- SAP Managed Tags
Introduction
Among the variety of features offered by SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition in their 3-System Landscape (3SL), a new feature called “Simple Transport Mode” has been introduced under Transport management functionality. 3SL consists of 3 Instances viz. Development, Test and Production to develop, test and deploy various configurations and customizations to the Productive environment. These changes are transported via Transport Requests (TR) from one system to the other, in a quality-assured and systematic way. You can find more details on 3SL and TR Management on the SAP Help Portal.
Till now, we had a standard approach of managing multiple Transport Requests in 3SL Transport Management which is now newly defined as “Flexible Transport Mode”. This mode offers the full flexibility of transports. It offers the possibility to create multiple business configuration transports in parallel, which could result in a dependency network across multiple transports.
With the launch of the new “Simple Transport Mode”, the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Customizing tenant now enables users to transport their customizing changes using the “Simple Transport Mode” or the “Flexible Transport Mode”.
What is Simple Transport Mode
“Simple Transport mode” offers a basic functionality to record all Business Configuration changes in one single customizing transport. This simplifies the transport process by reducing the complexity for the customers to deal with multiple transports for Business Configurations. Few points to note:
- This feature has been developed to support small and medium-sized customers who requested a simplified version of transport management.
- For new customers, “Simple Transport Mode” is activated by default, and they can switch between the Flexible or Simple Transport Modes according to their needs.
- For upgraded customers, “Flexible Transport mode” is activated by default, and they can switch between the Flexible or Simple Transport Modes according to their needs. However, if customer has created transports in Development, but not released a single transport to Test, then after upgrade “Simple Transport Mode” will be activated by default.
- After activating “Simple Transport mode”, only one customizing/cross client customizing transport request is allowed at a time, very similar to the 2-System Landscape setup.
- For other transport types – Key User Extensibility, Developer Extensibility and Central Business Configuration (CBC), there is no change and there can be multiple Transport requests for them.
How Simple Transport Mode can be activated
- “Simple Transport Mode” can be activated from “Extensibility Settings” app in the customizing tenant.
- User needs to be assigned the “Extensibility Specialist” role (catalog “SAP_CORE_BC_EXT_SET”) to access “Extensibility Settings” app.
- Once user activates “Simple Transport Mode” in the Customizing tenant, it is automatically shown as activated in read-only mode in “Extensibility Settings” app in Test and Production systems.
In “Extensibility Settings” app, once the user sets “Flexible Transport Mode” toggle to Off (i.e., activates “Simple Transport Mode”), they get a pop-up message to confirm the same.
Fig 1 – Activate Simple Transport Mode Pop-up
Once confirmed, the “Simple Transport mode” is activated as shown below.
Fig 2 – Simple Transport Mode On under Extensibility Settings app
User can again deactivate “Simple Transport mode” (and activate “Flexible Transport Mode”) by confirming the popup message.
Fig 3 – Deactivate Simple Transport Mode Pop-up
Pre-requisites for activating Simple Transport Mode
There are few pre-requisites that users need to take care before activating “Simple Transport Mode”. They are listed below.
- Please release all open transports or merge all transports into a single transport in customizing tenant.
- Please do not select Suspend mode in Import automation settings for both Test and Production systems.
- Please do not enable Quality Assurance Approval toggle in Test system.
- Please do not activate SAP Cloud ALM integration (communication arrangement – SAP_COM_0690) in any system.
- Please select “All Collections” within affected software collections in Import Automation Settings in Test and Production system.
- Please do not select “No Collections” within affected software collections in Forward Automation settings in Test system.
If users try to activate “Simple Transport Mode” with any of the above 6 pre-requisites not being met, then error messages will be popped up to maintain the pre-requisites. These pre-requisites for “Simple Transport mode” help to manage transport movements from Customizing tenant to Production system seamlessly.
Fig 4 – Error messages if Multiple Open transports exist.
How Simple Transport Mode works after it is set to ON
For New Customers
- For new customers, as mentioned above, “Simple Transport Mode” is activated by default. Initially a user can create a Transport Request (TR). Other users can either save their changes in that TR in their own existing task or create a new task, to capture all their subsequent changes. For creating a new task, they must login via Administrator or BPC Expert Role. Catalog SAP_CORE_BC_BCT_TRN_REL_PC or SAP_CORE_BC_BCT_TRN_MNG_PC is mandatorily required to create tasks.
- These users will be the owners of their own tasks, but they may not be the owner of the overall TR.
- Subsequently, when a user tries to create another new customizing TR, even though there is already an open TR available, system will not allow to create it, which exemplifies the behaviour of “Simple Transport mode”.
- If a user wants to store changes in a new TR, they must release the already open TR and then only creation of a new TR is possible. At one point of time, only 1 TR can remain open.
For Existing Customers
- For existing customers, there might be multiple open TRs already existing in “Flexible transport mode”. If user wants to activate “Simple Transport mode”, it is mandatory to release all open TRs from Customizing tenant to Test and then Production systems or merge all their existing TRs into a single TR, so that all subsequent changes are stored in the same TR beforehand.
- If user tries to create a new default TR manually, system does not allow to create it but will prompt to store the change in an open customizing TR having a task in modifiable state.
Fig 5 – Error while trying to create a new default TR
Below are two scenarios that can occur when users try to record a change:
- Scenario 1: User owns the open transport
- Scenario 2: User doesn’t own the open transport
For the above 2 scenarios, please refer to below flowchart describing the flow in both cases.
Fig 6 – User to save a change in open task
Fig 7 – User to create new task to save the changes in TR owned by him
Fig 8 – User to create new task to save the changes in TR not owned by him
Points to Note
Below are a few important points to remember while working with the “Simple Transport Mode” feature:
- “Simple Transport Mode” is available in Customizing tenant, even if Test or Production systems are not available.
- After activating “Simple Transport mode”, you cannot enable QA Approval feature in Test system.
- After activating “Simple Transport mode”, you cannot enable Suspend feature in import automation settings of both Test and Production systems.
Conclusion
“Simple Transport Mode” feature offers a simplified framework for managing transports. Users benefit from reduced complexity, ultimately leading to better management of their customizations and smoother operational processes.
Thank you for reading this blog post. Hopefully, the blog post was informative and helped you to understand in detail how to use the “Simple Transport Mode”.
You can also find more details around Quality Assurance Approval feature on Quality Assurance Approval & Instant Forward for Transport Requests in S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
References
For more information, please refer
Transport Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 3-System Landscape: From Basics to Complex
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