Integration of CHARM and Document Management

Question

Dear All
After a lot of time on sdn wiki and thanks to the key blogging contributors , I now have a decent understanding of how to configure CHARM
To go into more details, i would like to integrate CHARM with the Document Management within Solution MAnager
Would i be right to assume that this integration is currently today in use only by a few GXP kind of customers
But it seems the configuration of document management itself is not so difficult (eg creating document types, statuses, status schemes, signature strategy etc) The IMG has the steps described though in not great detail. Some topics are still bit specialized eg document versioning etc
I was wondering if someone who has already spent time in this area could write a SDN blog or SAP experts coudl write a wiki section
I see this as the next big improvement since everything would be out of the box and external document databases can be discarded etc
Also the workflow of informing and signing documents for clear visibility is on the same system etc
Some requirements could be
1) what could be the minimal document workflow
2) what kind of checks can be implemnet to prevent CD to move forward if a document is not in 'Approved' status
3) at what point could a QM come into picture
etc
Though the documentation is in bits and pieces, if we could have alll at one place - lets say how its done , would be very helpful
Like a Wiki or the SAP CHARM configuration guide
or like the ITSM book by Nathan Williams with illustrations  :-)
Thx
Chandrakanth

Answer 1

This is very far from the type of integration I expect to see. Proper incident management means when a problem occurs and incident is logged into the sap service desk. If this incident requires a change it should be forwarded to the CHange Reqest Management (CHaRM). From there it should have a business impact analysis, then a system or architecture review, only then if it is approved should development be started, after the development, it goes into QA for testing. Since the business process is defined in the solman and there are test cases for this business process. It makes sense that one can use the test workbench to verify the business process, and document the testing. If there is a problem with the testing and it needs to go back to development, it should be connected to the same incident logged initially. There should not be a second problem logged. It is still part of the same incident and should be managed as such.
This question exists also for a maintenance project. Once I have an operational system and all the business process defined in the project and a change arrives into ChaRM, why canu2019t the change be done in the project like and implementation?
How can one find out the direction of this product? Does SAP have any plans to develop solman into an integrated tool or will it remain a bunch of simple tools that co-exist on the same server?