Extensions with ChaRM: Focused Build Extensions

The standalone enhancements can either be used together with the Requirement-to-Deploy process or as standalone functions in SAP Solution Manager.

They include functions from the areas of change control management, IT service management and test management. Particularly in change control management, companies face the same problems and challenges again and again.

Many companies use dual landscapes to separate implementations from parallel projects from day-to-day maintenance activities.

Here, the dual landscape plays an essential role and offers various advantages over conventional single-tier landscapes. The retrofit automation functions are available for the synchronization of the development systems (project and maintenance system).

The retrofit automation program enables bundling of all transports without conflicts in the maintenance system and their automatic import into the project system.

As part of the automation, transport requests are created in the target system and the objects are picked up from the maintenance system. The owners of the transport requests are then informed of the retrofit status in the target system by e-mail.

Higher retrofit automation can also be achieved in dual BW landscapes by using the Retrofit for BW function. Critical BW objects can be uniquely classified and, in the conflict-free case, also automatically imported into the target system.

The use of the retrofit scenario inevitably raises the question of how project development is transferred to the maintenance landscape. The cut-over checks function reduces the effort for the transfer (cut-over) of the customizing and development objects into maintenance.

In the cut-over preparation phase, various checks can be carried out to ensure a smooth takeover. Among other things, the project managers get an overview of the retrofit status of the maintenance shipments and possible conflicts between shipments from the project and maintenance landscape.

The cut-over activities are additionally supported by the repack functionality. The Repack operation is used to transfer changes from the project landscape to the maintenance landscape. Another use for Repack is the inclusion of external transports in Change Request Management.

Companies that have multiple system landscapes in use, and in particular follow a global template approach, are often faced with the challenge of how to automate the synchronization of customizing and development objects between the system landscapes.

With the cross-landscape distribution functionality, the automatic alignment and import of objects into the target landscape is supported via a guided process. The transfer of objects is integrated in Change Request Management, which is another advantage of the solution.

An additional aspect for operating complex SAP landscapes is the central management and execution of transport-related activities, especially the import of transports.

The Release Batch Import function is the ideal tool for this. With this function, it is possible to centrally perform the import for landscapes in different time zones and regions with different import time windows.

The Release Batch Import is optimally integrated into the Change Request Management. This ensures the integrity of the imports through numerous ChaRM import checks.

After a successful release import, it is possible to automatically advance the status of the associated change documents. The Release Batch Import has a test mode, which means that the import can be simulated to identify and resolve potential conflicts before the actual production import takes place.