System and Client Open During Business Hours

[ajjunit84]

Hello All-

I am trying to find some best practices for client/system open.

For some changes like plant creation etc, our project team members request for client open and that too during business hours. I am checking for any links and read few eg https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/1752208

But apart from well documented and approved change, haven't got an answer on the pros and cons.

Should SAP systems like ERP 's client be opened during business hours for 2-3 hours?

Even though we have most of the change access in firefighter user ids, but still there are many areas which open up.

Can you please provide your inputs on this and what are the risks involved.

I would like to avoid opening client during business hours and need some key points in support of it..

Thank you.

[BJarkowski]

Do you have development and quality systems? Then you can move changes as a transport and the prodution client doesn't have to be open.

[ajjunit84]

We, there are some changes where fucntional teams say that it's better not transported. Like eg. Plant creation. I am asking them to check this again and see if transport is a better option.

But apart from that, there are many configs like increasing log levels for CIF queues, pricing condition download etc for which we get requests to open client.

[Colleen]

Part of the whole business hours part comes down to the (1) risk or the change and the risk of other (2) users performing unapproved changes

For part 1, if it is a high risk change you may want users off the system and backup as part of the 'back out' plan could be a roll back or system restores. Users transacting during this time may cause issues. This scenario could apply to data dictionary updates or interfaces, etc

For Part 2 - if users have open privileges (e.g. table maintenance, etc) you may have a situations whereby users (Could be support users or end users) make unapproved changes

The off system is more around change control. It's the same risk assessment your technical team should make when they decide to migrate transports to production during business hours as opposed to taking a planned outage.

Transport is always the preferred option but there are configurations with system or client specific data that has to done performed correctly. When these changes are performed you may temporarily increase the user's permissions to have access and monitor what they do to make sure they have only actioned the approved change.

Regards

Colleen