SAP Solution Manager covers the complete application lifecycle for your IT solution and providers business processes to streamline operations. Support Package Stack 6 (SPS6) bring some great new enhancements and capabilities in SAP Solution Manager 7.2 across different processes.

To understand the impact of the changes, we are going to highlight only what’s new by breaking them down in each of the areas of functions in SAP Solution Manager 7.2 SPS 6.

• Configuration
• Requirements Management
• Project Management
• Process Management
• Custom Code Management
• Test Suite
• Change Control Management
• IT Service Management
• Application Operations
• Business Process Operations
• Data Volume Management
• SAP Engagement and Service Delivery

Configuration- General Changes:

• Users can now properly log off from SAP Solution Manager Configuration, for example to log on with another user.
• Within an activity’s help text, you can move to the help text of the next or previous activity.
• In a log comment, you can now enter a formatted text. You can also upload an image, for example a screenshot. You can then access this image choosing the link in the Display area of the Log screen area.

Configuration- Change Control Management:

• Define Change Process Copy Transaction Types Improve Defect Correction Process activity- This activity helps you set up the defect correction process as of SAP Solution Manager SPS 6.
• Improve Defect Correction Process step- In this step, you can perform the required delta Customizing to enable the new defect correction process.
• Configure Extended Function Set Up Transport-Related Checks Maintain Objects for White List activity-In this activity, you can maintain white list objects in a standard change.

Configuration- Application Operations

• Template Maintenance-In expert mode, for metric group, you can set the parameter EXCLUDE_SELF_TEST with the self-test checks for which you want to exclude monitoring and alerting.

Requirements Management:

• Consistency check CONFIG_ITEM- It checks if the configuration item information is provided in the change document. The check is customized for all change documents and their initial status (administrative, general, urgent, normal change, and defect correction). It sets the document status to error.

Project Management:

• The Projects Analytics – Change Cycles dashboard application provides an overview about projects and their details which are assigned to a change cycle. The change cycle acts as global filter and needs to be selected in the filter area in order to get a result. There is no data, if the end user is not responsible for a project or if no change management integration with change cycles is established.

Process Management-Solution Documentation and Solution Administration:

• History of elements- In Solution Documentation, the history of an element can be displayed via context menu Display History. This function shows the change history of structure elements and assignments (including corresponding attributes).
• Lifecycle operations- In Solution Documentation, the lifecycle operations Release Changes and Discard Changes are refined: A preview of to be released and to be discarded elements is available. For a better error handling, the columns Release/Discard Check show now warnings and problems.
• Drag and drop of documents- In Solution Documentation, it is possible to display and hide a drop area for drag and drop of one document or many documents. This function allows the upload of documents and the upload of new versions of documents.
• Reporting and search options- In Solution Documentation, the functions for reporting and searching incorporates now the following entities: Related documents, Diagram entities: BPMN diagram elements and universal diagram elements, Library usages
• Upload of Excel files- In solution administration on the Imports tab, it is possible to upload local Excel files as initial upload of structure elements, assignments, documents, and attributes. For the upload, the file must be saved as tab delimited text file.

Process Management- Graphical Process Editor

• Collaboration and Process Diagrams- New Auto Mapping feature allows to map draft symbols detected from the diagram to existing objects from the Solution Documentation elements. An auto mapping can be proposed based on comparison of used names and objects from Solution Documentation structure. This feature allows to model a diagram easier using the draft symbols and replace them easily by Solution Documentation elements. It can be triggered from the toolbar. Possibility to change texts position of some shapes. Texts can be moved to predefined positions via the context menu. This is possible for shapes having the title outside of it like Events, Gateways, Data Stores, Data Objects, Roles, Systems, or Flows.
• Collaboration Diagram- A pool/process can be added more than one time in the diagram.
• Universal Diagram Titles of all shapes can be moved to predefined positions via the context menu It is possible to change the font size and color of the shape’s texts.

Custom Code Management:

• Maintain Owner – Namespace Classification SAP Fiori app- With this app, you can display a classification of namespaces structured according to the namespace name, original owner, modified owner and by whom it was changed. These data can be used as filter criteria to restrict the list view. You can also enter a modified owner to overrule the automatically determined original owner.
• Blacklist Monitor- The blacklist monitor has been integrated into decommissioning cockpit. The blacklist monitor checks the usage of objects and identifies objects as quarantine candidates. If objects are still used though, the usage information is logged and/or leads to a dump depending on the settings you make.
• ATC variant configuration in quality cockpit- ATC variant configuration has been integrated into the quality cockpit. In a quality project you can use one ATC series and variant that you want to consider for the analysis.
• Usage information and infrastructure cockpit-The usage information and infrastructure cockpit helps you to display usage data in managed systems according to a specified time period. Two infrastructure types are available in the system: Usage and Procedure Logging (UPL) and ABAP call monitor (SCMON) to collect usage data

Test Suite:

• Test Plan Management-Mass maintenance applications are now available for:
  • Maintenance of the test plans attributes
  • Maintenance of test packages attributes (within one test plan)
  • Creation of new test packages within one test plan, for general data and settings.
• Assign Substitute for Testers As a tester you can assign a substitute to replace you during a time of absence.
• Tester Worklist > Revoke Check-Out- If a colleague has checked-out a document but is not working on it, you can undo the check-out to edit the document yourself.
• Tester Worklist > Hierarchy View-In the manual execution screen you can see the hierarchy path and as a tester you can access the test cases hierarchy to execute your tests.
• Tester Data Report- Additionally to the test plan status report, the tester data report provides more detail on the test execution.

Business Process Change Analyzer (BPCA)

• Business Process Change Analysis- Change Request Management Change Cycles can be analyzed by BPCA.
• Business Process Change Analysis- Impacts from SAP S/4HANA simplification items can be analyzed by BPCA.

Scope and Effort Analyzer:

• Scope and Effort Analyses-A configuration scenario for Scope and Effort Analyzer has been added to SAP Solution Manager Configuration. It can be found under configuration scenario ‘Test Suite’.
• Scope and Effort Analyses-A function to control the visibility of scope and effort analyses has been added

Change Control Management:

• Handling active import jobs during cycle switch for continual cycle, phase cycle, and release cycle- When you switch to a new cycle or close a cycle, the active import jobs assigned to the cycle are handled automatically.
• Ignoring CSOL and release check conflicts for defect corrections with change documents of the same cycle-You will not be notified about cross-system object lock conflicts or release check conflicts that are detected during upon-saving checks and release checks in a defect correction when the conflict originates from a normal change or a standard change in same cycle.
• Managed systems: create transport requests locally with implicit change document assignment:
• You can create transport requests directly in the managed ABAP development system while implicitly assigning them to change documents either in Change Request Management or Quality Gate Management in SAP Solution Manager.

Change Request Management:

• Open continual cycle-You can leverage also normal changes and standard changes in a continual cycle.
• Consistency check CONFIG_ITEM-It checks if the configuration item information is provided in the change document. The check is customized for all change documents and their initial status (administrative, general, urgent, normal change, and defect correction). It sets the document status to error.
• Standalone retrofit- When you want to use standalone retrofit, it is mandatory to execute manual activities “Prepare Implementation Landscape for Retrofit” and activity “Prepare Maintenance Landscape for Retrofit” in SAP Solution Manager Configuration.
• Consistency check TEXTS_OK-It checks if a user has maintained a specific text type for a document that has a certain status.

IT Service Management:

• PPM Project Integration in Incidents-You can now assign projects and project phases to incidents from within the CRM WebClient UI. You can also search for incidents assigned to projects and phases from the CRM WebClient UI.
• Extended Description in Incidents-You can replace the existing description field, which is limited to 40 characters with an extended description field of 120 characters. The extended description field is available only in the CRM WebClient UI.

Application Operations:

• Lock of guided procedure execution instance- With the ADMIN or EXEC user role, can lock a specific guided procedure execution instance in the Complete step, preventing it from subsequent changes. You can also overwrite the execution status and add a closing comment. Related tasks will be automatically set to completed. You can unlock a locked guided procedure execution instance in the log book.

Technical Administration -> Service Availability Management:

• Mass Maintenanc You can perform various actions on multiple selected outages on the Outage Maintenance screen by choosing the Mass Maintenance icon.

Technical Administration -> IT Calendar and Work Modes:

• Upload Work modes-You can upload work modes to IT calendar in CSV format.

Root Cause Analysis and Exception Management:

• Configuration Validation Reporting- You can use this new reporting tool, which can be used on mobiles, as an alternative to the existing configuration validation tool.

System and Application Monitoring:

• Message Flow Monitoring- You can view the self-monitoring details of message flow monitoring by choosing the Job Status icon

Business Process Operations:

• Business Process Analytics-Modernized analytical application which runs on mobile devices as well as on desktop computers.

Data Consistency Management:

• Data collection for cFIN-Consistency monitoring of cFIN solutions

Before updating to SPS6, ensure that you understand the impact of all these changes to minimize disrupting to the end users who are already using SAP Solution Manager 7.2 in production.

If you are still on SAP Solution Manager 7.1, good news is that you can go straight to SAP Solution Manager SPS 6.

 

Labinot Bytyqi – Chief SAP Manager and ALM Architect – CoreALM