How to use SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) with ChaRM?

[former_member77289]

Hello community,

today I would like to describe some facts regarding the usage of SAP BPC (SAP Business Planning and Consolidation) together with ChaRM (Change Request Management) and QGM in SAP Solution Manager.

First of all we have to differentiate between two cases:
A) SAP BPC running on Microsoft and transport management done via CTS+ and
B) SAP BPC running on SAP NetWeaver where transport management is done via regular CTS.

General Information:

In order to work correctly with QGM/Change Request Management in both cases, some parameters have to be set correctly.

First of all the CTS-Project assignment has to be mandatory. This will ensure that only transports can be exported that have a CTS project assignment. Secondly the CTS status switches need to be set like the following:

Details for Variant A)

In Variant A) the following parameter settings need to be done:

• WBO_GET_REQ_STRATEGY=TAGGED
• WBO_REL_REQ_STRATEGY=MANUAL
• CTS_System_TYPE = JAVA

The process will then work like this:

ChaRM (or QGM) will create a transport request. This transport request will be assigned to the responsible developer. The Developer will execute the development and the changed BPC objects will be assigned to the transport created before. This is a manual activity that needs to be carried out. Afterwards the transport can be released and transported via regular ChaRM/QGM processes.

Details for Variant B)

In Variant B) the story is a little bit different. Here we don’t have any additional parameters to be set – besides the general settings described above. SAP BPC currently does not support the assignment of already created transport requests, when trying to deploy new configurations and content in your landscape. SAP BPC will create own transports, bypassing the standard user interface and thereby the ability to select a ChaRM transport. Some customers of BPC and ChaRM have been unsure, how they should react on this. SAP Note 1638440 describes this limitation more in detail.

In general, SAP BPC is working fine with the SAP transport management system (CTS) and I would like to show you some possibilities, how you can also integrate SAP BPC in your ChaRM change management process.

What is the solution?

The solution is pretty straight forward: The only possibility to assign the BPC created transport request to a ChaRM project and to a Change Document is before you release the transport request. The “Assign Transport” functionality within a Change Document is available with Solution Manager 7.1 SP5.

You can simply access it via the Transport Management assignment block in a change document:

The following process will apply:

1. Once the Development is done, TR generation will be triggered via BPC. BPC will assign the changed objects to this transport.

2. This transport request needs to be assigned to related ChaRM/QGM CTS project. This happens either automatically, when using the “Assign Transport Request” functionality or can be done manually in two steps: first project assignment, then ChaRM/QGM assignment via task list.

3. The transport is then added to ChaRM/QGM and controlled via the regular functionalities.

4. ChaRM/QGM will then manage the further export/import of the transport.

General facts about transport management for SAP BPC 10:

• BPC NW 10.0 will support the transport of granular objects to move any given BPC object from development system to QA & Production systems. In 7.x, customers were required to transport whole AppSet every time.
• Customers and consultants will need to take into account dependencies to insure a logical sequence of transport imports when transporting an Environment's objects in multiple transports (negative dependency check will prompt a warning).
• BPC objects can be collected to a transport using the BW Administrative Workbench (transaction RSA1) which uses the standard transport process already familiar to BW users.

What is coming in the future?

With SP10 of SAP Solution Manager, we just released a new infrastructure (central CTS) that is also capable of handling "released" transports. This will give customers a maximum of flexibility for their change management process.

When you use the new infrastructure, also released transports can be atteched to a Change Document. This will bring you additional functionality when it comes to management of BPC transports with ChaRM.

If you would like to hear a bit more about SAP's strategy regarding Change Control Management and the new central CTS infrastructure, check out this video with product managers David Birkenbach and Tobias Hauk from SAP TechEd Live in Amsterdam. Also there is now the official online documentation available for the Central Change and Transport System.

Now I hope I could shed some light on the topic and you are able to handle your BPC related transports now also with Change Request Managemet!

- Tobias