From the CEO

Welcome to this edition of the SAP Change Control eNewsletter – I trust you will find each article of interest and value to you.

Be sure to read the article on SAP MDM and CTS+, it’s very good news, and then take some time to read the overview article of the latest Rev-Trac Customer Story from SCA.

The European webinar series is underway with registration open for parts two and three. Towards the bottom of this eNewsletter you will find new Rev-Trac Tips and Tricks and Rev-Trac Q & A sections. Previous tips can be found on the RSC website.

As always, we continue to lead innovation in SAP change control, developing software technology to help you to reduce the risks and lower the costs of introducing changes into your SAP systems.

David Drake, CEO and Founder

SAP MDM and CTS+

Some time ago, a long-term Rev-Trac customer spoke to us about the difficulties they were facing managing SAP MDM changes manually and their high hopes of automating this through Rev-Trac.

Since then the Rev-Trac add-on suite has been launched and with it the possibility of managing the non-ABAP MDM object changes using the RT-xDeploy add-on, Rev-Trac’s non-ABAP deployment manager.

More recently though, SAP MDM has been announced as the latest SAP application to be brought into the range of non-ABAP applications that can be managed using CTS+ and TMS.

The release of SAP NetWeaver 7.0 EhP1 provides for 'loose coupling' of SAP MDM packages into CTS+, which means of course that standard Rev-Trac functionality can be employed to manage non-ABAP SAP MDM objects through TMS.

Either way, the very good news is that SAP MDM object changes can now be managed using Rev-Trac via RT-xDeploy or, if SAP NetWeaver 7.0 EhP1 is deployed, using SAP CTS+.

For more information on managing non-ABAP SAP changes using
Rev-Trac, download the following whitepaper or visit the Rev-Trac Add-on Suite webpage.

[ Rev-Trac and SAP CTS+: Extending Transport Management to the SAP Java Environment >> ]

[ Rev-Trac Add-on Suite >> ]

CTS+ “Coupling” explained

By the way, coupling (or integration) describes the relationship between the TMS system and the application being integrated on the export side.

A closely coupled application is one for which there are mechanisms available for attaching a transportable object (e.g. EPA, SDA) to a transport request on the CTS system. For example, SAP NetWeaver Portal or SAP NetWeaver Development Infrastructure.

A loosely coupled application (in this case SAP MDM) is one which does not provide a direct integration mechanism, and therefore requires the developer to manually attach objects to transport requests via the Transport organizer Web UI.

SCA Customer Story

With active operations on every inhabited continent involved in the manufacture, shipping and marketing of a wide range of high-volume goods, Sweden based SCA faced some serious technical challenges.

Its business processes were well established in every geographical area, but as the company standardized to a global SAP-based business information system, it found it needed to more tightly manage and coordinate IT activities between regions.

SCA began an informed search to address the required transport coordination and change control solution. After examining other available change control solutions including Solution Manager, SCA determined that Rev-Trac by Revelation Software Concepts (RSC) provided the most comprehensive answer to their challenges.

SCA reasoned that Rev-Trac was mature, fully integrated with the larger SAP-based infrastructure, and certified by SAP itself. As an SAP Partner, RSC would not be stepping into an unfamiliar environment or layering new problems on top of the old. In addition, Rev-Trac was the only solution that would satisfy the requirement for control of non-ABAP transports without manual intervening steps or added resource drain.

Since implementing Rev-Trac in key systems, coordinating change transports between teams and groups no longer presents a problem at SCA.

[ Download complete SCA Customer Story >> ]

European Webinar Series:
Managing Change in Complex SAP Landscapes

The webinar series "Managing Change in Complex SAP Landscapes" has started for European time zones.

Registrations are now open for parts 2 and 3.

[ Details and Registration >> ]

Rev-Trac Tips and Tricks

Transport Lists

Transport lists are a very powerful way to perform standard Rev-Trac functions en masse. This includes:

• Running comparison reports with many specified transports

• Updating Sent indicators en masse

• Quarantining and un-quarantining transports en masse

• Releasing transports en masse

• Manually add many transports to the migration queue

• And more...

There are also several ways that a transport list can be created, varying in practicality, generally dependant on the intended use of the transport list.

Some of the ways to create a transport include via:

• The Rev-Trac migration workbench

• The output of the Rev-Trac chronological report

• The output of the Rev-Trac comparison report

• And more...

Using each of the above listed methods, a transport list can be created by selecting menu path: List > Transport List

For more detail on this topic, see the Rev-Trac Administrator Guide available for download from the support area of the RSC website.

[ More tips >> ]

Rev-Trac Q and A

How can I keep track of requests which are not progressing?

It is possible to keep track of all Rev-Trac requests which have not changed status within a defined period of time via a standard
Rev-Trac report ‘WF pending action’.

The report can be accessed via Rev-Trac menu path:
Request Management > Tools > WF pending action

The report can be filtered by Project, Request Type, Class, Severity, Current Status, Next Status and Hrs since last status change.

Further to this, the report can trigger workflow email to be resent to the approvers, prompting for a status approval.

For further information on Rev-Trac's reporting capabilities, please consult the Rev-Trac Administrator Guide available for download from the support area of the RSC website.