Today I talked with a customer about their SAP Cloud Integration (CPI) transport processes. They did like the way they currently used SAP Cloud Integration Transport and it worked well for them. I did get a short demonstration and could see the tool it worked as expected. It could transport iflows and have approvals of it.
After they saw what Figaf could offer in terms of visibility and ease of you they wanted to see how the organization could benefit from it. I hope it could be interesting for you also. I created a short demostration of how you can manage your SAP CPI transports better
What can SAP Cloud Transport Management
You can trigger a transport from SAP Cloud Integration (CPI) that starts the transport process.
It is possible to have approvals of each transport by a number of users.
You can import the transport into Test and Production.
In the history, you can see the text user has created hopefully with a link to the reason for the change. It is also possible to see the name of the Iflow being moved.
I believe it also is included in your Integration Suite license otherwise it is pretty cheap to run.
Why is Figaf Transport Better
Figaf is focused on how to make it easier to transport SAP Integration and do it in a way that allows users control over what is going on.
Some of the key advantages are:
What is changed
A much better view of what is being changed. For each artifact (Iflow) it is possible to see versions of it and compare different versions and see what is being changed. There are a few different options to view the differences in iflows.
- Graphical view of BPMN models
- Diff patch
- Message Mapping diff excel report
Review process
It is possible to review your changes in a more compliant way.
- You can set up approvers for the different landscapes so architects approve before Test and Business approve before import to production.
- You cannot approve your own transport to separate the approval process.
- Once you perform the approval you can use the different Diff options to compare the changed
Testing included
Once you have added a number of iflows to the Ticket you can add the different test cases created with the Figaf Tool to the ticket. You can then execute the test to check how the changes affect your operation. If you accept the changes to the iflow you can accept the new result to the test case.
Configuration of iflows
While you are setting up the transport you have the option to define the configuration in all landscape items. The configurations are also a part of the review process.
You can also just transport the configuration, so you have full documentation of changes applied to iflows.
History of changes
On all objects, it is possible to view the transport history and check which artifacts were a part of them. So you can find the Jira, Service Now, or Azure DevOps story that resulted in the change.
Flexible transport process
The Figaf system has virtual tenants. This will allow you to reuse any of your systems for multiply services like Development and Test. The Figaf system will add pre/postfixes to the different objects making it much easier to manage the reuse.
It also allows you to have long-running projects while still being able to support live projects.
Get Started
You can also try Figaf Transport Tool on your system. There is a free trial which is pretty easy to set up.
Conclusion
There are a lot of parameters that make it better to use Figaf DevOps Suite to manage your SAP CPI/Cloud Integration instead of using SAPs version. You will be able to improve the transport process and give much better documentation of what is being changed.
You will save time for each transport because the tool can handle a lot of the lifting around the transports and testing, where the automation makes it a lot easier to manage the integration.
SAP does have some advantages in that it is cheaper/free and easier to run because it is all maintained by SAP.