SAP S/4HANA Cloud transport traceability with SAP Cloud ALM

For SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition (3 System Landscape) it can be challenging to keep track of all the different transport types and the import statuses. Release 2308 provides a new integration scenario to connect SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Cloud ALM (SAP_COM_0690). The integration is about transport management and will constantly evolve. In the available state it can help you to keep track of the import statuses of transports relevant for new customer feature.

How does it work?

All transports exported on your SAP S/4HANA Cloud development or customizing tenant will be pushed to SAP Cloud ALM. To implement changes you can use “Features” in SAP Cloud ALM which ones contain the transports.

Note: Only transports / software collections exported after you established the connection of your SAP S/4HANA Cloud development and customizing system to SAP Cloud ALM will be pushed to SAP Cloud ALM. There is no historic data available for the time being.

A Feature can contain several transport types and you can easily assign them in Edit mode.

Assign transports

You can see the status per transport in a Feature.

Assigned transports with status

Recommended way of working

Within your implementation project in SAP Cloud ALM you can create requirements which can be used as a starting point for e.g., new extensibility functionalities. To implement the requirements it’s recommended to create one or several Features assigned to a requirement.

Create feature from requirement

The Feature can be put to status “In Implementation”. Then you inform your configurator / developer about the Feature to be used. As soon as they export their transports they should assign them to the Feature accordingly.

Feature in implementation with transports released

Since you can assign Key User or Developer Extensibility and Customizing to one Feature you are able to combine dependent transports early on.

The key to get full transparency is the Feature Traceability showing you the Deployment Status of Features. This shows you exactly whether you are ready to move changes to the test tenant and later on to the production tenant as well. The Feature workflow covers the statuses “In Testing” and “Ready for Production” to keep the flow as transparent as possible.

Feature Traceability navigation

Deployment Status in Feature Traceability

Deployment details

To forward and import transports you still use your well known Fiori apps on the SAP S/4HANA Cloud systems. But keeping track is a lot easier with SAP Cloud ALM in the game.

In case of import errors it would be shown in the Feature Traceability as well.

Deployment error

What’s in it for you?

There are some additional steps needed to use SAP Cloud ALM in combination with SAP S/4HANA Cloud. But looking at the capabilities to manage your application lifecycle SAP Cloud ALM adds a lot of value in terms of making your implementation projects transparent.

Offering transport traceability based on Features is the next great step. After the initial assign to your Features you don’t have to go through the different Fiori apps and search for your transports. Simply use the Feature traceability as a starting point to decide about next steps like forwarding and importing.

Wrap-Up

The integration will evolve over time. Goal is the orchestration of all your transports via SAP Cloud ALM including creation / assign of modifiable transports, exporting, forwarding and importing them. For side-by-side extensions with SAP BTP, SAP Cloud ALM already offers an integration with the SAP Cloud Transport Management Service. Please check blog post Interplay of SAP Cloud ALM and SAP Cloud Transport Management Service for further information.