- SAP Managed Tags:
Introduction
Among the variety of features offered by SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition in their 3 System Landscape (3SL), 2 new features have been introduced to enhance the management and control of Transport Requests (TRs) in the Test tenant, focusing on ensuring the quality of these TRs.
3SL consists of 3 Instances viz. Development, Test and Production to develop, test and deploy various configurations and customisations to the Productive environment. These changes are transported via TRs to move the objects from one tenant 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.
Quality Assurance Approval
With the launch of the “Quality Assurance Approval” (QAA) feature, the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Test tenant now enables users to set the Quality Status of their TRs to either “Approved” or “Rejected”. Firstly, the user needs to have the Administrator Business Role for them to be able to access this feature. To activate this feature, the user must select the QAA option using the Settings button in the Import Collection app.
Fig 1 - QAA under Settings
A pop-up appears for the user to switch the QAA toggle from OFF to ON and then Save. Once the user enables this feature, a new column named “Quality Status” is displayed in the Import Collection app.
Fig 2 – QAA Toggle Pop-up
Fig 3 - Quality Status column
As and when a new TR is transported to the Test tenant, Quality Status is always assigned as Open. The old TRs which have already been forwarded to the Production tenant will also have the Open status. However, no action is required to be performed on the old TRs. Below are a few important points to remember while working with the QAA feature-
- The user can Approve/Reject a TR by providing a Note along with it, irrespective of the Import status.
- TRs can be forwarded to the Production tenant only once they are Approved.
- Open or Rejected status will not let the user forward the TR. However, if the QAA settings are off, then TRs will be forwarded as per the initial “Forward Automation” settings.
- Also, it’s required for a user to approve all the SAP Central Business Configuration TRs to move it to the Production tenant. If the user tries to reject those TRs, an error message will appear stating- “Collection of type SAP Central Business Configuration can't be rejected.”
Fig 4 - Approve/Reject dropdown
Additionally, the QAA feature is also available in SAP Cloud ALM (CALM) as the “Approve for Production” button. The user can assign a TR to their Feature app and consequently Approve the assigned TR using the mentioned button. As of now, the user can only Approve the TR via CALM and not Reject it.
Fig 5 - Approve for Production in CALM
Once the user has enabled CALM integration, QAA will automatically be turned on for the user and they'll not be able to disable the QAA button from the Test tenant. However, if we enable the "Simple Transport Mode" feature, then as a pre-requisite, the QAA feature should be disabled and the CALM integration will also need to be removed from Dev, Test and Prod tenants. Hence, the user will not be able to use this feature.
Instant Forward
When a user imports a TR successfully into the Test tenant, the TR will then be forwarded and visible in the Production tenant as per the scheduled batch job frequency which runs every 30 minutes based on the user’s Forward Automation Settings. Hence, the “Instant Forward” feature enables the user to let their TRs get transported from the Test tenant to the Production tenant as soon as the TR is imported into the Test tenant. However, if QAA is On, then only the Approved TRs will be forwarded instantly. Whereas, if QAA is Off, then all transports will be forwarded immediately.
To activate this feature, the user needs to open the Forward Automation option using the Settings button available in the Import Collection app. Once the Instant Forward checkbox is selected, all other options will be removed from the Forward Automation Settings pop-up.
Fig 6 - Instant Forward in Forward Automation Settings
Let’s deep dive into how these two settings work together through the below table:
Quality Assurance Approval Toggle | Instant Forward Checkbox | Quality Status | Forward Status Observation |
On | On | Open / Rejected | Not Forwarded |
On | On | Approved | Forwarded instantly |
On | Off | Open / Rejected | Not Forwarded |
On | Off | Approved | Forwarded as per Forward Automation Settings / Manually |
Off | On | NA | Forwarded instantly |
Off | Off | NA | Forwarded as per Forward Automation Settings / Manually |
However, if there is an inter-dependency between the TRs then the scenario plays out a bit differently. Let’s say there are 2 transports TR1 and TR2 where TR2 is dependent on TR1.
Quality Assurance Approval Toggle | Instant Forward Checkbox | TR1 Quality Status | TR2 Quality Status | TR1 Forward Status Observation | TR2 Forward Status Observation |
On | On | Open / Rejected | Open / Rejected | Not Forwarded | Not Forwarded |
On | On | Approved | Open / Rejected | Forwarded instantly | Not Forwarded |
On | On | Open / Rejected | Approved | Not Forwarded | Forwarded instantly but will not be imported in Production tenant due to dependency |
On | On | Approved | Approved | Forwarded instantly | Forwarded instantly |
On | Off | Open / Rejected | Open / Rejected | Not Forwarded | Not Forwarded |
On | Off | Approved | Open / Rejected | Forwarded as per Forward Automation Settings / Manually | Not Forwarded |
On | Off | Open / Rejected | Approved | Not Forwarded | Not Forwarded as per Forward Automation Settings. On manually forwarding, user will get an error stating that TR1 is not Approved. |
On | Off | Approved | Approved | Forwarded as per Automation Settings / Manually | Forwarded as per Forward Automation Settings. On manually forwarding before TR1, the user will be prompted to forward the TR1 along with TR2 due to dependency. However, user can forward only TR2 by removing TR1 as dependency (i.e., by switching off the toggle, refer Fig 6) but TR2 will not be imported into the Production tenant until TR1 gets imported. |
Off | On | NA | NA | Forwarded instantly | Forwarded instantly but TR2 will not be imported into the Production tenant until TR1 gets imported. |
Off | Off | NA | NA | Forwarded as per Automation Settings / Manually | Forwarded as per Forward Automation Settings. On manually forwarding before TR1, the user will be prompted to forward the TR1 along with TR2 due to dependency. However, user can forward only TR2 by removing TR1 as dependency (i.e., by switching off the toggle, refer Fig 6) but TR2 will not be imported into the Production tenant until TR1 gets imported. |
Fig 7 - Dependency Toggle for interdependent TRs
Please note that if the Production tenant is not provisioned then the user will not be able to see these 2 features since none of the TRs can be transported to the Production tenant i.e. the Test tenant will not have a target tenant. Hence, this will disable the need to have the Quality Assurance Approval and Instant Forward features.
Conclusion
Together, these features offer a robust framework for managing TRs, enhancing both control and efficiency in the deployment process. Users benefit from reduced manual oversight, streamlined workflows, and improved tenant reliability, ultimately leading to better management of enterprise resources 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 Quality Assurance Approval and Instant Forward features.
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