The hottest and best of SolMan SPS13 and Focused Build/Insights SP8
…from the blueworks perspective.
Just as small children look forward to their birthdays and Christmas every year, we at blueworks look forward to the release of the new features for SolMan and Focused Build/Insights twice a year.
With the recently released SolMan SPS13 and Focused Build/Insights SP8, we can now also look forward to a “synchronous” release: In the past, the SP of Focused Build/Insights (ST-OST) was always released with a time delay, but now this is done in one “delivery”.
So what’s new in the different areas, divided into Operations, Implementation and Reporting with Focused Insights.
News from the “Operations” area
In the IT calendar, you can now make bulk edits with work mode titles, start and end times when the view is adjusted to “Upcoming events”.
Service Availability Management now allows you to download outages in an Excel spreadsheet. This is particularly helpful if the collected data is to be processed “externally”. At this point, however, it should be pointed out once again that Focused Insights can also be used to access the availability data and thus the data can be processed graphically within SolMan.
There is now mass maintenance of monitoring objects in Job Monitoring – Excel can be used to create or maintain monitoring objects and the selected objects are started in an ALV list that offers export and import options.
Process integration monitoring now contains two new tabs for differentiating between messages from PI Java components and ABAP components. In the “Messages” view, a button for resetting all filters has been added and the “Forwarded” column has been removed.
To further complete the hybrid landscape monitoring, new exception metrics are now available in interface and connection monitoring, which enable the monitoring of SAP Concur, SAP Fieldglass, SAP BTP and S/4HANA public cloud.
Finally, with the new ST-A/PI version 01U* SP2, the attributes “Group”, “Locked” and “Invalid” have been added to the user stores in the managed system, allowing more options for configuration validation.
News from the “Implementation” area
The biggest innovation in SolDoc is the “online editing with SAP GUI” (SolDoc Edit Online) for MS Office documents, with which documents can be edited directly in SolDoc without downloading – and without an ACF plug-in and therefore for a large number of browsers!
The integration of the Cloud TMS into the Focused Build Processflow is also worth highlighting: it is now even possible to manage change management for the Cloud products in the same way as the familiar Work Packages
The new report /SALM/RESET_CD_OF_CYCLE can set all open change documents back to “Development” after a system upgrade and repackage the corresponding transports so that they now contain the latest version of the upgraded system.
New OData Services can now … keep the external requirements and work items synchronized with Focused Build’s own.
In the area of testing, there are – as always – some minor but very useful improvements: One improvement often requested by our customers is the customizing of the visibility and input requirement of the input fields when creating defects.
In addition, the fields contained in the structure /SALM/TM_TWL_DEFECT_DEF_VALUES can be pre-assigned on a customer-specific basis using the BADI /SALM/TM_TWL_DEFECT_DIALOG_BADI:
In the Test Step Desginer, the new SP allows process steps to be searched for and added using the name of the executable unit when manually creating test steps via the “Add from SolDoc” button.
Furthermore, a test case may now be described in more detail in the title: The title length has been increased to 100 characters.
For the test step parameters, an initial value can now be specified in the definition and validity checks can be carried out based on this.
News from the “Reporting” area with Focused Insights
With the Focused Build (ST-OST 200) SP8, Focused Insights (FI) has of course also received an update. With this new support package, SAP is once again releasing many corrections to the stability and security of the Insights Framework. For example, all open source libraries were removed and replaced with SAP’s own code in favor of security.
Probably the biggest change with this SP is the move away from wave-based corrections for the dashboards. Previously, Insights received its dashboard bug fixes and enhancements through a series of wave fixes that were available for all SPs still in maintenance. Wave 9.0, the first wave for SP8, will be the last, after which SAP will return to the familiar Solution Manager method of distributing fixes via Central Notes.
These are divided into categories according to dashboard type (the notes have not yet been released by SAP):
3082481 – Focused Insight Central Note for OCC Dashboard
3082674 – Focused Insight Central Note for TAC Dashboard
3082717 – Focused Insight Central Note for OPE Dashboard
3082722 – Focused Insight Central Note for SLR Dashboard
3082758 – Focused Insight Central Note for SCR Dashboard
3082777 – Focused Insight General Dashboard Note
The entry point for all required information on FI remains note 2392728 “Central note for Focused Insights ST-OST 200”.
The data provider DP_CRM, which allows you to create dashboards based on saved searches in the CRM user interface, has been extended to also use CRM views from the saved search. This enables even better user-defined dashboards and the visualization of information, whether in table or graphic gadgets.
There are also some notable improvements for features already available from previous SPs: In the general setup, there are additional reports for updates to the data provider list and security scenarios under step 10. The setup steps should be carried out again after updates to ensure that all functions work as intended.
The “Tactical Security” section in the dashboard has also been improved and now offers the option of displaying information from configuration validation checks.
ATTENTION: For all those who did not know it yet: The FI setup can be opened directly from the Launchpad:
