Upgrade Roadmap – Solution Manager 7.0 to 7.1 with Service Desk/ChaRM

Plenty of requests are pouring upon me or queries from our existing customer’s related to upgrading Solution Manager from 7.0 to 7.1 with service desk or change request management(ChaRM).

In fact, similar sort of queries are coming on regular basis in the forum so I thought let me share some useful information, if you are planning to do the same.

There is a big change in terms of Solution Manager (older)7.0 to (new)7.1 version and therefore Customer’s using Solution Manager Change Request Management(ChaRM) and Service Desk have to go for dual Upgrade i.e Technical Upgrade followed by Functional Upgrade.

Therefore, it should not happen in any sort of unplanned manner or without proper planning or insufficient resources.

A proper phased approach must be used to complete this task to accomplish it.

Initially, we must do a proper or detailed understanding of the current setup especially in case of Service Desk and Change Request Management(ChaRM) as these 2 are heavily impacted in the newer version(7.1).

Some of the facts or learnings:

• Very painful in case of no documentation existing for functionalities implemented already

• Technical Upgrade itself might struck due to inconsistent notes/open objects in SE80 transaction so check with ABAP Team to resolve the errors and activate all the objects shown as inactive.

• A very good document from SAP which helps to get the picture of new features and do the scoping

        http://www.service.sap.com/~sapidb/011000358700001167582011E

• Old SLD version causes a NIGHTMARE and creates bigger problems so better to upgrade SLD version first otherwise LDMB starts throwing many error during synchronization etc.

• All the configuration w.r.t to Service Desk and ChaRM which was done in 7.0 version will still be there but of no or less use because transaction types are changed and based upon different Business Object itself

        for e.g Incident Management SLFN is changed to SMIN ….Change Request SDCR is changed to SMCR etc

        Make sure you just have one entry now for in Dno_Cust04 table for PROCESS_TYPE = ZMIN etc and no values for PROCESS_TYPE_ADD or else                  you landed up with pop up asking you to choose transaction type

• Post upgrade you might see – NO Multilevel categorization – this is a very common issue because in new version we have to configure it differently.Run the report AI_CRM_CREATE_CAT_SCHEMA to resolve this issue and can also refer detail guide here

        http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/SAPITSM/Multilevel+Categorization)

       Once you have activated the standard MLC, it will be shown as below in SM_CRM transaction or the new interface in Categorization Schemas

• Need to have a Developer in the team as Central Correction Notes for ChaRM (Note 1775258 – Master Note for Change Request Management 7.10, SP8 or check for the SP you are upgrading) brings many manual corrections or table entries

• There is new concept of Business Roles and unless configured properly it allows full access to all message processors like change manager, incident resolution team etc

        http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/SAPITSM/IT+Service+Management+Roles+and+Authorizations

I have recently published few blogs on the same which can be referred

http://scn.sap.com/community/it-management/alm/solution-manager/blog/2013/10/09/quick-tip-business-role-in-solution-manager-71-itsm

http://scn.sap.com/community/it-management/alm/solution-manager/blog/2013/10/24/quick-tip-customizing-business-role-in-solution-manager-71-itsm-part-2

• Also, You might see that Risk field is empty – Refer below IMG path

Similarly, Urgency and Impact field might be empty.

• Another big issue might be even you do all this customizing and setup the Project doesn’t show up in the new interface or PROJECT Field

• End User liked the IT Service Management a lot and happy to move a away from SAP GUI Interface to a new Web Based Interface but authorization management has to be properly configured via PFCG roles.

• Maintenance cycle for ChaRM gets corrupted – There are lot of notes so check SMP

• If customer plans to go for Non SAP Components – For Non SAP its a big challenge as there is not much documentation on the same and to implement for non SAP you need to create additional entries in SLD for system which replicate in LMDB and then create IBASE for Non SAP component to enable incident or Change to be posted on it

• In short, things completely changed and need to have a good knowledge on SAP CRM UI Framework which is entirely different from SAP GUI. To Make fields mandatory/hiding its now just simple clicks instead of coding in SAP GUI which eases the task but needs to be familiar with it

• There was an option of Multiple search for incident or service desk tickets in crm_dno_monitor in 7.0 version of Solution Manager and if interested on how to do search for multiple tickets at one go check below SAP KA. Thus it is still supported only the way of doing it changed

1918499 – How to multi-select in Web UI – Solution Manager IT Service Management

In addition, do check the wiki and Service Marketplace(Installation and Upgrade guides section)

http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/SAPITSM/Configuration+and+Administration+of+ITSM

Some useful notes

1677520  – Time Recording: Possible Data Loss on Upgrade

1613908  – Old Transaction Types in SAP Solution Manager 7.1

1779203  – Is Non-Unicode Solution Manager supported when Upgrading to 7.1?

Hope this gives you some good insights and all the best for the Upgrade 🙂