night. That's as often as Samsung wanted for them to be done.

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