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SAP AMERICA Moderator: Margaret Anderson June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m.
CDT Page 1
SAP AMERICA June 21, 2001 10:00 a.m. CDT
Coordinator
At the request of SAP America, this call is being recorded for transcription purposes. If there are any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to introduce the moderator for todays call, Mr. Ron Silberstein. Sir, you may begin.
R. Silberstein
Thank you, Kelly. Hello, this is Ron Silberstein from the BW Rig in the US. Well be presenting another know how network conference call today. Today, we are joined by Amelia Lo, also from the BW Rig in the US. And shell be talking about the topic of BW and HR - human resources, some tip, tricks and things you might want to know about using HR with BW.
We also are expecting some development colleagues to join us, Alex Hofer and Stefan Mueller. So well see if theyll be able to join the call as well. So the format of the call will be a brief presentation 20-25 maybe 30 minutes, depending on what we cover. And at the end of that time, then
SAP AMERICA Moderator: Margaret Anderson June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT Page 2
well open up the floor. If there are questions, please feel free to ask them and well see what we can do about answering them. And now Ill turn the call over to Amelia Lo to present the topic.
A. Lo Good morning. Thank you, Ron. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the BW know how conference call. I hope you all had an opportunity to download the presentation material from the SAPNet BW Web page. In case you havent, the presentation material can be found at www.service.sap.com/bw, where you can find the link to the know-how conference call under special service folder. Todays presentation is listed under the title of BW HR implementation tips and hints.
Within the next 25 minutes, I will review the following five topics. 1. One, I will talk about the BW HR content strategy and what is coming up. 2. Number two, Ill give you an update on what is the latest in upcoming business content in the BW HR arena. 3. Number three, I will review a new function related to BW HR authorization. That is one of the most frequently inquired functionalities for HR authorization in the past. 4. Number four; what is new in HR analytics and benchmarking area.
5. Last, but not least, I will review the tips and hints for efficient HR BW implementations.
Now, if you would turn to page three of your presentation material, the general BW HR content development strategy is basically to continue providing R/3 extractors for the sub-functional area in HR, provide integration with other functional components and for industry specific business contents. We also are focused on providing HR analytics for enhanced analytical capability within business intelligence and in the SAP portals arena.
For the new standard business content in R3, HR development is not only enhancing extractors for additional functional components. We are adding country specific contents, providing cross-functional integration, and provide new data sources to improve the performance, the flexibility, and also added one of the most requested functionalities as I mentioned. Its called BW/HR structural authorizations.
HR is probably the first R3 functional component providing data source to bring R/3 authorization objects into BW environment. This is done through bringing the R3 HR structural authorizations. Hopefully, you have installed that if you want to use this functionality to extract it into the BW environment.
We will have additional slides on this topic to further discuss later.
In the area of decision support and analytical capability, HR analytics will provide standard Web reporting which will be a part of delivered business contents that you can activate; and Web cockpits for the executive usage, benchmarking capability to integrate with SEM, Strategic Enterprise Management System and providing the balance score card, etc. We will have another slide to talk about this in just a little bit more detail.
Furthermore, to support the HR analytics, additional key figures inquiries are in the planning stage in all HR set functional areas. Also starting BW 21C release, which is already currently available, Multicube is also being provided as a part of the standard business content, and we will continue to deliver more of the Multicubes in the future.
Now, if you will please turn to slide number four, for additional details. As you probably already know that in BW 21C release, HR already provided the business contents for personnel cost planning components. Personnel cost planning will provide cost comparisons between different costs, planning results for organizations and cost items. This will really enhance the budgeting and cost comparison in the personnel arena
In BW 3.0B, new Infocube is also planned with payroll and FI integration. The significance of this integration lies in the synchronization of time dimensions. As you probably are aware, FI uses fiscal period and fiscal variant and HR users Calmonth and Calday time dimensions. To synchronize them is not a small chore. And so you can expect in 30B when it has become generally available, that integration will be provided for you.
And also thanks to the HR development in BW Plug In 2000.2, the US specific contents will become available. I believe that most of the installation in the US has some enhancement to add in the Social Security number and ethnicitys. And now they will become part of the standard business content. In addition, the veteran status, military and disability status are also being added in, and they will be part of the standard attributes of employee master data.
Now please turn to the next slide. The new data source will be available in BW 3.0 for performance improvement includes a new 0HRposition data source for a cost center upload. And the existing 0HRposition data source will contain all attributes, except for call centers. As some of the large installations with large number of cost centers, they have experienced performances issue when loading 0HRposition. It is most troublesome for the installation had
limited production window. This separation of the cost center away from the regular 0Hrpositions will greatly enhance the loading performance with possibility to load both datasources in parallel. The end result of separate load into 0Hrposition is that they are still viewed as one single integrated master data component. With this separation, it will greatly enhance the loading performance and with a possibility for you to load both data sources in parallel concurrently, so that will definitely shrink the production window for you.
Employee master data has not only enhanced for US specific attributes. It has further enhanced with the fields such as the contract type, the work contract and organization key. Work unit master data also has included many attributes for the CRM integration customer relation management system, and the BBP, which is your business to business procurement new dimension product. And so you will see in the standard business contents there are fields supporting those products.
The next important functionality is the BW/HR structural authorizations data source as I mentioned earlier, which will soon be available in the US. It has been piloted in a German bank and additional pilot in the US is being planned currently.
Now if you would please turn to page six, this slide will give you a little more detail about the BW/HR structural authorization data source. It basically brings the R3 structural authorizations into the BW environment. You may bring all or selectively bring the R3 structural authorization, using the standard selection criteria when youre setting up the BW info packages. For example, if you have selected the organization you want to bring across not all the organization for some reason, or if you have a certain ... employee number ranges that you wanted to bring across, you can preset it up as well. However, currently there are few limitations, one of the restrictions for the structural authorization is that only the active client version of the structural authorizations will be brought across.
The second limitation is the structural authorizations will not be time dependent, meaning the historical structural authorizations will not be supported. I hope that nearly all installations concerned about security access will only concerned about the current security authorization and will only be working with the current status of the authorizations.
Thirdly, the standard delivered business content will support the evaluation path of the Orgunit, Position and Person objects with necessary update rules delivered when you activate the business contents on the BW side. The standard data
source does, however, support all object types from the R3 side. But if you wanted to bring across, for example, the evaluation pass for the costcenter, you can do so, but the only additional work you need to do is to customize the update rules that you would need to develop on the BW side.
In the next slide - now if you would continue to slide number seven, there is a diagram that depicts the architecture of BW HR structure authorizations. Slide number eight actually provides you a sample scenario on the basic steps to install structure authorizations in BW.
Now, if you look at side number seven on the last pane, it shows the components involved from the R3 side. First, if you should have already setup the structural authorizations in R/3. This can be done by going through structure authorization profile set up in the IMG, and the result would be that the T77PR table have been updated. Next the user has to be assigned to the profile, meaning that the end result T77UA table would have been updated.
One extra table that needs to be updated, which is not necessarily the regular R/3 structural authorizations installation process is that you must also update the user assignments in the T77UU table. And so once you maintain these three tables, you can schedule the extraction either on a daily basis or a periodic
as you wish. But prior to the extraction, you must execute a program called RHBAUS00 to create the index cluster. The index cluster file is the basis of the Datasource for the Structural Authorizations to be brought in to BW.
From this point on, the R/3 side, the standard business content for this datasource must be activated. Of course, in the R3 side it is necessary to use the SBIW transactions to activate the data source, and then you can do all your standard datasource replication and activate the business content in BW. In addition, one other thing you must do on the BW side is the InfoObjects for 0Orgunit, 0HRposition, and 0Employee need to be activated as the authorization relevant InfoObjects. And then one of the last steps is that a RSSB function module must be executed to generate the BW side of authorization.
I hope this will give you a brief overview about this important new functionality and provide you with the specific steps on slide number eight. Right now, since we are still in the pilot stage, and therefore this detailed information could be subject to change in the future. But, this will provide you with a rough idea on the overall architecture to support this functionality. Now, if you will please turn to slide number nine, we will talk about additional information
on the HR analytics. The additional Web reporting will be delivered as standard business content, would include the Headcount, Headcount for the full time equivalents, Entry, which is hiring rate, and Leavers, which is the turnover rate in US terms.
And also from the time management and payroll info cube, the Web reports related to the illness hours in overtime hours, the costs for illness and overtime will also be produced via Web report.
From project managers standpoint, reports for the Training and Events and Payroll and Cost planning related Web reporting will also become available. With these Web reports being produced, the HR Web Cockpit for managers portal, in the future SAP portals, will also be delivered with the charts, graphs and associated navigation for head counts and overtime and the productivity arena.
As far as the benchmarking with the SEM integration, HR analytical capability is extending into five different areas. First is a strategic alignment. Second is in balance score card. Third is management by objective MBO. Fourth is work force analysis. Fifth is the benchmarking and reporting. Let me further explain what that means.
In the strategic alignment, it will allow you to create work force performance scorecards, using predefined or customized performance indicators. For balancing scorecards, it will define target milestones, key performance indicators, communicates your strategy and goals throughout your organization and keeps all your company activities in synch with strategic goals.
For management by objective MBOs, it will enable you to define and monitor an employees goals. With work force analysis, it will help you to make the best decision by using work force analytical applications, such as the headcount planning, cost simulation and forecasting. Benchmarking and reporting will provide the tools you need to conduct operational and analytical reporting and benchmarking comparison with the industry measures.
Now, well get to the last topic that Id like to cover today, which are some of the tips and hints on BW HR implementation. When implementing BW HR, one of the most important things is to have a close coordination in communication with the R/3 implementation team. This is because some of the configuration options are important from the BW/HR implementation
standpoint.
First, for the PA/PD integration, I hope most of you are familiar with the R/3 side of the configuration. In PA/PD, there are integration points, specifically PLOGI/PLOGI that must be turned on. The Plogi/ORGA for organization interface PLOGI/PRELI for the personnel need to be all turned on. This is because a personnel administration business content is greatly dependent on the integrated org. management data elements and Infotype 1.
R. Silberstein
Just a note, were on slide ten.
A. Lo Thank you, Ron. Secondly, it is important to be aware that master data does not support time constraint 3. Time constraint 3, meaning that you can have overlapping beginning/ending time of either organization assignments, position and so forth and so on. This is due to the HR data mostly time dependent and master data cannot have the overlapping time constraint, which will cause problems with the unique keys, and it will result in errors of overlapping records when you do the master data extraction. And therefore, if you do have such a setup, please review it with your R3 side of the functional team and try to come up with the resolution. There is an OSS note that I have put down, number 396103. Please review that note in
further detail.
As far as planning for the time management area that you needed to carefully plan for your time type and quote type assignment, you can do that through the BW IMG screen. It is important to evaluate the time type and quota type to be sure that you are selecting the proper time type and also grouping them logically for the reporting purpose. For example, if you could set up to have all the time type such as illness, jury duty, etc. grouped as total time off - that will facilitate the viewing of your query reports. And also, it will help you to create the external hierarchy, so that you can easily create an external hierarchy for the time type and for the quota type and viewing them in a hierarchical manner.
Another consideration where implementing time management business content, is to be sure that you map your time unit, meaning the hours and days. And if it is not mapped properly, you could conceivably be receiving like a unit as 017 or something like that which will be very confusing for your end user. And please refer to OSS note 200829 for detailed setup. The next area that when youre planning to implementing compensation and cost planning, you do need to be aware that all of the annual salary needs to be customized into the T539J table for all of the wage types related to annual salary.
Otherwise, the end result of the compensation may be a surprise to you when some item is missing.
And also please be aware that off cycle payroll is not included in the standard compensation extraction. For example, if you pay bonuses via off cycle payroll, they will not show up in your standard compensation business contents. Although, that information will be in your regular payroll wage type, which youll have an alternative to obtain that kind of information, but its just not in the compensation business content Infocube.
The cost planning extraction is also extracting only the current plan, which is typically plan version 01, and also will extract the organization view only.
Now, if you would turn to page eleven, I will review some of the very common issues from the system maintenance perspective. And Id like to call your attention, as it is very important to keep your system up to date. Apply and activate the latest content patches at the first possible chance. There has been many OSS messages that we have received repeatedly, reporting that either functional or performance issues, which have already been addressed in the content patches.
We also have discovered that sometimes the customer applied the patches. But without reactivating the business contents, which include the new update rules, if you are already implementing the BW/HR, you will know that there are quite a lot of updated rules and some of the routines being called by those update rules. If you just apply the patches without reactivating them, you will not be able to see all of the enhancements and improvements. I would encourage you to review notes periodically and apply them as appropriate.
Another very common update consideration, which applies to all the BW in functional areas, you should always review the changes from both bases in BW perspective and adopt them as quickly as you can.
And now we come to the last slide, number 12. I have a few tips regarding to the data loading performance, as some folks have expressed the concerns when they first look at the HR business contents, because HR business contents predominately supporting full load only. With the exceptions of the payroll and time management, the delta update is really not supported from the HR R3 extraction standpoint. However, if youre familiar with BW after BW 20B with the ODS available, that there are delta updates capability on the BW side. However, if your issue concern is in between of the R3 and BW extraction, then that will not resolve your issue.
Now a couple of tips, one, for the full load as you know that when you do the new load, you must delete the previous data loads to avoid the duplicated records. And in BW 20B, there is the automatic deletion functionality to delete the prior loads upon new load - I mean, after the successful load, it will automatically delete the previously loaded record or previous requests, so you should take advantage with that functionality. However, if you have very complicated setup and dependencies, the RSMM start second process function module is still there for you to use to customize your own logic.
And also there is a BW add-ins, and that capability is now available in transaction SE18 and transaction SE18 or SE19 will provide you the entry point to using the BW add-in. For further information, please refer to the 2.1C BW online documentation. You can also find that from the SAPNet BW page documentation.
For the very high volume customers, you should consider the parallel processing for multiple info packages, by using this sort of selection criteria wherever possible. Quite a large number of large accounts are typically using the 12 months time dimension to do the selection. Others using company code if the data source have the availability of that type of selection criteria. If you
set up the parallel processing, it may create a little bit of tension. But overall, your production window will be reduced.
And also when youre loading very high volume data, this is not only for HR, it is in general for all the extractions, youd be sure that your secondary indices has been deleted, prior to extraction and rebuild afterwards. And also, your database run statistics should be run prior to release the system for BW query use. For additional information for high volume loads, please check OSS note 130253 and 115047.
And this is pretty much all I have. Thank you so much for your attention. R. Silberstein Yes. And now if there are questions, wed be willing to entertain them. Kelly the operator, are you there?
Coordinator
Im here, sir.
R. Silberstein
I think we can open up the call to see if we have any questions.
Coordinator
The first question comes from Bill Fazon.
B. Fazon
Yes, hello, Amelia.
A. Lo Hello.
B. Fazon
I have a question. As you said in slide ten and that for the compensation and cost planning info source extract, all cycle payroll is not included.
A. Lo Yes.
B. Fazon
Can you give me an example of what that means?
A. Lo Normally you probably run monthly, weekly or some of the customers may be running regular payroll after time Eval has been run and on a regular basis. But, say if you have a bonus payment, that it is a one-time thing, that you will run not on a regular schedule payroll. You run off the so called off-cycle payroll or as some people call it as the manual payroll. And so if you did that and those wage types or dollar amounts will not be included in the compensation extraction. However, as you know, payroll is extracting all info wage types, so that you could obtain those data from the payroll Infocube, but not compensation Cube.
B. Fazon
All right. Yes, because we were planning on using the payroll extract. And
any payroll type or wage type information is always extracted out in the delta mode for that. Correct?
A. Lo Yes.
B. Fazon
Okay. All right. I guess I was a little confused by saying compensation instead of payroll. Okay. All right. Well, thanks for clearing that up.
A. Lo Sure.
Coordinator K. Mayer
The next question comes from Karen Mayer. Hello, Amelia. This is Nimala from Delta automotive and I have a question. This is regarding content specific business, especially for the US. Is this available in 2.1C now?
A. Lo Actually it is more depending on the plug-ins. I think it is on the plug-in 2000.2 plus a certain patch level.
Which patch level is that? Do you know? Because were on service pack four, and we dont have that on 21C.
A. Lo Right. What the development was trying to do, originally they wanted to release it along
with 3.0, but because it is available, so that they were trying to retrofit it into 21C release. Alex, are you on the call?
A. Holford
Yes, Im on the call.
A. Lo Can you answer the specific time frame and release level for the US specifics?
A. Hofer
The US specific fields have been delivered with plug in 2001.1, which means a new attributes you mentioned on your slide of country specific business content seals.
A. Lo Okay. Thank you, Alex.
A. Hofer
Yes. Okay.
Amelia, we cant find those fields. I mean, we need all these ethnicity Social Security numbers, veteran status, military status. We are not able to find those fields.
A. Lo Are you on 2001.1?
Were on 2000.2.
A. Lo 2000.2, the plug in needs to be upgraded to 2001.1.
Okay. 2001.1, not 2000.2. Okay. All right. Thank you.
A. Lo Youre welcome.
Coordinator P. Martin
The next question comes from Scott Johnson. Hello, Amelia. This is Paula Martin at Chevron.
A. Lo Hello.
P. Martin
Hello. I have a question on the new Infocube that you said will be out in release 3.0B, the payroll cube that integrates FI. Since its synchronizing time dimensions, is that going to give us more detail payroll reporting, or is it still going to be highly summarized?
A. Lo Its still pretty highly summarized. Its just your synchronization with the FI side of time dimension will be done. Now Alex probably has a lot more details, since it is still under development.
A. Hofer
Yes, its still under development, and we havent seen finished specification at this time. But I think it will have a lot of details on the line item level for the FI information. But right now, we cant provide details until the specification is finished.
P. Martin
Do you know if it will have at least pay period level in the pay period and the amount it occurs in?
A. Hofer
It should be included, yes.
P. Martin
Okay. Thank you.
Coordinator
The next question comes from Dalit Kuner.
D. Kuner
Hello there, Amelia. Its Dali Kuner from ... UK. Ive got a number of questions on the BW security. Im quite interested in that area, but I havent spent much time on it.
Ive got this scenario where youve got a factory manager. He needs to see the payroll results for his factory. We want him to go down and drill down on an employee and look at individual values for various business reasons.
Is that possible to do with that much work? I mean, generally how does BW security work?
A. Lo The new functionality requires for you to have the structural authorizations already set up on the R3 side. Are you using structural authorization from the R3 HR side?
D. Kuner
No, not at this time.
A. Lo Okay. What that really basically is - like for example, the evaluation pass for your factory manager and whos responsible for the organization, say 1234. And there are positions associated with it and there are people assigning underneath of that. And so if that evaluation path is already established on the R3 side, and it is a matter to go through the process as indicated in the paper for you to use a new data source to bring the data across onto the BW side. And then those user has the authorization will be able to drill down, but not for the people who do not have the evaluation path available.
Like anyone else, if you are in organization 2345, you will not be able to see the detailed data for those users. And on the BW side, you also have the capability to allow everyone to see the information summary level, not the detailed level, so you can set it up how this BW security accordingly has from the overall
scope of things. And you will see all the right figures, only for those who have the right authorization that has been over from R3 can look at the detailed information.
D. Kuner
That was what I was asking. Can you view the big picture? And then obviously you drilled down to look at the individuals youve got access to, but you can still - but the big picture includes all the people you cant see as well.
A. Lo Right.
D. Kuner
Is that right?
A. Lo You can do that.
D. Kuner
Okay. Is it possible to somehow find out the number of employees that have been skipped, due to an authorization failure? So when you drill down, you might just get ten employees, but because of your authorization access, you only see five.
A. Lo It will not be very obvious from the query standpoint. Is that what youre asking?
D. Kuner
Yes. Thats what Im asking, yes. So you do a drill down on say a call center, and then when you drill down on the employee object, you only see four instead of eight of the employees under that call center. Theres just no easy way of finding out that youve actually missed four employees.
A. Lo Yes. Im not aware of specifically how to derive that off the top of my hand. Do you have any thoughts, Alex?
A. Hofer
No. I think it doesnt make sense, because if you would have a selection in your query which says, give me all employees via salary mode, and youre earning more than a million bucks. You know you have access to five employees, lets say ... but not to the other five if there are ten. Then you would know that the other five would earn more or less than one million, which means by having this information, you would get the results you are not allowed to get, if you know what I mean. So you shouldnt get any information on how many records have kept.
D. Kuner
The example I would have used is youve got access to a lot of employees at a factory, but up to a certain grade. And then when you drill down, you only see the ones up to a certain grade and youve not realized that youve missed some people, because they arent a grade higher than youve got
access to see.
A. Hofer
See, you dont see how many you miss. Its like in R3.
D. Kuner
Right. Okay. Ive just got a general question on the payroll time management Multi-cube. Can you just give me any information on implementing that cube and what the issues might be?
A. Lo There is the implementation consideration mostly relevant to the basic cube implementation, which is like - time management has one specific Infocube in the payroll. Actually time has two - payroll has one particular Infocube, and the Infocube one has limited information. Dont use that. The one sayst 0PY_C02 is the one you wanted to use.
And as far as the multi-cube, its basically joining - I mean union those two cubes with a query view. So theres no specific particularity in that arena. I do have a BW/HR implementation paper that will talk a little bit more in detail for the specific separate functional area. It is quite a lengthy paper, and it will be posted on SAPNet within the next month or so. So just watch out for that, and that will give you more information on the general implementation consideration.
D. Kuner
Right. Okay. Is there any additional source of documentation out there on the Web that can help with HR implementations on top of your paper?
A. Lo You might want to have a look at the standard online documentation, if that has not been too helpful for you, then please be patient. It could be within a week or a month. I dont know for sure. It is in the queue to be published.
D. Kuner
Right. Okay.
A. Lo Also, the structure authorization will have a paper become available. Actually its a know how in more detailed steps. The screen shot will be available after we finish up the pilot programs.
D. Kuner
Okay. What do you see as the biggest limitations of BW for HR at the current time?
A. Lo With the country specific contents that have become available, and I think BW/HR probably is one of the functional area that has the most complete business contents. And I will say between 60% to 80% of the customers that have utilized the standard business contents - I mean, the majority of the customers can cover about 60% to 80% of the requirements, except for the
very early customers, they may have a lot more enhancements.
And one of the most important factors I think of, which I stressed in my paper regarding the implementation strategy, really ought to think through how much - what would be the most cost effective way for you to bring the additional BW contents into the BW side. If you can first bring up the standard business contents and get your end user involved. And then for them to help you to do the gap analysis, that probably would be the most effective way and you will find the limitation is not a very big gap.
D. Kuner
Okay. My final point is at the moment Ive got a payroll cube in development, which is monthly. Ive got a time management cube, which is daily - time ... daily. Im looking at the multi-cube, which will start to get into it. And Im just wondering whether you can say straight off if thats going to cause big problems, because they both operate on different time granularity.
A. Lo All right. Basically, the query result will look pretty strange if youre mixing the time dimension, although you could do that. The standard content will not go into the daily time dimension, but you certainly can bring the data across and just be aware of the end result that you receive may not be what you
like to see.
D. Kuner
Right. Will it not just summarize the daily figures into a monthly perspective?
A. Lo Are you asking?
D. Kuner
Oh, yes. I was just asking. I was just thinking if time management is recorded daily, but it also some variety to monthly, quarterly, yearly level. I was thinking maybe that it would just summarize it to a monthly perspective, so the payroll and time measure, at least both were looking at a month as the Lost time ...
A. Lo Right. Exactly. And that is the common denominator that will be the policy to go forward.
D. Kuner
Right.
A. Lo Take a look at the standard delivered first hand and see whether that will satisfy your requirement.
D. Kuner
Okay. Thanks very much, Amelia.
A. Lo Youre welcome. Coordinator The next question comes from Sam Goodman.
S. Goodman
Hello, Amelia. This is Sam Goodman. I have a question regarding what your point is about HR Web practice for managers portal. Were right now using managers portal through workplace. Eventually what we were planning on doing with workplace was in addition to some of the managers portal stuff, everything that were doing through managers portal is pointing to R3 data directly. And we were under the impression that basically our workplace pilot eventually we would put some BW reports on there, as well. But I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how you integrate BW directly with managers portal. Is it a tie in to the workplace or to R3?
A. Lo You can tie in to the workplace. Actually, in the future you would probably call it SAP portals. And its basically tied into the SAP portal. The way that you would integrate them is through the role that you have defined. For example, for the HR managers, probably underneath of that becomes - when they bring up their portal on the left hand pane on the launch pad, you will see all the either R3 applications or BW reports and the cockpits that are available to
you. And so the integration point will be through the roles. Does that answer your question, Sam? S. Goodman Well, not really, because right now what we have through workplace, say a role in workplace contains an item that youd see on the menu on the launch pad. And the URL in that role or the URL behind there is a hook into the workplace configuration tables, where weve configured managers portal. When you click on that, based on your configuration youve done in the workplace, on the landing pad, you see a screen that shows you your organizational structure and your people inside of it and then you click on it and you start the application. And because were pointing to R3 right now, that takes you into R3 data. But if we wanted to use that to point to BW data instead of R3 data
A. Lo You really can access either R/3 or BW using workplace or SAP Portals as a single point of entry - Sam, am I coming over to your site some time soon?
S. Goodman
I think so. Were probably work with you on your structural authorizations.
A. Lo Well, Ill go through all of that with you. Hows that?
S. Goodman
Sounds good.
A. Lo Okay. Thank you.
Coordinator
The next question comes from Pedro Concepcion.
P. Conception
Hello, Amelia. How are you?
A. Lo How are you, Pedro?
P. Conception
Pretty good. Ive got two quick questions here. On slide 12, you talked about the use of automated deletion functionality, and we are using that. But we are experiencing sporadically that that will actually delete the previous request and we had to manually delete them. Has this been reported yet?
A. Lo I have not - Im using the functionality, but have not experience the inconsistency problem - what release level are you at now?
P. Conception
The patch 14.
A. Lo Patch 14 20B?
P. Conception
Yes, 20B.
A. Lo Okay. If you are actually at the fairly up-to-date release level and experience the inconsistency, Id report to OSS.
P. Conception
Yes. Its not very consistent- we do a lot of load dump and reload. And every now and then we say, Hey, what happened here? How come this didnt get deleted? And its not consistent to a specific infopacage. Its like its sporadic.
A. Lo I wonder whether theres any timing issue, if you have lots of loading. You might want to document and report as a problem - have you sent in a OSS message?
P. Conception
Not yet, because we couldnt get it to consistently happen, so it will hard for them to check this.
A. Lo Yes. Why dont you follow up with our hotline support center? If I get a chance to talk to the schedule developer, Ill ask him whether hes aware of the problem or not.
P. Conception
Okay, thanks. And the last question here is, on the parallel processing on slide 12 also, consider parallel processing, we tried this back I guess a few months ago, and we get a lock error when we are doing a parallel load to one single Infocube.
A. Lo Did you have indices deleted and your secondary index deleted?
P. Conception
Yes.
A. Lo Have you? Because we do that all the time, your next-door neighbor has long time management loads and they do like five or six loads concurrently.
P. Conception
Into the same cube at the same time?
A. Lo Same cube and same info sources.
P. Conception
Okay. Well have to look into that again, so theres no problem in that processing.
A. Lo Yes. Typically you might want to double check the time you have a locking, because it could be very possibly because of the indices is not deleted. It could just have happened once that timing wise and it didnt happen and so, double
check that. I havent seen the locking problem if youve done it correctly.
P. Conception
Okay. All right. Thanks a lot.
A. Lo Youre welcome.
Coordinator R. Silberstein
The next question comes from Kathy Soovie. Okay. Well make that our last question of the day.
A. Lo Hello, Kathy?
Hello. This is ... from Belgium. Hello, Amelia. I have some questions on the performance on the loads of time management data. If I read correctly in the OSS note, delta loads on time management data is done by comparing new results with the already loaded results in the BW?
A. Lo Yes.
And does that give you a better performance or not, because I have questions about this.
A. Lo Yes. Actually I have had mixed feedback on that. And on one hand, some of the customers
I talked with seem to be happy with their delta load. But for some of the real large volume customers, they did not see that much of the performance difference. And as a matter of fact, when they do the full load by using the automatic delete function, they see a slightly better performance. That could be the case, but I also did talk with the HR development for the time management. The developer did tell me some of the process going through the delta could result in some inefficiency.
And when youre talking about automated deletion, can you tell me how do that, because I havent found that.
A. Lo Okay. When you set up your info package, and where the data target and there is a where it points to your Infocube, there is a summation side, click on that and you should find it. It is about the third tab into your info packet page when you set up your infopackage.
So youre talking about the infopackages- and it will only delete results for the same selection criteria then?
A. Lo You have the option to delete identical or more severe, once you clicked on the summation sign, it open up with an information screen, there are a bunch of selection
criteria that you can choose from. But you can definitely choose the exactly identical info source, identical selective criteria, etc.
So the ... when I -
. Lo
Yes.
Another problem I experienced is that I got a lock on the R3 side when loading the data So I got a lock on R3, which was running with the extractor.
A. Lo I hadnt seen that problem either. Actually, I havent seen that in any of the application side, and you might have your basis folks do some monitoring from the R3 side and see whether theres anymore detailed information that causes the lock because and executing program should not cause any lock at all.
R. Silberstein
Yes. Extraction only perform read also. You really should not have a lock for reading data.
A. Lo Right. W The first time I tried it, it told me the extractor is locked, so I thought it was impossible. And then for the secondary indices, I thought I had written an OSS note that
the deletion of the secondary indices is done automatically.
A. Lo There is an option in starting later patch of 1.2B that allow you to turn off and on indices before and after data loading. You can find the option under manage InfoCube. There is a performance tab, where you can ask the system to automatically do that. But if you are using parallel processing, be aware of the timing issue. You could have deleted it. And then the next package before youre creating and trying to delete ... is pretty messy if you have that kind of situation. So be aware.
R. Silberstein
Yes. If youre loading more than one info packet into a cube simultaneously, its probably better to use the event chain functionality than to send it to the automatic deletion and create.
A. Lo Thats exactly right.
Thank you very much. That was it.
R. Silberstein
Okay.
A. Lo Well, thank you all so much.
R. Silberstein
Yes. Thank you all for attending the conference call. Sorry if we didnt get to all the questions, but we do have to cut it off at this time. Well be skipping the call in two weeks, because of the 4th of July holiday, but well be resuming two weeks after that with the call. The topic will be BW globalization issues.
A. Lo I also want to thank Alexander Hofer and Stefan Mueller to be on the call with us. Thank you very much.
R. Silberstein
Okay. Thank you, everyone. Bye now.
A. Sanderhoofer
Bye.
Coordinator
The conference call has concluded.

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SAP AMERICA Moderator: Margaret Anderson June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m.

SAP AMERICA June 21, 2001 10:00 a.m. CDT

We will have additional slides on this topic to further discuss later.

Just a note, were on slide ten.

I think we can open up the call to see if we have any questions.

The first question comes from Bill Fazon.

Yes, hello, Amelia.

Can you give me an example of what that means?

Yes, Im on the call.

A. Lo Okay. Thank you, Alex.

A. Lo Are you on 2001.1?

A. Lo 2000.2, the plug in needs to be upgraded to 2001.1.

Okay. 2001.1, not 2000.2. Okay. All right. Thank you.

It should be included, yes.

Okay. Thank you.

The next question comes from Dalit Kuner.

No, not at this time.

A. Lo You can do that.

very early customers, they may have a lot more enhancements.

A. Lo Are you asking?

Okay. Thanks very much, Amelia.

A. Lo Well, Ill go through all of that with you. Hows that?

A. Lo Okay. Thank you.

The next question comes from Pedro Concepcion.

Hello, Amelia. How are you?

A. Lo How are you, Pedro?

The patch 14.

Into the same cube at the same time?

A. Lo Same cube and same info sources.

Okay. All right. Thanks a lot.

So the ... when I -

the deletion of the secondary indices is done automatically.

A. Lo Thats exactly right.

Thank you very much. That was it.

A. Lo Well, thank you all so much.

Okay. Thank you, everyone. Bye now.

The conference call has concluded.

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