From the CEO

As we enter an uncertain period, perhaps the most uncertain in living memory for most of us, it’s going to become important to find ways to minimize risks and lower costs of managing IT systems going forward. Business will be requiring certainty around the stability of their IT systems and IT support teams will be expected to provide high SLAs with the same or less funding.

However, the complexity around SAP Solutions is not going to go away, in fact it’s likely to increase and so the implementation of tried and tested SAP change control technology is something every SAP user organization should begin to consider.

Our team that attended SAP TechEd Berlin reported very much the same story they heard at TechEd Las Vegas. Be sure to read their account below.

SAP has introduced its SAP EcoHub to help its customers find the most suitable certified third party solutions quickly and easily and there is more on the EcoHub in this edition.

The next European webinar series is also announced today and 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 TechEd Berlin

Having been part of exhibiting at both TechEd in the US and TechEd in Europe for a couple of years now it fascinates me to hear the different change control priorities between regions, especially when one would expect them to be the same or very similar.

Interestingly, European attendees were far more familiar with the functionality of CTS+ and a little more mature in their understanding of the Solution Manager function/feature set and its limitations.

However, interest in 5 system landscape change control was significantly less among European attendees and interest in managing Java change far greater in the US.

For your interest these were the top five conversation points:

• Complex system SAP landscapes – use is increasing

• Mixed stack technology SAP solutions – implementations are escalating

• SAP ECC upgrades – a very large number are in the pipeline

• SAP CTS+ (for TMS deployment of Java changes) – this has generated a huge amount of interest

• SAP Solution Manager Change and Request Manager (ChaRM) – functionality has fallen short of the expectations of many

Regarding CTS+, it was announced that loose coupling between TMS and MDM is now available in the latest versions. This is the first of the non-ABAP/non-Java technologies to be integrated into CTS via CTS+, and more are expected.

If you are interested in learning more about CTS+ or about how
Rev-Trac can integrate with CTS+, download the following whitepaper:

"Rev-Trac and SAP CTS+: Extending Transport Management to the SAP Java Environment"

[ Download whitepaper >> ]

SAP EcoHub

SAP has launched an online SAP Partner Product Review Site

SAP announced at SAP TechEd Berlin the launch of a customer-focused ecosystem hub called SAP EcoHub.

The SAP EcoHub is a community-powered online solution marketplace that allows customers to easily discover and evaluate SAP partner solutions relevant to their industry and their own unique IT environment.

Customers can learn about SAP certified solutions and leverage the knowledge of peers, partners, business process experts and consultants to help choose third-party products that best fit their requirements.

Customers can search solutions using keywords and/or navigate by industry or solution type. Other options include accessing solutions by certification category, most viewed solutions, or by community ratings.

Explore the SAP EcoHub at http://ecohub.sap.com

To review the Rev-Trac listing on the SAP EcoHub, click here.

European Webinar Series:
Managing Change in Complex SAP Landscapes

RSC just completed a three part webinar series on "Managing Change in Complex SAP Landscapes". This webinar series will now run again for European time zones starting in November.

Registrations are now open.

[ Details and Registration >> ]

Rev-Trac Tips and Tricks

Control whether a Rev-Trac request field can be modified, viewed only or mandatory

The attribute of each field on a Rev-Trac request can be changed via standard Rev-Trac configuration to be either:

• A normal input field

• A mandatory input field

• A suppressed field (i.e. not displayed at all)

• A display only field

The field attribute can be modified via Rev-Trac menu path:
Configuration > Process > Request Screen > Field Attributes

The value in the ‘Attr’ field of configuration will control how the request field is used.

For more detail on this topic, see the section “Setting custom attributes for specific Rev-Trac request fields” in the current version of the Rev-Trac Administrator guide available for download from the support area of the RSC website.

[ More tips >> ]

Rev-Trac Q and A

Rev-Trac enforcement is not working, where should I check to ensure that my environment is correctly configured to ensure all transports are attached to a Rev-Trac request?

There are several areas you can check to see if the enforcement issue you are encountering can be corrected via standard Rev-Trac maintenance and configuration checks.

1. Is the change a local change or a transportable change request?
   Rev-Trac will not enforce the attachment of local change requests to a Rev-Trac request. Please ensure that you are creating a transportable change request and not a local change request.
2. Are the field exits active in the development system?
   Verifying that instance parameter: abap/fieldexit = yes has been set and that the system has been restarted since this parameter was set. If this parameter is not present: Add the parameter to the system's instance profile via transaction RZ10 and restart the system
3. Are the Rev-Trac field exits active?
   To check if the Rev-Trac field exits are active, run program RSMODPRF and check the status of field exits for data elements TRKORR and TRORDERTXT.
4. Is the Rev-Trac BADI active (SAP 4.6C+)?
   Check if the Rev-Trac BADI /RSC/DEV_EP_PLUS_TX is active using transaction SE19.
5. Are all RFC destinations functioning correctly?
   Rev-Trac menu path: Administration > Health Check
   Deselect all options except ‘Perform RFC check’
   A list of all RFC destinations should return without any errors.
6. Is Rev-Trac enforcement enabled at a system level?
   Rev-Trac menu path: Configuration > Systems > Systems -> System Parameters
   For the system in question, ensure that ‘Enforce’ = 1
7. Is Rev-Trac enforcement enabled for the user experiencing the problem?
   Rev-Trac menu path: Configuration > Process > Organizations
   For the user in question, ensure that ‘UserType’ = 0

If you have confirmed that all of the above has been checked and enforcement is still not working, please send a problem report to support@xrsc.com and include a copy of your Rev-Trac diagnostics file.