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On 19-Aug, I gave a webcast on our Solution Manager implementation. As the date approached, I was awed as the registration numbers went past 100, 200, then 300 and finally past 400 people. Generally, about half of the registrants connect during a webcast, so I was still looking at an audience potentially over 200, not to mention those that connect with team members in conference rooms or offices.
We've been working on (and off) Solution Manager for years, yet I felt uneasy with the possibility I would have too little material or experience to share. Though we are on a fairly current patch level, we had not yet accomplished all I would like to have running. Despite my trepidation, I told myself I'm an experienced speaker, I can only talk about what I know, and a major goal of the event was to bring peers together in a community network setting to share challenges and solutions.
Since I planned to demonstrate Solution Manager running on our systems, I requested that the usual webcast recording not be done. As the day approached and several people said they had conflicts and could not make it, I thought I would make an audio recording. Since I was not sure if it would turn out, I didn't mention it during the webcast. I thought I should listen to it first so I did not promise something and not be able to deliver.
After I listened to the MP3 file and found it acceptable, I realized that anyone who asked questions might not have know they were being recorded. Etiquette dictates I ask permission (unlike being photographed in public places it seems - different topic for another venue), and as I did not have everyone's name and email address, that was not possible. So I scrubbed the recording using Audacity, a free software sound editor. Jon Reed got a kick out of my quote "I buried Paul." (I also silenced one of my coughs 😉
"The latest release of Audacity is 1.3.8 (Beta)."
To fill in those inaudible portions, here is a brief timestamp / question summary
36:50 - 7.0 or enh pkg 1
46:05 - Service Desk, 2 different customers
51:43 - CEN / NW Admin
53:28 - sandbox
53:45 - EW alerts on dev
54:36 - features
55:53 - integrate with help desk
57:15 - Charm, transports
58:02 - Paul / 3M - not using SolMgr yet (Paul gave permission to be published)
59:13 - SP 17 - reconfigure to get to EP1
60:43 - database growth
Other clarifications
- Staff time - I said our Basis team has 5 members, and they estimate 5-10% of their time is on Solution Manager. That would imply one of them spends 1-2 days per week solely on Solution Manager work, which is probably too high. When we did Enhancement Package 1, it was probably most of one person week. But other than that, it's more like an hour or 2 per week total.
- Unicode - Our development system is not Unicode, our production system is Unicode. To get development up to standards will require both a Unicode conversion and applying EP1, so we're going to try a production copyback instead. We will let everyone know how that works out.
- Portals - I am not a Portals expert; all I know is that we have Java running to get Solution Manager Diagnostics to work, and there are parts of EP1 (the "Wily Introscope" tool) that are only accessible via web browsers. It's hardly a seamless experience.
- SLD / System Landscape Directory - I believe Maria answered the chat questions.
- CHARM, Service Desk, etc. - No, we are not using them. Now stop asking.
- More content will be in my SAP TechEd 09 slides, including screen shots of parts I did not cover.
If you are reading this outside the SCN network, please notify SAP.
#blogtheft - it's not what's for dinner.
The sound quality of the edited copy is a little worse than the original. If I had recorded straight to WAV format, instead of to MP3, the edit would have come out better. I also reduced the resolution from 64Kbps to 48Kbps, to make the file smaller.
For further information, see these links on the ASUG site (member login required):
ASUG Solution Manager Webcast
Slides
Chat
http://jive.asug.com/docs/DOC-21669
