Export Software Collection Best Practices

[JEFODB]

Dear experts,

Currently we are experiencing a lot of issues using the export/import software collection.

Currently, the set up is as followed. We have two big collections.

One containing all business roles, pages, spaces, custom catalogs and all related items. And the second containing all segmentation settings. We choose this set up because these two are the ones that gets updated/changed the most frequent.

However, when checking the software collection we receive an error message regarding a deleted business role. We cannot delete the business role from the collection and if we move all other items to another collection the deleted business rol get's added automatically. For this, I created an incident.

My questions you experts are:

- Are there any best practices available?

- What type of collections do you use at your clients?

- When to use the hotfix? (This is what we currently do to bypass the check)

Thanks in advance!

[KunalBansal · Accepted solution]

Dear jefodb,

I would like to help you out with general best practices on Export S/W Collection:

CASE A: Custom Field >> All the below 4 Important ARTIFACTS to be exported together

1. Custom Field
2. Segmentation Data Source
3. Segmentation Data Source for value help (If any exists)
4. Segmentation Objects

CASE B: Custom Business Object >> All the below 5 Important ARTIFACTS to be exported together

1. CBO
2. Segmentation Data Source of the CBO (Data Source Alias)
3. SAP HANA view for the CBO
4. Segmentation Object
5. And any other dependent items on the above four items

CASE C: Custom Views >> Important Points

1. Only .xml files are supported
2. The length of the calculation view name must not exceed 32 characters.
3. The imported calculation view is available in the directory sap\hana-app\cuan\custom_seg\gen (for type segmentation)
4. Name of imported calc. view is the same as entered in the ID field of the XML file with prefix CA_.
5. The prefix CA_ is only added to view names that don't contain the prefix.

Summary: Always export all the related objects together. I hope this is helpful.

Thank you.

Best Regards,

Kunal Bansal, SAP Marketing Consultant

[JEFODB · Accepted solution]

Hi Kunal,

Thanks a lot this information is really helpful. One remaining question I have, what if for instance you have assigned a custom field 'A' to different custom segmentation profiles 'X, Y, Z". According to your steps, you add the custom field A together with the segmentation data sources and profiles to one software collection, correct?

After some time segmentation profile X is no longer needed. So you move the segmentation profile X to a dedicated collection called 'Deleted items' for instance. Correct?

However, SAP will automatically add all related items as well. Meaning the custom field A is also moved from the collection. This is not what you would like. Because you still want to use custom field A on segmentation profiles Y,Z.

[KunalBansal]

Hello jefodb,

Answer to your above questions:

What if for instance you have assigned a custom field 'A' to different custom segmentation profiles 'X, Y, Z". According to your steps, you add the custom field A together with the segmentation data sources and profiles to one software collection, correct?

• YES

After some time segmentation profile X is no longer needed. So you move the segmentation profile X to a dedicated collection called 'Deleted items' for instance. Correct?

• Yes, but before you remove the profile A assignment from CF, you need to remove the connection of that Custom Field assignment in Segmentation.
• Once done, you need to use a separate Collection for this activity, so that it doesn't remove assignments from profiles B and C.

In case you get into any technical issues, you can reach us out via SAP Expert Chat.

Hope this helps. Thank you.

Best Regards,

Kunal

[maik_bosch]

see some helpful info here:

https://blogs.sap.com/2020/11/19/best-practices-for-software-collection-handling-in-sap-marketing-cl...

we use hotfix only for very urgent topics

In general we try to export only at the end of the sprint

[JEFODB]

Hi Maik,

Thanks for the reply. I read it and it doesn't provide me much info for the issue I'm facing. Hopefully my incident will provide me with the necesarry feedback. Do you have any insights what might be the way forward?