DRAFT
How to Use SAP Activate Content in SAP
Solution Manager 7.2
1. INVESTIGATE SAP S/4HANA BEST PRACTICE CONTENT IN SAP SOLUTION MANAGER 7.2
2
1.1.
Set up a solution in SAP Solution Manager 7.2
2
1.2.
Import an SAP Activate Best Practices Package
3
1.3.
Review SAP Activate Work Breakdown Structure in IT PPM
4
1.4.
Review Best Practice Processes in Solution Documentation
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2. DEPLOY THE BEST PRACTICE CONTENT (NEW IMPLEMENTATION)
9
2.1.
Move Best Practice content into own project
9
2.2.
Deploy the pre-configured configuration
9
2.3.
Adjust SAP Activate Best Practices: Process Flow
9
2.4.
Adjust SAP Activate Best Practices: Configuration
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2.5.
Test and Transport Management
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3. USE SAP ACTIVATE FOR EXISTING SYSTEMS
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3.1.
Identify Improvement Potentials
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3.2.
Project Plan
15
3.3.
Configuration
15
3.4.
Test Management and Change Control
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4. CONCLUSION
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5. RELATED INFORMATION
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1.
Investigate SAP S/4HANA Best Practice Content in SAP Solution
Manager 7.2
This chapter explains how you can analyze SAP Activate content for SAP S/4HANA to check if it fits to
your requirements.
1.1.
Set up a solution in SAP Solution Manager 7.2
Using SAP Activate content in SAP Solution Manager 7.2 requires that the content has been imported
to a solution. For this you can re-use an existing solution. If there is no solution available yet, you have
to set it up as the first step.
Select the Solution Administration tile in the group Project and Process Management of the SAP
Solution Manager launch pad. (your launch pad might look different, since every user can customize
his/her own launch pad):
In Solution Administration, click on the Create New icon
name and a technical name for the solution and click OK.
in the top-right corner: Enter a solution
On the system landscape tab, right-click in the (empty) list of logical component groups at the bottom
of the screen and select new to create a new logical component group. Enter the name of the new
logical component group and a description before clicking OK.
After the logical component group has been created successfully, open the Technical System
Management of the group and click the Edit button to assign technical systems and maintenance
roles.
Click the Assign Technical Systems button to define the systems. For each system within the group,
enter the Technical System Type (Application Server ABAP for SAP S/4HANA), system ID, client
number and system role (development, quality assurance, production …) and click OK.
Finally click the Save button in the Logical Component Group Editor to save your settings.
1.2.
Import an SAP Activate Best Practices Package
The import of SAP Activate Best Practice packages into a solution is triggered from the Solution
Administration of the solution.
On the SAP Best Practices Packages tab, click on the link to Import SAP Best Practices Package.
A list of available packages shows up. Currently (January 2016) four different packages are available:
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SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA, On premise enterprise edition 1511 US
SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA, cloud enterprise edition 1511 US
SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA, cloud enterprise edition 1511 DE
SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition 1511 DE
Select the package you want to import, specify the import branch that shall include the package, and
start the import.
Finally, you have to confirm the mapping of the best practice package to the right logical component
group. As result, the SAP Activate content will be available in the selected branch of your solution.
1.3.
Review SAP Activate Work Breakdown Structure in IT PPM
One part of the SAP Activate content is the methodology. It provides a work breakdown structure,
which is the foundation of project management via IT PPM in SAP Solution Manager 7.2.
Click on the link to the project for the imported SAP Best Practices package in solution administration.
IT PPM provides the project management functionality within SAP Solution Manager 7.2. The project
has a hierarchical structure, which consists of phases – deliverables – tasks. You will find all related
information for an element if you select it in the left-hand navigation area and look at the available
tabs, like basic data, dates and work, solution documentation, notes …
Besides the project structure, the SAP Activate content provides multiple documents that help to
accelerate individual tasks. These documents are accessible by switching to the Documents tab and
selecting the corresponding task in the work breakdown structure on the left-hand side.
You can view project flow information in a GANTT chart. Select the graphic view to show this.
All details of the different tasks are available in the table view.
1.4.
Review Best Practice Processes in Solution Documentation
To see the best practices processes, go to Solution Administration and open the solution
documentation of the import branch.
The import of SAP Best Practices packages creates a folder SAP Best Practices Import in solution
documentation. In this folder, you will find a scenario for each imported best practices package.
The scenario contains all best practices processes of the package with process diagrams,
documentation, configuration information, and links to related business processes. The process steps
of a selected business process are displayed in an additional column. If a process step is executed in
SAP S/4HANA, the corresponding executable would be listed as well. (In case you have not assigned
a physical S/4HANA system to your LCG, you would only find a technical name for the executable).
The process diagram displays the flow of process steps of the corresponding business process in
BPMN notification.
A right-click on the
symbol of a business process step in the BPMN model displays the executable
assigned to this step.
If you select the link to the corresponding documentation at the bottom of the screen,
the corresponding documentation from the XXX is displayed.
The process documentation includes a process diagram as well. (Currently there are some processes
with different process diagrams in SAP Solution Manager and the process documentation. This will be
fixed in the future.)
Another element of the process documentation are test scripts. They describe for each Best Practice
Business Process how it would be executed to check if the process runs as required. In the discovery
phase the process has not been configured yet. Anyway, the test script might help you to explain the
process in detail and to discuss with your customer if the standard process is sufficient or if some
adaptions are required.
Configuration information is available in solution documentation as well. If you select any of the
configuration objects (building blocks) at the bottom of the screen, a new tab will show up displaying
the elements of the building block.
The elements contain links to the IMG objects, transactions, … to do the individual configuration steps
required.
One of these elements is a document describing the entire configuration that is required to do the
configuration of this building block. This is called the Building Block Configuration Guide.
All this information will help you to investigate if the SAP Activate Best Practices Processes fit to the
customer requirements and to create a first indication regarding the related effort to be expected.
2.
Deploy the Best Practice Content (New Implementation)
This process description explains how you can implement business processes of SAP Activate Best
Practices for new implementations of SAP S/4HANA.
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2.1.
Move relevant business processes to project scenario (44 – 50)
Deploy the pre-configured configuration.
Adjust Best Practice content (process flow)
Adjust Best Practice content (configuration)
Move Best Practice content into own project
If you have decided to use one or more best practices processes for your own company, you can
move them from the SAP Best Practices Import folder to the folder/scenario of your current project. If
you don’t have set up such a folder yet, just right-click in the second column from the left and select
New -> Scenario to do so.
Now, drill down the SAP Best Practices Import scenario until you come to the business process(es)
you want to move. Right-click the corresponding business process, and select the ‘Move’ action.
Then you navigate to the scenario/folder of your project and right-click the business process column to
select Insert ‘xxx’. This protects the content to be overwritten when you import later versions of the
SAP Activate content.
2.2.
Deploy the pre-configured configuration
The guided configuration of SAP Activate provides self-service UIs that does the required
configuration for the selected best practices processes and some content personalization. However,
this works only for new implementations of SAP S/4HANA. If you want to convert an existing SAP
Business Suite system to SAP S/4HANA, please refer to chapter 5.
2.3.
Adjust SAP Activate Best Practices: Process Flow
Some of the process steps in the best practices processes are marked as optional. e.g., the step
‘Check Batches (optional)’ in BD9 – Sales Order Processing: Sale from Stock.
If you do not want this step to be included in the process of your company, just select the step in the
column with the process steps, right-click on it, and select Delete.
After confirming this action, the process step will vanish in the column browser. In the Graphical
Browser it is only greyed.
Here you have to select the corresponding graphical element and click Remove in the actions bar
to delete the element and related connections to other objects.
To repair broken connections between elements, click on the source element for the connection, take
the
Connection symbol from the displayed symbols, and move it to the target element.
In a similar way you can add additional process steps to your process. This might be necessary if
some business process steps, which are important for the execution of the business process at your
company, are not part of the pre-configured best practices process. Either you add the new process
step in the column browser via right-mouse click in the process-step column and selecting New ->
Process Step
Then you can select a process step from available libraries or specify a new one.
In the graphical browser, you can select additional elements in the left-hand navigation and drag them
to the process diagram. Afterwards connect them and save the new diagram.
2.4.
Adjust SAP Activate Best Practices: Configuration
If required, You can adapt the existing configuration of SAP Activate best practices processes, via the
Implementation Cockpit of SAP Activate. For this, the Guided Configuration provides Expert
Configuration. This is a encapsulation of the implementation guide (CPRO), which can be used to
access and change all configuration settings of the S/4HANA system.
2.5.
Test and Transport Management
SAP Activate provides some kind of test automation. But for SAP S/4HANA 1511 this only supports
the cloud edition. If you are using SAP S/4HANA on-premise edition, you have to use other test
management tools like SAP Solution Manager.
But you do not need to start from scratch when planning the test of your S/4HANA system. As
mentioned in chapter 3.4, the SAP Activate content contains test scripts for all best practices
processes. You can link to these existing test scripts in your test cases.
In case that you have adapted a best practices process to your requirements, you can still benefit from
the test scripts of SAP Activate. The test scripts are available as PDF documents. If you open these
documents with MS Word and convert them in an editable Word document, you have the possibility to
modify the content such that it fits to your processes: e.g.: delete obsolete parts for excluded process
steps, add new parts for additional process steps, and change the text and entry values if required.
After successful testing, you want to bring your configuration from the development to the quality
assurance system and further on to the production system. Since all configuration changes of
S/4HANA systems are captured in transport requests of the (enhanced) change and transport system,
SAP Solution Manager can provide full change control for SAP S/4HANA.
3.
Use SAP Activate for existing systems
New implementations, as described above, take an empty system as starting point. This means that
they do not need to control if the configuration of SAP Activate best practices processes conflict with
existing configuration. If you want to move an existing SAP Business Suite system to SAP S/4HANA,
this is not granted any longer. Therefore, the activation of SAP Activate configuration will not work.
However, other parts of the SAP Activate content remain valuable for such projects. And this is also
true if the implementation of SAP Activate processes is just one part of a larger project.
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Identify improvement potentials
Project plan
Configuration
Test Management
3.1.
Identify Improvement Potentials
3.2.
Project Plan
3.3.
Configuration
3.4.
Test Management and Change Control
4.
Text
Conclusion
5.
Related Information