SAP Solution Manager (SolMan) is a powerful, integrated Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform that supports the entire lifecycle of SAP solutions — from implementation to operation. However, each organization’s SAP landscape, business processes, and operational requirements are unique. To maximize the value of SAP Solution Manager, it is essential to customize the platform to align with the specific needs of your business and IT environment.
This article explores the key aspects, approaches, and best practices for customizing SAP Solution Manager, enabling organizations to tailor the system for effective project management, monitoring, and support.
Out-of-the-box, SAP Solution Manager provides a comprehensive suite of tools, but its true power lies in its flexibility:
- Adapt to organizational processes and governance models
- Align with specific project requirements and ITIL best practices
- Optimize workflows, notifications, and approvals for change management
- Tailor monitoring dashboards and alerts to relevant KPIs
- Integrate with non-SAP systems and tools
Proper customization helps improve user adoption, streamline operations, and deliver more value from the solution.
¶ 1. System Landscape Setup
Customization begins with accurately defining your system landscape within Solution Manager:
- Configure technical systems, clients, and managed systems
- Define system roles (Development, Quality, Production)
- Set up connections for diagnostics and remote support
This foundational step ensures accurate monitoring and data collection.
¶ 2. Project and Solution Setup
- Create and customize project structures, including work packages and phases
- Define solution documentation templates aligned to your business processes
- Customize business process hierarchies and link them to system components
Tailored documentation ensures clarity and supports traceability.
ChaRM controls the change and transport process. Customizing ChaRM involves:
- Designing approval workflows to match your organization’s governance
- Defining user roles and authorizations for creating, approving, and releasing changes
- Configuring transport routes and landscape-specific settings
- Customizing notifications and alerts to keep stakeholders informed
Proper customization of ChaRM reduces risk and improves control over system changes.
Customize ITSM to align incident, problem, and service request processes with your support organization:
- Modify ticket categories and priority schemes
- Adapt service level agreements (SLAs) and escalation rules
- Customize the user interface and templates for ticket creation
- Integrate knowledge bases and FAQ content
This helps improve service quality and user satisfaction.
¶ 5. Monitoring and Alerting Customization
- Define custom monitoring templates for systems, jobs, interfaces, and business processes
- Set threshold values for alerts and configure notification recipients
- Develop dashboards tailored to different user roles (technical, functional, management)
- Integrate with external tools if needed
Effective monitoring customization enables proactive issue resolution.
- Customize test plans and test cases to reflect project-specific requirements
- Define defect categories and workflow steps
- Integrate automated test tools like CBTA or third-party test automation
- Customize reports and analytics for test progress and results
- Start with a Clear Blueprint: Understand your current processes and goals before customizing.
- Use Standard SAP Content: Leverage SAP’s delivered best practice content and templates as a base.
- Engage Stakeholders: Involve business, IT, and support teams to ensure alignment.
- Implement Incrementally: Prioritize high-impact customizations and phase in changes.
- Maintain Documentation: Keep customization details well documented for future maintenance.
- Test Thoroughly: Validate custom workflows and settings in sandbox environments.
- Train Users: Provide role-based training to ensure smooth adoption.
Customizing SAP Solution Manager is crucial to fully unlock its potential as the backbone of your SAP ALM strategy. From tailoring change management workflows to configuring monitoring dashboards, customization aligns the tool with your organization’s unique processes and requirements.
By investing effort upfront in proper customization, businesses can achieve greater control, transparency, and efficiency in managing SAP solutions — resulting in smoother projects, faster issue resolution, and enhanced operational excellence.