Some of you have made use of the free software tool eSpline has made available to extract a VC model and then upload that model to the CWG Sandbox as described at on the CWG website.
If you happen to be using IPC and have created an IPC knowledge base for your model, you can also import the IPC knowledge base and turn it back into VC master data on the sandbox.  

The first step is to decide on the IPC format to use for the export from your system.  If you are using CRM or ECC6 (ERP 6.0), you should use the AP XML Format Export (as described by Michael Zarges in his presentation at the 2008 European CWG Conference held in Berlin.  This is presentation is only available to CWG members).  If you are running an older SAP R/3 version, you should use the CU36 transaction format.    Here is how.

AP XML Format Export

1. Create a folder on your local disk (e.g. C:\IPC) and then create a "temp" subfolder under it (C:\IPC\temp)
2. Run transaction SE16, display table COMM_CFGKB and look for your KB by KBOBJNAME, note down the KBID
3. Run transaction SE37, enter function module COM_CFG_DB_DOWNLOAD_KB and hit F8
4. Fill in the path on your local disk (C:\IPC - do NOT include the temp) and the KBID hit F8 to execute
5. This downloads a number of XML files into the temp folder, zip up the whole temp folder and you're ready to import.

CU36 Format Export

1. Create a folder on your local disk called C:\Program Files\SAP\SCE\db\temp
2. Run transaction CU36 and enter your IPC knowledge base and version, hit F8 to download
3. Hit Enter in the "ODBC Data for download" pop-up. This will now download a number of text files into the temp folder above and might give you a couple of error messages at the end. Disregard them. Zip up the temp folder and you're ready to import

Import into Avenue Portal (Managing VC)

Now that you have your IPC KB zip file from the previous step, go to the eSpline Portal and log in. On the "Import Models" tab choose your ZIP file and then fill in the SAP system and client as shown on the screenhot:

 

 

Click on the "Import & Process" button. This step is the same regardless of the IPC zip format used (XML or txt).

Depending on the size of your model it might take a while to process - you can check the processing on the "View Processing Jobs" tab. Once the model is processed, it is available in the "View & Compare Models" tab - make sure you click on the "Refresh" button first.

 

 

To import your model into the CWG sandbox, navigate to the "Export Models" tab.

 

 

In order to be safe, we recommend that you assign a three (3) character prefix to your model upload - this will rename all of the objects in your model when uploading, so that there are no conflicts.  Select your model from the list and click on the "Upload selected model to CWG Sandbox" button.  This will not give you a message or confirmation, but in the background the model is being transferred and you can look up how it's processing using transaction BD87 on the CWG Sandbox.

Please do not hesitate to contact Daniel Naus at sandbox@configuration-workgroup.com  if you want to give this a try, as the IPC upload into VC data is a new test.  If you want to try some wild things (like exporting a model from PME in CRM and uploading it to the CWG sandbox), the upload will most likely fail so watch out for any failed IDOCs and again contact us to see if we can work through it together.

Happy playing in the sandbox :)
Daniel