CDS Custom Views: How to add Master Data attributes to a delivered data source by creating a Customer CDS View

Use Case:

Jack is an Analytics Specialist with ABC company. He frequently needs to create queries and reports, but he didn’t find any suitable CDS view for his customer deal, so he is trying to create his own Custom CDS Views. So he decided to create a new CDS View using “Custom CDS View” App which was new and can suffices his requirement. Here he is trying to leverage Primary Data Source I_GLAccountLineItemCube.

Step 1:

• Jack scrolls down and select the Business catalog “Extensibility” (1)
• Afterwards he clicks on the Custom CDS Views Tile in order to start the Custom CDS Views App  (2)

Step 2:

• In the Customer CDS View App, Jack clicks on “Create” to be able to access the window allowing him to create a new View. (1)

Step 3:

• Now Jack want to create a new Custom CDS View. To achieve this after selecting the tab “General”, Jack has to achieve following activities:
• In the tab “General” Jack has to maintain: (1)
  • Name with: “YY1_PROFITCENTER”
  • Label with: “Profit Center Line Item”
• Additionally, Jack must:
  • Check the OData box as well as the Analytical box(2) (Here selecting OData will automatically create an OData service in backend system that could be consumed in Analytical Apps)
  • Insert a Primary Data Source(3)

Step 4:

• The search field could be used to rapidly filter the appropriated Data Source by entering for e.g. for this test case “I_GLAccountLine”(1)
• After the search, Jack has to select the Data Source “I_GLAccountLineItemCube”(2)
• And hit the Add button(3)  to have “I_GLAccountLineItemCube” persisted as the Data Source for the Custom CDS View to be created.

Step 5:

• Jack needs now to choose the relevant fields for his use case. For this purpose, Jack has to:
  • Select and click on the Data Source ”I_GLAccountLineItemCube”

Step 6:

• After that Jack has to select the tab “Field Selection” to properly select the desired fields.

Step 7: 

• When in the Tab “Field Selection” Jack is seeing two columns: one labeled with “Available Fields and Associations” and the other with “Selected Fields and Associations”
• Checking the boxes of some fields from the type “Field” like the one marked in red from the “Available Fields and Associations” column, trigger the mapping with the “Selected Fields and Associations”. This means that those fields are immediately inserted in the column “Selected Fields and Associations” which are definitively the selected fields for the use case.

Step 8:

• The same thing must be done by Jack with fields from type “Association” which should be selected for the use case as well.
• Afterwards Jack has to click on the “Save Draft” button to have the mapping (selected fields) persisted.

Step 9:

• To make further necessary adjustments, Jack has to select the tab “Field Properties” (1) where selected fields could be enhanced with properties like semantic, semantic value etc…

Step 10:

• In the tab “Field Properties”(1)  Jack has enhanced the properties of the field LedgerFiscalYear by setting its “Semantic Value” to true .(2)

Step 11:

• To make further necessary adjustments, Jack can still select others Tabs like “Parameters” (1) where selected fields could be enhanced with others properties (In Tab “Parameter” there is no entry to maintain for this particular use case)

Step 12:

• In the tab “Filter “, identical to the tab “Parameters”, Jack has no entry to maintain for this use case
• Afterwards Jack has to click on the Save Draft(1) button that will trigger a toast message “Saved successfully”
• To make the created Custom View available and usable for creating reporting, Jack has to click on the “Publish” button .(2)

Step 13:

• To have an overview on the data content, Jack has to click on the Preview button  (3)
• After the click on the Preview button the preview should look similar to this(4)