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The SAP License Audit

Submitted by 1905 Team on Thu, 18/02/2016 - 21:12

Yes indeed. It can happen at any moment. SAP will contact you to support them in undertaking a measurement of all your SAP systems for the purposes of licensing compliance. Once contacted, you will have 4 weeks within which to deliver the final measurement log. The log is then evaluated by SAP according to the terms and conditions of your contract with SAP.

But what is measured?

The use of SAP software is based on (a) software scenarios (or engines) active within the SAP application and (b) named users of the system. The measurement program determines the number of users and the active software engines in your system(s). Only development and production systems are measured. Test systems (including copies of production systems for testing) are exempt from the measurement program. The process of measurement can be quite involved; especially if you have many systems.

The measurement is conducted through transaction USMM and generally speaking, the process takes the following format:

  • 1 System Data Check Ensure that you have the client type (production, test etc) set appropriately.
  • 2 Client Selection Select which Clients are to be measured. Remember, Test clients are omitted.
  • 3 Activate Price List Select the Price List in accordance with your contract. This will subsequently determine (in the next step), which User Types are available for named-user assignment.
  • 4 User Type Selection Activate specific user types pursuant to your contract with SAP.
  • 5 Classify Users All named users in each measured client must be classified under one of the User Types as selected in Step 4. The more clients you have, the more involved this process will become.
  • 6 Start Measurement Once all the users have been classified, begin the measurement process.
  • 7 Check & Send Results After the measurement process has completed and the results checked, send the results to SAP. If measurements have to be consolidated, use transaction SLAW to orchestrate the collection, aggregation and sending of the measurement results.

    • Classifying Users is by far the more involved and time consuming process. This step requires the Administrator of each system to ensure that (a) only the right users are measured and (b) those users are classified correctly. The more clients being measured, the more involved this process becomes.

    How can UserXpress help me?

    The core strength of UserXpress is its ability to perform many changes across many systems - at the same time.

    UserXpress can help reduce contractual burden by very easily identifying users that are no longer using any of your SAP systems. And, it can also classify users across systems in one easy step. The following example shows how to accomplish both of these steps easily.

    1. Identify Potential Inactive Users

    Generally, inactive users are not taken into consideration for licensing purposes, therefore it is crucial to identify them.

    Select the filter on the "Last logged in" column and choose a date from which you might consider inactive users. In this example, we're looking for all users in all connected systems that have not logged on since before Jan 1st 2016. The Global User Table will only show users that have logged on since that date.

    2. Deactivate Users

    Select all users with the Global User Table and then click the Multiple Changes button. From this window we can now deactivate all selected users in all systems. SAP considers a user 'deactivated' when (1) the password is deactivated (2) the user is locked (3) the validity date is in the past (4) all roles are removed (5) all profiles also removed and (6) the user is assigned the group Inactive (accepted as an SAP standard exercise).

    With UserXpress these 6 steps are easily accomplished in one step - for each selected user in each client of each system!

    3. Classifying Users

    Using combined filters on the Global User Table followed by the Multiple Changes option, we can very easily identify users without classification and subsequently a valid class type.

  • Select the filter for column 'Client Type' and select "Production" and "Customizing"
  • Select the filter for column 'Group' and select all values except "Inactive" (if you're already following SAP standards)
  • Select the Dialog from the 'Type' column
  • Select the filter for the 'License' column and only include blank entries

    • The Global User Table will automatically redefine the list as you activate each filter. When complete, the Global User Table will only display dialog users who are deemed active, without an assigned license in development and production systems.

    To change the classification of the user, click Multiple Changes, click 'License' and then select the appropriate License type. Click OK and you're done.

    The above exercise is just a small demonstration of what can be accomplished with UserXpress!

    If there's a specific task that you'd like UserXpress to solve and you're unsure if it can, please - send us a note to info@1905ideas.com and we'll check it out for you.

    Thank you for spending time with us,

    1905 Team