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3126032 - Export/import Software Collections in S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition - Frequently Asked Questions

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Export/import Software Collections in S/4HANA Cloud - Frequently Asked Questions

Environment

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

Depending on your installation, your SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition is based either on a 2-system landscape or on a 3-system landscape.
The 2-system landscape consists of a quality (Q) system and a production (P) system.
The 3-system landscape consists of a development (D) system, test (T) system, and production (P) system. Development and testing activities are separated into two dedicated systems. 

Resolution

Answers that are only relevant for a specific landscape are marked accordingly.

1. Is it possible to export a collection during system upgrade? No. 

  

2. Is it possible to import a collection after Q-system upgrade and before P-system upgrade? No, unless the collection has been exported before the Q-system upgrade.

3-system landscape: The T-system is upgraded before the D-system and the P-system. The later systems are upgraded after a consolidation period (usually three weeks). During the consolidation period transports are still possible.

   

3. Is it possible to import a collection during system upgrade? No.

    

4. Are extensibility software collections imported automatically?

2-sytem landscape: No, unlike business configurations.

3-system landscape: Yes, every day in the T-system and weekly in the P-system. These settings can be changed in the import automation settings of the app Import Collection.

    

5. Is it possible to create a hotfix after systems upgraded to a new release? Yes. Your first export after a system upgrade can be a hotfix. The dependency checks in the Import Collection app will check the content of the hotfix. If extensibility items are missing, you will need to export another hotfix that contains the missing items.

    

6. What is the meaning of message "Development function currently not available due to upgrade preparation"? Hotfix or Upgrade Deployment including the Preprocessing is executed. Changes for ATO managed objects (e.g. Custom Form changes, Custom Business Logic or Objects, Custom CDS views) will not be possible during preprocessing and the deployment phase.

    

7. What is the meaning of message "System is currently locked by the service provider. Try again later."? Hotfix or Upgrade Deployment including the Preprocessing is executed. Changes for ATO managed objects (e.g. Custom Form changes, Custom Business Logic or Objects, Custom CDS views) will not be possible during preprocessing and the deployment phase.

    

8. What is the meaning of message "Adaptation Transport Organizer notification is currently disabled"? Hotfix or Upgrade Deployment including the Preprocessing is executed. Changes for ATO managed objects (e.g. Custom Form changes, Custom Business Logic or Objects, Custom CDS views) will not be possible during preprocessing and the deployment phase.

   

9. When can I resume the extensibility activities? The extensibility activities can be resumed after the Q-system has been upgraded, there is no need to wait until the P-system is upgraded, but importing collection will not be possible.

3-system landscape: Activities can be resumed after the D-system has been upgraded. P-system will be upgraded at the same time and importing will be possible.

    

10. When can I resume the import activities? The import activities can be resumed after the respective system is upgraded.

   

11. What is the meaning of the Export Software Collection tile number? It indicates the number of software collections that contain errors and therefore cannot be transported. If the number on the tile indicates 0, all software collections can be exported without delay.

    

12. Can I import a software collection that has been exported in a different release? No. To transport extension items, the system from which you export and the system to which you import need to be on the same cloud release. You need to re-export the software collection in the Q-system.

3-system landscape: Developer Extensibility and Customizing (all types) collections that have been exported on one release (n) can be imported into the next higher release (n+1). 
Key User Extensibility collections may contain items that cannot be imported into higher releases (n+1). There will be a warning when exporting such software collections. You can review the list of key user item types supported by using the app Extensibility Settings. 
   1. Open the app Extensibility Settings
   2. In the list "Key User Namespace" select the namespace "YY1_ - Key user development" and navigate to the "Namespace Detail" view.
   3. The list "Supported Item Types" contains the column "Import Into Higher Release Supported".
You should make sure that your software collections only contain extensibility items that either support the import into higher release or not. This will allow to import some software collections into the higher release.

    

13. Is it possible to revert a collection that was exported but never imported? No. The only solution is to correct the objects or delete the objects but you would need to create a new version with the changed/deleted objects, exported and imported together with the other version.

    

14. What does "Add Missing Items" button does? You can use Add Missing Items to add direct dependent items to your software collection.

    

15. Can I remove an item from a collection? You can only remove items that have never been exported, that is items with status "New". Any item within a software collection that does not have the status New has already been transported to the productive system and thus needs to be moved with the Move Items functionality.

    

16. Can I move an item from a collection to a different collection to solve dependencies between collections? Yes. For more information please refer to 2638029 - ATO: How to resolve Dependencies of ATO items - SAP for Me 

    

17. Why does the object I moved from one collection to another using the "Move items" functionality has now status "Changed"? Items keep their current status (Unchanged/Changed/Deleted) when moved to another software collection. However, unchanged items that have not been exported in the current release are labeled and recognized as Changed after the move unless the import of their latest exported version can be verified in the P-system.

   

18. Why do the amount of items I can see in the list does not correspond to the number which is displayed in brackets? You have a filter applied. Please, use the table view settings to include the missing status.

   

19. What is the meaning of "Import in target system is not possible because of different SAP release."? You have tried to import a collection in P-system that has been exported in Q-system before the upgraded in Q-system was completed. Please, re-export the software collection from Q-system and try to import it again in P-system. In order to re-export a collection you just need to go to the Export Software Collections app in Q-system, select the relevant software collection and click on "Export" > "All Items".

   

20. While creating a hotfix, why am I ask to add other than direct dependencies? Changed or deleted items that have a direct dependency to any of the extension items in the hotfix must also be included in the hotfix. That can happen until no more dependencies are found.

    

21. After using the merge functionality, why the items that were not changed have status Changed now?  After merging, all items will be marked as Changed or Deleted, irrespective of their actual technical status. As a consequence, they will be included in the next export of the target collection. The source collection can no longer be changed. 

   

22. Is it possible to revert a merge? No.

   

23. Is it possible to revert a move? No.

   

24. Is it okay to delete an empty collection once all items have been moved to another collection? Yes.

    

25. Is it possible to remove/delete an object from a collection? Only if they have status "New"

    

26. What is the meaning of "Merged item xxxxxx cannot be added to hotfix."? This is indeed a restriction which cannot be circumvented and which is necessary to ensure consistency of the merged software collection. 

There are two workarounds:

1. When two software collections are being merged, all the items of the source collections have to be transported together with the target collection once. After that, hotfixes are possible again.

2. Move the merged items to a new software collection with their dependencies.

    

27. Why I cannot see my CBC released transport in the target system for Import? There's an upgrade taking place and your Source System and Target System are in different releases, so the CBC Transport Request will only be available for Import when they are in the same release.

     

28. While exporting a software collection, the following message appears: Item <A> of type <type of A> depends on item <B> of type <type of B>. 

Please refer to 2638029 - ATO: How to resolve Dependencies of ATO items - SAP for Me 

     

29. While exporting a derived business role you are asked to include the leading business role in the same hotfix/collection?

If you transport a derived business role, the leading business role and all other derived business roles need to be added as dependencies to the transport request as well.

If you transport a leading business role, all derived business roles need to be added as dependencies to the transport request as well.

Please refer to How to Import and Export Business Roles | SAP Help Portal

    

30. What does "Preimported" mean?(3SL only)

You've imported a collection version and skipped importing its dependencies. If you decide to import the dependencies later on, mind that you need to import the collection version again. You can forward the collection version. Key User Extensibility and CBC collection versions can’t be preimported. 

    

31. Why customizing configurations are not visible as expected, after Preimporting TRs? 

It's because the dependencies are not imported.

    

32. How to deal with the transports with status "Preimported"?

The Pre-Import status is set when the dependencies on other transports are ignored.

The re-import of the transports with "Pre-Imported" status takes place automatically as soon as the transports on which the pre-imported transports depend are also imported.

For more information please refer to Transport Dependencies | SAP Help Portal 

    

33. What is "Transport Aging"?

Transports are exported on a certain software release. 

On the next release SAP might ship changes to the underlying database tables. 

The problem with transports is that the content within the transport is not converted.

So maybe run into situations where to many changes have been done to the underlying database table and the content of the transport is no longer compatible to the database.

Therefore it is only allowed to import transports that are from the current release and one release older. All transports that are older will get the status ‘Outdated’ and a replacement transport is required.

Transport Dependencies

You can't import a transport created on release n into release n+2 and higher, which means that you have to recreate the transport in the development system. However, it is not possible to recreate CBC transports. In this case, you have to create a support incident. 

    

34. Is it possible to delete/discard the customizing transport with SBCL recorded on them?

No. Error message "Discard of SBCL controlled transports is not allowed" will pop-up.

The aim of Semantic Business Configuration Locks [SBCL] is to ensure, that changes in configuration done by the customer in the Dev System are being checked against current settings of the productive P-System and its Test System using the already established Cross Client Verification [CCV].
In case an intended setting fits to the current settings and needs to ‘freeze’ this situation in the P-system, predefined ‘Semantic Business Configuration Locks’ are to be set when saving the configuration.  

If such a transport is to be deleted or discarded it from being imported into productive environment, the customizing in DEV and in TEST/PROD will look different without any transparency. Therefore, we always recommend to revert the changes in DEV system, storing the changes in the same transports or - if released - in a secondary transport and then releasing/importing both with these non-changes. Especially for SBCL Lock Tokens stored inside a transport, this is mandatory as otherwise the locks will not be removed in the TEST and/or PROD system.

Once the second transport is available in the production system you can import both transports at the same time.

This will make sure that:

  • The faulty configuration is never active in production
  • The semantic business locks are released in production
  • The configuration of all 3 systems is in a consistent state

In addition, Key User Extensibility and CBC collection versions can’t be discarded. 

Importing a Software Collection | SAP Help Portal

     

35. While exporting a software collection that contains items of type "ALV GUI Variant Configuration", getting error "Export failed".

The object list entered in the Transport Organizer cannot be appended to task XYZ because some of the objects do not comply with the requirements.

The object name is not supported. It contains an Unicode-Character which is not supported in the transport:

According to SOBJ modelling (logical transport object):

Syntactic characters (without a-z): The object names contain characters from the syntactic character set only (consisting of the uppercase letters A-Z, the digits 0-9, the underscore and several other special characters). The lowercase letters a-z are converted to the corresponding uppercase letters A-Z.

     

36. What is the risk of forwarding a transport without dependencies?

Collections of type Customizing and Developer Extensibility can be forwarded and imported without dependencies. However this is at your own risk.

There is no way to determine if the result of the import will work correctly in the production system. Even if the import works without errors the production system might work incorrectly.

For example: Foreign keys in customizing tables might point to non-existing entries in the original table of the key.

It is in the responsibility of the customer to analyze the content of the collection and judge if they can risk to import the content without the dependencies on the other collections.

       

37. How to re-export deleted items from a "discarded"/"outdated" key user extensibility software collection?

  • After discarding a key user extensibility software collection (that contains the deleted items) in test tenant, a new version of the same software collection has to be exported from the customizing tenant using the option "Export > All items" or "Export > Changed and Deleted Items" . This will include the deletions that were not yet imported in the test tenant. 
  •  After a key user extensibility software collection (that contains the deleted items) becomes "Outdated" in the test tenant, a new version of the same software collection has to be exported from the customizing tenant using the option "Export > All items". This will include the deletions that were not yet imported in the test tenant. 

If a key user extensibility software collection version has not been forwarded to production system yet (outdated, discarded, not forwarded), the newly created version of the same key user extensibility software collection will include the items that haven't been consolidated in production tenant. For more information, please refer to New Features for Key User Extensibility Transport ... - SAP Community > Discarding Extensibility Collection Versions

      

38. Do "SAP Scheduled Collections" in Transport Automation include "BC Scope Extension" or "BC Initial Scope" transport requests from content activation?

No, "SAP Scheduled Collections" is only referring to content generated by SAP Updates or Upgrades (Upgrade in Detail | SAP Help Portal).

Please keep in mind that this content is automatically deployed/exported from the customizing system and automatically imported in the test system (with import automation enabled) as long as there is no issues with dependent content, either activation or configuration (Release Sequence for Transport Requests from SAP Central Business Configuration and Importing Transport Requests).

     

39. Considerations about Import Collection - Ignore All Dependencies functionality.

Please refer to 3257506 - Import Collection - Ignore All Dependencies: Exceptional Process - SAP for Me

See Also

Keywords

import export software collection frequently asked questions faq help information, Import is currently not available due to upgrade preparation , KBA , BC-SRV-APS-EXT-SL , Manage and Import Software Collections , Problem

Product

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition all versions