How many Solutions entries in Solution Directory?

[Former Member]

What is the best practice for setting up Solutions in the Solution Directory?

Should we have one for all business processes?

Should we have maybe something like the following?

1. Campaign to Cash Business Processes

2. Employee Business Processes

3. Solution Manager -- ITIL Business Processes

Are there any disadvantage to having multiple solution entries?

I searched service.sap.com and this forum for an answer before posting this question.

Regards,

Mel Calucin

Bentley Systems

[DoloresCorrea]

Hello Mel,

I don´t know if I get correctly the question, sorry if not.

In Solman solution are use mainly for the Operation scenario, this means that usually customers create one solution for all productive systems they have, another solution for the R/3 DEV->QUA->PRD landscape, etc.

You can define as many Solution as you need, you only need to include the logical components with which you want to operate.

Operation scenario include:

- System Monitoring

- Service Level reporting

- Central Administration

- Maintenance Optimizer

between others.

Hope this helps,

Dolores

[Former Member]

Hi Dolores,

Thanks for your reply.

Maybe I'm not understanding concepts and relationships of these items:

Solution

Project

Logical Component

System Role

System

Business Process

Please tell me if I am getting any of the statements below are incorrect.

1. New and to-be-modified business processes are developed and tested using Solution Manager Projects and are never developed or tested using Solution Manager Solutions; therefore, Solution Manager Solutions only contain production business processes.

2. When a Solution Manager Project is completed, business processes in that Project are copied to one or more Solution Manager Solutions; consequently, the business processses become production business processes.

3. The structure of a Solution Manager Solution is the same as a Solution Manager Project; however, some tabs in a Solution Manager Solution are not modifiable and can only be populated when a business process in a Solution Manager Project is copied to the Solution Manager Solution.

4. Current business processes (current operations) that are not yet in a Solution Manager Solution maybe directly entered in a Solution Manager Solution; however, because some tabs such as the configuration tab in a Solution Manager Solution are not available for modification, it maybe better to document completely the undocumented business process in a Solution Manager Project and then copy the business process to a Solution Manager Solution.

5. The business processes defined under a Solution or Project must be linked to a Logical Component.

6. A Logical Component defines a unique main program and version combination e.g. CRM 4.0, CRM 5.0, R/3 4.7, ERP 5.0, ERP 6.0, etc..

7. A Logical Component also defines what systems contain the main program/version combination and the system roles that those systems serve as e.g. sandbox, dev, qa, production, etc..

8. A Solution Manager Solution or a Solution Manager Project through the use of Logical Components indirectly has a definition for systems with system roles of Dev, QA, and Production.

9. If a company has documented ALL of the its business processes in Solution Manager Solutions, the company has documented all of the systems and systems roles within that company as well.

Given the above statements are true, the goal would be to document all business processes in Solution Manager Solutions. It is unnecessary to create Solution Manager Solutions based on system roles e.g. one for Solution Manager Solution for Production, one Solution for QA, one for Dev or combinations of system roles e.g. Dev->QA->Production. By defining one Solution Manager Solution, the system roles are also defined for the business processes contained in the Solution Manager Solution.

My quesiton is: Is it better to have one Solution Manager Solution for all business processes or to divide the business processes into multiple Solutions. If it is better to break up the business processes into multiple Solutions, what is the best way to break them up? Does SAP offer a best practice for this?

Regards,

Mel Calucin

Bentley Systems, Inc.

[DoloresCorrea]

Hi Mel,

I will try to answer your questions:

1. New and to-be-modified business processes are developed and tested using Solution Manager Projects and are never developed or tested using Solution Manager Solutions; CORRECT!

therefore, Solution Manager Solutions only contain production business processes.

CORRECT! you can transfer the business processes in a project to a Solution to used for example "Business Process Monitoring scenario"

2. When a Solution Manager Project is completed, business processes in that Project are copied to one or more Solution Manager Solutions; consequently, the business processses become production business processes.

Correct!

3. The structure of a Solution Manager Solution is the same as a Solution Manager Project; however, some tabs in a Solution Manager Solution are not modifiable and can only be populated when a business process in a Solution Manager Project is copied to the Solution Manager Solution.

You can transfer the data from a project to a Solution, and in this case you will get the same business scenario structure that you had in SOLAR01, but you can change this structure in order to delete scenarios, or add new once.

Also you can create a clean solution and add this Business Scenarios manually comming from different projects if you like.

4.

5. The business processes defined under a Solution or Project must be linked to a Logical Component

Correct!

-

---

The business scenarios that you define in your solutions are only use for "Business Process Monitoring" scenario.

Usually other customer creates Solutions and add the logical components that ate included in the solution.

6,7, 8 Logical component definition

A logical component define the different systems, with different roles involved in a

usual DEVclient->QUA_client->PRD_client landscape for a specific version and installation type.

For example, a usual logical component would be:

Z_ECC60: DEV 100 QUA 200 PRD 300

You can also enter other system roles in this logical component

This DEV 100,etc, has previously defined in SMSY and RFC connection created to these satellites.

9. Correct! because the processe take place in logical components finally, in SAP or not SAP systems.

"Given the above statements are true, the goal would be to document all business processes in Solution Manager Solutions. It is unnecessary to create Solution Manager Solutions based on system roles e.g. one for Solution Manager Solution for Production, one Solution for QA, one for Dev or combinations of system roles e.g. Dev->QA->Production. By defining one Solution Manager Solution, the system roles are also defined for the business processes contained in the Solution Manager Solution."

The goal is to have the documentation of the business processes in the SOLMAN system.

The Solution are mainly created for Administration and monitoring activities, based on system "basis" site, so usually Solution are created for these purposes usually after the Go live of the project.

I mean, Solution are used for the technical part of the project.

Although for Service Desk and Change request management scenarios more than

technical roles must be involved.

So, do you want to generate a report with the response times for all your productive systems? if yes, you will need to define a Solution that includes all

the logical components available in your landscape, but only "Put in Solution" the production systems.

Do you want to see the alerts from only want system, instead of seeing a graphic with 10 systems, you will need to create a Solution with only this system.

Usually to have a Solution with all system is not operational, unless you have few systems.

I have to insist in the idea that the Solution is not used by "Functional" team, mainly for "Technical" team.

!"My quesiton is: Is it better to have one Solution Manager Solution for all business processes or to divide the business processes into multiple Solutions. If it is better to break up the business processes into multiple Solutions, what is the best way to break them up? Does SAP offer a best practice for this?"

Usually customer even not define the Business Scenarios in their Solution for the Operational scenarios, because these Business Scenarios are not used.

Hope this clarify your questions, best regards,

Dolores

[Former Member]

Hi Dolores,

I think that setting up a Solution to be able to do any system monitoring is what is wrong with Solution Manager. A Solution is composed of Logical Components and business processes. The intent of Logical Component is to separate the business processes from the system definitions. Maybe this is why SAP is making proposing having a Central Monitoring system which is separate from Solution Manager and contains NetWeaver Administrator. This would remove the system monitoring and administration from Solution Manager and just have Projects, Solutions, and Business Processes configuration, and Business Process monitoring.

Regards,

Mel Calucin

Bentley Systems, Inc.

[DoloresCorrea]

Hello Mel,

From the last Teched 2006 in Las Vegas from lecture "SAP NetWeaver

Administrator: Latest News"

It is said:

"NWA is not positioned to replace Solution Manager nor Solution Manager Diagnostics"

Best regards,

Dolores