During the Blueprint phase, you held design meetings, ensured that business process stakeholders were involved and committed to your project, and documented the business requirements that were to be met in the scenarios, processes, and steps. Now it’s time for the Realization phase. This is when you take a step back, look at what you’ve decided is in scope, and understand that you’re now faced with delivering a functioning solution that meets the needs described in your Blueprint phase. This is the time when you focus on customizing the SAP solution to meet all the requirements captured in designing the workshops into a working enterprise system.

SAP Solution Manager can help you organize your configuration activities into cross-process and process-specific categories. For example, configuration elements such as units of measure and company codes cross many business processes while configuration related to sales tax calculation is more limited to the order management business process. Through the use of the configuration structure and configuration tab, you can manage the build of your solution in the areas of configuration that cross business processes and the areas that are process specific. With the SAP Solution Manager System Landscape, you can control the navigation into satellite systems for performing your configuration, developing and documenting your custom development, and aligning your testing to the business processes. Using the SAP Solution Manager configuration capabilities, you can produce a comprehensive configuration guide to help you monitor and manage your solution build activities and to produce the phase documentation. The configuration capabilities in SAP Solution Manager allow you to organize your training materials to your business processes.

Configuration Process

Use transaction SOLAR02 to access the SAP Solution Manager configuration functionality that helps you get all the documentation and technical components organized in the business processes you identified in the Business Blueprint. When you first execute transaction SOLAR02, you might think you’ve simply opened another way into your Blueprint as the Business Process Hierarchy (BPH) is presented much in the same way as it was during design. However, note that there is a new node just below the project level of your BPH structure labeled Configuration (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Initial view of SOLAR02 configuration

Transaction SOLAR02 allows you to carefully and structurally align your activities and documentation to the way you build an SAP solution as opposed to how you design or use one. SAP software is constructed and implemented in a way that requires foundational activities that cross business processes just as the foundation of a house crosses rooms.

As you look at how SAP solutions are built and delivered, it becomes quickly apparent that there are some things that you need to do regardless of which business processes you support.

For example, many core business processes include the concept of a company, credit control area, or plant. Think about creating a sales order. In this process, you cannot create a sales order without knowing from which warehouse (i.e., plant) the goods are to be shipped, whether or not the customer is approved to purchase the goods (i.e., credit control area), or which financial entity within your enterprise is affected by the transaction (i.e., company).

Now you see the need to look at the BPH in a whole new way as you build the system. You must have an organized way to separate the build from the design.

Configuration Nodes Structure

The Configuration node in transaction SOLAR02 allows you to freely define how you choose to organize the build of your solution. However, there are some guiding principles to keep in mind.

First, use the Configuration structure to manage and document the many configuration activities that cross business processes and scenarios.

Second, take advantage of the freely definable structure to let the structure nodes indicate the areas of the configuration. For these you can take advantage of the IMG (SAP Configuration Guide) structure as a reference. For example, in SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) a couple of IMG nodes at the top affect many of the business processes configured elsewhere in the IMG. Figure 2 shows a configuration node sample in SAP Solution Manager that reflects the General Settings and Cross Application setting in SAP ECC.

Figure 2

General settings and cross application configuration nodes

Now you’ll see how these node structures are built. When you click the Configuration node in transaction SOLAR02 and select the Structure tab, you see a button labeled Change Configuration Structure (Figure 2). This is different from what you saw in the Business Blueprint (transaction SOLAR01) on the structure (Figure 3). In Business Blueprint, the focus is on scoping the project so the structure is about business process decomposition.

Figure 3

Structure tab in the Business Blueprint

Click the Change Configuration Structure button and you see an entry screen where you can build out your cross-process configuration node structure (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Configuration node structure maintenance

This is an important distinction from the Blueprint approach to building out the structure. You only see the Structure and Configuration tabs when you’re in this mode. Also, the configuration tab is display only when you’re maintaining the Configuration node structure. You must return to the standard mode by clicking the back icon to be able to maintain the Configuration tab with IMG object assignments.

On the Structure tab in Change Configuration Structure mode, enter the structure nodes of the current level of the structure. In Figure 4, you can see I entered the structure nodes for General Settings and Cross Application. I keyed these in manually to match the naming of the IMG nodes I intend to configure later. However, you can also use the Business Process Repository to import suggested content from SAP (Figures 5 and 6).

Figure 6

Content retrieved from the BPH

When you’re finished entering the structure nodes for this level of the structure, save your work and click the back icon to return to the main screen for transaction SOLAR02. Click the refresh icon over the structure to see your changes (Figure 7).

Figure 7

Updated configuration structure

To add nodes beneath the General Settings node, click the General Settings node and then click the Change Configuration Structure button again to return to the entry screen for the Configuration Structure. You can enter any number of nodes underneath the Cycle 1 node (Figure 8).

Figure 8

The General Settings node structure

By repeating these steps, you can build out your configuration structure to as many levels as you need to describe how you will build your solution (Figure 9).

Figure 9

Example of a multi-tier configuration node structure

Assign the Configuration Elements

Once you’ve completed building out your configuration node structure, it’s time to assign the configuration elements to the structure that you’ll use to build your solution.

On each of the structures (both on the configuration nodes structure and the BPH), you are presented with the same tabs that you had during the Business Blueprint (transaction SOLAR01), and some new ones. The new ones include Configuration, Development, Test Cases, and Training Materials.

The process for assigning configuration to the Configuration tab is the same for both the configuration nodes structure and the BPH structure in transaction SOLAR02.

On the main screen of transaction SOLAR02, expand your node structure to the level where you wish to assign the configuration elements and then click the Configuration tab (Figure 10).

Figure 10

Configuration tab within the configuration node structure in transaction SOLAR02

Note that up to this point, I’ve been using the term configuration elements rather than configuration objects. The reason for this is that there are many things that you can store on the Configuration tab to manage and describe the configuration of your solution. These different elements are identified by the Type column on the Configuration tab (Figure 11).

Figure 11

Configuration type options on the Configuration tab

The most commonly used type is the configuration object. This tells SAP Solution Manager that you wish to navigate to a managed system’s IMG to perform a configuration activity.

The process for doing this is as follows:

• Select the type of IMG object (e.g., COBJ IMG Object)
• Select SAP ECC as the Logical Component
• Use the prompt in the Object Column to open the IMG in the SAP ECC system
• Navigate the IMG tree to the desired node, select the check box, and press Enter

Figures 12, 13, and 14 illustrate the process of assigning an IMG object to the structure node. First you select an IMG object and the logical component SAP ECC (Figure 12).

Figure 12

Select type of IMG object and logical component SAP ECC

Figure 13

Selecting the Set Country-Specific Checks check box automatically selects the check boxes of the higher-order IMG nodes in the selection window

Figure 14

Pressing Enter selects the node and includes it in the configuration structure

Open the SAP ECC IMG, navigate to the desired node, and select the check box (Figure 13). Then, press Enter to select the node and bring it into the configuration structure (Figure 14).

Repeat this process until you’ve assigned all of the appropriate configuration objects to the node, then repeat for the other nodes. Assigning documentation and the other types is done in a similar way.

Once you’ve completed assigning all the configuration elements for your cross-process configuration, you can then repeat the above steps for your process-specific configuration on the Configuration tab of the BPH structure nodes for Scenario, Process, and Step.

The Project Configuration Guide

Now that you’ve assigned your configuration elements to your Configuration node for your cross-process configuration and to the BPH for the process-specific configuration, you can produce a configuration guide that is specific to your project. This is a valuable document that you can use to get a jumpstart on the documentation of your solution as well as for planning and tracking the progress of your solution build.

When you’re ready to start doing the configuration you can produce the Configuration Guide as a first check to make sure you’ve covered all the areas you plan to configure. You can see the initial documentation available from SAP either from the BPR (Business Process Repository used in the Blueprint phase transaction SOLAR01), or from the IMG documentation. You can review and verify the configuration coverage of the different logical components in your solution.

By reproducing the configuration guide throughout the Configuration phase, you can take advantage of the valuable information available to help you manage and review your project as you move through the solution build. This gives you visibility into the progress of your project that is not available with project planning tools.

When you finish the Configuration phase, you can produce the configuration guide again as a review document to close the phase. This is a valuable deliverable as it provides a single source of reference of the entire solution that can reside outside of SAP Solution Manager as a single document.

Producing the Configuration Guide

After initial configuration element assignment and periodically throughout your project you can produce the configuration guide to get a comprehensive view of the solution configuration. From transaction SOLAR02, follow menu path Configuration > Generate Configuration Guide (Figure 15).

Figure 15

Generate the configuration guide

This prompts you with the options for generating your guide (Figure 16). On the General tab, identify where to store the generated guide and whether or not to disband shortcuts. (A full definition of shortcuts is outside the scope of this article.)

Figure 16

Selection options on the General tab for the configuration guide

The Scope tab shown in Figure 17 allows you to control how broad the content view is for the guide. The Only with Objects check box controls which parts of the project structure are included in the guide. With this check box selected, only structure nodes with configuration are included. Uncheck the box to include all structure nodes.

Figure 17

The Scope tab

You can use other fields, such as Logical Component, Team Member, Status, and Keywords to further filter the content for the guide. These are useful as you produce interim guides to monitor project progress. The Structure button allows you generate a guide for specific project structure nodes. Finally, you can control the documentation that’s being included using the fields in the Documents section.

The Display Options tab shown in Figure 18 allows you to control which additional elements are included in the generated guide. For example, the IMG Documentation check box allows you to include the SAP-delivered documentation in the satellite system IMGs in your guide. This is useful as SAP continues to enhance this documentation to make building your solution easier.

Figure 18

Display Options tab

When you execute your selections, SAP Solution Manager exports the configuration guide to the directory you chose on the General tab. When the guide is processed, you receive a completion message. Pay attention to the information in this message because it tells you the last step you must take to complete your guide (Figure 19).

Figure 19

Guide generation completion message

When you first open the Microsoft Word document, it will be mostly blank. This is where reading the completion message comes into play (Figure 20).

Figure 20

Initial view of configuration guide document

In Microsoft Word, follow menu path Tools > Macro > Macros to open the macro selection screen. Because you carefully read the completion message, you already know which macro to run to finish up your configuration guide (Figure 21). In the example, it is SAP_CONFIGURATION_GUIDE.

Figure 21

Run the SAP_CONFIGURATION_GUIDE macro

When this macro is complete, so is the Configuration Guide (Figure 22). You now have a document to start your configuration build activities. You can refresh it periodically to monitor your project’s process through solution build.

Figure 22

The completed Configuration Guide

At the end of the Configuration phase, you can produce a final configuration document as a phase deliverable that is a comprehensive documentation of your solution from a configuration perspective.

New Tabs

You will see three new tabs in transaction SOLAR02. One is the Development tab. As with the Configuration tab described earlier, it can contain many different objects that are related to the custom development commonly needed to deliver your solution. And, as with the Configuration tab, SAP Solution Manager uses the System Landscape to manage the navigation to the satellite systems for validating and launching the activities associated with the assigned objects.

Figure 23 shows the list of the object types that you can house in the Development tab. I recommend that you store the custom development objects and technical documentation here at a minimum. Additionally, you can reference the transports here to aid in documentation and to help coordinate solution delivery and production support.

Figure 23

Object types for Development tab

You can use the Test Cases tab to store, navigate to, and execute test cases. The Computer Aided Test Tool (CATT) and extended Computer Aided Test Tool (eCATT) test cases are stored in the satellite system unless a central system is defined for storage. Manual Test Cases are documents and therefore are stored in the SAP Knowledge Warehouse layer of SAP Solution Manager. See Figure 24 for the types of objects stored on the Test Cases tab.

Figure 24

Objects for the Test Cases tab

You can use the Training Materials tab to store the training materials for the business processes. You can also use it in conjunction with the End User Roles tab by transaction SOLAR_LEARNING_MAP as a source for building Learning Maps in SAP Solution Manager. Note that you can store your training materials here regardless of whether you’re using the Learning Maps feature of SAP Solution Manager.

Training materials are of the type “document” because they are stored in the SAP Knowledge Warehouse in SAP Solution Manager as binary large objects. Therefore, you can store all types of files here. Microsoft Office documents, SAP Tutor files, PDFs, MP3/MP4/AVI, and other multimedia files to meet almost every training material need. Figure 25 shows a sample of the Training Materials tab.

Figure 25

The Training Materials tab

D. Russell Sloan

D. Russell Sloan is a specialist in project and program governance for IBM. He focuses on the use of SAP Solution Manager for global rollout projects for IBM’s largest customers, having worked with SAP software since 1996. Russell has degrees in accounting and information systems and has been a team and project leader for SAP projects for more than 14 years. He has been developing and deploying software systems for over 30 years.

You may contact the author at solmanruss@gmail.com.

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