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Nagar_Megha
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
2,641
Introducing some features that are now available in SAP Cloud ALM and Release Assessment and Scope Dependency tool, that help SAP S/4 HANA Cloud customers to manage and track their major upgrade tasks. They can manage upcoming upgrade 2308 in two ways:

  • Option 1 : Managing Upgrade tasks in your active/ongoing implementation project

  • Option 2 : Managing Upgrade tasks in your upgrade Project in parallel to your active implementation project


1. How to Manage Upgrade Tasks in Your Active/Ongoing Implementation Project?


If you already have a project in SAP Cloud ALM implementing S/4 HANA Cloud solution and the project is currently in phase 'Run', you can manage your upgrade tasks by following these steps:

Step 1: Observe the upgrade information on the 'Overview Page' of your project. In the 'Upcoming Events' card on overview page, you get an early access to S/4 HANA Cloud Major Upgrade release event information.


Step 2: You can click on the event to inform yourself about detailed system wise downtime schedule planned by SAP. You can utilize this information to ensure that you do not have any clashes with go-live milestones or deployments planned in your project with these events, create your custom phase for upgrades etc.

Step 3: Create custom phases for upgrades and define its duration in the 'Project and Setup' app of SAP Cloud ALM for managing your upgrade tasks.


 

Step 4: You can already start planning for your upgrade activities once the impact of the upcoming upgrade is known. RASD (Release Assessment and Scope Dependency) tool helps you assess the impact of an upgrade on your used application by summarizing the changes an upgrade brings with it.

You get a quick access to your impact summary in RASD via 'Impact Assessment'. More information about RASD and how to logon can be obtained here.


 

Step 5: In the RASD tool you can click on the deletion and deprecation related card headers to access detailed list of relevant actionable.


 

Step 6: You can download these actionable as 'SAP Cloud ALM task' which is nothing but an Excel list that is ready to be uploaded in the Task Application of SAP Cloud ALM.

More information about how to use RASD tool for upcoming upgrade can be found in this blog.


 


The downloaded tasks come preassigned with:

  1. Tag that is named after the upgrade version

  2. Source as RASD

  3. Timebox as 'Run' phase


Step 7: Update the Timebox column, replace 'Run' by the custom phase for upgrade phase you created in your active implementation project.


Step 8: In SAP Cloud ALM, use upload feature in Task application to upload Excel task list.


 

Step 9: The uploaded tasks can be easily filtered out by source / timebox / tags. Planned completion date is pre-populated in tool which is nothing but phase end date maintained by you. You can redefine start and completion dates, assign responsible and teams for individual tasks or in the mass edit functionality. You can also define priorities, workstreams, story points etc for these tasks.


 

Step 10: With each task you get a deep link to 'What's New in SAP S/4HANA Cloud' document where you get detailed description of specific change and steps required to activate/deactivate features.


Click on the link in the description or in the reference section to view the document.


Step 11: Track progress of your upgrade tasks on Overview page on task specific cards such as Project Progress by Task Completion, Tasks, Task Distribution by Responsible/teams etc.

 


 

2. How to Manage Upgrades in an Upgrade Project in parallel to your active implementation project


Another way of handling upgrades is your Upgrade Project. If you do not have an existing upgrade project, you can create create one in the 'Project and Setup' by selecting Activate Roadmap for 3SL upgrade.


 

This project can be used as a continuous upgrade project, single project where multiple upgrades can be managed in phases. Simply create a custom phase for each upgrade and assign respective upgrade tasks to the phase.

The limitations with this option is that Scopes, Requirements, Test cases, and Notes need to be recreated here as they can not be shared among multiple projects.

Further, follow steps 1-10 from the previous option to upload upgrade tasks to SAP Cloud ALM.

Release and Timelines app offers visualization of the planned timelines across projects. You can create a non-deployment window in your main project, upgrade phase in your upgrade project in alignment with SAP upgrade window.


 

 

Related Reads that might interest you:

If you are new to SAP Cloud ALM:

Request and activate SAP Cloud ALM 

End to End Implementation in SAP Cloud ALM

Creating Upgrade Projects

 
2 Comments
leandroraffaele
Explorer
Cool blog post! Somehow I am not able to see the cards "usage-based impact" and "usage-based catalogs" in the impact assessment app. I can see that I should be able to add them under my profile in "manage cards" but I can't activate them.
Any suggestions what might cause this?
Nagar_Megha
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
0 Kudos
Hi Leandro,

Please make sure that you login to Release Assessment tool with your S-user which is linked to customer account. Only then you will see the usage based impact cards.