Integrate SAP Transport Management with your ITSM Tool
With the release of an app that allows you to manage your change transports directly from Freshservice, we have a great opportunity to discuss the reason you probably want to integrate your SAP transports with your ITSM tool.
What is a SAP Transport?
The simplest definition would be that A SAP transport is a package which is used to transfer data from one SAP installation to another (according to Wikipedia).
If you are using SAP, someone in the background should be using transports to transfer data from your development environment (DEV), where the changes are made, to your quality environment (QA), where they will be tested. When everything is tested okay, the changes are transported again, to your productive environment (PROD). This is the very simplified process for a 3 tier landscape (DEV - QA - PROD). And you want to do it that way because, as per SAP best practices, your production environment should not allow modifications made directly (more on this on a different article).
Why should I know what is being changed?
Changes happen, and are necessary. You may need to configure a new location (A plant, for example) in SAP, change some fields value, create a new report… Changes you request can affect other users, and changes requested by other people can affect you. This is why changes should be managed centrally. And SAP has the Transport Management System (STMS) to assist in central management of all transport functions.
Why should I integrate the STMS with my ITSM tool?
An ITSM tool is often the entry point for your end users issues. Most companies have one (Jira, Freshservice, Zendesk).
Some companies use SAP Change Request Management (ChaRM), the SAP tool that helps organize changes (Think ITSM, but with fields specifics to change management, and the possibility to control the STMS).
And some companies integrate their ITSM tool with ChaRM. This means configuring ChaRM, and making sure changes in ChaRM are reflected in the ITSM tool. This integration requires some light development however, that can be avoided by:
Using SAP own ITSM tool (Solution Manager ITSM) easily integrated with ChaRM
Managing the changes directly in the third party ITSM tool without using ChaRM (the topic of this blog entry)
Without some form of integration, end users who create the issues don’t have access or visibility on the change process. And the developers making the changes don’t always have access to the ITSM tool. This delays communication, decreases velocity, impedes agility.
So what does this app allow you to do?
With the available app, you can directly from your Freshservice ticket:
Create or delete a Transport Request in the SAP system;
Remove a transport from the list in case it has already been deleted in the SAP system;
Retrieve and/or Update transport information in the SAP system;
Create a Transport of Copies for an existing transport linked to the Freshservice change;
Release a transport when all tasks have been released in SAP.
The development team offers great insight on how all this works here.
This integration means that end users and developers can now all work directly from the same place, with increased visibility for all. This opens the door to an agile management of your SAP changes.
