Tricentis for SAP - Common questions answered

[sabatale]

Tricentis and SAP recently released four (4) new SAP-branded solutions with some fancy acronyms: SAP TTA, SAP ECT, SAP CIA and SAP LTT. You can find the official Tricentis Test Automation for SAP (TTA) documentation here. This article focuses on the first two products and describes some of our own findings after a first SAP TTA deployment. It's mostly very good!

1. What are the main differences between SAP TTA, SAP ECT and Tosca?
   
   SAP TTA is included in your SAP Enterprise Support agreement while SAP ECT is a paid product available on the SAP Price List (concurrent users). Tosca is the same solution as SAP ECT but is sold directly by Tricentis, the software publisher.
   
   SAP TTA is essentially an automation engine with no additional testing features, such as requirements, coverage, distributed executions, etc. It also only covers SAP and browser-based technologies, as opposed to SAP ECT that can virtually handle anything (Microsoft Office, Salesforce, ServiceNow and 150+ others).



2. Why are Tricentis Tosca and SAP Tricentis solutions not on the same release level?
   
   There is indeed a version gap between the original Tosca product and SAP branded solutions. As of now, the latest Tosca is 14.2 while SAP only offers 13.4. There will most likely always be a gap, however you are unlikely to experience breaking bugs because of it. SAP is planning to release the next version of SAP TTA & ECT before summer.



3. Do I need SAP Solution Manager or CloudALM to use Tricentis solutions?
   
   SAP Solution Manager is mandatory if you intend to deploy SAP TTA. Without it, you only have the ability to run automated tests... manually. However, with SAP ECT, it's a different story. Both products have overlapping functionalities and you can choose to use one or the other. Of course, if you are already actively using SAP Solution Manager or intend to deploy some of its scenarios in the near future (such as ChaRM), it makes sense to choose SAP Solution Manager as the leading product.
   
   CloudALM is yet another story. There is currently no integration with any of the Tricentis products. This seems to be planned for Q4 2021 at the moment. The process will be the same though: TTA is the automation engine to build your test cases, while CloudALM manages everything else from requirements to reporting.



4. Which technologies can I automate with SAP TTA?
   
   A lot! All SAP technology (UI5, WebDynpro, GUI, SF, Concur, etc.) are supported as well as any solution running in a browser (any website on the internet). You can not only run non-regression SAP test cases but also perform SAP API testing, which is something entirely new in SAP Solution Manager.
   
   Of course, while the tool lets you automate non-SAP websites, SAP will not provide support to you if something does not work as expected.



5. Who is supporting me if I need to raise an incident?
   
   SAP itself! Nothing changes for your team: they can directly raise an OSS ticket on the SAP One Support Launchpad. If the issue requires Tricentis attention, they will interact with you through the same OSS incident. The main OSS component is XX-PART-TRI-CLD-ECT.



6. What is the architecture I need to support those products?
   
   The system requirements are available here. There are 3 components to it:
   
   
   
   
   1. the ARA software, which is a standalone recording tool intended for business users with no access to the automation software
   
   
   2. the TTA or ECT client software, which automation engineers use to build test cases, handle data, define variants, etc.
   
   
   3. the TTA or ECT server that is mostly responsible for centralizing user access, data management and any administrator settings.
      
      
      Our team had no problem running it with a 4vCPU and 16GB RAM VM on Windows Server 2016. The server can also be cloud-based (not yet available for SAP-branded products), in which case Tricentis will be hosting it for you.
   
   
   
   
   



7. How should I handle my test data with SAP TTA or SAP ECT?
   
   In both cases, the Tosca server is responsible for handling test data management. You can centralize all of your data through the Test Data Service and even play around with external data sheets. The capability to manage your test data in SAP Solution Manager is still available but is not recommended when using SAP TTA or SAP ECT.



8. Can I create defects in case an automated test failed?
   
   With SAP TTA, you need to implement the Defect management process that is part of SAP ITSM and Test Suite in SAP Solution Manager. If you purchase SAP ECT then you can create issues directly in the product or setup an integration with Jira (pricing is unclear).



9. Can I run distributed executions (multiple test cases in parallel)?
   
   SAP TTA relies entirely on SAP Solution Manager for unattended execution, and it does not allow distributed executions at all. However, SAP ECT is capable of handling very complex scenarios for distributed executions, and offers powerful monitoring and reporting capabilities as well.



10. How different is SAP TTA from SAP CBTA?
    
    Both solutions are very similar in spirit. They are really only automation engines and require SAP Solution Manager for everything else. They are both model-based testing solutions, meaning the test cases are built with reusables components to minimize maintenance.
    
    In short, the only thing that changes for you is that, once your empty test configuration is created, the recording and engineering of the test script are done in SAP TTA and manually synchronized back into SAP Solution Manager.
    
    So, in the end, it all comes down to the fact that SAP TTA is a much more mature solution because Tricentis, the publisher, only does one thing: automation testing. You will have a better experience and, more importantly, tons of features to make your test cases stable and easily maintainable.



11. Which tool should I go with? SAP CBTA, SAP TTA or SAP ECT?
    
    Unless you are already using SAP CBTA, there is little value for new customers to implement it. For the two other products, it really depends on your budget: if you have one, by all means, go with SAP ECT. It can do so much more and is a lot more flexible than the traditional SAP TTA + SAP Solution Manager combo. And that's normal, you're paying for the best!

[juandavid_murcia]

Thanks Alexandre nice blog,

Do you know if a customer using CBTA can export (Kind of migration) their scripts to TTA or they have to redo them?

Have a nice day

[sabatale]

Hey Juan, thanks!

No, you cannot convert CBTA scripts into TTA or ECT test cases. However, in SAP Solution Manager, you can "chain" them within a Composite test (E2E) where one CBTA script can be followed by a TTA script. Ideally, though, it is still best to re-script everything in the TTA/ECT client since test cases can be maintained and improved a lot more easily than with CBTA.

[former_member793386]

Do you know if with SAP Solution Manager 7.2, SP14 Focus Build 9 if SAP TTA version 15.0 is likely to be issued? Any schedule date etc

[sabatale]

Unfortunately, this is probably a question best asked to SAP! To my knowledge, SAP TTA and ECT versions are not tied to SAP Solution Manager (SP15 planned for July) but if I had to guess, I'd say we can expect one release (2 max.) per year. The last one was in September 2021.

[former_member793386]

Thanks for your quick/ promote response,

 

Actual it is the Focus build (s9)/SolMan SP14 has one of the innovation to syn up test execution results to SolMna testing dashboard, SAP PPT Template, As TOSCA ECT is launched version 15, and current TTA is on V14.2, so if SAP will be upgrading TTA to V15 as well or not. What is

 

Regards, Rajesh Sharma

[former_member712807]

Hi Alexandre,

 

Thanks for nice blog.

 

We are using SAP TTA version to connect with Tricentis and are able to run the test scripts successfully. But our main requirement is to set the Input and Output parameters in Tricentis so that the testers can feed Input parameters through SOLMAN and get the Tricentis Output parameters in SOLMAN again .

When we set the Input/output parameters in test scripts, it is showing successfully in SOLMAN but somehow those script run through SOLMAN is ending up in error. The error message is "External TRICENTIS TOSCA not installed or No Licence available".

The normal scripts without Input/output parameters are running fine through SOLMAN. Please suggest if this functionality is available in SAP TTA version or we need to follow some specific steps to run these scripts successfully.

Please find attached the error message for your reference.

Error

 

Thanks

Biswaranjan

[sabatale]

As I mentioned, SAP ECT and SAP TTA do not strictly follow Tricentis' release schedule. You can try contacting SAP product team directly for more information about the next versions.

[sabatale]

This looks like a customizing error but I'm not implementing SAP TTA nor do I recommend it anymore - we're only using SAP ECT or Tosca. You should open an OSS ticket directly with SAP if you think this is a bug.

[SASM]

Suggest following the Solman Integration Steps outlined in the online documentation.  SAP Solution Manager Integration (tricentis.com)

[NS]

Hi Alexandre, do I read correctly that SAP clients that are with SAP Enterprise support program get to use SAP TTA for free?

[eforest]

Hi,   If we use TTA with solution Manager, can I move to ECT easily?

[sabatale]

Yes, this is correct! (for On-Premise customers)

[sabatale]

The migration is seamless. TTA and ECT are the same product with a different set of features.

[asanchezacb]

Hi Alexandre, do you know if TTA is free for SAP Business One contracts as well?

Thank you!

[sabatale]

The licensing is determined by your SAP Support Agreement.

[former_member785591]

Hi, Alexandre. My SAP TTA doesn't have report section, so do I have to move to Tosca to have that funciton? Or it can be config some where?

[sabatale]

TTA is mostly limited to the actual scripting. For reporting and traceability (and pretty much everything else), you still have to rely on SAP Solution Manager - Test Suite.

If you want to manage everything in Tricentis Tosca, then you do need to purchase their product.

Message me if needed!

[former_member820196]

Hi Alexandre:

As you comment above new TTA v15.0 is avaliable from download center.

Will you include in the documentation a specific section for the update from v14.2 to v15.0 as already exists for migrations from 13.4 to 14.2 ?

 

Regards and thanks for your blog.

[sabatale]

Hello,

I have no plans to update this blog further as we are not offering TTA anymore since SAP Solution Manager is not part of RISE ($$$). However the upgrade process itself is the same as Tricentis Tosca, so there is minimal impact to be expected!

[Manish_Bhandari]

Do we already have a integration with Cloud ALM and TTA or SAP ECT for Public cloud customers?

[AjayHS]

Integration between SAP Cloud ALM & Tricentis test automation tool is not available as yet but its on the roadmap and the delivery roadmap will be disclosed in the SAP ALM Summit EMEA 2022.

[former_member831536]

Hi Alexandre, thanks for this great post! I understand that the Tricentis ECT tool is available for private cloud, but is it also available for SAP S/4 HANA public cloud edition?

[btsabatale]

Tricentis Tosca (ECT) is built to work with technologies, not specific products. SAP S/4 HANA Public being really just a fully browser-based version, it will run fine.