Using transport of copies and deploy several features to production with SAP Cloud ALM in conjunction with CTS

++ Update July 13, 2023 ++

Create transport of copies (ToC) within a Feature available as of now

This updated blog post will help you to understand how to use ToCs within Features to keep changed objects locked in the development system. Furthermore, it will show how several Features can be deployed together to production.

Handling transport of copies within features

Features in SAP Cloud ALM are there to deploy your change objects through your implementation landscape together with the documentation in the description area.

In order to keep your development / customizing objects locked in the development system it is very helpful to create ToCs. Transport of copies can be deployed to the quality assurance system without adding an entry to the import queue of your production system hence you can do some early testing without releasing the original transport request.

As of now you can create ToCs from within a Feature directly.

Prerequisites

• General setup for the transport integration must be executed. Please follow the guides below:
  • Setup & Administration Guide – SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition and On-Premise Systems
  • Blog Post – Enabling change & deployment management in SAP Cloud ALM for SAP S/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition
• Implement SAP Note 3322679 – SAP Cloud ALM – CDM: Master Note in the managed development system.
  • Before implementing this note, implement note 3336918 SAP Cloud ALM – CDM: Preliminary Implementation of Developments in ST-PI 740 SP24!
    Carefully read and follow the steps in note 3336918 when implementing!
• In setup transaction /n/sdf/alm_setup of the development system working client activate use case “Feature Deployment: Manage Transports per Client”.

Steps to utilize transport of copies

Transport requests in status “Modifiable” assigned to your Feature in SAP Cloud ALM can be selected for the creation of transport of copies. By clicking the “Copy” button you can select one or several transport requests for which ToCs shall be created.

Note: ToCs can only be created for transport requests with all transport tasks released.

For each transport request selected a ToC will be created, released and deployed to the consolidation target(s) immediately.

• Click the “Copy” button.

Create ToC

• Select the transport request(s) you want to create ToCs for.

Select transport requests for ToC creation

Next to the original transport request a new icon appears which is indicating that a ToC is available for it.

• Click on the icon to receive further information about the ToC in a popover.

Creation of ToC pending

• By clicking the icon the popover information gets refreshed every time. After a few minutes (depends on frequency of the use case “Feature Deployment: Manage Transports per Client”) the status should show “Deployed”.

ToC deployed to test

Note: Only the latest ToC per original transport request is shown in the popover with the release timestamp.

• In case something went wrong with creating the ToC it is shown in the popover as well. In this case the transport tasks have not been released.

ToC creation failed

Creating a ToC can be triggered as often as needed just by clicking the “Copy” button again.

• In the Feature History all the triggered creations are captured.

ToC in Feature History

Advantage of this approach: Your development teams need to collaborate when touching the same development / customizing objects in case of distributed development.

Deploy several Features together to production

In case you are using release management in SAP Cloud ALM it makes a lot of sense to have an option to deploy several Features together to production. To deploy a subset of transports assigned to several Features you can utilize the “Deploy to Production” button in the “Features” app.

By using the releases to bundle your Features to be deployed to production together. you can easily filter for the Feature status “Ready for Production” and the release of interest in the Features Overview.

Selection via status and release

• Now you can select all the Features and click the “Deploy to Production” button.

Deploy to Production

• After confirming the dialog the deployment for all transports assigned to the selected Features will be scheduled.

Note: All transports will be imported as subset to the production system.

Confirm the deployment scheduling

• In case one of the involved transports is not yet ready to be moved to production an error message will stop you from deploying to production.

Deployment to production not possible

If you want to check for the proper deployment status for the Features upfront I recommend to have a look in the “Feature Traceability”. (via “Analytics” link in Features Overview or “Analytics” app)

Deployment Status in Feature Traceability

Wrap-Up

In this updated blog post you’ve learned how to use ToCs within features in SAP Cloud ALM supporting you in managing distributed developments by different teams. In addition, an option to handle release to production of several Features was outlined.

Looking forward to receiving feedback. For latest updates and notifications, you can follow me by clicking Moritz Gysler.