This month at Revelation Software Concepts we have released an important integration between Rev-Trac and Salt [now Rev-Trac Insights]
The integration enables a process side-by-side comparison of any workbench object on receiving a notification of a migration conflict.
This will highlight the differences between the versions of the two conflicting objects allowing for exception decision making and highlighting any following corrective action that may be required.
For example, the integration feature has been internally coded MB4-OOPS (Match Box for Overtake and Overwrite Protection System), which launches a Salt Match Box report when an OOPS alert is triggered in a Rev-Trac’s migration process.
This allows any out of sequence migration, downgrade or conflict retrofit to be compared side-by-side.
There are a wide range of use cases for this new feature, but I’ve outlined three of the more common possible uses here.
Retrofitting and OOPS
Rev-Tac is capable of automatically applying support changes to a parallel project DEV system. However, in the event of a conflict (a version in the project track which does not exist in support is about to be overwritten), Rev-Trac will provide an OOPS alert, identifying the migration transport and the transport in the project track.
Now with MB4-OOPS, the analyst reviewing the conflict will be able to launch a side-by-side comparison of the support and project changes.
If the result will severely effect the project go-live or require too much rework, the analyst can reject the retrofit and instead automatically trigger a work order for a manual application of the support change.
NOTE: The decision process may vary based on the project go-live or the amount of effort required to rework either the support or project change.
Prevent production downgrades (emergencies)
Rev-Trac’s OOPS Overwrite feature will always alert when a transport containing an old version of an object is about to overwrite (downgrade) a newer version of the same object.
Downgrades are normally avoided in Rev-Trac due to the OOPS Overwrite (out of sequence migration) alert.
However, it is typical to bypass an OOPS Overtake when an emergency change is required for immediate deployment to production.
The MB4-OOPS feature will identify any emergency code which could be compromised by applying their code.
This allows the reviewing analyst to identify additional code (emergency code already applied to production) to include in their own change to avoid removing or downgrading any functionality from production.
During go-live
During the go-live of a long running Project that has been developed in a parallel development track, project changes will be applied to the support track. During this process, any support change that has conflicting object versions to the project will be overwritten.
MB4-OOPS now allows for analysts to compare the project version of the object with the support version of the same object.
Although it is rare that an organization will not choose to overwrite the support change, the fully audited OOPS report in Rev-Trac allows the support analyst to see what has been overwritten by the project change in their support change, to easily identify a method of merging or reverting to their changes without compromising the project change.
The MB4-OOPS integration represents the first of a series of planned integrations between Rev-Trac and Salt along the exciting Rev-Trac SAP change control automation roadmap.
For more information on Rev-Trac’s comprehensive safety features, feel free to reach out to one of our SAP change management experts.
