What is SAP Transport Request Process?
This document is a summary of the SAP Transport Request process at MIT involving technical code reviews for custom development, configuration changes, acceptance testing, documentation, training, and implementation into the production environment. Business and technical area input and approval is implicit in appropriate stages of the process.
The business analyst should make every effort to completely describe the business needs and benefits of the requested change. Any major changes to the SAP production configuration or environments (for example, upgrades, add-ons, infrastructure changes, or new functionality) are reviewed and approved by Administrative Systems and Policies Coordinating Council (ASPCC), SAPbiz, and perhaps others as deemed appropriate.
SAP Transport Request process
Development/Configuration
The development teams are responsible for the plans associated with the code design, technical review, testing, training, and documentation. If a developer considers making a change to validation rules, the configuration, custom layouts, or status of fields (required/optional/not permitted)
In the ABAP Editor use the ‘Pattern’ button and select ZDOCUPRG for program documentation template or select ZDOCUINM for include documentation template. For function module documentation template use program ZFUNCDOC.
If the development includes new ABAP programs, includes, or function modules, a technical code review is required. The ABAP Review Team (ABAP-REV) reviews the program for conformance with the MIT ABAP Development Standards and the ABAP ReviewChecklist.
When using ZUTTREQ to generate the transport request for the Quality Assurance environment and new programs are within the transport, a prompt displays asking if mail should be sent to ABAP-REV.
As appropriate or upon request, the development team must provide updates and feedback to the business process owners and others about the application changes as needed.
Transport Request Utility
ZUTTREQ is an MIT-customized SAP utility used in the multiple SAP environments designed to generate transport requests. The developers complete the fields on a five-tabbed screen and then emails are sent to specific mail lists or staff communicating the changes destined for production implementation. For more information on how to run ZUTTREQ, see: ZUTTREQ.
When a ZUTTREQ is sent to the Change Coordinators (sap-chg) for production implementation, the request is also recorded in Casetracker which is a suite of tools utilized by MIT’s computing support service providers for tracking computing support requests from staff and students. More information on Casetracker is located at: Casetracker.
Production Transport Request Priority Status
The Transport Request priority status can be designated as Normal or Critical.
Critical production transport requests are processed any day of the week. A critical priority status means that one of three circumstances exists in the production environment: a business process has halted, a calculation or formula is incorrect, or a system repair is needed. Call or email a Change Coordinator that you have a critical production transport request in progress, as soon as possible.
Normal transport requests are processed between 6:00 pm on Thursday and 9:00 am Friday morning. ZUTTREQ, the transport email request, must be in Case tracker by 3:00 pm on Thursdays. If Thursday is the last business day of the month and Friday is the first business day of the next month, then transport requests are processed on Wednesday.
The developer or project team must be available for issue resolution during the production implementation of the changes and for some reasonable period of time afterwards.
Production Transport Request Approval Process
The Administrative Computing business analyst or developer completes ZUTTREQ and forwards the request to the Business Process Owner or Business Coordinator for testing and production approval.
The business area performs tests to validate the changes in the Quality Assurance environment in SF5. When testing is successful, the Business Process Owner or Business Coordinator should change the subject line to read “Transport SF5 toPS1” and forward the ZUTTREQ