Initial Situation

You are considering giving consent for the data transfer in Cloud ALM for Service of your Cloud ALM tenant. Before doing so, you want to understand the details about how data will be transferred between SAP and your Cloud ALM tenant.

Why

Cloud ALM for Service is the single central collaboration platform for all service related activities. It allows customers and SAP to collaborate during the preparation, execution and follow up for all services that are delivered within SAP service contracts.

Collaboration requires the exchange of information. To achieve this, there are SAP internal applications that run on SAP internal tenants. This is where the SAP service consultants maintain their information relevant for a service delivery. Information from these SAP internal tenants is transferred to the customer’s cloud ALM tenant where the customer maintains the service delivery relevant information.

This data exchange does not happen per default, but only after the customer has agreed to the exchange by giving the consent for data transfer.

Some clarifications up front

Prerequisites

Data Transfer for Cloud ALM for Service only happens after you have given consent for the data transfer for your tenant.

Consent is given once per Cloud ALM tenant. Make sure that not too many users have the authorization to give or revoke consent in order to avoid ping-pong effects when giving/revoking consent.

If you have more than one tenant (e.g. a test tenant and a productive tenant), make sure that the consent has been given only for the productive tenant.

Check the blog “How to get your Cloud ALM tenant ready for service deliveries” for details on how to give consent.

What happens when you give consent

Your consent information is persisted in the HANA DB instance of your Cloud ALM tenant and, together with information to uniquely identify your tenant and your customer number, is transferred to SAP and persisted there as well. The consent information is the basis for the data transfer between SAP and your tenant.

What kind of data is transferred

Only data related to service deliveries for the customer number associated with your Cloud ALM tenant is transferred. This means:

• No data for other customer numbers is touched, meaning data meant for your Cloud ALM tenant is only transferred into your tenant and no other Cloud ALM tenant will receive your service information.
• Data from your Cloud ALM tenant is only transferred back to SAP, not to any other customer tenant.
• Only service related data is transferred (meaning data accessible via Cloud ALM for Service). Data from Cloud ALM for Implementation and Operation is not transferred

What about the size of the data

Service information is persisted in your Cloud ALM tenant and allocates space there in the HANA DB. It thus contributes to the size of your Cloud ALM tenant. However, the information for the service deliveries themselves is typically very small. The objects that allocate a lot of space are screenshots and attachments. These are not stored in the HANA DB, but in a separate Document Management system and do NOT contribute to the size of your Cloud ALM tenant.

What happens when you revoke your consent

As of that moment, the data transfer between SAP and your Cloud ALM tenant no longer happens. Data that has already been transferred does not get deleted. All service information becomes read-only. You can no longer change anything in Cloud ALM for Service and you cannot upload documents any longer.

Service related Data Transfer

SAP → Your Cloud ALM Tenant

Once you have given consent for data transfer, SAP will start sending the following information to your Cloud ALM tenant:

• List of scheduled service deliveries
  • Name and dates of the upcoming service deliveries
• Service Details per service delivery
  • Scope
  • Delivery Team
  • System information
  • Service status
• Preparation tasks that were created by SAP that you as a customer are supposed to work on
• Notes that were created by SAP that are relevant for you
  • might include meeting minutes
• Attachments that were created by SAP that are relevant for you
  • Physically, the attachments are stored in a DMS instance that is also accessible by customers. What is transferred is the link to these attachments and the entitlement to access them. The same is true for all pictures stored in issues / actions / preparation tasks / notes / service results.
• Service Results that were created and published by SAP
  • Service results that are still being worked on (status “Draft”) are not replicated
• Issues and Actions that were created and published by SAP
  • Issues and actions that are still being worked on (status “Draft”) are not replicated

You will get this information into your Cloud ALM tenant regardless of whether or not you actively use Cloud ALM for Service.

Your Cloud ALM Tenant → SAP

Once you have given consent for data transfer, SAP will synchronize the following information from your Cloud ALM tenant back to SAP:

• Preparation tasks
  • Status changes you have made for preparation tasks for a service
  • All comments you entered for preparation tasks for a service
  • If you assign a preparation task to a user, that assignment information is NOT replicated back to SAP.
  • Please note that you can only change existing preparation tasks, but not create new tasks. 
• Notes
  • Notes that you have created for a service
  • Comments that you have provided for notes
• Attachments
  • documents that you have uploaded for a service
  • Physically, the attachments are stored in a DMS instance that is also accessible by SAP. What is transferred is the link to these attachments and the entitlement to access them.
• Issues and Actions
  • Changes that you have made to issues and actions
  • If you assign an issue or an action to a user, that assignment information is NOT replicated back to SAP.

All of this information requires active involvement from your side. If you have given consent, but do not change any information in Cloud ALM for Service of your tenant, no information is replicated back to SAP.

Further Information