Creating a Publication having Hierarchies using Webi

[Former Member]

Hi All,

I have a challenge....

We have hierachy on Organisation Unit. A BEX query where the Hierarchy is enabled and we created a hierarchy variable for selection so we can select any node in the hierarchy so that the aggregation is done to the node for a report. We created an universe on the BEX query, and the report... the hierachy variable raises a prompt when the report is run and works as expected.

Now, we need to create a Publication using Dynamic Recipients. This is where the challenge is... how??? Webi filters on fields... The dynamic recipient list will have the node in the hierarchy as a field, however, the source document uses a prompt for the hieratchy node to be selected, but I need to have this as field to filter on... any idess on how to solve this...???

Much appreciated.

Jacques

[IngoH · Accepted solution]

Hi Jacques,

first of all when you want to create a publication with SAP as a source system you need to setup "server side trust" (see the Installation guide for details) to ensure that your publication is leveraging the complete SAP security. the publication will be a multi-pass bursting process.

Your report has a hierarchy node variable in place and you would have to make a choice for the publication now to either leave the node empty (which requires the prompt to be empty) or to set a value.

The server side trust requires you to leverage the Enterprise Recipients so that you can use the SAP credentials to logon to the system to keep the SAP security intact.

Do your users have security on the hierarchy node level ?

thanks

Ingo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ingo,

The solution entails not using BW or BOE user accounts, thus the dynamic recipient list is used in a report that queries an ODS with the details. Much of the data is actually maintained in R3 or a custom built web application.

We are using a single account to login to BW to access the various cubes and ODSs to make up the report. I use the Full Name variable in the publication to map it to the field that will generate a file (PDF) in the requried naming format. The one part of the solution works well as publication is at employee level and each employee's file gets generated in PDF format. The customer has a custom web application whereby the user base (10 000) can login and view their report as the filename eludes to which file belongs to which user - there is no SAP or BOE user management.

My issue comes about to try and do the same, but at Org Unit level - which is essentialy the same report, but roled up to a team level. The input of a particular team (Org Unit/Node) will then result in a team like report at the team level. The hierarchy is making this difficult as a report could be generated at any level or node... this is where I am stuck and within the limitations of solution requirments can't seem to find a way to get this part to work.

[IngoH · Accepted solution]

Hi Jacques,

so you want to run the report for several groups and pass in different values for the hierarchy node variable per group ?

so what exactly is the issue ?

ingo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ingo,

That is correct.

The issue... how?

The hierarchy variable in BEX raises a prompt that works the way I want to i.e the report generates correctly. The issue is when creating the publication. There are two aspects to the personalisation as I understand it. Personalisation is when you map the fields from the Dynamic Reciepent report's query fields to the fields in the Source Document report's fields. The Dynamic Recipient list has a field that has 1 field with the node number in the hierarchy (can be any position in the hierarchy) determining the node. In the Source document, the fields of the Hierarchy are L01 xxx, L02 xxx, L03 xxx etc and the hierarchy variable is inputed as the node number which is found in another part of the publication setup where a value van be set or left out. The issue is mapping the dynamic list fields to the source document fields... the single value in the dynamic list (which can be at any node level) maps to which field in the source document...the hierarchy has been flatened L01 xxx, L02 xxx. Or am I missing somthing on how the publication works in terms of filtering the data out to the groups.

Jacques

[IngoH · Accepted solution]

you would ma the field to the prompt

ingo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ingo,

Mapping the field to the prompt would be ideal, but you can't. This would be a great enhancement though. You can only map the fields available in the query to the fields available in the dynamic list query. The prompt is available for a filter on the entire report - then the field mapping filters out the data according to the dynamic recipient list after the report has refeshed against the data...

...still stuck.

Jacques

[IngoH · Accepted solution]

Hi Jacques,

I can see several options:

- first of all what about actually pre-calculating the data inside the SAP BI system using Broadcasting on the SAP BI side ?

- or... does it have to be a WebI report ? What about CR ?

Ingo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ingo,

The SAP BI side is not an option, preferbly Webi, but if we need to go the Crystal route then it would be fine, as long as it happens in BOBJ and we can create a publication to "split" the reports to the 1000's of PDF files as required. The BOBJ portion is merely a piece in the overall solution.

We have overcome many of the obstacles due to stringent requirements. We even have been capped on the size of the PDF file.. 40kb. The files are to be hosted in one place and accessed globally within the company. The Africa regions have low bandwidth, thus the file cap.

In any event, due to the hierarchy requirement, it toughens up on the development side to get it to work.

Thanks for all your input thusfar.

Jacques

[IngoH · Accepted solution]

Hi Jacques,

do you have access to Crystal Reports ? in the CR case you can send in values to prompts in the report.

Ingo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Ingo,

We have access to CR. Tried to avoid it as the content of the report will require several sub reports to get the required layout. We will try it...

Thanks again.

Jacques

[IngoH · Accepted solution]

why would it require several subreports ?

Ingo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Ingo,

The report has serveral data sources and a few "rules" in terms of the queries, thus subreports will be needed.

Regards

Jacques

[IngoH · Accepted solution]

so what was the plan on the WebI part for that ?

Ingo

[Former Member]

Solution was built in Crystal using a variable in Bex to prompt for the node ID.

[IngoH]

so I assume this is solved ? Did the WebI part not work out for you ?

ingo

[Former Member]

Yes, the Crystal solution provided the desired result in conjunction with the publication using dynamic recipients... the prompts and personalisation works fine, apposed to Webi that deals with this scenario a little short of what was required.

[IngoH]

"short" in what way. the features are the same.

ingo