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Cloud ERP Close-Up: Tooling for ERP as a Service Test Automation in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition

BeSchulze
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎12-04-2023 2:16 PM


Welcome to the last Cloud ERP Close-Up of the year!

SaaS is a vital catalyst for many companies to adopt trends and innovate technologies much faster for significantly improved business velocity and resilience. The definition of SaaS is rather technical: SaaS is a method of service delivery and licensing in which the service is accessed online via a subscription rather than bought and installed on individual computers.

But, when looking at SaaS ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning, nowadays often even coined as NRP, Networked Resource Planning (as the Supply Chains become more and more integrated into the overall demand-driven planning and fulfillment process), the business perspective of SaaS is much more interesting.

There are fundamental differences in expectation and delivery between Consumption as a Product and Consumption as a Service.



















Characteristics of a Product Characteristics of a Service
A thing An activity
Products are used Services are experienced
A product can be finalized and shipped A service is constantly evolving

But to get there, you need to transform your organization from consuming an ERP as a Product to consuming an ERP as a Service.

  • In an "ERP as a Product" scenario, customers buy and own software to get it started, run, and upgrade it. Upgrades are planned at customer pace, with large IT teams responsible for preparing upgrades from both angles: technology and business. Extensive documentation is appreciated; the more, the better. It´s the project team's job to be prepared, and they do have the capacity to consume it. Customers used to practice a larger ERP upgrade every 1-4 years because the effort doesn't allow them to catch up faster.

  • In an "ERP as a Service" scenario, we talk about a business service activation. An upgrade becomes a significantly smaller event, almost towards a near-non-event. The solution provider takes care of nearly any aspect to keep it running. The provider does not only provide the infrastructure but also gradually steps into the task list of the customer's IT organization.


 


Figure 1: Stages of buying and running Software as a Product vs. a Service.

 

Now, we need to enable you to live up to the agile SaaS consumption models. Therefore, many things are fundamentally different if you run "ERP as a Service", here is a list of some tools reflecting the natural consequence:

  • Updates require running at high velocity and zero to very low risk

  • Tools support initial activation, availability, integrity, security, and upgradability. Upgrade knowledge, a key differentiator for a few highly specialized teams, must become ubiquitous as the specialized teams serve other purposes



And there is one essential aspect that supports you after an upgrade that I want to shed light on in today's Close-Up cadence: the ability of the SaaS ERP to support an automated testing framework along with a robust testing strategy, enabling partners and customers to manage periodic upgrades with minimal effort and business disruption. It is designed to support customers in covering tests across their own data and scenarios between the "Q"-system and "P"-system upgrade period.

Test automation tool (TAT), natively available within the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition solution, provides the necessary feature set to create an automated regression suite for SaaS ERP testing needs. The tool comes as a no-code, no-installation, cloud-native solution. It has 300+ standard test automates across best practices (scope items) and continues to augment its repository with every release.

Check out the Automated Test Script Index to get to know the full scope items that have test automates available with their pre-requisites.

Salient features of TAT:

  1. The execution engine (for automated tests) of the test automation tool is deployed on the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and is provisioned (multi-tenancy subscription for test tool service) for SAP S/4HANA Cloud usage

  2. It is available for use only on the Q/T-system of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition solution for customers

    1. Check out the Help document: Manage Your Test Process to get started with TAT



  3. It is now also available and accessible in partner test demo and development (TDD) systems on the 3-system landscape. It is not available in the 2-system landscape for the following tenants:

    1. Partner Demo Customizing

    2. Trial Customizing / Development

    3. Customer Sandbox Customizing / Development



  4. It provides a mechanism for test data maintenance and re-useability in test automates using a framework called Test Data Container (TDC)

    1. Check out the blog post Centralized Test Data Management with Test Data Container for a detailed understanding of TDC and how to leverage it



  5. Supports both user interface (UI) & API test automation frameworks. Customers can create integrated test automates that contain UI process steps chained together with API automates for one seamless end-to-end process flow

    1. Refer to the blog post: Creating API Automates Using the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test Automation Tool for a detailed understanding on working with API automates




 

Adapting Test Scripts – How Customers Can Create Their Own Test Processes


While TAT provides standard test scripts for most scope items, there will always be a need for customers to either define their own scripts or to adapt the standard ones as per their business process. The TAT tool also provides recording capabilities to introduce new process steps to custom test processes and the ability to reuse existing process steps. Standard test processes are maintained by SAP and cannot be modified. Custom test process can either be created from scratch or based on a copy of a standard test process.

 

Get a more detailed understanding in this blog post: Adapt Test Process in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test Automation Tool 

 

UI Control Repository – A Framework to Propagate App Level UI Updates Across Test Processes


UI controls are interactive controls such as buttons, inputs, checkboxes, and more, which are present on SAP Fiori and SAP GUI apps. They are UI control objects that can be used across applications. These controls could be changed or updated as part of updates or upgrades.

The effectiveness of any test automation tool is gauged by its ability to manage application changes introduced by regular updates and upgrades. Test automates created earlier must incorporate these changes seamlessly with minimal manual intervention.

Example: A manual action step like the "OK" button control has changed to "Go" during an upgrade. All the apps referenced by test automates created before the upgrade should reflect this change.

The UI repository is a central collection of these controls, making them modular and reusable within the TAT framework. Changes made to the objects in the UI repository ensure changes are reflected across relevant apps that use this control as part of the test automates.

In this blog post, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test Automation Tool – UI Control Repository, you can get a good understanding of how this framework can be leveraged

 

SAP Activate: Your Guide for Test Automation During Implementation and Upgrades


SAP's Activate methodology provides customers with a comprehensive testing strategy and approach to be followed during different project scenarios such as implementations and upgrades.

 

  1. Implementation Projects: Check out SAP Activate for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition (3-system landscape) for a complete testing guidance across project phases.Figure 2: SAP Activate for implementation filtered by content testing.

  2. Upgrade Projects: Check "SAP Activate for Upgrade of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, three-system landscape"Figure 3: SAP Activate for upgrades filtered by content testing.



Post-Upgrade Test (PUT): Safeguarding Customer Systems Through Upgrades and Updates


PUT is a quality verification service executed on customer systems post update/upgrade of their SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition T-system. This service, as a standard, runs SAP-delivered automates using customer-defined scope and data to regression check the impact (if any) on standard features post application update/upgrade. Customers can also run their custom automates as part of this process.


Figure 4: Post-Upgrade Test (PUT) – Process Flow


Cloud Application Lifecycle Management (CALM) integration with Test Automation Tool (TAT)


CALM is SAP's cloud-native tool available to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition customers by default, to centrally manage all tasks related to their solution implementation and post-implementation operations. In the context of testing, it enables central planning and orchestration of test plans and cases across manual and automated test cases. Test automates (standard and custom) defined in TAT can be integrated into CALM for central execution and monitoring of all testing activities.

Read this blog post for a real-world experience on running test automates from CALM:  Step by Step Guide – Running Automation Script in SAP Cloud ALM

Watch this informative video on how to synchronize standard test automates from TAT into CALM: Integrate the Test Automation Tool for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Check out this help link on how to import custom test cases into CALM: https://help.sap.com/docs/cloud-alm/applicationhelp/importing-automated-test-cases

 

Using Third-Party Test Automation Tools via Cloud Application Lifecycle Management (CALM)


There can be scenarios in the customers' landscape where there is a need to manage test automates connected to other cloud products such as SAP SuccessFactors or third-party software. SAP CALM supports integration with "Tricentis Test Automation for SAP".

A prudent testing strategy for customers could be to adopt TAT for test processes primarily driven by SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition as it comes with pre-built standard automates for most processes and leverage Tricentis Test Automation to build the test scripts for processes driven primarily from other cloud systems – all this orchestrated and managed centrally within CALM.

Check out this community page to understand the Differences between SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test Automation Tool vs. Tricentis Test Automation

Check out the help document Setting Up Tricentis Test Automation for SAP Integrated with SAP Cloud ALM

Given the speed of innovation being delivered via our cloud solutions, leveraging test automation with CALM to do regression testing for public cloud solutions is a must-have strategy for any organization so that businesses can adopt new capabilities with minimum disruption and testing change management during upgrades.


Wrap Up


Testing is a vital catalyst for a smooth upgrade experience and improved business velocity and trust. I hope that with this blog post, I can give you some food for thought on how to make the best use of the tooling we have embedded in our solution. If you want to improve your system's resilience and increase your test coverage, I have good news for you: It is of the utmost importance to do so, too.

Engage with us to take the next steps and don’t miss the chance to visit this key page in our SAP Community Automated Testing in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition. Here, you will find the latest and greatest information about automated testing, enablement and activation information, tips and tricks, the most recent features added to the tool landscape, and an expert chat.

Another great source of information is the following SAP Note.

I am excited to learn how much you leverage test automation today. Feel free to drop a comment.

For further questions, I encourage you to leverage our SAP Community.

I hope to see you as a frequent follower of our Cloud ERP Close-Up – stay tuned and discover more product highlights in 2024.

All the best,

Bert

Follow us on @SAP and #S4HANA #Cloud, and myself on bert.schulze, LinkedIn or Twitter.


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