How to handle transport target groups in SAP Cloud ALM

In this blog post I will provide some insights in how to handle complex transport landscapes in SAP Cloud ALM. Talking about TMS we can think of transport routes including transport target groups to deliver changes to several target clients in parallel.

Prerequisites

For the TMS transport target group support following prerequisites must be met:

• Minimum SAP ST-PI 740 SP 18
• Apply the following notes:
  • 3201146 – CALM CDM: enable sending of TMS target groups to CALM
  • 3221589 – CALM CDM: Enable deployment for target groups containing multiple clients of same system
    • Note 3221589 starts the implementation of both notes

TMS target group handling

In the feature the target group information is resolved. This means you can see the different target clients / tenants in the transport section for one transport. In the following I will illustrate the flow for an exemplary target group.

Target group is configured like that:

Target group configuration

In the SAP Cloud ALM feature the target group gets resolved. This means you see all target clients added to the target group in the Target Tenant column of the Transports section:

Target clients in feature

By deploying the feature, the transport will be imported to all the different clients:

Feature deployment

Note:

To import transports to some of the clients on a frequent basis you can schedule an import job in the respective client. The import status will be pushed to SAP Cloud ALM and show up in the feature. Please be aware that this import will not show up in the history of the feature since it was triggered from the managed system itself.

After the successful deployment to all clients the feature will show the remaining target clients, in this example the production clients:

Feature result after deployment to target group

Now you can trigger the deployment to the two production clients via the Deploy button:

Deploy to production

The successful deployment to the production clients shows up in the Transports section and the deployment of the feature can be confirmed by switching the feature status to Deployed:

Feature in status Deployed

Note:

The transport target groups are handled as one stage. This leads to the fact that a synchronized deployment to production is still possible.

All deployment actions for a feature are captured in the history to keep track of your changes:

Feature history

Conclusion

With the support of transport target groups SAP Cloud ALM is from now on able to manage more complex TMS landscapes. Yet another step on our way to support various facets of hybrid change management.

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