Client opening in production/Quality systems

[Former Member]

Hi Gurus,

I need your inputs on my thoughts regarding client opening in production or quality systems.

Am a BASIS administrator and sometime we get requests from functional teams to open a production or quality client to do some direct changes which are non-transportable from Development.

So, my question is should we open the client with a setting "Automatic recording of changes" or "Changes without automatic recording". If they are really non-transportable, i guess there is no harm with the setting "Changes without automatic recording", but in case if they do some changes directly in production which are transportable from development, then it becomes an issue if the recording is not allowed so there will not be any log.

So please suggest if it better is to set it as "Automatic recording of changes" so that it will create a request and log the changes. It will be helpful to trace of the changes in case those changes are transportable. Is there any harm or audit violation if we set "Automatic recording of changes" in a porduction or quality system?

Am awaiting your thoughts on it.

Thank you,

Ram.

[Former Member]

There is no difference between recording of changes and withour recording, if you are directly opening a production client.

If it is recording the changes in a request, why don't you follow normal change management process?

Client open is recommended only for exemptional cases where your changes are not being recorded or being recorded locally.

It is not advisable for the changes where the changes are being recorded in a transport request (Other than some exemptional cases).

No harm in opening a client if you have well defined authorization levels and you follow the process (for such configuration changes, customers follow the configuration/change management process).

Regards,

Nick Loy

[Former Member]

Appreciate your responses Siva and Nick.

Nick: I agree that production client has to be opened only for changes which are not transportable. But once we open the client it allows any change irrespective of transportable or not transportable.

How we will be able to track if the requestor is doing more changes than mentioned in the change request for which he/she is approved for.

If we do not record we have to do lot of post mortum activity later to identify who has done these changes and if we record we can easily trace to the changes done if any than agreed.

In our environment fire fighter setup enabled only in production environment but not in quality. We are trying to enable production changes only through fire fighter but are checking if additionally enabling recording helps or not. What we are finding is it helps us quickly trace the changes done by the user though we have fire fighter logs.

But in quality environment as we do not have fire figher set up and we are seing recording is only possible way of producing necessary audit trail.

As mentioned above if any such transports are created we need to ensure that they are to be released so that objects are not locked under them. Let us know if you see any issues here.

What we are trying to arrive at is a fool proof plan and process when we open clients for direct editing.

Let us know if enabling recording effects in any other way when we open quality or production environment in exceptional cases.

Greatly appreciate your thoughts on this.

Thanks

Ram

[Former Member]

Hello Ramakrishna,

If you choose "Automatic recording of changes" then a change request will be created when an object is modified/changed by the user in the system. All changes are recorded in that change request.

Hope it answered your question.

Thanks,

Siva Kumar

[Former Member]

Hi Siva

I know that with setting "Automatic recording of changes", a change request will be created and changes will be recorded in that. But am asking for the best practice to implement while opening a production or quality client for changes, as SAP recommends to not create a change request directly in production. But if keep, changes without recording, we may get into trouble when people make changes which are actually transportable.

Hope am clear to you.

Regards,

Ram.

[Former Member]

Hello Ramakrishna,

In order to choose right option, you should aware what they are modifying/changing in the system. I vote for "Automatic recording of changes" because it will be very useful during external audit. Without proper documentation, client will not approve them to change directly in prod environment.

Thanks,

Siva Kumar

[Former Member]

Hi Siva,

Thanks for your thoughts on it.

Even am thinking to use the option "Automatic recording of changes" as it will log all the changes and will be useful for audit purposes.

Regards,

Ram

[Former Member]

Dear Ram

Who is the approving authority for client opening in you organization?.If you are following procedures before opening client You have no need worrying about audit,creating Request in Production not recommended as you mentioned in your earlier post.

[Former Member]

Hi All,

I have a question here in this regard.

If we keep "Automatic recording of changes" when we open client in production for some changes to be done, and when someone does any changes, it will create transport rquest. But the objects in transport request will remain locked. If they remain locked, and if we import new transport requests to production which actually need to access those objects, then those transports will fail as the objects are locked in the request. So how can we go about this? Do we need to release those transports in production.

Please let me know your thoughts on it.

Regards,

R.K.

[Former Member]

Hello Ramakrishna,

In this case, yes. You have to release those transport requests.

Thanks,

Siva Kumar

[Former Member]

Hello,

first of all you should do this only in exceptional cases and you should know the person that does the changes, which should be one you trust. You also should know what changes are made. From my experience sometimes transports from development system would be possible, but users are don't want that because of organizational problems. Be also aware that other users that have authorizations could to changes while the system is open.

So regarding to your questions i would suggest to use "Changes without automatic recording" if you have a trustworthy user and you know exactly what changes are made. In such cases recording sometimes is a obstacle for doing the cange quick.

In all other cases i would use "Automatic recording of changes" for further investigation in case of problems.

In all cases it is wise to establish some kind of procedure and logging for audits.

regards

Christian

[Former Member]

Hi Rose,

Many thanks for your thoughts on it.

Well, coming to your recommendations, in many cases we dont know the trustworthiness of the person who does the changes and sometimes it is not possible to know what changes they are gonna make. Besides, as you are rightly pointed out, anyone who has authorization can make changes too at the same when the client is open. So to log any changes they make which are actually can be transported i think it is better to keep "Automatic recording of changes". It is to keep track of all the changes done to production system directly when the system is opened.

Please let me know if you have any addional thoughts on it.

Regards,

Ram.