3482742 - Transport Management in S/4HANA Cloud - Central KBA

Transport management is a crucial aspect of any ERP system, including SAP S/4HANA Cloud. It enables organizations to efficiently and securely move software changes and configurations across different system landscapes, such as development, quality assurance, and production environments. In this article, we will provide an overview of transport management in S4HANA Cloud, discuss best practices, offer recommendations, and address some frequently asked questions.

Note: The current KBA focuses on the 3-System Landscape scenario.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

System Landscapes in SAP S/4HANA Cloud

The 3-system landscape consists of a development system, test system, and production system. Configuration content in the 3-system landscape is always provided via SAP Central Business Configuration, which is connected only to the development system. While SAP handles the software updates and upgrades, you decide within a dedicated time frame when you want to apply the content updates and upgrades available in SAP Central Business Configuration.

The following graphic illustrates the connection between SAP Central Business Configuration with the development system. The graphic also shows the basic transport process from the development to the test system, and from the test to the production system.

Transports

SAP provides dedicated tools and apps to move transport requests from your development system into your test system and production system. The following graphic shows the movement of the different types of transport request through your systems:

Transport Management Summary

The following tables give you an overview of transport management in a 3-system landscape.

Restrictions and Constraints

• Transports for developer extensibility, key user extensibility, and business configuration are separated, and content can't be mixed.
• Transport requests of the different categories can't be merged.
• It is not possible to delete requests, request objects, tasks and task objects which contain the Object Type Semantic Business Configuration Lock Token.
• You import all types of transport request into the test tenant (100) of your test system, and forward/import them into the production tenant (100) of your production system, by using the app Import Collection. You should always export and import transport requests in the sequence in which they were created; transport requests for scope and organizational structure, as well as those for reference content, can only be imported and forwarded in this sequence.
• All SAP CBC transport requests must be transported in the same sequence of their deployment.
• Transport requests with dependencies must be transported in the right sequence or they must be merged.
• 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.
• Export, import, and forward are not possible while the system is being prepared for upgrade. Preparation for upgrade normally begins a few days before the actual upgrade is performed.

Recommendations

We have several recommendations for your transports:

• Release your transports regularly; they should not be unnecessarily large. In particular, you should note the following:
  • When working with developer extensibility, you should have one transport per sprint and independent feature.
  • When working with business configuration, you should have one default transport per sprint.
• Dependency checks may require you to release some transport requests in a specific sequence, to avoid import errors and inconsistencies in the target system. You should plan transports so that any dependencies are managed accordingly. It is not always possible to fix issues with transport dependencies by merging the transports, as transport requests of different types cannot be merged; they have to be released in the correct sequence instead. This is especially important when transports for reference content have dependencies to transports for business configuration. The transport without dependencies should be released first, and then the dependent transport. For more information, see section Object Dependencies under Transport Dependencies.
• If a transport for reference content needs to be imported or forwarded but it has dependencies to other transports, the transports should all be imported or forwarded together.
• Once your scope is deployed from SAP Central Business Configuration and activated in your development system, you should immediately release your transports of type Central Business Configuration in the app Export Customizing Transports, before starting any business configuration activities.
• Large content deployments for new countries, scope enhancements, or organizational changes from SAP Central Business Configuration to the development system should not be triggered in the 24 hours prior to the upgrade preparation due to the possibility of longer content activation times. This may interfere with the upgrade activities triggered by SAP.
• Release all transports from your development system before it is upgraded.
• Make sure that the states of your test system and production system are as similar as possible, so that you can apply and test corrections quickly.
• Have an approval process for corrections, and use dedicated transport requests for them; you must be able to make corrections and transport them at any time.
• Work in sprints according to your needs (for example, 2 weeks per sprint); you should always have an open default transport request available for each sprint. To obtain more information, consult the help document Best Practices and learning SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, 3-System Landscape - Transport Management Fundamentals.
• Establish a dedicated role or team to take care of transports between systems.
• Collaborate closely within your implementation team, to ensure timely release of dependent changes between different countries or lines of business.
• It is recommended to import collections with a high business interruption risk after working hours.

Frequently Used KBAs/Notes

Learning

Refer to the attached learning map 'S4HC Learning Journey - Transport Management.pdf' for a more systematic approach to learning transport management. 

Help Document

3-System Landscape and Transport Management

Overview of Software and Content Upgrade

Transport Management Summary

Transport Dependencies

Tools and Apps

Export Software Collection

Import Collection

Community Blog

Transport Management in S/4HANA Cloud

How to Manage and Move Transport Request in S/4HANA Public Cloud (Cloud ERP) in 3 System Landscape

3-System Landscape Provisioning and Initial Activities in CBC for S/4HANA Cloud

Transport Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 3-System Landscape: From Basics to Complex

Transport Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 3SL (2): Parallel Implementation and Maintenance

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