Retrofit: How to perform retrofit from an End-User perspective

…or: How the hell do I do it?

by: Hannes Kerber, SAP Active Global Support, ALM RIG EMEA

Today it is end-user time!

Many questions and discussions came up during the last years on the topic on how to really perform retrofit activities successfully. That means for all the ways which are out there, checking error messages, typical pitfalls and so on and so on.

With this blog post I would like to cover a simple “Story Board” on what actually needs to be done. That means how do I proceed step by step during a retrofit activity.

So, how to start. In the retrofit there can occur different cases in terms of how to perform the retrofit for particular transports and objects based on the conflict calculation which has been performed automatically by the tool.

The following steps have to be performed in any case and are the basic foundation

• Locate your transport
• Check Column “Critical Retrofit”
• Check Column “Sequence Dependency”
• Select a target request
• Make a decision on how to perform the retrofit (based on the checks)
• Perform the retrofit

(click on pictures to enlarge)

Step 1: Locate your transport

Step 2: Check Column “Critical Retrofit”

Step 3: Check Column Sequence Dependency”

AND

Step 4: Select a target request

Step 5: Make a decision on how to perform the retrofit (based on the checks)

Step 6: Perform the retrofit

So, everything is prepared now and the retrofit can be executed. There are now different possibilities:

a. Automatic Import

This is the easy part. Just press the button Auto-Import, confirm the popup that you are sure about the execution and you are done.

b. Retrofit with the SCWB (Correction Workbench

c. Retrofit with BC-Sets

Error Resolution and Log Access

All the logs can be directly accessed from the tool and necessary actions can take place. To access the logs for a particular transport you can proceed as outlined below:

There is one last question to answer: What does the conflict detection in retrofit mean, how is it perform and what do the colors mean? How does this affect my retrofit?

We have learned what to do and how to interpret the colors. But how do these scenarios occur? Please find an explanation below:

The important take away of the last picture is but below the picture in blue:

The generated Transport of Copies can be only a partial copy – it is not “ALL or NOTHING”, but a partial approach to automate as much as possible

Hope this helps in the daily operations and/or for training.

Cheers,

Hannes

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In the next blog post I will cover the more strategic aspects of retrofit. This means:

• Who is responsible for the execution of the retrofit?
• What does this mean for my tool setup?
• What is the right time to perform retrofit? Are there different strategies?
• Do specific guidelines exist?
• What are generic rules I can apply to my synchronization process?
• What impact does retrofit have on my release landscape?
  • Is testing impacted?
  • Is cutover to BAU/Maintenance/Production Support affected?
• How can I setup a governance and reporting process around retrofit?