This section details the final preparatory activities that should be done as part of Go-Live.
Testing
Basis Technologies recommend that our customers thoroughly test their ActiveControl setup fully before go-live.
Basis Technologies does not provide formal test scripts as part of an Implementation (or subsequent Upgrade) of ActiveControl, this is a customer responsibility. We find that our customers perform very different levels of testing, depending on the scope of the ActiveControl implementation and the extent of their existing SAP estate and Change Management processes. Wherever possible, this should involve moving SAP transports through each ActiveControl path, to test the workflow and approvals you have configured within ActiveControl.
At an absolute minimum, Basis Technologies would recommend that the following scenarios are tested:
| Item | Suggested Test |
|---|---|
| 1 | Run test transports through all systems to ensure that all is working correctly and as expected. Check Imports, Skipping Rules etc |
| 2 | Test Workbench and Customizing transports end to end. |
| 3 | Test Approval process. |
| 4 | Test all key Analysers Including Overtake / Conflict Analysis etc |
| 5 | Test Email notifications (including link from Web interface). |
| 6 | Test Web interface (operation, approvals, analysis, etc.). |
| 7 | Test creation of Manual Steps / Manual Activities. |
| 8 | Test user access and roles / authorizations. (especially if using copied Z roles) |
| 9 | Test transport Backout process. (if relevant) |
| 10 | Test Merge process (if relevant) |
| 11 | Test In-line conflict analysis. (if relevant) |
| 12 | Test user exits / enhancements. (if relevant) |
| 13 | Test any existing Integrations – between your non-Production DC and a non-Production Integration instance. |
Basis Technologies recommend involving the intended end-user community in the testing process of ActiveControl, to ensure early familiarity with the tool and buy-in to the to-be processes, prior to the Go-Live of ActiveControl.
Training
All stakeholders will need to be trained on ActiveControl prior to go-live. Basis Technologies typically deliver various training sessions to the following audiences as part of an ActiveControl Implementation:
1. Transport Owners (all developer, functiona and securities and authorisations teams that create Transports)
2. Approvers & Testers (all users that will perform an Inbox, Outbox or Test Queue approval as part of the to-be workflow within ActiveControl.
3. Basis (all Basis team-members that will need to perform additional responsibilities such as manual transport imports, adding external transports etc)
This training is generally done by a Basis Technologies solution specialist in conjunction with the customer ActiveControl Administrator and/or SAP Training team.
Data Migration
The upload of inflight transports into ActiveControl is a 2-step process:
- All open, inflight Tickets are uploaded as Business Tasks,
- All open, inflight Transports are uploaded as Transport Forms against those Business Tasks.
A template spreadsheet that can be used to upload Business Tasks and Transport Forms will be provided by Basis Technologies solution specialist as part of project. That template and the following instructions should be used for uploading your existing data into ActiveControl:
| Item | Activity | Details |
| 1 | Populate Business Task Template | Populate the Task tab of the Data Migration template with the details of all current open ‘tickets’ you want to upload into ActiveControl. Note that the values for Business Task [Group], Business Task [Type] and [Project] are the long GUID numbers taken from tables /BTI/TE_GROUPS, /BTI/TE_TYPE and /BTI/TE_PROJ respectively. You can use SE16 to get this information. |
| 2 | Populate Transport Form Template | Populate the Transport Form tab of the Data Migration template with the details of all current open ‘tickets’ you want to upload into ActiveControl. The Business Task [Reference] , [Project], [Group] and [Type] are again the long GUID numbers taken from tables /BTI/TE_TASK, /BTI/TE_PROJ, /BTI/TE_GROUPS and /BTI/TE_TYPE respectively. Again, you can use SE16 to get this information. Note: Utility program /BTI/TE_TRANS_DATAMIG can be run in the Domain Controller to help identify inflight transports. |
| 3 | Upload Business Tasks | Use SE38 to execute program /BTI/TE_RTASK_UPLOAD |
| 4 | Upload Transport Forms | Use SE38 to execute program /BTI/TE_ANALYTICS. It is strongly recommended that you switch off any automated Schedules before performing a Data Migration, to avoid any risk of transports being incorrectly imported / re-imported to a SAP system. |
| 5 | Perform any manual movements | Depending on your intended ActiveControl workflow, it is likely that you will need to manually move some of the uploaded Transport Forms into the correct location. This should be done using the standard ActiveControl Approval and ‘Mark as Imported’ functionality. |
Go-Live / Cutover Activities
The following activities should typically be performed at the time of your ActiveControl Go-Live:
| Activity | Details |
| Data Migration | Perform Data migration as per steps mentioned above. |
| Assign Schedules | Within the Targets app tile, open each Target System and allocate the relevant Schedule to each of your SAP systems. |
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Use SM31 to update table /BTI/TE_CONTROL to switch on the SAP GUI processing for all users in each of your development systems, but using a blank username. When switching on for all users using the blank entry, it is recommended to remove any legacy entries for individual users from the table |
|
Add any approvers/testers not already assigned to the User Roles, via the User Roles tile within the Administration screen. |
Ignore Flags
Within ActiveControl – there is some ongoing Housekeeping activities that need to be performed periodically by customer ActiveControl Administrators. The exact nature of these Housekeeping activities will depend on your SAP landscape, existing processes and configuration setup of ActiveControl, and should be discussed with the Basis Technologies solution specialist working with you on the implementation of ActiveControl.
Prior to ActiveControl go-live, it is recommended to set an Ignore flag on historical transports that have already been deployed through your entire SAP landscape, to avoid spurious errors in ActiveControl. This can be done by running program /BTI/TE_RU002 (via transaction SE38) in the source development system – to set assign ActiveControl attribute YBT_TE_IGNORE to all the transports that historically went to Production.
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