A request for change is a transaction you use to request a change of your software or a company system, for example, an enhancement or change to a function. A request for change can also be triggered by a problem message. It must pass through an approval process before a change can be made. You can categorize a request for change by the type of change, for example, a normal change, urgent change or general change. When the request for change is approved by a change manager or another employee, change documents are created from the request for change and linked to it.
Note
You can assign several change documents to a request for change. For example, if a change affects several production systems of a change control landscape, you can record all changes in one request for change.
As of SAP Solution Manager 7.2 support package 3, you can use a standard request for change independently of maintaining entries in the Scope
assignment block. In other words, for a request for change without scope items, no change documents are generated.
The SAP standard request for change (transaction type SMCR
) is delivered with the following configuration: Status To Be Approved
makes it mandatory to maintain scope items.
If you want to enable using the request for change without scope items, call transaction SOLMAN_SETUP
(SAP Solution Manager Configuration) and choose the Change Request Management scenario. Go to Step Enable Optional Scope Items
to adopt the settings in the respective activities.
By default, you can use transaction type SMCR for the request for change in the WebClient UI. We recommend that you do not change the Customizing settings specified for transaction type SMCR delivered by SAP. However, you can copy this transaction type and adapt it to your requirements. For more information, see SAP Note 1493264.
The request for change consists of the header details, which are organized in individual groups, and additional assignment blocks. You can adapt and customize the display of the assignment blocks according to your requirements.
In the header details, you record your general data that is valid for the entire request for change. This includes, for example, the following data:
General data, for example, requester, change manager, and ID
Processing data
Data for change planning, for example, approval procedure and change cycle data
Relationships, for example, corresponding problem and corresponding event
In the assignment blocks, you record additional data for the request for change, for example:
Scope
Here you specify the change category, the type of the change document(s), for example, urgent or normal change. Specify the configuration item for which a change is requested, and the product system and client. For each line item, define a change category and an installation.
Note
A request for change can have several change documents assigned. These can also be change documents of different types.
Once the request for change has the status “Being Implemented”, and the change manager detects that more change documents are required to implement the required changes, he can extend the scope by executing the action Extend Scope
. The request for change changes the status to “Extend Scope”. You can then add more change documents and approve them again.
Approval
Attachments
Solution documentation
Test management
Requests for change and change documents with their content features are summarized using the term change transactions. They are used for handling all change processes with SAP Solution Manager.
Change Request Management uses variants of the service transaction for the processing of change transactions in SAP system landscapes. For more information about integration and the required settings, see the Customizing in
.The execution of a request for change can be planned in detail and, if necessary, can be integrated with additional processes and functions. If a knowledge article was used to complete a request for change, this knowledge article can be attached to similar requests for change as a source of useful information.