How to schedule Process Chain to refresh data hourly on month-end close days on-demand by business?

[Former Member]

Hello Experts,

Currently, BW data gets refreshed from ECC system once daily. On the month-end days (which are not fixed days of the months) I get requests from the business to refresh data hourly. It's usually 2 days in a month but these days seem to vary every month. How can I accomplish this in BW without having to worry about running the process chain manually on the month-ends? Usually the business lets us know of the exact month-end days 15-20 days in advance.

-Rohit

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Rohit,

In my understanding, there are no rules on exact month-end days and it all depends on the business user.

In this case, I will suggest you to:

- Create a custom table to save the time period which the chain should trigger hourly

(i.e. a table with multi-line of start/end date time)

- Create a program, check the custom table and trigger the chain if within the time period

- Schedule the program hourly

This way, you just need to input a few datas when business lets you know of the exact month-end days.

Wish it help.

Regards

Bill

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Bill,

Can you please your instructions in detail?

-Rohit

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Rohit,

I assume you know how to create table as well as coding, in case you don't you better seek help from your ABAPer.

My idea is to trigger the chain by a program which scheduled hourly, and the program will check a custom table to determine it trigger the chain or not.

Say for example, you have a Z table ZBDAY which contain the dates need to run hourly...

 DATE
10.01.2014
11.01.2014
 

And a program with logic like follow:

SELECT DATE FROM ZBDAY WHERE DATE = <TODAY>

IF EXISTS
   TRIGGER CHAIN
END IF
 

As you scheduled the program hourly, the chain will trigger on 10.01.2014 and 11.01.2014 every hours, and in case the user want to change the date, you only need to mantain data in Z table ZBDAY.

Wish the idea is clear now, for how to trigger a chain, you may reference to others reply.

Regards

Bill

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

We have multiple options to meet the requirements on different conditions.

1.   During month end close please schedule the process chain with hourly frequency and after            

      completion of Month end close please suspend the hourly jobs

2.   During Non Month end close please schedule the process chain with daily frequency

     In the above two situations it requires manual intervene to schedule and re-schedule the process chain.

3.   Automation of process chain schedule with all the conditions is possible with the ABAP program

Regards,

Vasu

[sander_vanwilligen]

Hi Rohit,

Can you please confirm if my reply of  Jan 3, 2014 1:12 AM is clear?
If not, please let me know how I can help you further.

Thanks,
Sander

[former_member182516]

Do u have any separate PC that will be executed to extract month end data loads or you need to execute the regular PCs only?

If you are executing the same PC by changing the scheduling option then you need to do it manually.( first you need to suspend the daily schedules).

Give a try using the DECISION process in the process chain.

Here you set the condition when to run n when not to run the PC.

Regards

KP

[former_member229708]

Hi Rohit,

In my previous project we had something similar requirement relates to month end
activity and process chain. 

I am pretty sure that, as you are having ECC as your source system then there will be end
month booking closing activity by functional or end user . This activity is
getting stored in one system table.

This table consists of current fiscal period and previous period value. We developed a
generic DS on this table and getting loaded on daily bases.

Daily bases comparison happen if there is difference in current fiscal period.

If there is no change, it means there is no change in current month values and it run
normal process chain otherwise it will be month end and it will trigger a different
process chain contain month end activities.

This development consists of ABAP program and decision making Process types.

Hope this suggestion provides some idea for your case also.

Thanks & Regards,

Vipin

[Former Member]

Hi Rohit,

Please check the table T009B, it stores the period end details of your SAP system.

Create a Event from the Transaction SM64 and attach that Event to your process chain and use an ABAP program to trigger the event based in T009B period end values.

There are documents available in SDN to elaborate the process of triggering a process chain using events.

You can also use the FM RSPC_API_CHAIN_START to trigger the Process chain using T009b values instead of Events.

Regards,

Raghu

[Former Member]

Hi Raghu,

I believe you are referring to the calendar month-end days. But in my case the request to refresh the data is for the days when the month-end activities are scheduled to happen. These days are usually on the first week of the following month but they are definitely not the same each month.

-Rohit

[Former Member]

Hi Rohit,

Yes, the T009b table maintains the Calendar for the SAP system.

If any client has installed SAP, their calender information(in your case, their period end details) will be stored in this table.

You can collect the past dates of your month end activities and compare it with T009B table values, definitely there will be some pattern matches.

You can use your ABAP program to do the remaining logic for triggering the process chain.

Regards,

Raghu

[sander_vanwilligen]

Hi Rohit,

My advice is creating a dedicated Factory Calendar for this purpose. This way you can define a custom schedule for the month end closing procedure. The background job (belonging to the scheduled process chain start process) can run against this factory calendar with an hourly frequency. Make sure that the execution is only on "working days" , i.e. the custom predefined days of the month end procedure.

Normally you will upload factory calendars in BW. So you will have to define this factory calendar in the "golden" source system, usually ECC. T/ode is SCAL.

Best regards,

Sander

[Former Member]

Hi Sander,

Thanks for the reply but the required days in my case by the business changes every month. The request to refresh the data is for the days when the month-end activities are scheduled to happen. These days are usually on the first week of the following month but they are definitely not the same each month.

-Rohit

[sander_vanwilligen]

Hi Rohit,

In my Factory Calendar proposal it is certainly possible to define a custom schedule, i.e. you plan the month end dates one-by-one. I strongly suggest to educate the business users and to formalize these dates in advance.

However, if you cannot or do not want to plan these dates in advance, then the only option is to have an "on demand scenario" in place. Please refer to SAP Note 135637 - Start data transfer into BW from OLTP for more information how to accomplish such a scenario. I.e. in your case it should be used to trigger a process chain based on an event triggered by the source system.

Best regards,

Sander