SAP are continuing to evolve SAP Solution Manager 7.2 with the latest support package stack SP09 being released in July 2019. Although not the biggest support pack, it does bring several new and enhanced features across a broad spectrum of the functional scope, including important and further support for the new SAP Support Backbone (see our article here).
Please see below for more details of the changes, with the most significant changes coming in the Test Suite and Change Control Management modules
- Project Analytics – New Test Management in Project Assets
- Within the Project Assets Dashboard, there is now a tile for Test Management, this will help the Project Managers see how many test plans, for example, are assigned to a project. They will now also be able to access defect information along with typical additional test management information. You will now also be able to drill into Test Management tiles and have edit authorisation.
- New indexing report
- This new report calculates and displays the expected size of a full Embedded Search index in SAP Solution Manager based on the existing data at the time the report runs. This is useful on the odd occasion where you have to schedule a full re-index of your documentation (e.g. after some patches or SAP Note applications), which can take quite some time. Having a clear view of the estimated time required enables you to plan and communicate the required downtime of the search infrastructure to your end users.
- Further integration with Change Control Management
- There is now greater flexibility in reassignment of Solution Documentation artifacts from one change document to another. The respective re-assignment option is smoothly integrated within the change list UI, this is a great addition enabling greater flexibility when managing documentation updates via ChaRM.
Test Document Signature
- Test Suite has now incorporated a digital signature, this will enhance the workflow process as there will now be the ability for a Test Manager to authorise certain status with their digital signatures. The signature data is also available in test reports enabling you to easily see who has signed off which tests.
- Edit Test Documents/Notes online
- Previously to edit a test document you would have to download to your local machine, make the changes and then re-upload; this was a pain! Now, this edit can now be performed directly in Solution Manager without the need to download/upload. Simple changes like this really help with the adoption of the tooling and processes and are very welcome!
- Manual Test Executions
- There’s now a signature icon in the test notes/results which will display you the signature history of that Test Plan, and if you’re in edit mode it will give you the option to sign in the document with your signature.
- Configure the same job in different systems
- There is now a report available that lets you configure monitoring for multiple systems identically, this will help to remove the manual effort in setting up the same job for multiple systems like you used to have to do.
- Multiple monitoring objects from one job document
- You can now create more than one Job Monitoring object from a job document for the same system and client, again reducing the number of Job Documents you would need to create for the same monitoring object. So you can now have 2 monitoring objects, monitoring different things and alerts being sent to different teams but against the same job document.
- Improved mass deletion report
- SAP recently released a mass deletion report in a previous support pack, this has been enhanced further in this latest support pack.
- You can now access Job Documents from the Job Details section in the central job overview, therefore increasing seamless integration between the monitoring and documentation functions.
- EU Data Protection Flag for Communication with SAP
- You can now mark systems in the SAP Support Portal as requiring EU data protection, this means processors outside the EU will not be able to access a remote connection to that system. The documents attached to those incidents will also be flagged.
- Approval Procedure for White List Objects
- A developer can now request an object be added to the White List directly from the managed system UI, the Change Manager will approve or reject the request in the Administration cockpit, this can also be done in the recently released ‘My Inbox SAP Fiori App’.
- Approval Procedure for Critical Objects
- A developer can now request a critical object to be approved directly from the managed system UI, the Change Manager will approve or reject the request in the Administration cockpit, this can also be done in the recently released ‘My Inbox SAP Fiori App’.
- Automatic assignment of Development team
- You can now automatically assign a development team to a specific change transaction. Previously the development team would have had to of been entered manually each time into a change document, now, you can have the development team automatically populate depending upon the transaction type.
- Automatic import of Transport of Copies (ToC) into QAS
- When you create a Transport of Copy (ToC) in the transport management assignment block of WebClient UI, the ToC is now also automatically imported into the QAS system after it is released. Thus, removing the need for a background job or interaction by the Basis team; testing can continue immediately!
- Silent mode for transport-related checks
- If the DGP check or the cross-reference check is customised as “Silent” mode, then during releasing and importing transport request the check will NOT be performed but skipped directly; for the manual check-in the assignment block, the check will be performed and if any conflicts detected, the check result will always be reported as warning conflicts. This will come in useful when you want to skip DGP checks for certain systems in the landscape e.g skip QA.
Of course, there are many other changes under the skin on Solution Manager SP09 than we can’t go into here, including minor, but welcome additions to Application Operations, SolMan Configuration and Data Consistency Management. Please Note – If you use any of the Focused Build/Insight functionalities then you should delay your patching to SP09 until Focused Build 4 is also released (scheduled for mid-August).
Don’t forget that to maintain access to SAP’s Support Backbone (required for the continued operation of key functions such as the Maintenance Planner – amongst others) you will need to upgrade to at least SP07 and ideally SP09 before the end 2019, so now is the time to take action! Get in contact with us below to find out how we can make sure you get the most out of the latest enhancements in the fastest possible time.
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