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Author's profile photo Boris Milosevic

New Import Strategy : Selective Import Solman 7.1 – SP10 (How To)

To be able to freely select the changes and transports, that shall be imported into a system or with using Additional Variant you can do intelligent pre-selection based approach.

Before we should proceed with any further discussion and how-to approach will be nice to know how Selective Import (SI) feature will support us in CHARM project. First of all it is part of the flexibility options for ChaRM (available from SP8) but Selective import itself (part of flex consulting solution for ChaRM) is available from SP10 onwards in standard.

For the better understanding of complete CHARM Import Strategy SAP provided us with the below matrix.

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To get the above matrix more clear for subject of Selective Import I will summarize the above table just in two sentence:

  1. Selective Import IMPORT_SEL: customizing parameter which helps  in control of any change document  import to P environment. You will have SI popup for ZMMJ document type. SI for document type  ZMHF does not make sense therefore is not supported .
  2. Status Dependent Selective Import IM_STA_SEL:  We can call it Fine Tuning SI. With this parameter we can control P environment in the way that you can have SI popup  just for one user status for example : E0014 Released for Import of your ZMMJ document type. This means that you will get TR listed  in the SI popup just for the changes that belongs to the document type  which is in E0014 user status! Again all this configurations is relevant for the ZMMJ but not for ZMHF.

Status Dependent Import IMPORT_STA – important parameter ,  is not part of the Selective import feature but it is part of CHARM’s global Import Strategy. This parameter is important if you like to prevents imports of the ZMHF TR in the PRD buffer while you are performing Go-Live of the corresponding project.

For an example :  ZMHF can be in process of testing  (still UNTESTED but TR is present in the PRD buffer)!! With this parameter you can control which of the available ZMHF’s transports in PRD buffer  should not go to PRD when you are performing Go Live import from the Task list!

Customizing Process for Selective Import

First you should go to the SPRO

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Selective Import (not Status Dependent) IMPORT_SEL

in the next screen we should activate Select import feature just for one specific project (e.g. SP10TEST project name) and it will not be active for all others project in your solman landscape. You also have possibility to restrict it to the specific client and system in your logical component , also you can restrict via System Role specifications like we did: Just for the system role Production!!

You should get possibility to add it via New Entry button. For the Import Strategy please select IMPORT_SEL !

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To test above scenario we should create an example ZMMJ document type where we should get Selective import popup screen for each ZMMJ User Status related to  PRD  environment!

Later in the text you can see all this in action.

Status Dependent Selective Import IM_STA_SEL

To activate this feature you should in your customizing activate following Import Strategy IM_STA_SEL:

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the you should add New Entry in the Status-Dependent Import section:

Step 1:

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Step 2:

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Your customizing part is over : now you can test it on your SOLMAN system!!

For a test we can create two documents, one  ZMMJ that will be in user status E0009 therefore TR imported in the QAS and ready/waiting in the PRD buffer to be imported during Go -Live. Second ZMMJ will be in user status E0014 Released For import  and according to our customizing settings only this document TR will be available for import in the SI pop up screen!

Corresponding SMMN  is in the Go- Live phase and follow the below screenshots:

ZMMJ in E0014 Released for Import

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ZMMJ in E0009 Successfully Tested

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Next action is Operator will log in your solman system and he will start import to the production system from the corresponding Task List. During his process you will get Selective Import popup Screen for import in to PRD system

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when your confirm this scheduled job you should get Selective Import Popup Screen like is presented in the below picture:

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As you can see from the above picture just ZMMJ document 8xx1122 is available and free to selectin the SI pop up screen. Document 8×1121  in status E0009 has its TR in the PRD buffer ready for the import but in the SI pop up screen you are not able to select it.!!

There is new blog from Frank Jungmann with the special hints on this subject (especially for the SMHF Urgent Change customizing and fine  tuning ) that will help you in better understanding this subject   Some Hints to Status Dependent Import Control!

All suggestion and questions are more then welcomed 🙂

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      31 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Prakhar Saxena
      Prakhar Saxena

      Hi Boris,

      This is one of the most demanding feature.

      Definitely a great change in ChaRM.

      thanks for sharing

      Regards

      Prakhar

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Nice Blog, Boris!!

      I think it is really helpful to get a better understanding of the different import strategies. I now also linked it in my general SP10 Overview Blog 😉

      Best regards

      Tobias

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Nice blogs. Thanks Boris.

      Rg,

      karthik

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Well Authored content, use full for my future deployment

      Thank you Boris...

      -giri

      Author's profile photo Riccardo Escher
      Riccardo Escher

      Hi Boris,

      I am piloting ChaRM with the new status depending import and I am scratching my head about the relationship between the transport strategy SAP0 (task plan variant), status depending import and urgent corrections (UC).

      SAP0 meant in the past that you manage UCs as preliminary import into production, the corresponding transport requests keep the status "yellow" "Request is ready for import again".

      Then you do the production phase of your cycle and trigger via task list an import project all which will import finally all normal corrections AND all UCs in one go, making the sequence of imports belonging to normal changes (NC) and UCs consistent again.

      Doing tp import project all you ignore the status of the change documents, that was good for the import consistency but bad for the governance (no import without tester approval allowed).

      But how should we manage SAP0 transport strategy together with this new feature?

      I didn't find any documentation or best practice on sapnet, the rkt-online demos were little laboratory fictions, and the online help tells at usual you can do this you can do that (but what should I?).

      My first try (SP07) was to select for import into P all NCs with status "Preliminary Import Tested" + all UCs with status "Productive" & "Confirmed" with the effect that the batch report did the import for all, but left the UCs in the status "yellow" "ready for import again". I opened a customer message, but now we implemented SP10, so I will try it again.

      But I am not happy with the combination of SAP0 & UCs together with statusdep. import. What are your thoughts about?

      Author's profile photo Boris Milosevic
      Boris Milosevic
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Riccardo,

      ... unfortunately I do not have experience with the SAP0 and UC in combination with Selective Import. 😳

      What I will suggest u do the test in POC environment by  yourself and share experience with us.

      Thank you.

      Boris

      Author's profile photo Luigi Co
      Luigi Co

      Hi Boris,

      For a specific landscape, is it possible to have both selective import and status dependent import? Or should there only be one import strategy assigned per project/system/client/role?

      I am looking to have selective import for a specific transaction type only.. then for the rest of the transaction type use the status dependent import.

      Thank you.

      Author's profile photo Boris Milosevic
      Boris Milosevic
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Luigi,

      yes - you can have combination of selective and status driven Import for a CHARM project. During your configuration of those features you should take care that your customizong will not to contradict  each other !

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Boris,

      In the matrix is shown that Status-Dependent Import work voor Transport of Copies with Change Documents, in our experience it only works with Original Transports, But actually we want to have Status-Dependent import also for Transport of copies.

      Or is this feature only available from SP10?

      Any tips?

      Thank you.

      Author's profile photo Boris Milosevic
      Boris Milosevic
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Swelsen,

      this feature  is availble just from  SP10 onwards , you need to upgrade your solman in order to have it.

      Treating  TOC with selective import is possible, you just need to change your System Role input filed instead of "P" you will put "T"  (during your IMG customization process). 🙂

      Cheers

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Boris,

      thanks for your answer. What we need/want is Status-Dependent import for ToC. So SP10 has this feature, because now with SP8 Status-Dependent Import only works with the Original Transport and NOT with ToC.

      So in SP8 this cann't be used or a use another workaround for Status-Dependent Import for ToC.

      Thanks.

      Author's profile photo Boris Milosevic
      Boris Milosevic
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Swelsen,

      In SP8 you have IMG activity (SOLMAN_CM_STDEP) which correspond to the Selective import customizing (later in SP10) but in the SP8 you have just IMPORT_STA feature which is not part of the Selective Import strategy but it is part of CHARM's global Import Strategy!! 


      brgds


      Author's profile photo Luigi Co
      Luigi Co

      Hi Boris,

      Is there any SAP documentation for configuring  using IM_STA_SEL?

      Also, I was trying to test IM_STA_SEL import strategy, but I don't get a pop-up. Instead, I get this screen:

      Capture.JPG

      Is there any additional configuration needed for the tasklist? Will IM_STA_SEL only work for system role P? I have configured IM_STA_SEL for system roles 0 and 1. We are using SP11.

      And just want to clarify, if by any chance, IM_STA_SEL can work for ZMHF change documents through configuration?

      Thanks a lot!

      Author's profile photo Boris Milosevic
      Boris Milosevic
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Luigi,

      only SAP documentation on this subject is  this blog.  There is no additional configuration for the task list expect IMG customizing described in this blog. For which system you will have selective import popup depends how you configured you Selective Import IMG tables.

      Please read blog once more I'm sure it will work!!

      Solman 7.1 SP11 is ok package level!

      Yes - you can control ZMHF/SMHF change documents imports  with Selective Import !

      rgds

      BM

      Author's profile photo Luigi Co
      Luigi Co

      Hi Boris,

      Thanks a lot! Will check my configuration.

      For ZMHF/SMHF, the selective import will be triggered in its own (H*) tasklist right? But with this, we still have to unlock the task in the H* tasklist?

      The problem I have now is I cant unlock the import task in the H* tasklist.. it says that the unlocking should happen in the change doc level..

      Thanks!

      Luigi

      Author's profile photo Boris Milosevic
      Boris Milosevic
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Luigi,

      for the ZMHF pls read Frank J. blog Some Hints to Status Dependent Import Control there you will get idea how you can use ZMHF with Selective Import. In case of the  ZMHF you will never use Task list! read Franks blog carefully !

      rgds

      BM

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Boris,

      First off, thank you so much for putting such detailed documentation on Selective Import strategy. It seems like your is now the official documentation on this config <I haven't seen any other docs on this>.

      I am trying to realize the Selective Import Strategy in Solman 7.1, SP 11 and while I am doing all the steps as described in your post I get an empty screen as a pop up as I run transaction SCMA to schedule imports immediately.

      Here are screenshots to show you my config:

      1_10-29-2014 2-22-28 PM.jpg

      2_10-29-2014 2-24-56 PM.jpg

      3_10-29-2014 2-27-20 PM.jpg

      One suggestion I got was to confirm my system roles are defined correctly and I confirmed that as well.

      4_11-3-2014 10-14-03 AM.jpg

      Any ideas if you have seen this happen before or if there is something that you see I am doing incorrectly. Would really appreciate your feedback.

      Regards,

      -Anshul

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      I am also experiencing the same issue when testing out this functionality with similar setup, and have transports in the queues (popup is blank when importing to QA, Pre-Prod, and PROD, all configured for selective import) Thanks for sharing, I will check back and hopefully get this running.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      @Anshul

      We found that resolving an RFC connection error between our domain controller (Production Solman in our case) and the managed system client 000 fixed the issue for us. This error was found in STMS when looking at the import queue to double check a transport was indeed in the queue.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Jonathan,

      Thank you so much for updating the message. I will test and let you know if it resolves our issue as well.

      By any chance, do you have the RFC error that you you were seeing ? I havent seen any transport related errors in STMS when I use transaction SCMA to move transports.

      Thanks again,

      -Anshul

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Here is the error that we had.

      In this case SM2 is our Dev solman system, SP1 is production solman.

      Our test project used SM2 to manage transports between CRX (CRM sandbox) clients

      Although we were using SM2, as the domain system SP1 seemed to come into play here

      (I have also read that enabling cCTS has helped elimate the need to manage connections to client 000)

      STMS error solman.JPG 

      Author's profile photo Christer Lidholm
      Christer Lidholm

      Hi Boris,

      We are on 7.1 SP10 and we are thinking of using Selective Import Strategy (probably together with Status Dependent as well). However while testing on one project in our Prod system we have noticed one behaviour I would like to confirm with you before we proceed.

      Urgent changes (ZMHF) are normally imported twice in to the prod system.

      1. The first time when the ZMHF itself is imported.

      2. The second time when the maintenance project is in Go Live and all the normal (ZMMJ) changes  are imported.

      But once we configured for Selective Import Strategy the second import never occured for the urgent changes.

      Can you confirm this works as designed or if there is something wrong?

      I think the 2-step import is good since it keeps the order of the TR's in a good way and I wonder why it is being changed.

      Thanks and best regards,

      Christer

      Author's profile photo Boris Milosevic
      Boris Milosevic
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Christer,

      would you be so kind and read blog Some Hints to Status Dependent Import Control , there you will find your case and it will explain all your next steps and checks !

      Please let me know if again you will have same problem.

      thank you

      Author's profile photo Christer Lidholm
      Christer Lidholm

      Hi Boris,

      We have done the config according to the instructions given by Frank in his blog.

      It is working much better now, thanks!

      BR,

      Christer

      Author's profile photo Luigi Co
      Luigi Co

      Hi Boris,

      Using IMP_STA_SEL, we are allowed to choose TPs to import at a change document level.

      If a change document contains 2 TPs, can we only select 1 TP to be moved? Is this possible using IMP_STA_SEL strategy?

      Thanks!

      Author's profile photo Juan-Carlos Garcia-Garavito
      Juan-Carlos Garcia-Garavito

      Hi Boris:  Many thanks for sharing.

      We have an issue.  Without selective import, our transports once moved to Production disappear from the import buffer, which is okay for us, but now with selective import they remain there and we have to manually delete them.

      Have you or any of the readers had the same situation?

      Thanks,

      Juan

      Author's profile photo Christer Lidholm
      Christer Lidholm

      Hi again Boris,

      In your blog above you are only referring to PRD while using Selective Import Strategy. We wonder if there are any obstacles using it for QA environment or is the intended use for PRD only? And in that case, why?

      Thanks!

      Christer

      Author's profile photo Juan-Carlos Garcia-Garavito
      Juan-Carlos Garcia-Garavito

      Christer.   Instead of "P", you can use any of the letters below to establish an import strategy, accordingly.   The systems and their roles are to be entered in transaction  SOLAR_PROJECT_ADMIN.

      BabyFood.png

      Author's profile photo Christer Lidholm
      Christer Lidholm

      Hi Juan-Carlos,

      Thanks for your swift answer!

      Yes I know it is possible to choose different system roles as described by you. The reason to my question was that from the blog I got a feeling the intended use of Selective Import was primarily for PRD importing. But if you don't see any difference, then I take it for granted it will work as good in all type of systems.

      Thanks and best regards,

      Christer

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Great post Boris, it really brings it down to the important facts, well done!

      Author's profile photo Warren Nash
      Warren Nash

      Great stuff