Planning and Orchestrating Deployments with SAP Cloud ALM

The figure explains and defines the Feature.

The Feature is the entity for change documentation and deployment orchestration.

Easily assign transports and trigger their deployment throughout your landscape.

Traceability is ensured via the history of a feature.

The figure explains the workflow of a Feature.

This figure illustrates the available deployment integrations offered by SAP Cloud ALM.

This figure illustrates an example of how to enable transport management for CTS integration.

Find the setup information in the Setup & Administration Guide.

The figure shows a holistic view with SAP Cloud ALM.

To create a Feature from a Requirement:

• Simply create features from a requirement.
• Document the changes necessary to implement a requirement in the related features.
• Navigate from the requirement to the related features easily.

Simply create user stories and project tasks to relate them to a feature.

Distribute your implementation efforts by using user stories.

In Edit mode, you can assign user stories to a feature to deploy changes of different user stories together.

Release transports from within a feature directly in the managed system – for CTS transports only.

Follow the steps in the Setup & Administration Guide to enable the release functionality.

Features cannot be deployed to the next system as long as an assigned transport is in a failed status.

The transport error must be corrected before the status can be set to repaired.

Status repaired indicates that the feature can be deployed to the next system.

Features in SAP Cloud ALM know about the transport tracks of connected system landscapes via the landscape push configured during system connection.

Deployment to the production system of the transport track will only work in feature status Ready for Production.

Filter in the features overview for features with transports assigned or not assigned.

Search for transport IDs to figure out to which feature transports are assigned.

Easily figure out which features are not yet touched since no transports are assigned.

SAP Cloud Transport Management (CTMS) is now integrated with SAP Cloud ALM.

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.

Check the Setup & Admin Guidefor the integration steps.

Features can include transports for SAP on-premise and cloud solutions.

Orchestration of deployment to production for different solutions can be handled via SAP Cloud ALM now.

Synchronized deployment of changes to different production systems can be achieved by using features.

Create a deployment plan in the Projects and Setup application.

Define your releases to divide the release into timeboxes to frame your production go-live.

Assign the deployment plan to a project in order to use the releases for deployment planning.

Requested release can be assigned to a requirement to indicate a planned release to production.

The feature related to the requirement holds the actual deployment date by the assigned release.

The end date of the release can be seen as the go-live date.

Based on the status and the release, the features to be deployed to production can be figured out easily.

When all features related to a requirement are deployed to production, you can confirm the requirement.

Manage complex Cloud Transport Management landscapes and TMS target groups within a feature.

Multiple deployment targets (transport nodes) per transport are supplied by a single deploy action within a feature.

Deploy several features together to production for a given release.

Features are checked for the status Ready for Production and whether all assigned transports are ready to be deployed to the production systems.

Easily assign tags to features to categorize them in a convenient way.

Creation of new tags is possible by entering a new tag label and existing tags are suggested via the dropdown when you start typing.

Tags are shown in the Features Overview and can be used to filter the list of features.

Assign a responsible person to a feature.

Supports you in figuring out who is the one in charge of the feature.

By assigning a new responsible to a feature, an in-app notification is triggered.

Via the notification, the responsible person can navigate to the feature from the notification area in the shell bar.

Creation of transport requests from a feature is possible for:

• SAP S/4HANA on-premise
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition
• SAP NetWeaver Application Server for ABAP on-premise

As a prerequisite, the export tenant (development client) must be assigned to a system group and the system groups must be assigned to your project through the corresponding deployment plan.

Find more information in following blog post: https://blogs.sap.com/2023/04/06/create-transport-requests-from-features-in-sap-cloud-alm/.

Add manual references of transports to your features, which cannot be managed from a deployment perspective by SAP Cloud ALM.

In Edit mode, you can add a transport reference with an ID (mandatory), a title, and a URL.

By choosing the ID, you can navigate, for example, to the Configuration Center of SAP SuccessFactors to check out the Configuration Bundles easily.

In case of issues with changes of a certain feature detected in the status In Testing or Ready for Production, it is possible to set the status back to In Implementation.

This leads to more transparency regarding the traceability of features.

Create transport of copies (ToC) within a feature for transport requests for which all assigned transport tasks are releases.

Via choosing the Copy button, you can select several transport requests in status Modifiable to create a ToC for each of these transport requests.

The ToC is created, released, and deployed to the consolidation target system immediately.

Next to the original transport request, an icon shows up for the ToC.

Choosing the icon opens the pop-up with detailed information.

Find more information, read the following blog post:

Using transport of copies with SAP Cloud ALM.

For Change and Deployment Management, two new roles are available:

• Change manager: Approve features for production deployment.
• Deployment manager: Deploy transports into test and production systems.

The roles are automatically assigned to existing users with the project lead role, which previously included these authorizations, and you can decide which users keep the authorizations provided by the new roles.

Important: The Change and Deployment Management roles must be combined with either the project member or the project lead role.

The deployment manager role collection contains two role templates:

• imp_cdm_DeploymentManagerProd for deployment to production systems.
• imp_cdm_DeploymentManagerTest for deployment to test systems.

These role templates can be used to create your own custom role collections on the SAP BTP subaccount.

​Use the Feature to track your Configuration, Key User, and Developer Extensibility changes in SAP S/4HANA Cloud:

• Easily assign your released transport requests to a feature.
• Manage dependencies between different collection types by bundling dependent transport requests in one feature.
• Simply use the Feature Traceability as a starting point to decide about next steps like forwarding and importing transport requests.
• For more detailed information regarding the configuration of the communication arrangement, refer to the Setup & Admin Guide.
• Blog post: SAP S/4HANA Cloud transport traceability with SAP Cloud ALM.

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 standalone or from a requirement​ and then linked to user stories for the E2E traceability.

Both transport types are preselected when creating a transport from within a feature.

Empty transports are deleted when triggering the release.

The transport title is predefined and contains the Feature ID and the Feature Title.

The title can be overwritten.

Easily restrict the list of CTS-managed transports to be assigned to features.

Simply add the export client as a development system to a system group and assign the system group through a deployment plan to your project.

Navigate to the Transport Organizer Web UI for CTS-managed transport requests to check the transport logs, add tasks for new users, check for the transport/task status, and release tasks.

Additionally, the service CTS_ORGANIZER has to be active (Transaction: SICF, Service Path: /sap/bc/webdynpro/sap/cts_organizer).

Activating the communication arrangement SAP_COM_0690 is switching on Quality Approval in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

Only transports with Quality Status "Approved" can be forwarded and imported to the Production Tenant.

Approving a feature for Production indicates that all transports assigned are designated for Quality Status Approved.

A job in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test Tenant picks up the transports and sets the Quality Status accordingly.

In combination with Forward Automation and Import Automation, this is powerful to reach the objective of continuously delivering features to Production.

You can now add links in the References section for documentation that is stored externally to a feature.

Simply use the Add button of the References section in Edit mode and enter a name and a URL.

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 standalone or from a requirement​ and then linked to user stories for the E2E traceability.

You can perform a Downgrade Protection, or Cross-Reference Check on a feature to safeguard your production tenants.

Checks can only be performed if all transports assigned to a feature are ready to be imported to the production tenant.

Perform All Checks is scheduling both check types in parallel.

For more information regarding prerequisites and usage please check the Transport Checks section in the SAP Help Portal

In the Cross-Project Overview, a new Transport Analysis app is available to provide a bottom-up view based on the Transport Request IDs.

Easily find Transport Requests not yet assigned to Features, and figure out to which Feature a Transport Request or a Transport of Copies belongs.

Find further information here:

• Blog post – How to get ready for Change & Deployment Management in SAP Cloud ALM
• Blog post - Enabling change & deployment management in SAP Cloud ALM for SAP S/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition
• Blog post – Interplay of SAP Cloud ALM and SAP Cloud Transport Management Service
• Setup Guide – Enabling Transport Management
• SAP Support Portal Home – SAP Cloud ALM
• SAP Cloud ALM – Public Demo Tenant
• ​​​​​​​SAP Cloud ALM APIs