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 today’s 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. We’ll 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 she’ll 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 we’ll see if they’ll be able to join the call as
well. So the format of the call will be a brief presentation 20-25 maybe 30
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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minutes, depending on what we cover. And at the end of that time, then
we’ll open up the floor. If there are questions, please feel free to ask them
and we’ll see what we can do about answering them. And now I’ll 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 haven’t, 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. Today’s 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, I’ll 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.
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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. It’s
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
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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.
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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 ethnicity’s. 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
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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.
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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 you’re 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.
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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.
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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 manager’s 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
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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 MBO’s, it will enable you to define and
monitor an employee’s 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
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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measures.
Now, we’ll get to the last topic that I’d 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, we’re 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
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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.
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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 you’re 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 you’ll have an alternative to obtain that kind of
information, but it’s just not in the compensation business content
Infocube.
The cost planning extraction is also extracting only the current plan, which
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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 I’d 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
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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 you’re
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
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June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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 you’re loading very high volume data, this is not only for
HR, it is in general for all the extractions, you’d 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
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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, we’d be willing to entertain them.
Kelly the operator, are you there?
Coordinator
I’m 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.
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June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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.
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Moderator: Margaret Anderson
June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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A. Lo
Sure.
Coordinator
The next question comes from Karen Mayer.
K. 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.
W
Which patch level is that? Do you know? Because we’re on service pack
four, and we don’t 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, I’m on the call.
A. Lo
Can you answer the specific time frame and release level for the US
specifics?
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June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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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.
W
Amelia, we can’t 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?
W
We’re on 2000.2.
A. Lo
2000.2, the plug in needs to be upgraded to 2001.1.
W
Okay. 2001.1, not 2000.2. Okay. All right. Thank you.
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June 21, 2001/10:00 a.m. CDT
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A. Lo
You’re welcome.
Coordinator
The next question comes from Scott Johnson.
P. Martin
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 it’s synchronizing
time dimensions, is that going to give us more detail payroll reporting, or
is it still going to be highly summarized?
A. Lo
It’s still pretty highly summarized. It’s 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, it’s still under development, and we haven’t 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 can’t provide
details until the specification is finished.
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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. It’s Dali Kuner from ... UK. I’ve got a number of
questions on the BW security. I’m quite interested in that area, but I
haven’t spent much time on it.
I’ve got this scenario where you’ve 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
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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 who’s 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.
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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 you’ve got access to,
but you can still - but the big picture includes all the people you can’t 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 you’re
asking?
D. Kuner
Yes. That’s what I’m 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
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see four instead of eight of the employees under that call center. There’s
just no easy way of finding out that you’ve actually missed four
employees.
A. Lo
Yes. I’m 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 doesn’t make sense, because if you would have a selection
in your query which says, ‘give me all employees via salary mode,’ and
you’re earning more than a million bucks. You know you have access to
five employees, let’s 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
shouldn’t get any information on how many records have kept.
D. Kuner
The example I would have used is you’ve 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 you’ve not realized that you’ve
missed some people, because they aren’t a grade higher than you’ve got
access to see.
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A. Hofer
See, you don’t see how many you miss. It’s like in R3.
D. Kuner
Right. Okay. I’ve 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. Don’t use that.
The one sayst 0PY_C02 is the one you wanted to use.
And as far as the multi-cube, it’s basically joining - I mean union those
two cubes with a query view. So there’s 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
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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 don’t 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 it’s 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.
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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 I’ve got a payroll cube in
development, which is monthly. I’ve got a time management cube, which
is daily - time ... daily. I’m looking at the multi-cube, which will start to
get into it. And I’m just wondering whether you can say straight off if
that’s 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 you’re
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.
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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 we’re 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.
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A. Lo
You’re 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 manager’s portal. We’re right
now using manager’s portal through workplace. Eventually what we were
planning on doing with workplace was in addition to some of the
manager’s portal stuff, everything that we’re doing through manager’s
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 manager’s 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 it’s 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
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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 you’d 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 we’ve configured
manager’s portal. When you click on that, based on your configuration
you’ve 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 we’re
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. We’re probably work with you on your structural
authorizations.
A. Lo
Well, I’ll go through all of that with you. How’s that?
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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. I’ve 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 - I’m using the functionality, but have not experience the
inconsistency problem - what release level are you at now?
P. Conception
The patch 14.
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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, I’d report to OSS.
P. Conception
Yes. It’s 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
didn’t get deleted?” And it’s not consistent to a specific infopacage. It’s
like it’s sporadic.
A. Lo
I wonder whether there’s 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 couldn’t get it to consistently happen, so it will hard
for them to check this.
A. Lo
Yes. Why don’t you follow up with our hotline support center? If I get a
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chance to talk to the schedule developer, I’ll ask him whether he’s 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. We’ll have to look into that again, so there’s no problem in that
processing.
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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 didn’t
happen and so, double check that. I haven’t seen the locking problem if
you’ve done it correctly.
P. Conception
Okay. All right. Thanks a lot.
A. Lo
You’re welcome.
Coordinator
The next question comes from Kathy Soovie.
R. Silberstein
Okay. We’ll make that our last question of the day.
A. Lo
Hello, Kathy?
W
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?
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A. Lo
Yes.
W
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.
W
And when you’re talking about automated deletion, can you tell me how
do that, because I haven’t 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.
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W
So you’re 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.
W
So the ... when I -
. Lo
Yes.
W
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 hadn’t seen that problem either. Actually, I haven’t 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 there’s anymore detailed
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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 you’re creating and trying to delete ... is
pretty messy if you have that kind of situation. So be aware.
R. Silberstein
Yes. If you’re loading more than one info packet into a cube
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simultaneously, it’s probably better to use the event chain functionality
than to send it to the automatic deletion and create.
A. Lo
That’s exactly right.
W
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 didn’t
get to all the questions, but we do have to cut it off at this time. We’ll be
skipping the call in two weeks, because of the 4th of July holiday, but
we’ll 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.
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A. Sanderhoofer
Bye.
Coordinator
The conference call has concluded.