Recap of the ALM Community Call on March 16, 2022

ALM Community Call recap & further information

In this blog, I’d like to recap the ALM Community Call from March 16, 2022. You can find a short summary of the topics covered in this call, as well as a collection of links either from the presentation shown during the call, or additional useful links. I will also provide a summary of the Q&A topics. The focus topic of this call was SAP Cloud ALM.

The structure of this blog post roughly follows the order of the call topics. Let’s get started!

News from SAP Product Support: Support Log Assistant Overview

First, Romy Sachse showcased the Support Log Assistant which helps to solve customer issues by analyzing log files and recommending follow-up activities (like related KBAs). You can find out more about the Support Log Assistant in KBA 2990062, in the WIKI or the FAQ.

News from the SAP Community: Blog highlights

Next, Tonja Kehrer presented her personal recommended ALM blog favorites from the SAP Community. She highlighted three blogs this month:

• “Update SAP Best Practice Content in SAP Solution Manager Process Management” by Axel Schulze
• “Associating Test Cases and Requirements in SAP Cloud ALM” by Nicolas Alech
• “Contribute to the Setup Guide for SAP Cloud ALM” by Laura Branitsch

SAP Cloud ALM: Adoption Accelerators

To fire up the focus topic of this call, Cay Rademann highlighted the new Expert Guided Implementation (EGI) service “Everything you need to know about SAP Cloud ALM”. This EGI helps customers getting started with SAP Cloud ALM, using the proven EGI method of learning from an expert, and doing it yourself on your system. The delivery date for the first EGI is April 25 to 29, 2022.

You can learn more about this EGI from this blog . Sign Up Here for participation.

Afterwards, I shared the new mission “Onboarding and first steps with SAP Cloud ALM” in the SAP Discovery Center. The missions in the SAP Discovery Center help you to implement your use cases on SAP Business Technology Platform, with step-by-step guidance and a well-established support from topic experts and SAP Community.

SAP Cloud ALM for SAP SuccessFactors

Cay Rademann highlighted the value of SAP Cloud ALM for SAP SuccessFactors:

• For implementing SAP SuccessFactors: SAP Cloud ALM provides extensive implementation content now, based on the SAP Activate methodology and process content from the SAP SuccessFactors process library.
• For operations: Various monitoring scenarios are supported (for example Integration & Exception Monitoring, Real User Monitoring and Job & Automation Monitoring), and pre-defined KPIs are provided for Business Process Monitoring.

Resources about SAP Cloud ALM for SAP SuccessFactors can be found at the landing page.

Tonja Kehrer then showed a short demo in SAP Cloud ALM of both implementation and operations use cases for SAP SuccessFactors. You can watch the demo in the recording of the call (directly starting at minute 18:10).

SAP Solution Manager: Important Dates

For SAP Solution Manager, Tim Steuer presented the planned date for the upcoming Customer Connection delivery call (planned for CW21*) and the planned release date for SAP Solution Manager SPS15 (CW29*).

*Both of those dates are subject to change.

Mentimeter Poll: ALM Newsletter

As usual, Tim Steuer asked the participants some questions using Mentimeter. The questions this month focused on getting feedback about a planned ALM newsletter, you can see the questions and results here:

Possible newsletter frequency

Ranking of newsletter topics

Importance of ALM topics

Additional newsletter topics

Upcoming events: What’s going on?

I shared upcoming ALM events. Here are the highlights:

• ALM Summit Latin America: March 30 & April 5-6 (Spanish | Portuguese)
• SAP Cloud ALM Expert Community Call: April 6 (more)
• SAPInsider SAP Center of Excellence Global Summit: April 5-7 (more)
• DSAG Technologietage: May 3-4 (more)
• SAP Sapphire 2022: May 10-12 (more)
• DSAG CCOE Forum: May 31 – June 1 (more)
• Multiple ALM Roadshows planned for April to June 2022

Find out about all ALM Events here: https://support.sap.com/alm-events

The next ALM Community Call will take place on April 20, at 4pm CEST / 10am EST. You can register here.

Additional Information: openSAP course relevant for ChaRM users

Check out the new openSAP course “DevOps for ABAP with cGTS for SAP S/4HANA“, which could be especially interesting for Change Request Management users in SAP Solution Manager.

Q&A: You asked, we answered

Here you can find some of the questions which have been raised during the call, as well as the answers provided by our experts.

Q: Will SAP Cloud ALM replace SAP Solution Manager?
A: The clear answer is NO! SAP Solution Manager and SAP Cloud ALM are both strategic for SAP. SAP Solution Manager is targeting on-premise centric customers. SAP Cloud ALM is focusing on cloud-centric customers. We strongly believe that there will be on-premise centric customers of SAP for quite some years.

Q: So there is no end of maintenance planned for SAP SolMan in the near future?
A: Correct. Mainstream Maintenance is available until Dec. 31.2027, followed by customer specific maintenance. For Business Suite Customers with extended maintenance, SAP Solution Manager will also be in extended maintenance, helping customers to complete their move to SAP S/4HANA.

Q: Can I still connect from Cloud ALM to all existing on-premise systems or do I need cloud collector or additional software installed?
A: It’s suggested to review the SAP Cloud ALM supported solutions: https://help.sap.com/products/CloudALM/08879d094f3b4de3ac67832f4a56a6de/3ebab44c25da4cc1997bad08cc00991c.html

Q: Is it worth setting up Cloud ALM if we just use SuccessFactors in the cloud?
A: Yes. Please start your journey via the landing page: https://support.sap.com/en/alm/sap-cloud-alm/sap-cloud-alm-for-successfactors.html

If you have any additional questions about any of the topics discussed in this call, please write them in the comments below!

Wrap-Up: Let us know what you think!

You can find the recording of the ALM Community Call from March 16 here.

The presentation of the call can be downloaded here.

This is the first recap blog post for the monthly ALM Community Call. Please let us know in the comments section if this was useful and if you would like us to continue with this after every ALM Community Call!