If you use Technical Monitoring in Solution Manager 7.1 you should be aware of the Event Calculation Engine. The job is essential for the Monitoring and Alerting Infrastructure. If the job is not scheduled, no status and alert calculation is performed. It calculates monitoring status, Events and Alerts based on received Metric Instances and Event Instances an configuration information stored in the Alerting Directory. Especially it allows event correlation and propagation but also calculation of events.

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You can schedule the job in the SAP Solution Manager configuration (transaction SOLMAN_SETUP) by
performing the following step: "Basic Configuration" -->"Configure Automatically" --> "Create Alert Calculation Job"

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By default, the Event Calculation Engine runs once per minute within the job
SAP_ALERT_CALCULATION_ENGINE, which, in turn, starts the report ACE_CALCULATION_CONTROLLER.

The ECE is responsible for calculating the current status based on central configuration:

• Calculates rating for metrics based on the metric thresholds
• Calculates the event rating based on the contributing metrics and event rules
• Writes the current status of metrics and events to the Event + Metric Store
• Provides the events to the Alert Consumer Connector
• Does its calculation based on categories (Availability, Performance, Configuration
  and Exception).

Troubleshooting:

1) Is the Event Calculation Engine Job running and performing?

You can find the corresponding check in Self-Monitoring under the component Event Calculation Engine - Status of the Alert Calculation Job.

The Event Calculation Engine job runs every minute under the name SAP_ALERT_CALCULATION_ENGINE
(if not changed manually), which calls the report ACE_CALCULATION_CONTROLLER. The Self-monitoring checks whether the
job had been started in the last minutes. If it has not run within the last two minutes, the status is red.

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If the status is not green, you can check the following:

The job is not scheduled: Schedule the Event Calculation Engine job in the SAP Solution Manager
configuration (transaction SOLMAN_SETUP). Configure the scenario Solution Manager Self-Monitoring in Technical Monitoring,
and go to Configure Infrastructure --> Configure Automatically, which contains the activity Create Alert Calculation Job. Switch to change
mode, select this activity and perform it, with Execute Selected.

The job is delayed or did not finish: The job is scheduled, but ran late, because there was insufficient background processing capacity to run the
scheduled jobs on time. Check the job log in the Job Overview (transaction SM37), and provide
more work processing resources, if necessary, e.g. by increasing the number of work processes.

2) Are there error messages for the Alert Calculation Engine?

If the status is not green, analyse the error messages in the Application Log, as follows:

• Start the transaction SLG1, and enter the object E2E_ALERTING and sub object ENGINE.
• The logs are ordered by job executions, error messages are highlighted in traffic light
  colours.
• Expand the runs in which errors occurred; and expand the rows by
  double-click.
• The messages of the job run are displayed at the bottom of the window. Display the
  error message long text.

A solution is usually proposed,as well as the cause of the error. Proceed according to the text.

3) Are Housekeeping jobs running?

The housekeeping jobs have no direct impact on the MAI, but the performance of the engine job is
affected, if the housekeeping jobs are not scheduled.

• SAP_METRIC_STORE_CLEANUP
• SAP_ALERT_HOUSEKEEPING

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If you do however experience further performance problems with the Event Calculation Engine please review the following SAP notes:

1964945 - Extended wait time for enqueue for BI reporting in Event Calculation Engine

1928160 - MAI: Optimizing the performance of event calculations

2014552 - MAI: Parallelization of Event Calculation for Better Performance

2021463 - Composite SAP Note, corrections for "Event Calculation Engine" SP12

Let’s share our thoughts on how to make a successful ITSM / ChaRM project!

For 8 years, I’ve done many of these, for small, medium and large SAP implementations and I’ve found that some key steps are always essential to guarantee the project success:

• Define the improvements expected from the project and don’t forget to use TEA (Transport Execution Analysis) to detect hidden flaws in your change and release management process
• Keep your ITSM / ChaRM solution simple and as close to the standard as possible
• Take advantage of the project to align your release management process to SAP best practices
• Don’t underestimate the change management aspects of the project
• Don’t just test ITSM / ChaRM processes and define tests plans for the most complex scenarios of your change and release management processes
• Make your training documentation as simple as possible
• Start preparing the Go Live at least two weeks before the actual Go-Live date
• After 6 to 9 month, measure the reality vs the expected results with TEA

In this blog, I will describe in detail, by project phase, why all those steps will guarantee a successful ITSM / ChaRM implementation. I've divided it in two parts, the next one will be published soon.

1. Project preparation

A customer has decided he needs to implement a change and release management tool and chose ITSM / ChaRM. He has defined his objectives, the expected ROI and the area where improvements are expected.

However, there is always a gap between how we think a process is executed and how it is really used on a day to day basis. Such gaps can lead to actual problems (regression, extra work for the development team, etc.). They should be identified before the project starts or its benefits might not be as high as planned.

To identify those gaps, SAP provides, in SAP Solution Manager a report called TEA (Transport Execution Analysis). It measures a list of predefined Key Performance Indicators to evaluate how your change, test, transport and release management processes are really executed.

It is very fast to run and you would be surprised by what we find. Here are some of the findings we made with some of our customers:

• 60 dumps every day in average on a production system
• 40 objects overwritten in production by an older version on a 6 months period
• 800 transport requests opened in development for more than 6 months
• Etc.

This report gives you a quick and clear understanding on where your efforts should be focused and what should be done to improve your IT processes.

2. Solution Design

This step is essential as it will determine how the solution behaves. My best advice, keep it simple and try to stay as much as possible close to the standard processes. It will make your life much easier in the future!

Keep it simple!

Each additional step, field or validation in the process makes it less flexible and will slow it down. Don’t forget that it will be used every day by your organization and that complex solutions requires a lot more training, which can be problematic when new employees arrive or a new partner starts working on a project.

Always think, before adding a new element,

• Is it really necessary?
• Can it create bottlenecks?
• Will it increase the workload of your team, or even worse the workload of key members of your team?

Stay close to the standard processes

As for all SAP solutions, the further you get from SAP standard processes, the harder it will be to maintain and upgrade it.

Adjust ITSM / ChaRM processes to your organization but make sure you understand them well before making any decision. They are based on ITIL best practices and are designed to fit most IT organizations requirements.

Don’t be shy and align your release management process to SAP best practices

One of the thing that is usually overlooked is the release management. Any change and transport management tool will have an impact on the way you manage your releases in SAP. So don’t be shy and use this opportunity to align your release management process to SAP best practices.

Lately, SAP has produced some really great documents on how you should manage your tests, how you should bundle your changes, how to categorize changes, etc. Use those documents and make their principles yours.

It will make the difference between a good ITSM / ChaRM solution and a great one that optimizes the change and release management processes by reducing its costs, the time to market and the incidents in production.

To be continued in my next blog...

In this blog, I will show how to report in CRM_UI (SM_CRM) based on a new custom UI field created in AET. This is using SolMan 7.1 SP 11.

The requirement was to add a new field to the Request for Change (ZMCR) UI and allow the new field reportable in the Search Criteria.

To add the new custom UI field, I followed the steps in this post, so I won’t go into those details.

http://scn.sap.com/people/tzanko.stefanov2/blog/2008/11/18/application-enhancement-tool-creating-and-reusing-custom-fields-with-crm-70-part-1-of-2

The requirement was to enable the new custom field to appear in the Search Criteria in SM_CRM here...

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Tcode SM_CRM.  Confirm you have Configuration mode checked and select SAVE....

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Select Change Request Management -> Requests for Change...

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On the Search screen, select Show Configurable Areas…

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Highlight the Search Criteria section and select…

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If a Z Configuration Area does not already exist for the selected area, create one…

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Select the Component Name to copy and COPY…

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Confirm you are maintaining the Z business role.

Change the Usage, Type, and Subtype to <DEFAULT>. Select CONTINUE.

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Select the newly created Configuration Area.

Locate the custom field that you want to show in the Search Criteria in the list of Available Search Criteria.

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...error “500 SAP Internal Server Error - Exception condition “PROBLEM_WITH_QUERY raised” appeared…

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In my case, I found that this error was caused by the enhancement generation not entirely completing when the custom field was added.  The new field was not found in table CRMC_REPDY.

To resolve this error, in tcode AXTSHOW, I needed to manual re-generate the enhancement.

Before re-generating, the high level was green, but the Appends and other objects were not active. I selected Generate Enhancement to complete this step.

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After re-generating,  the new field was successful….

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This caused the field entry to be created in table CRMC_REPDY…

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Now, new field is reportable in SM_CRM…

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I am sharing common issues faced while implementation of charm in SP12.

1. Normal change had status "In development" if it created from the RFC.

Solution

ZMMJ_ON_CREATE_MJ : Define the statuf value in the condition for this action.

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2. Partner id is not visible in Charm approval procedure even after creating the policy.

You need to create the rule moduler profile and assign it here.

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go to Service manager profiles

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Copy as this profile in your own name

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Give the service id as SRV_REQ_RULE_EXE

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In the properties tab, assign the policy that you had created in rule policy through web ui

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3. while extending the scope, release for approval is not visble.

Check the action release for approval and insert the status value and set the maximum value accordingly in the action defination.

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Hope it will be helpfull.

Thanks

Rishav Garg

Diagnostics Agent Doesn't Start on LINUX

Cause

• The kernel bundled with the installer 7.3 SP02 or lower is not supported on Linux 3.x
• Error message “"This patch level of the Startup Framework 720 has not been released for OS release Linux 3.x"

  Resolution

Upgrading kernel of Diagnostic Agent is generally not recommended. In any doubt on any issue being related or not to diagnostic agent kernel version, please raise a support message

Approach 1:-

Diagnostics Agent - How to upgrade SAP Kernel

You are in one of the following cases:

• After upgrading the operating system you get an error message during the Diagnostics Agent restart like: "OS release <...> is not supported with this kernel (<...>)" or "<...> has not been released for OS release <...> <...>".
• Your operating system is only released with Kernel 720_EXT.
• Your operating system is only released with Kernel 721_EXT.

1. Obtaining the Archives

Download the latest SAPEXE archive from the SAP Service Marketplace under:

Software Downloads -> Support Packages and Patches -> A-Z Index -> K -> SAP KERNEL * UNICODE, and rename it from SAPEXE_<XXX>.SAR to SAPEXE.SAR.

If you upgrade from a Diagnostics Agent that was installed using a Diagnostics Agent Standalone Installer, you should expect up to 3 GB additional disk space consumption during and after the upgrade.

2. Preparations

1. Stop all the Diagnostics Agents available on your host.

2. Stop sapstartsrv

On UNIX: kill -2 <PID of sapstartsrv>

3. Remove any IPC objects that still exist (Unix only)

  Cleanipc <instance no> remove

3. Importing the new kernel on UNIX

Copy the kernel into a temporary directory <newkernel>.

1. Log on as user<dasid>adm and switch to the directory /usr/sap/<DASID>/SYS/exe/uc/<platform>

2. Save the sdiagag.lst file if it exists (from the <platform> directory)

3. Recommend saving the old kernel before deploying the new kernel.

4. Delete all of the files from the <platform> directory, including the subdirectories. This ensures that there are no remaining files from the earlier release.

• ATTENTION: Make sure you are in directory /usr/sap/<DASID>/SYS/exe/uc/<platform>
  Execute: rm -rf *

5. Create a new <platform> directory and navigate to this directory to restore the sdiagag.lst file saved in step 2 (if it exists).

6. Unpack the new kernel in the <platform> directory:

           SAPCAR -xvf <new kernel>/SAPEXE.SAR

7. Switch to the Diagnostics Agent instance exe directory /usr/sap/<DASID>/SMDA<XX>/exe and save the sapjvm* files and directories.

8. Delete all content from Diagnostics Agent instance exe directory.

• ATTENTION: Make sure you are in directory /usr/sap/<DASID>/SMDA<XX>/exe
  Execute: rm -rf *

9. Restore the sapjvm* files and directories you saved in step 7.

10. Since executables from the local instance executable directories may already be executed during the start, before sapcpe runs, perform an initial copy of the executables:

           cd /usr/sap/<DASID>/SMDA<XX>/work
sapcpe pf=/usr/sap/<DASID>/SYS/profile/<DASID> _SMDA<XX>_<hostname>

Approach 2:-

Diagnostics Agent - How toperform Agent Replacement

To replace a Diagnostics Agent, install a new Diagnostics Agent, and uninstall the previous Diagnostics Agent. This procedure can be relevant in the following scenarios:

• Replace a Diagnostics Agent, which has problems that cannot be easily resolved.
• “Upgrade” a Diagnostics Agent system, e.g.
• Install a new Diagnostics Agent using a newer installer and a newer kernel, and get a Diagnostics Agent that has a new SAP JVM and a new SAP Kernel.
• uninstall the previous Diagnostics Agent and Reset the server name in SOLMAN.

Overview

SEA analyzes an SAP environment and documents the impact of an upgrade to an Enhancement Pack or Support Stack before the project begins in an effort to understand the costs and tests associated with the project. It is delivered with Solution Manager 7.1 (SolMan) and available since Support Stack 11.

Minimal configuration in SolMan is required to use the SEA functionality. A target environment will need to be configured and the system information included in LMDB.

Usage and Procedure Logging (UPL) is not required, but is recommended to be implemented in Solution Manager to obtain more accurate data. UPL is available on any ABAP based system and is based on the core functionality of the SAP Coverage Analyzer. Compared with Workload and Performance Statistics (ST03N), the UPL result will be more accurate. It is able to detect all online and background processes and submitted jobs. It can detect the usage of any ABAP process down to the most basic levels and will provide information about system modifications, user exits, development classes as well as single method executions. The Workload and Performance Statistics (ST03N) only counts the dialog steps during the running process but not the number of times it has been run, where as UPL can count the number of executed ABAP procedures on a daily base.

• UPL Documentation can be found: https://websmp104.sap-ag.de/~sapidb/011000358700000427102012E
• SAP Note 1955847 UPL: Activation Procedure and Authorization Handling in SAP Solution Manager

Results Summary

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The Summary provides a wealth of information regarding the Upgrade Project including the target platform and version, the total number of days estimated for testing, the number of custom code objects that require adjustment, the number of modifications that require adjustment and the estimated amount of time to complete the development efforts on the custom code and the modifications.

In addition this Summary will provide you with a quick and clear understanding of what will be the overall effort of the upgrade project.  All of the information displayed is detailed in the other parts of the SEA report.

Standard and custom code impacts analysis

SEA provides a list of impacted modifications (SPAU and SPDD) as well a list of custom developments that will need to be modified as part of the upgrade project. Also, the toolset provides an estimation of time required to complete the development efforts needed to complete the project.

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The list of impacted custom developments provides an indication of the issue with each object that’s needs to be modified. Also, the list can be exported to Microsoft Excel and used as work list.

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The impacted SPAU/SPDD objects are displayed by their affected SAP Application Component and the impacted custom objects by Packages. For planning purposes this information is very valuable to understand the required resources for the upgrade. Prior to the introduction of SEA this information was only made available after completing a test upgrade.

Test Management

During the analysis creation SolMan can be used as the primary Test Management Application or integrated with a 3^rd Party Test Management Application such as HP Quality Center. The recommend rule for SEA is that it can provide recommendations for creation of automated test cases.

SEA test scope optimization is based on the BPCA (Business Process Change Analyzer) feature of Solution Manager. Based on UPL, the tool is much faster to use and the analysis more precise.

The objective of SEA and BPCA is to assist the system in the performance of a battery of tests as efficiently as possible:

• Only the business processes impacted are tested
• The order of the test is determined by the number of objects impacted by each test. Those with a higher number of objects will have a higher priority. 
• Automated tests are prioritized over manual tests, as they require very little effort to run

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The test order is determined by the type of test conducted (manual or automated) and is influenced by the number of impacted objects tested. When executing the first four tests the test coverage  quickly increases to 60% (of the objects impacted by the upgrade).

In this portion of the SEA Results, the workload available can be modified during the testing phase. SEA provides the ability to quickly analyze the risks taken (% of the tests covered, business processes not tested). SEA is a very efficient tool to safeguard an SAP upgrade project by providing the impacts prior to execution  while optimizing the testing costs.

When using the Test Workbench in Solution Manager, the results of the test optimization can be exported as Test packages.

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By reducing the granularity in the graph the provided the associated steps are listed and greater detail is provided on each step of the testing.

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The detailed list of tests is prioritized by number of objects impacted.

Conclusion

SEA provides new functionality, which modifies the way IT organizations will plan upgrades. With it, there is a planning tool to precisely evaluate the upgrade budget and schedule, in order to decide if and when the project can be done.

The customer benefits of using SEA cover three main areas in terms of time and resources. The ability to understand the impact of an impending upgrade prior to having to do the upgrade, understanding the custom code and modifications that will need to be corrected, also Test Scope Optimization will focus on providing the proper resources to the specific areas where testing will be critical.

More information about the setup, installation and configuration of SEA can found at: http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/SAP+Solution+Manager+WIKI+-+Test+Management

As a logical consequence of my earlier blog How to setup Cross System Object Lock (CSOL) when using enhanced retrofit i want to write today a little about the settings for Down Grade Protection (DGP) in a dual landscape with retrofit.

The best practice use for Downgrade protection is of course "full protection" which means from a customizing setting point of view, an empty table, meaning "no exceptions" for DGP calculation.

You can reach these setting via IMG:

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Select "Configure Downgrade Protection" and you will see the "Downgrade Conflict Type" first.

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Here we do not want to do any changes and normally this is also where you never change. It's the table to configure what kind of warning or error should appear with which corresponding icon. I guess the standard setting to have the release check being a warning, the re-assign check warning too, the predecessor check critical and finally the imminent check very critical make perfect sense and therefore i never changed this.

We want to browse to the next setting which is the "Downgrade System Configuration".

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as said before in standard this table is empty which means no exceptions setup, which results in full protection and a DGP conflict calculation for every conflict type (Release, re-assign, predecessor, imminent) for every system, client, system role and project.

Now i case of a dual landscape we have retrofit setup to look for conflicts between the 2 landscapes and calculate the corresponding retrofit type.

In case of no conflicts -> green case in case of conflicts -> yellow or red.

As the retrofit conflict calculation happens at the time of when a Transport is released in the retrofit source at the same time (or to say it technically correct before the retrofit calculation takes place) the DGP check will be performed.

As a consequence DGP will issue a conflict (of type warning) before the transport can be released and before the retrofit can be calculated.

So the DGP conflict has to be ignored first before the transport can be released. So we can more or less say for every conflict that will be handled via retrofit with a yellow or red type (conflict case) the DGP check will stop the process before.

This is of course an unwanted behavior, as the transport has to be released anyway and the conflict will be resolved using the retrofit tool.

Therefore i recommend switching off the release check of DGP for the source system in dual track retrofit landscape.

You can exclude that check from being performed by adding a line into the "Downgrade System Configuration".

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Like that, when releasing a transport in the retrofit source system there will be no DGP check for that transport. The transport will be released and the retrofit calculation will take place and will put a yellow or red case. So you can solve the conflict by using the retrofit tool and will not be stopped by DGP every time before.

So i would resume that in every dual retrofit landscape the DGP customizing should have that exception that the DGP release check is switched off for the retrofit source.

Issues with the Trusted RFCs in CHARM

Trusted RFCs should be created with current user id and not any other user id because when you will log on from charm to do any modification after creating the transport request in web ui of charm it will not allow you to own the request(owner is changed).

All developers should have access to S_RFC and S_RFCACL objects.

This can be the main reason you won’t be able to schedule the transport release tasks in SCMA as it will initiate the call to TMSSUP* RFC.

Transport of copies are not getting created

While creation of transport copies, TMW rfc will be used and hence SMTMSMP user should have access to execute the function module TMW* in managed system, the main authorization object for this is S_RFC.

Bpmon security authorization issues

Sometimes monitoring object greyed out and alert cannot be viewed in WorkCentre also.

Solman read user in the rfc does not have proper authorization in managed system setup.

Required authorizations are profiles S_CSMREG and S_CUS_CMP

Also S_TABU_DIS authorization is required with field value as SS for DICBERCLS

File monitoring issues

Also for the file monitoring in BPMON, it is very much required for the user in managed system setup assigned in READ rfc from the solution manager to have the authorization object with S_CTS_ADMI with the value of TABL and EPS1.

Note:- The important role SAP_SM_BPOANA_ALL should be checked for all the users and should be configured as per the analytics guide.

Job monitoring issues

Error occurred in the job monitoring objects: This is the error occurred if the job documentation is not created and further not assigned to the job monitoring object. The authorization object required for this is SM_JOBDEF or SM_JSM_DOC. These objects are delivered through SAP_SM_SCHEDULER_BPO role. You need to see and activate the object SM_JOBDEF (in case old authorizations are active you need to adjust it accordingly). Further for configuring the business process monitoring the specified roles should present with user BPO_ADM_<SID>. Similarly for technical monitoring the corresponding user is SMC_JMON_<SID>.

Hello All,

It was a simple issue but I spent 2 days on it hence writing this small blog, hope it will help others.

While generating stack file in Solman 7.1 SP12 system for ERP6 EHP7 (SAP_HR 600)system to HR Renewal2.0, even after selecting addon HR Renewal 2.0, in target stack MOPZ was capturing component SAP_HR & EA_HR till 604 and 607 respectively.

While HR Renewal 2.0 upgrades SAP_HR and EA_HR to 608 level.

Also I was getting below warning message-

‘SAP KERNEL 7.42 64-BIT UNICODE': Requested instantiation '20012195' invisible

Solution :

SAP note#1940845 is solution for this.

Issue was due to compatibility between backend services in SAP OSS system and MOPZ.

After applying above note in solman system, MOPZ captured correct packages for HR Renewal2.0 in stack file successfully.

Note also cleared warning “‘SAP KERNEL 7.42 64-BIT UNICODE': Requested instantiation '20012195' invisible” but yes this warning can be ignored.

Here is the second part of my blog on the steps to make a successful ITSM / ChaRM project. You can find the first part with this link:

http://scn.sap.com/community/it-management/alm/solution-manager/blog/2015/02/12/how-to-make-a-successful-itsm-charm-project-part-1

3. Change Management

This is a part of the project that can easily be underestimated whereas it is one of the most important factor of its success.

When any ITSM solution is implemented, it replaces an existing tool or add a new tool in the IT processes. In any case, the old ways of working are going to change and it is never an easy thing to do.

To make the transition as smooth as possible, right from the beginning of the project, start communicating to the future end users about the project’s objectives, the solution designed, the benefits expected, etc.

It will help you in different ways:

• Your teams members might identify some part of the process that have not been clearly defined or don’t fit how one group is used to work
• The changes brought by the project will be more easily accepted and you will guarantee a much faster adoption of the solution
• You will reduce the risk of the solution being rejected by some of your teams

You don’t need to spend a lot of time on those activities. Just a few days are necessary, but it will definitely change the way your solution is accepted.

4. Build

This is related to the change management part of the project, but don’t forget to involve ChaRM end users during the build phase. Organize demonstrations, Q&A, etc.

The build phase also requires a test landscape to validate the tickets behavior. You can always use solman, but the best configuration is to have an ERP sandbox as close as possible to the production landscape configuration.

It will make your life easier during the go live. You will avoid implementing SAP notes on the ERP systems, close to the go live date, because the SAP Basis level is lower on ERP than Solution Manager, for example.

5. Test

As for any IT project, the definition of the requirements is essential to successfully test the solution. You don’t want to forget any requirement, as it would lead to a solution partially tested. The best approach is to start building your requirements during the design phase. As you design the solution, you also define what should be tested and how.

Don’t forget to cover, with the requirements, your release management process and all the different ways your team works, depending on SAP modules or products.

6. Training

Keep your training documents simple. In many projects, I have seen clients build very detailed documentation. The problem is that they are very difficult to maintain and the end-users usually don’t use them, as the documents are too long and they cannot quickly find the answers they are looking for.

And remember that end-users will regularly change, your documentation should be easy to understand as the solution owner won’t be available to explain to all new users how they should use the solution.

Instead, when you’re preparing the documentation, think about how the end-users will consume it. What are the information they will need to look for regularly (naming convention, release management principles, etc.) and the ones they will look at once or twice (objectives of the project, ticket interface, etc.).

With this, you can divide your user guide in more comprehensive units and make sure that the solution will be used the way it was supposed to.

7. Go-Live

I have identified three steps to safeguard the go live of ITSM / ChaRM projects

• Build the cut over plan throughout the project
• Anticipate the technical operations
• Build a transition plan for the existing tickets / transport requests

Build the cut over plan throughout the project

Depending on the size of the solution you’re dealing with, there can be a lot of operations that need to be performed. It is very easy to forget some.

To avoid that, the best thing is to start building the cut over plan as soon as the design phase starts and to update it regularly during the project.

Anticipate the technical operations

On most projects I’ve done, we usually had problems with the same operations:

• System landscape preparation: basis team had trouble generating RFC destinations or setting up TMS the way ChaRM expects it
• Authorizations on the satellite systems: the authorizations were not consistent on all the systems managed by Solution Manager and it can lead to errors in the processes (ex: transport requests not released)

All this problems can lead to a stressful go live and even delay it. My best advice is to anticipate those operations. Start working on them at least 1 or 2 weeks before the go live.

You will give your teams more time to solve the issues and will avoid all the stress.

Build a transition plan for the existing tickets / transport requests

When the new solution will be deployed, you will have tickets in your previous ITSM solution or transport requests not linked to ChaRM tickets. You want to reduce them as much as possible, as it will confuse end users and can lead to errors.

For ITSM tickets in the legacy system, you can chose between three options:

• Manually create the tickets in Solution Manager: easy to do when you have a few tickets, but the workload quickly increases
• Work with the old tickets until they are all closed and use Solution Manager for all new requests / incidents: it is the easiest solution, as no work is necessary to prepare the go live, but it can be confusing for end users
• Automatically transfer the tickets from the legacy tool to Solution Manager: SAP doesn’t have any tool to fulfill this requirement, but there are software, provided by third party vendors, that can perform this operation. It is the best solution and can be cheapest depending on the number of tickets to transfer

For transport requests, if you have deployed the cCTS infrastructure, you can link released and unreleased transport requests to your tickets. In that case, the best strategy is to create tickets and link them to transport requests before the go live.

8. Post go-live

Depending on the size of your organization, the changes brought to your IT processes can take a while to be fully understood by your team.

Make sure they are supported after the go-live to understand how the solution works, how it impacts their day to day operations and what benefits they can get from it.

Finally, after 6 or 9 months, execute a new TEA report to measure the progresses made and compare them with the initial objectives. And don’t forget to communicate about your successes!

Fellow Members,

In this blog, I would like to share my experiences with previous Change Request Management projects. I read a blog on ChaRM on a Developers perspective and I liked it and it was close to the 'things' that you hear in a ChaRM Project. In the same lines, I tried to compile my notes from my work diary in a consultant's shoe and present it here in plain English.

P. S: All the content expressed here are my personal opinions and do not represent my employer or SAP.

1. Concept of Change Request and Change Document

Often during the blueprint discussion, the most asked question is 'Why do we need two documents in ChaRM process?'. Most of the customers I worked with find it little confusing. The confusion is more profound if the customer does not have a established change management process or used to any other tools (like sharepoint, custom web forms or editable PDF forms..etc) as Change Request Forms. The hard time for consultant will be to convince the customer and make them understand how  Change Request will be used only for Approvals and Change Documents would be used for handling Transport Management aspects of it.

2. Who will create Request For Change?

The organization structure of companies varies from one organization to another organization running SAP. So we can not go with a notion that one size fits all concept. The work of consultant would be easier if the customer has a well defined change management practice already established. Sometime the end user would be sales agent on the field or sometimes it's the help desk team in scenarios where the end user does not have access to system and had to call the help desk hotline to raise a CR on behalf of him/her. So identifying the right set of people for end user trainings is an important factor to be kept in mind while designing the process.

3. Approvals in Change Request.

This topics varies from customer to customer and consultant needs to be prepared to expect more than 4 or 5 approvers for a single change request. Average number of approvers I have encountered is three, speaking from my past experiences. This means having new partner functions and CRM UI customization aspects of it. Also there will be confusions when, the end user raising a request for a change would not be knowing who would be his 3rd level of approver for the request of change to be raised. In such cases we need to incorporate partner function determination using categories. This would ease the process. Also if the organization is huge then, expect to have a very long list of categories to be incorporated in a change request. In addition, if you customize the approval process determination using categories then it would be applauded by the end users for sure !! Image may be NSFW.
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4. Emails in Approval Management

Everyone loves to receive a email if he/she was made as a approver for a change request(if possible in HTML mail format). In a standard process offered the approvers receive worklist emails in their SO01 inbox. With little customization you can convert these SO01 worklist email to outlook/inbox email notifications. However please note, this email notification would be in plain text. Email notifications for approvers is one of the most needed feature in out of the box solution, hope SAP would incorporate this as a standard feature in future releases. Image may be NSFW.
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5. Which Change Documents to use?

Again, this is one of the most debated topics and strangely, I have seen customers reluctance to use Normal Changes for maintenance purposes. Some of the feedback I hear during blueprint discussion meetings is, Normal Change is too much 'clicks here and there' and in scenarios where Basis team is trying to minimize their efforts in Change Management and Transports execution process. Normal Change fits perfectly if the customer has a defined release cycle concept. However in scenarios where the customer is so much comfortable with existing ad hoc transports import, then they expect your new process to work the same way. However with the new preliminary imports and other enhancements, things have started to change and Normal Change is finding more and more relevance for everyday change processes. 

There is another perspective for this. Some customers would only be looking to automate the Transport Management process and other would be interested  in complete re-haul of their change management practice to adopt to best practices. So it depends on whose boarding room you would end up Image may be NSFW.
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6. Approval for Transport Import inside individual Change Documents

I encountered this request 2 out 3 times in my previous projects.  Even though Change Request is approved and handed over to functional/development team for implementation; the leads/managers of functional/development team would want to control the transport import process to follow on systems via approval apart from just controlling the phases of cycle. Again you can trace the origin of this type of requests to traditional email approvals that the team leads/managers used to provide before implementing new process. This type of requests are achieved by tweaking couple of new actions and statuses in the change documents. No big deal, but time consuming Image may be NSFW.
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7. Simply the User Experience and UI as much as possible

Before you hand over the process to user trainings, try going for minimalistic approach in the CR or CD UI. By default you would have lot many tabs inside CR or CD which may not be relevant for every customer. So tweaking the UI and removing not used tabs can add lot more value for the end users.

8. User Trainings

According to me,  this is one of most time consuming process in ChaRM implementation projects; it is every human's basic nature to be reluctant for the unknown or new things anywayImage may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. . I recently used one of SAP's tool in training and content management portfolio, WPB (Workforce Performance Builder) and this tool turned out to be very useful for end user trainings in ChaRM. Users liked the way of learning new process ( like creating a new CR ...) in a completely new UI with relative ease.

Hope this helps all the consultants out there who would be handling ChaRM projects for the first time !!!

I would love to hear from all of you on your experiences, suggestions and feedback in the comment section.

With Regards,

Vivek

From SAP: “All live Meet the Expert Sessions are recorded and will be then available via SAP ES Academy ‘Replay Library’  www.service.sap.com/replay-library”

The usual disclaimer applies that things in the future are subject to change.  Also a couple caveats:

1. I have not used this feature productively

2. I missed parts of this webcast in the middle so my notes are not complete

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Figure 1: Source: SAP

Figure 1 shows that SAP plans to make Solution Manager more business oriented.

SAP also wants to make SolMan ready for HANA deployments

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Figure 2: Source: SAP

SOLAR transactions that support documentation and implementation processes

SAP said this approach that had drawbacks

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Figure 3: Source: SAP

Figure 3 shows the current pain points, including a “Rigid 3 level hierarchy”

SAP wants to use the new UI – HTML5

Basic Concept for SAP Solution Manager 7.2

Solutions can act as a an umbrella

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Figure 4: Source: SAP

Solution (in Figure 4) covers system landscape where you need to know runtime environment, execution environment

New solution documentation UI works with LMDB content, logical component, new logical component group

It covers the processes that the customer execute

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Figure 5: Source: SAP

Figure 5 shows the Solution landscape and documentation UI

Sub landscapes relates to a maintenance cycle related to ERP

Sites are processes deployed to multiple plant running different ERP systems – for global rollout use cases

Document types reflect what documentation to be available

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Figure 6: Source: SAP

Figure 6 shows the planned solution documentation approach is to be both top down and bottoms up.

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Figure 7: Source: SAP

Figure 7 shows where attach documentation related to executables

Business processes can be reused

Define configuration block; define dependencies of the block

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Figure 8: Source: SAP

Library of executables, config units, interfaces – IT

Enable processes – assemble end to end processes out of artifacts

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Figure 9:  Source: SAP

Introduce a change and include change documentation

Ensure properly documented in maintenance branch and transported

Documentation needs to be released

System Landscape

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Figure 10: Source: SAP

Logical components have changed; solution documentation is bound to logical component group

When upgrade, you need to restructure logical components

Content Activation

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Figure 11: Source: SAP

Figure 11 shows projects/solutions to move to 7.2 content structure; this includes BPMN modeling capability

Question and Answer:

Q: What is clear definition for branch?

A: Branch is a versioning context for documentation

Q: Is this Solution Manager running on HANA DB?

A: Can run on HANA or other databases

Q: Will integration with ARIS be possible?

A: Clearly plan to have open interface to integrate with third party modeling tools

Not available in first version but it is on the agenda

Q: Is there is a limit on the number of nodes you can have on your project

A: not known to him

Q: Will there be integration with PowerDesigner?

A: plan to have open interface to integrate with third party modeling tools

Q: What is the effort to migrate?

A: If you move content from SOLAR to new documentation – content is moved to process area – the respective library structures are created

It has been quite a while since the last TechED which happened in 2013 and therefore there are lot of new changes happening in Solution Manager as well.

This year SAP TechED was so much streamlined/well planned with sessions in Bengaluru,India  and quite a good exposure has been provided in terms of future SAP Products along with working Demo's/Hands-on etc. In addition, plenty of sessions were held on various Topics of Solution Manager 7.1 and how it is going to address the new products/hybrid scenarios.

I am fortunate to visit this time and met with plenty of good friends, speakers, SAP developers/sessions speakers friends and really a big thanks to SCN Moderator team for promoting and appreciating the Topic leaders again this year. Of-course I was there representing our Solution Manager space but this on behalf of our entire Solution Manager family spread-ed across multiple organizations and collaborating for noble cause of knowledge sharing, helping others etc.

Overall the experience was very good as always and I will try to share some of the important learning which is received during the SAP TechED 2015, Bangalore. Please note that I can't cover everything as we have more than 30-40 sessions but will try to cover the most important key notes received/covered from my perspective.All the below slides or information I have received while attending multiple sessions in SAP TechED 2015 and please note all the slides are part of  SAP disclaimer policy.

The very first session which I have attended was ITM100 - Holistic IT Management for Hybrid Solutions and further lot of connected sessions were shared/advised.

Here our knowledge was upgraded from HANA and Cloud perspective and SAP’s plan and offerings in this area. We now understand there are multiple options available for SAP customers to either have a complete on premise HANA solution or mixed scenario or completely public cloud based solution.

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Source - SAP

As soon as we understood the concept of these hybrid scenarios we were trying figure out the importance of Solution Manager and whether it supports above.

The answer is yes it supports above hybrid scenario but with certain limitations with respect to functionalities of Solution Manager and it will help us to complete visibility in terms on Promise scenarios and HANA Enterprise Cloud scenarios.

How this will happen?

Again the concept remain based upon LMDB and SLD setup we will identify the Cloud scenarios and this will help us to implement functionalities which are running for Hybrid scenarios like Change Management, Monitoring etc.

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Source - SAP

for. e.g in above scenario, the SLD on cloud solution will be linked to internal SLD on customer on premise and further fill the LMDB with information over VPN network.

Again the concept of monitoring remain the same here and Diagnostic/Host Agent will play the main role as noted above.

In some of the other sessions like ITM212 - How to Operate SAP-Based CloudSolutions with SAP Solution Manager, we were enlightened about Solution Manager 7.1 SP13 as below and can see how good new things are coming from support perspective or Operations side.

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Source - SAP

Also, there is good theoretical exposure on SAP Solution Manager 7.2(ITM261- From Business Requirement to Solution with SAP Solution Manager) focusing more on Business Process Management where we will live without

• System monitoring workcenter
• Solar01/solar02 for documentation
• BPM - Business Process Monitoring based on CCMS

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Source - SAP

Really a big thanks to SAP for conducting these wonderful informative session's and I will try to attend the same next year.

...or why you have lost it.

Sometimes happens that, for any reason or by mistake, SAP Solution Manager system is removed from LMDB. It implies that the stages System Preparation and Basic Configuration will be lost.

As SAP Note 2020955 says:

"There are no means of bringing back the setup, you have to re-run all the steps in System Preparation and Basic Configuration."

Graphically,

Before:

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After:

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It is not the best thing that can happens to you but, it could be useful sometimes (thinking in a new SM system not very well configured and you want to start a fresh installation)

Hi All,

I was having an issue on my SOLMAN system and was able to resolve this recently.

I would like to share the resolution here.

I was unable to enter any text in the TEXT field of a change request. Image may be NSFW.
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Looks like the Mr.Charm doesn't is against textingImage may be NSFW.
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See the below Video on what happens when I enter the text.

We are on Solman 7.1 SP12 and I was able to find the solution from Miguel Angel Arino Clarke  Image may be NSFW.
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SAP has released a KBA 2126320 - Unable to type text in text assignment block to resolve this issue.

As per this KBA please implement SAP note  1955587 - Textarea Length Check  to fix this issue.

Please take a note that the SAP note 1955587 has manual changes based on your current SAP Web UI Framework component (WEBCUIF).

If your WEBCUIF is already at a greater level than the one specified in the Manual Pre-Implement , these change are already in your system, you can check the Correction Instructions section and see if there are relevant correction for your system. Like in my case, the WEBCUIF is on SP level 12(SAPK-70112INWEBCUIF) and the Manual Pre-Implement are not applicable but correction instruction 1690346 is applicable to fix this issue.

Once you note is implemented you will be able to add text in the change request again. Image may be NSFW.
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Ref : Unable to add test to a Change request in Charm

Thanks for reading this blog.

Feel free to comment if you have faced any other issue on Charm and able to resolve the same.

I like to share my experiences in Scope and Effort Analyzer (SEA) as at March, 26th, 2015, with you. With this blog I'll publish my different scn documents and other Information concerning SEA. From time to time new information will be published here.

• SEA needs a Trusted-RFC-Destination (http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-62903)
• Missing application component hierachy in SEA Project (http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-62816)
• Job "SAP Clone Finder" for SEA (http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-62902)
• MOPZ transaction assigned to SEA Project (http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-62818)
• Creating the business blueprint for an SEA analysis project (http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-62830)
• Reuse of an earlier created SEA analysis (http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-62951)

Here are some interesting links concerning SEA.

http://service.sap.com/SEA (media library with HowTo-Guide)

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-54826

http://scn.sap.com/community/it-management/alm/blog/2014/03/01/what-is-upl-and-why-should-you-care--solution-manager-update

http://scn.sap.com/community/it-management/alm/solution-manager/blog/2014/06/25/secure-your-ehpsps-implementation-with-scope-effort-analyzer-in-sap-solution-manager

http://scn.sap.com/community/it-management/alm/solution-manager/blog/2014/03/01/solution-manager-what-is-new-today-planned-for-the-future-asug-webcast-part-4

http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/TechOps/EFWK_SETUP

Hello Team,

Few years back, it was very difficult to renew Maintenance license for each system (very complicated for big landscape)

Dedicated Basis Resource needs to work only on Maintenance certificate really solution Manager doing great job, really good concept of Automatic Renewal of Maintenance License

Solution Manager can be used to distribute maintenance license to all Abap systems of landscape. If Automatic License Maintenance is activated, Solution Manager  becomes the agent between a satellite system and Service Market place. 

As illustrated below in diagram: it checks with satellite system if the maintenance license is expiring, if yes solution manager receives maintenance license from Service Market Place  and makes it available in satellite system’s s license.

Note: To receive maintenance license via Solution Manager  from Service Market Place , it is necessary that a valid maintenance contract is active between SAP and customer

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Procedure to setup automatic distribution of maintenance license:

To setup solution manager distribution of license, it is necessary that managed systems are configured for EWA report setup in SDCCN. Once EWA is setup in Solution Manager, create job for fetching license data from managed systems:

Go to SDCCN --> Go to To do tab -> Click on Create button on the menu bar -> Select “Get License Data” from the menu

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This would schedule a daily job for collection license data from managed systems To check the logs of job, click on Done tab - > click on log icon in Logs column

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How to renew Maintenance License Automatically using Solution Manager

Second step is to activate license distribution from change management : Go to Solman_workcenter

Click on Change Management -> License Management ( in left Menu )

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In the screen select a system and click on “Activate Distribution” select “Activate Automatic Distribution”

Solution Manager can fetch the license 30 days in advance.

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Thanks,

Rahul Yedapally

    As administrators of solution manager, we are enthrusted with the responsibility to set up monitoring for BW process chains,   BO jobs, DS jobs. We wonder, sometimes, what would be good values for thresholds for certain time relevant metrics like Duration or typical values for records processed and/or data packages processed.

We all believe the past performance of the process chians & jobs are indicative of their general performance over a period of time. It would be very effective to have these values (Minimum , maximum, average of the last 10 executions) of these chains/jobs made avialable at the time of setup (SOLMAN_SETUP) and configuration to enable effecient monitoring.

BI Monitoring, provides this possibility.

In the SOLMAN_SETUP-> Technical Monitoring - > Job & BI Monitoring -> Bi Monitoring - > Step 4 (Define scope)-> Choose scenario - > Step 6 -> Monitoring & Alerting

Go to any of the monitored object types sub stesps( 6.1 to 6.4)

Choose the relevant chains/jobs and click on THRESHOLD MASS MAINTANANCE

In the below screenshot you could se that we can provide absolute value as +/- from MIN, MAX, LAS, AVG

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A simlar example is with a percentage +/- for metrics (in this screenshot for Records procesed)

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At this point in time, the values are fetched fomr the managed system and the corspoding values are calculated and shown in the main ALV. on Save & activate, these values atre persisted to the monitored objects. At this moment a pointer is converted to the value and the values are persisted!

As mentioned earlier, this is syncronised at this point in time. And not automaticallly adjusted as time progresses. But should there be a need, this reactivation can be done en-masse.

Regards, Raghav

Let’s share our thoughts on how to make a successful ITSM / ChaRM project!

For 8 years, I’ve done many of these, for small, medium and large SAP implementations and I’ve found that some key steps are always essential to guarantee the project success:

• Define the improvements expected from the project and don’t forget to use TEA (Transport Execution Analysis) to detect hidden flaws in your change and release management process
• Keep your ITSM / ChaRM solution simple and as close to the standard as possible
• Take advantage of the project to align your release management process to SAP best practices
• Don’t underestimate the change management aspects of the project
• Don’t just test ITSM / ChaRM processes and define tests plans for the most complex scenarios of your change and release management processes
• Make your training documentation as simple as possible
• Start preparing the Go Live at least two weeks before the actual Go-Live date
• After 6 to 9 month, measure the reality vs the expected results with TEA

In this blog, I will describe in detail, by project phase, why all those steps will guarantee a successful ITSM / ChaRM implementation. I've divided it in two parts, the next one will be published soon.

1. Project preparation

A customer has decided he needs to implement a change and release management tool and chose ITSM / ChaRM. He has defined his objectives, the expected ROI and the area where improvements are expected.

However, there is always a gap between how we think a process is executed and how it is really used on a day to day basis. Such gaps can lead to actual problems (regression, extra work for the development team, etc.). They should be identified before the project starts or its benefits might not be as high as planned.

To identify those gaps, SAP provides, in SAP Solution Manager a report called TEA (Transport Execution Analysis). It measures a list of predefined Key Performance Indicators to evaluate how your change, test, transport and release management processes are really executed.

It is very fast to run and you would be surprised by what we find. Here are some of the findings we made with some of our customers:

• 60 dumps every day in average on a production system
• 40 objects overwritten in production by an older version on a 6 months period
• 800 transport requests opened in development for more than 6 months
• Etc.

This report gives you a quick and clear understanding on where your efforts should be focused and what should be done to improve your IT processes.

2. Solution Design

This step is essential as it will determine how the solution behaves. My best advice, keep it simple and try to stay as much as possible close to the standard processes. It will make your life much easier in the future!

Keep it simple!

Each additional step, field or validation in the process makes it less flexible and will slow it down. Don’t forget that it will be used every day by your organization and that complex solutions requires a lot more training, which can be problematic when new employees arrive or a new partner starts working on a project.

Always think, before adding a new element,

• Is it really necessary?
• Can it create bottlenecks?
• Will it increase the workload of your team, or even worse the workload of key members of your team?

Stay close to the standard processes

As for all SAP solutions, the further you get from SAP standard processes, the harder it will be to maintain and upgrade it.

Adjust ITSM / ChaRM processes to your organization but make sure you understand them well before making any decision. They are based on ITIL best practices and are designed to fit most IT organizations requirements.

Don’t be shy and align your release management process to SAP best practices

One of the thing that is usually overlooked is the release management. Any change and transport management tool will have an impact on the way you manage your releases in SAP. So don’t be shy and use this opportunity to align your release management process to SAP best practices.

Lately, SAP has produced some really great documents on how you should manage your tests, how you should bundle your changes, how to categorize changes, etc. Use those documents and make their principles yours.

It will make the difference between a good ITSM / ChaRM solution and a great one that optimizes the change and release management processes by reducing its costs, the time to market and the incidents in production.

To be continued in my next blog...

Hi All

SAP Release the new ONE Support Launchpad (ex-Portal ) (https://launchpad.support.sap.com) that run in HCP with Fiori Style!!

This guide show you how to install a Digital Certificate in your mobile device and access to the new Portal Launchpad from you mobile device without type user/password every time.

For the part 2 of this tutorial use the following link:

How to use the new ONE Support LaunchPad(Ex-Portal) your Mobile devices - Part 2 / 2

1).-  Logon to service.sap.com/tcs with Firefox/Iexplorer

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2).-  Select the option Single Sign-On with SAP Passports from the left menu and click on the red button "Apply Here"Image may be NSFW.
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3).-  The system will ask your OSS Username and passwordImage may be NSFW.
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4).-  In the following screen you need to write your password again and click on "Apply for SAP Passport" button

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5).-  Firefox will confirm that the certificate was installed OK
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You can check that is installed in the right way going to "Advanced--> Certificates--> Your CertificatesImage may be NSFW.
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6).- now you need to select the certificate and click on the Backup button Image may be NSFW.
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And select the folder and Name to save the certificate in your desktop
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The system will ask you a Certificate Backup Password
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7).-  after the successful execution, the system will show you the following screen and you will have your certificate file in your desktop.Image may be NSFW.
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