Clarity

 View Only
  • 1.  Clarity SaaS Transition: Lessons Learned and Best Practices

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted May 04, 2020 11:26 AM

    Welcome to the Clarity SaaS transition Blog series. This blog series provides customers updates regarding the Clarity SaaS transition to the Google Cloud Platform™ (GCP).  


    As you may know,  is Broadcom began the SaaS transition activity in March. We are happy to announce that several customers have successfully transitioned to the GCP platform. In addition, we have severap-[0l other customers are actively testing their non-production environments (in GCP) in preparation for production Go Live in GCP. 


    If you are awaiting contact from a Broadcom point of contact (PoC), review this blog which introduces the overall transition process. If you are in the midst of your SaaS transition, review this blog to better understand transition activities


    Today's blog will focus on some lessons learned and best practices gleaned from our experiences transitioning customers to the GCP platform. We are confident this information will help make your transition to the GCP platform as seamless as possible. 


    Let's start with the list of lessons we have learned thus far and then we can cover how those issues can be mitigated:


    Lesson 1: When a non-production environment is released to customers for testing, they realize that some newly developed components are missing.


    Broadcom:


    As part of the SaaS transition process, covered in detail during the earlier blogs, we make a point to state that Broadcom will take a copy of your production environment two (2) weeks prior to your non-production transition date. If you do any development after that time, those updates will not be available in your transitioned non-production GCP environment. To mitigate this, we recommend being familiar with the process and have all development components moved to production at least two (2) weeks prior to your non-production transition date.


    Lesson 2: It is not clear what Broadcom means when they say stop all "Development activities".


    Broadcom:


    When we ask the customer to stop all development activities, we are specifically asking for the following:


    1. Stop making any changes to NSQL lookups in Studio
    2. Stop making changes to NSQL queries in Studio
    3. Stop making changes to processes with GEL containing SQL code
    4. Stop making changes to Jaspersoft studio reports and domains

    Lesson 3: Customers are not clear on how long it will take to convert their instance.


    Broadcom:


    The time needed to convert each instance is directly dependent on the data size and the number of studio development components. While Broadcom will convert all studio components, we may require extra time to convert all components including those are no longer in use. We recommend using this time to clean up your environment as follows:



    • Reduce the amount of data that needs to be converted from Oracle to PostgreSQL
      • Customers can leverage the transition as an opportunity to clean up data by deleting old process logs, job logs, old audit data, and investments that are no longer relevant. 

    • Delete unused processes or set the status to "Draft"
      • Customers often create multiple iterations of the same process as they add new functionalities. The status of the old processes is set to "On Hold". Please delete the unused processes or set their status to "Draft". Broadcom will not convert processes with a "Draft" status to PostgreSQL. 

    • Remove unused portlets

      • Customers often create multiple iterations of the same query-based portlets as new functionalities are added. Remove the old or unused queries and portlets. 

    • Remove unused Jaspersoft Reports

      • Customers often create copies of out-of-the-box reports or queries which result in multiple permutations of the same report. Delete these unused reports and any other old reports that you are no longer in use. This will help reduce the time required to convert to support PostgreSQL and reduce customer overall report testing time. 


    Lesson 4: Customers are not able to login to their non-production environment after it is provisioned to GCP.


    Broadcom:


    After your non-production environment is provisioned to GCP, you will receive an email notification (from your PoC) containing the URL to access your non-production environment. If you are unable to log into the non-production environment, perform the following steps:


    1. Ensure you are using the same credentials used to access your production environment in the current data center. 
      1. As you recall, Broadcom used a copy of your Clarity production environment to provision a non-production environment in GCP. 
    2. If your password has expired, contact your Broadcom PoC and request email notifications to be enabled in your non-production GCP environment. This will enable you to use the 'Forgot Password' functionality and reset your password. 

    Lesson 5: Customers are not sure which Clarity Add-in they are using and if those will be supported after they transition to GCP.


    Broadcom:


    The following (3) add-ins will be supported in the new GCP data center and will be converted to support PostgreSQL:


      • Agile Add-in to integrate Clarity with Rally (AGL)
      • Application and Portfolio Management (APM)
      • PMO Accelerator (PMO)

    The following (4) Add-ins will not be supported in the GCP data center and will not be converted to support PostgreSQL. These Add-ins were planned for end-of-life (EOL) and go into maintenance mode effective Jan-1-2020:


    • New Product Development (NPD)
    • Accelerator for PRINCE2 (PRINCE2)
    • Accelerator for the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)
    • Earned Value Manager (EVM)
    • Integration Adaptor (IAD)

    Customer can find out which Clarity Add-ins are installed in their environment by following the steps:


    • Navigate to Clarity Administration -> Studio -> Content Add-ins
    • Review the add-ins installed

    We also recommend reviewing the SaaS Transition FAQ for additional details on our Add-ins.


    Lesson 6: Customers are noticing that some of their processes are failing in GCP after conversion.



    Broadcom:


    During conversion, we found that customers with GEL scripts, that make XOG or WSDL calls, were failing. After further analysis, it was determined that these GEL scripts were passing hardcoded XOG URL as an input parameter. Since Broadcom takes a copy of your production environment, it will have all production-specific values. In such cases, we ask the customer to review and update any hardcoded URLs to point to the non-production environment. This activity should be similar to what customers do today after refreshing their non-production environment with a production environment.


    Lesson 7: Customers are noticing that their existing REST API integrations, using API Keys, are failing with the following error: 



    Error:  

    {StatusCode: 404, ReasonPhrase: '', Version: 1.1, Content: System.Net.Http.StreamContent, Headers:

    {

    X-FRAME-OPTIONS: SAMEORIGIN

    Cache-Control: no-store, must-revalidate, no-cache, max-age=0, post-check=0, pre-check=0

    Pragma: no-cache

    Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2020 00:12:10 GMT

    Server: CA

    Server: PPM

    Set-Cookie: 31b610187530b6e724a4040bb375102f=0838dc102ea76f82740df3af6691ca4e; path=/; HttpOnly; Secure

    Content-Length: 114

    Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

    }}

    System.Net.HttpStatusCode.NotFound


    Broadcom:


    In the previous data center, customer's behind the Portal were using the URL https://cppmxxxx.ondemand.ca.com/tokens to make REST API calls with API tokens.. However, in the GCP datacentre, customers should change the API endpoint to https://cppmxxxx.ondemand.ca.com/ppm. For more information about API documentation, please see API documentation



    Lesson 8: Customers are noticing that their channels and links in Clarity point to the production instance 


    Broadcom:


    During conversion, Broadcom found that customers with channels and links that were pointing to the production URL and were displaying errors. After further analysis, Broadcom determined that these channels and links were passing hardcoded URL as an input parameter. Since Broadcom creates a copy of your production environment, your environment in the GCP data center will reflect all production-specific values. In such cases, we ask the customer to review and update any hardcoded URLs to point to the non-production environment.This activity should be similar to what customers do today after refreshing their non-production environment with a production environment.  In addition, customers creating Channels should use relative paths using generic URLs, as described in our documentation. This will prevent channels from breaking in the future.



    This concludes the blog post and the Clarity SaaS Transition Blog series. We will now be posting tips and tricks around the GCP migration at frequent intervals. 

    Thank you for being a part of the Clarity community. Please write to clarityppm.saas@broadcom.com in case you have any specific questions for us.

    #ca_clarity_ppm #gcp #clarityppmsaas


    ------------------------------
    Thanks & Regards
    Suman Pramanik
    Sr. Principal Support Engineer | Customer Success & Support, Enterprise Software Division
    Broadcom
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Clarity SaaS Transition: Lessons Learned and Best Practices

     
    Posted May 04, 2020 12:28 PM
    Thank you for the update Suman!

    ------------------------------
    Chris Hackett
    Community Manager, Broadcom Enterprise Software Division
    Broadcom Inc.
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: Clarity SaaS Transition: Lessons Learned and Best Practices

    Posted Jan 31, 2021 11:03 PM
    Thanks Suman

    ------------------------------
    Regards
    Uruj
    ------------------------------