SAP BPC 7.

0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

Applies to:
Business Objects Planning and Consolidation (BPC) 7.0 NW sp 02 SAP Closing Cockpit

Summary
This article provides an insight on using Work status functionality in consolidations/planning implementation scenarios. The article further explores the options to extend work status functionality in terms of consolidation status monitoring and the close process.

Author:

Srihari Govindarajan

Company: Capgemini US LLC Created on: 14 January 2010

Author Bio
Srihari Govindarajan is a manager in EPM practice at Capgemini. He is a Performance Management (CPM\EPM) solutions professional experienced in delivering financial decision support systems and technology implementation experience in a variety of industries. Product specialization: SAP BPC (5.1/7.0MS; 7.0NW).

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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

Table of Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 3 Work Status ........................................................................................................................................................ 4 Configuration Steps ......................................................................................................................................... 4
Step 1: Setup and order the work states for the Appset ............................................................................................... 4 Step 2: Assign dimensions for the Application ............................................................................................................. 5 Step 3: Assign Owners for the Driving Dimension ....................................................................................................... 6

Post Configuration Steps ................................................................................................................................ 6

Step 1: Change Work Status........................................................................................................................................ 6 Step 2: Report on Work Status .................................................................................................................................... 8

Consolidation Monitor ......................................................................................................................................... 9 SAP Closing Cockpit ......................................................................................................................................... 10 Troubleshooting Tips ........................................................................................................................................ 10 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................ 11 Related Content ................................................................................................................................................ 12 Related Content ................................................................................................................................................ 12 Disclaimer and Liability Notice .......................................................................................................................... 13

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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

Introduction
Companies strive to provide accurate, auditable accounting so that reliable and credible financial statements can be published to stakeholders. In a close process a company reconciles accounts, adjusts amounts and compiles information at the end of a month or fiscal period. Many departments of a company contribute to closing information as well as use the information for strategic purposes. To achieve a smooth period-end close the companies have to manage the accountability of the closing tasks with closed loop communication. It is imperative that the accounting team reviews the monthly consolidated data

submitted by different divisions/branches within the company for a particular month with up-to-date information on overall close process.

Day-5

Day 0

Day 1+

Prepare for Close

Execute Close

Analyze

Report

Figure 1 - High Level Financial Close process

The information review is crucial and during the review process there is a need to lock the data being

reviewed so that no new journal entries or data loads occur until the review is complete. It is also necessary to have a communication framework in place to notify a higher level person or team once the data load or input is complete so that the review process can start. This will also provide a high level view of who is finished throughout the process and the steps that are dependent on others. To achieve data locking you would need adequate control on data submission methods as well.

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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

Work Status
The work status functionality in BPC allows you to define the data region allowed for updates and the responsibility of the region with the control of the work status change. Work status also allows you to control how data updates are achieved and by whom. As and when the users complete the data load or input the corresponding work status is set. By setting the work status you are notifying the higher level person that you are done with your steps and they can see who is finished throughout the process and even start their steps that are dependent on you.

In summary, work status provides more control to business team in terms of data submission, review and tracking. Define the data region allowed for updates and the responsibility of the region with the control of the Work Status change. Control how updates are achieved (methods) and by whom. Manage Setup work status at both the global and individual application level.

Configuration Steps The work status is setup at both the appset and application level. The setup at the appset level is fixed for all the applications. The appset level is where you set the work states and their order but in the application is where you setup the driver dimensions. Step 1: Setup and order the work states for the Appset The list and order of work states setup at the Appset is applicable to all the applications in the appset. The work states should be defined in the blueprint phase itself as re-ordering a work state after go-live results in losing all the tracking information for the work states. The re-ordering will result in deletion of all locks for all the applications within the appset. Here is a sample work status setting at the appset level.

[DM Data Mgr, JRN Journals, MAN Manual Input, COMM Comments, DOCS Documents]

Figure 2- Navigation: BPC AdminConsole Appset Work Status

Options for each Method / Interface All = any user with member access write privilege Owner = only users assigned as owner with member access write privilege Mgr = only users assigned as owner of the parent to the current member ID with member access write privilege Locked = no user regardless of authorization

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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

ControlledBy: Determines who can select the work status code Both = owner of the specific member ID and the owner of the parent to the specific member ID Owner = owner of the specific member ID Mgr = owner of the parent to the specific member ID
Note: Mgr and Both are derived roles from the owner dimension settings. See step 3 for details.

Step 2: Assign dimensions for the Application Work status dimensions are configurable at an application level. Any dimension with work state setting 'Owner' is the controlling dimension i.e. the dimension which contains the approval organization. Any other dimension with Work state set to Yes will be used to track work status, No means that dimension will be excluded. The lock dimension(s) (work status =Yes), those dimensions cannot be removed from the application. The maximum number of dimensions allowed to be part of work status is 5, however 3 dimensions would suffice for most of the situations. Using more than 3 dimensions may result in a performance overhead. If there is a need to use more than 3 a detailed analysis should be done to ensure that having 4 or 5 dimensions for work status is absolutely essential.

Figure 3 - Navigation: BPC AdminConsole Application Work Status Settings

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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

Step 3: Assign Owners for the Driving Dimension An owner is defined by only one dimension hierarchy the owner dimension. User IDs or Team is specified in the Owner property of the Owner dimension for each application. Multiple users or user and team can set in the owner property. The manager is not set explicitly but is derived based on the parent hierarchy as noted in the sample owner dimension below.

Figure 4 - Navigation: BPC AdminConsole Appset Dimension Library Entity Dim Maintain Dimension Members

Post Configuration Steps Step 1: Change Work Status Let us consider a typical scenario in a planning process where in separate business units are responsible for entering their budgets from input templates. When each of the business unit is finished they would notify corporate that they are finished by changing their work status to submitted. The reviewers would then come in and change it to reviewing. This separation is required because an owner can only change from started to submitted while a manager can change from submitted to reviewing. The reviewer may finish their review and then change it back to started and ask a user to make a few changes or they will change it to approved.

One of the common scenarios during consolidation is that after all the subsidiaries have submitted data there is a need to perform top of the house adjustments using journals. While entering journal entries you do not want data to be submitted manually or using the data manager package. The appset work status setting for Reviewed above in the configuration step 1 supports the journal entry scenario. To be able to set the work status and then report on it, make sure that the SetWorkStatus and WorkStatusReport is set in the Task Access Profile setting for the logged in user. The following are the steps to change work status.
Note: Please refer to Troubleshooting tips section below if you see any errors while setting the work status.

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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

Figure 5 - Navigation:: BPC Excel Add-Ins eSubmit

Figure 6 - Navigation:: BPC Excel Add-Ins eSubmit Modify Work Status BPC Web (browser popup)

The data upload or manual entries are performed for more than one entity at a time. The work status can also be set for more than one entity by using the "include all children" option. This option allows you to set the work status code to all the children (sometimes referred as pushing).

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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

Step 2: Report on Work Status You can report on work status using the out-of-the box BPC system reports or you can build a custom report using EvLCK function. The content or format cannot be modified in the BPC systems report for works status. However you can use EVLCK function to build a custom report that has more content and can also add stop light indicators to the report based on work status returned for each business unit. The following provides the steps for creating a system report on work status.

Figure 7 - Navigation:: BPC Web

Figure 8 - Navigation :: BPC Web System Reports

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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

Figure 9 - Navigation:: BPC Web System Reports Work Status Report

Consolidation Monitor
In BPC 7.0 NW version the Business Process Flows (BPF) functionality is currently not available. Prior versions of BCS and EC-CS have a consolidation monitor that in an upgrade environment is often a requested functionality that is not available in BPC. To provide the monitor functionality (specific to customer requirements), a custom monitor solution is our only option. I would envision adding an additional step before changing the work status to implement this. The work status can be entered into the input template that has a button with a macro which on submission, it sends the data ( to an account called status) and then opens up the BPC web page (refer to step1:set work status) Then you can run a report on the account status to simulate consolidation monitor.

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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

SAP Closing Cockpit

Closing Cockpit in mySAP ERP is delivered as an extension of the Schedule Manager functionality. You use it for scheduling the tasks you execute on a regular basis. It provides a simplified overview of the entire closing process. You can define and add tasks or note pertaining to your closing tasks. You can easily schedule, execute, and monitor your tasks for a selected organizational level. For each organization level you can also provide a way to review work status in BPC. The closing cockpit allows you to provide html link as part of the Note or task. However we cannot provide a link to BPC web or a report in BPC, as there is no single sign-on between Closing cockpit and BPC. Closing cockpit does provide an option to link to a BI report that is deployed on the Netweaver portal. A custom work status report can be built based on the BPC cube and deployed into Netweaver BI portal. The note or task that you have created for work status review can include the link to the work status BI report to view the updated status in the consolidation process. By doing so, the closing process becomes more transparent and centralized instead of switching between BPC and closing cockpit.

Troubleshooting Tips
The following are the list of the errors you might encounter while using the work status. Even though the errors that occur is based on different combinations of your setup the table below lists some common trouble shooting tips that can be referred to.

If you get this

Check this Check the Member Access profile for the BPC logged in user to ensure that profile has access to Modify Work Status. Check to make sure that the BPC logged in user is setup as a owner in the Owner property of the controlling dimension (ex: Entity)

Check to make sure that you are NOT trying to set a work status for parent that is higher than its children.

Check to make sure that the BPC logged in user is setup as a owner in the Owner property of the controlling dimension (ex: Entity)

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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

Check to make sure that the BPC logged in user who is setup as a owner is trying to set a work status that is controlled by mgr.

Check to make sure that the entity or the controlling dimension you have selected is not a base member.

Conclusion
BPC 7.0 on NetWeaver platform provides work status functionality that enables the business team to lock down the period for review and adjustments. Work Status provides a better option compared to that of a complex security model that would need to be changed often. The work status functionality can also be linked to SAP closing cockpit to centralize the closing process. As existing SAP Customers are migrating from BCS or ECCS to BPC, they ask for the consolidation monitor functionality which is not available in BPC 7.0NW version. In the upcoming version, BPC 7.5NW provides the Business Process Flows. For BPC 7.0NW customers, the suggested custom solution can be considered to mimic the consolidation monitor functionality. The methods described in this article are relatively easy to configure by a functional consultant and do not require custom coding. The expected outcome is a more integrated close process with adequate insight in the consolidation process therefore increasing the value BPC brings to business users, and the organization overall.

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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

Related Content
Reference 1 SAP Note 1348997 on Work Status Reference 2 How to Guide - Custom Menu Reference 3 SAP BPC 7.0 NW Help

For more information, visit the Enterprise Performance Management homepage

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SAP BPC 7.0: Version for SAP NetWeaver - Work Status

Disclaimer and Liability Notice

This document may discuss sample coding or other information that does not include SAP official interfaces and therefore is not supported by SAP. Changes made based on this information are not supported and can be overwritten during an upgrade. SAP will not be held liable for any damages caused by using or misusing the information, code or methods suggested in this document, and anyone using these methods does so at his/her own risk. SAP offers no guarantees and assumes no responsibility or liability of any type with respect to the content of this technical article or code sample, including any liability resulting from incompatibility between the content within this document and the materials and services offered by SAP. You agree that you will not hold, or seek to hold, SAP responsible or liable with respect to the content of this document.

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