Template Management Part I

[Former Member]

Template management Part I

Introduction

Today’s businesses are headed toward globalization with a magnitude which is unprecedented. In addition, the advent of the use of the internet in business means geographical separations and time zones are no longer the barriers that they used to be. With this, Multinational or globally operating companies face significant additional complexity during the implementation of a SAP enterprise solution in their headquarters and international operations

The template management approach allows customers with multi-site SAP installations to efficiently manage their business processes across geographical distances – from initial template definition to template implementation and template optimization, such as in a global rollout.

Template Management approach comprises the following activities:

• The template is created by the global template team, in a template project which serves as a container for your template definition.(Which discussed here as part I)
• The template is rolled out to the local sites, e.g., dedicated subsidiaries orregions, and implemented by the local rollout teams using implementation projects(Which discussed here as part II)
• Over the course of time, requirements for changes (e.g functional enhancements, increased productivity, business process merge or split) may result in the creation of an updated template. The updated template is to be rolled out once more to local sites, who now transfer the delta changes via a comparison and adjustment mechanism, into their project.(Which discussed here as part III)

Create Template Project

We are now going to focus on the steps that you perform when you create a template via SAP Solution Manager project administration tcode(SOLAR_PROJECT_ADMIN).

When you create a new project in SAP Solution Manager, you select the project type Template Projects.

When defining the project framework, you assign project team members, roles, and responsibilities. This is the same as in implementation projects.

In template projects, there is an additional tab, Template, in the project administration transaction, where you define the templates required in your project.

Templates serve as containers for global, standardized and harmonized business processes and the underlying system landscape in which they Operate. Template projects provide the environment to managed one or more templates.Create your own template by click "create new" button.

For each of these templates, you can control the visibility by switching between the statuses Closed and Open. A closed template is still being worked on by the template application team and, therefore, can currently not be transferred to any other rollout project. Only templates that are open for public use can be used by other rollout projects to jump-start template implementation.

To be able to control the use of global attributes, you need to activate the Global Rollout Functionality on this tab.

These attributes define the global coverage of a business scenario or process, and allow you to control the extent to which a dedicated business scenario or process can be changed in an implementation project

Business blue print phase of the template

In the business blueprint phase of your template creation process, you define your global business processes and related functional requirements.

The easiest way to jump-start your global process design is to use SAP predefined implementation content from the Business Process Repository.

Along your global business process structure, you assign your templates to the process structure, so that all business process-related content is stored in the desired template for later rollout and/or shipment.  This is done in the Template column, where you assign one or more templates to business scenarios.

You can set the global attribute for each business scenario, process or process step, to determine the scope of process changes in local roll-out projects.

Now make your own Business process steps for Campaign Management from the business process repositary.

Choose the needed process from BPR.

Define your own subnode attribute setup under pass on global attributes.

Once you done it shows the subnodes as like below,

Configuration Phase of the templateproject

After finishing the business blueprint template, you enter the configuration phase of the template and prepare the reference template by pre-configuring it. You do so by, below

like,

a)Creating and assigning BC Sets (Business Configuration Sets) to your process structure.

b)Assigning related IMG (SAP Implementation Guide) activities, to fine-tune your configuration.

c)Assigning global customer-specific developments like programs,transactions, etc.

d)Creating standard test cases (manual or automatic) and assigning them to your process structure as well.

All these different pieces of pre-configuration can be launched in the rollout projects to accelerate local template implementation.  The pre-configuration can be applied either 1:1, such as for BC Sets, or can be used as a copy reference, upon which local material can be built, e.g. for test cases.

Rollout of the template project

When you have finished building your templates, you can start to package them.  Ensure that you have assigned all relevant scenarios to the template.  Then release the template, by changing the visibility to public use, in the project administration.

The template is only then visible, and thus usable by the rollout projects. If you are not using the same SAP Solution Manager for your rollout projects, collect the templates into transport requests and transport them to the other SAP Solution Manager System.

This ends the creation of the template project.The detail configuration to implement the Local Rollout projects are discussed in Part II.