The figure explains how you can deliver your changes towards production in a holistic manner.
This E2E process flow provides the key activities per each project role during the whole project life cycle.
When setting up SAP Cloud ALM:
- Make sure you follow the required setup described on the SAP HELP PORTAL.
- Note: the Configuration differs for various SAP Solutions.
- Transports for the following solutions are covered by CTMS:
- SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry environment (development content)
- SAP BTP, Neo environment (development content)
- SAP Integration Suite:
- Cloud Integration
- API Management
- More under Supported Content Types.
Configuration to enable transport management must be done per SAP Solution/deployment provider.
In the use-case for SAP S/4HANA on-premise and CTMS for Cloud Integration.
In both cases, the SAP Cloud ALM API Service Key is needed to establish the connection.
A Feature is a vehicle to deploy functionality throughout your landscape by orchestrating different transport containers for various software components and ensuring traceability via history:
- Features can be created in the Features app or from a requirement.
- Fill in a meaningful title for the changes to be delivered with your Feature.
- In the Description area, you can add rich text and screenshots to describe the changes properly.
Features can be created standalone in the Features app or directly from a requirement (the recommended way).
Add a meaningful title to easily figure out what the feature is about.
In the description area, you can add long text and screenshots to properly specify the feature.
Create/Assign Transports
Create a Transport for SAP S/4HANA within a Feature to provide the transport container to your developer/configuration expert:
Contents of a Potential Transport
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | <Add a meaningful title of your choice> |
| Type | <Select the type of the transport request (Customizing or Workbench)> |
| Owner | <Add an owner – User ID from the managed system (optional)> |
| Export Tenant | <Select the export tenant> |
| Target | <Select the consolidation target> |
- Title: Add a meaningful title.
- Type: Select the type of the transport request (Customizing or Workbench).
- Owner: Add an owner – User ID from the managed system (optional).
- Export Tenant: Select the export tenant.
- Target: Select the consolidation target.
Transport requests can be created for SAP S/4HANA On-Premise and S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition.
With this functionality, you can hand over the transport to the developer/configuration expert right from the start.
A (transport) owner must be available in the managed system, otherwise the fallback technical background user specified in the /SDF/ALM_SETUP.
The Export tenant is taken from the system groups assigned to your project, meaning a development client must be assigned to a system group of a project.
The Target is taken from the transport route configuration. It is the consolidation target of your managed system.
Assign a Transport for SAP Cloud Integration in the Edit mode and combine transport containers to be synchronized with production deployment:
A Transport created directly in SAP Cloud Integration can be assigned to a Feature in SAP Cloud ALM via the Cloud Transport Management Service integration of SAP Cloud ALM.
Use the Assign button in the Transports section of a Feature and select the appropriate SAP Cloud Integration Transport.
Assigning transports to add CTMS transports or late bind on-premise transports as an example.
You can also unassign transports and reassign them later, but you have to be careful there.
All transports of connected systems/deployment tools can be assigned.
Release and Deployment to QAS
Release On-premise transport requests directly from within a Feature:
Using the Release button in the Transports section of the Feature is triggering the Release of all Transports in the Modifiable status, assigned to the Feature.
Transport requests can only be released if all transport tasks assigned to the transport requests in the managed systems are released. If a Release fails, the status of the transport request changes to Release failed and in a pop-up on the status you see the error message.
Deploy the Feature and all assigned Transports to the Quality Assurance (QAS) stage:
- Utilizing the Deploy button in the Transports section to schedule the deployment to the QAS stage.
- All Transports assigned to a Feature are considered for the deployment.
- In case a Transport assigned to the Feature has already been deployed to QAS for any reason, this Transport will not be considered since the deployment of Transports in QAS is synchronized first.
Easily track the deployment status of Features and the assigned Transports in the Feature Traceability.
- Filter for the list of Features you are interested in, for example, via the Release.
- Filter for certain Deployment Statuses to figure out, for example, which Features are ready to go the Test Systems.
- Check the Deployment Status for a 3-tier landscape and drilldown to the detailed information per Transport.
Deploy the Feature and all assigned Transports to the Production (PRD) stage:
- To be able to deploy Features to production, your Feature must be in status Ready for Production.
- Utilizing the Deploy button in the Transports section of a Feature to schedule the deployment to the PRD stage:
Via the Deploy to Production button in the Features Overview, you can deploy several Features to PRD together, for example, based on a Release.
All Transports assigned to a Feature are considered for the deployment and imported as a subset (in the on-premise case).