In the past few years, many CA customers have migrated their CA PPM environment from on-premise to SaaS. The first step in this process is to run a discovery script to ensure that the customer’s CA PPM instance is SaaS compliant and identify any customizations that have been developed.
I can hear you’ saying, “The discovery script tool sounds great. It should be available to CA PPM administrators and advanced users for health checks, customization reports and/or troubleshooting. Reports should be generated in a few easy steps.”
Well, I’m happy to announce that a new customization discovery analysis report has been integrated as an out-of-the-box feature in CA PPM. Read on for more details.
In what CA PPM version is the new customization discovery analysis report available?
It’s in CA PPM 15.2 and higher versions.
What information does the report provide?
This report was designed for CA Technologies Global Delivery teams, CA Support, and advanced administrators to help them prepare to migrate from an on-premise to SaaS environment. Bear in mind that some customizations allowed in an on-premise system are not permitted in SaaS. Also, the report includes an estimated level of complexity for the migration, based on non-compliant objects and other factors.
How do I run the report?
1. Prepare to run the report.
Rights: Only administrators should be allowed access. Ensure that your administrators have the following rights:
• Administration - Application Setup global access right
• Administration - Access to access the administrator menu
• Jobs - Access global access right
• Jobs - Run - All (or at least the instance level right for running the PPM Customization Discovery Analysis job)
Administrators must be added to the Log Analysis Access group to access the health report page.
2. Run the report: There are two different ways to run the report:
a) “One Click” from Health Report:
· Go to the Security and Diagnostics section of the Administration menu and click on Health Report.
· Click on Download Discovery Analysis Report.
b) From Jobs (optional): Suggested method for large deployments.
· Go to the Administration menu in Data Administration and Jobs.
· Search for PPM Customization Discovery Analysis job.
· Select the Active check box.
The job results are in an Excel spreadsheet that can also be emailed to the recipient if that is specified in the job parameters at the time of execution.
Do you have any advice on how to analyze the report?
The output contains many tabs of data: Cover Page, Non-Compliant Objects, Non-Compliant DB Source, Custom Triggers Detail, Custom Procedures Detail, Custom Functions Detail, Custom Views Detail, Custom Synonyms Detail, Custom Packages Detail, Grid Portlets, Grid Object Portlets, Graph Portlets, Filter Portlets, HTML Portlets, Interactive Portlets, NSQL Code, Reports, Custom Studio Objects, Custom Attributes, Gel Scripts, Processes, Scheduled Jobs, TimeSlices, Email Anomalies, Install History, File Store, Dynamic Lookups, Custom Groups, Transactions, License Counts, Custom Java jobs, Custom Stored Proc Jobs and GD Components.
** Note: Data analysis requires advanced technical skills.
The report contains very detailed information with names, IDs, and source code. A task that requires hours of deep-dive analysis is determining why an object has been flagged as non-compliant. Some of the most common causes are:
- Customizations done directly in the database instead of using CA PPM studio, such as creating triggers, store procedures, tables, views or indexes.
- Portlets, dynamic lookups and scripts that rely on non-compliant database customizations or hard-coded URLs in the custom code.
- Custom integrations.
Analysis requires collaboration between skilled technical and functional resources who are knowledgeable about the particular environment’s specifics. Once the discovery analysis has provided a full scan of the system to help users make it SaaS compliant, the organization must conduct a cleanup to remove obsolete customizations.
Some organizations document all technical changes and enhancements, but they may also become obsolete. But in my experience, many unsupported and non-compliant customizations are not kept in customers’ documentation or a private knowledge base. The discovery analysis report is an excellent tool for getting a detailed picture of environment customizations.
For readers interested in more detail, check out DocOps. I encourage you to participate in the best-in-class site, where you have access to your peers, events and support. You can also reach out to CA Services for information about CA PPM release 15.2 upgrades/implementations and individualized business outcome references and analysis. Feel free to post in the comments section of this blog or contact me directly via email and Twitter @aurora_ppm.