S/4 Hana Embedded Analytics (Analysis Path Framework + Smart Business Tiles)

                                               S/4 HANA Embedded Analytics
What is S/4 HANA embedded Analytics?

It is a set of apps that provide real time analytics on S4 HANA. They are based on CDS views exposed as Odata services, and are used as data providers to the apps; Fiori tiles are used as a Launchpad for the tiles.

This blog assumes you are familiar with the CDS views and is written as an advanced lessons learned. There are other great blog posts on this subject, but often they do not include some of the detail decision points needed to complete the tasks.

To provide this embedded analytic capability, there are a base set of apps namely:
1) Key Performance Indicators(KPI) and Evaluation
2) Analysis Path Framework
3) Smart Business Tiles

There are tutorials available at help.sap.com
https://help.sap.com/saphelp_uiaddon10/helpdata/en/1c/457c53595a6655e10000000a423f68/content.htm
https://help.sap.com/saphelp_uiaddon10/helpdata/en/3a/a60841f1d542088ae85fda131ff094/content.htm
https://help.sap.com/saphelp_uiaddon10/helpdata/en/3a/a60841f1d542088ae85fda131ff094/content.htm

This blog post is intended to discuss some of the difficulties faced while implementing Smart Business Tiles and Analysis Path Framework encountered at a customer site.

To start with, we will pick up once you have entered your site specific information and now want to define your data sources for your KPI:

1) Create a KPI indicator on top of a CDS View, with the following data source example. You will need to adjust to your environment variables:

Some points that should be considered for creating this indicator:

1) The annotation that should be used for your entity set to be visible in the Entity set  drop-down in the above screen are:
@Analytics.query: true

@VDM.viewType: #CONSUMPTION

Also add the annotation for your measures in the  CDS view:

@DefaultAggregation:#SUM

Also add Odata.publish: true for exposing the CDS view as Odata

2) You can select the measure here in the drop-down. You can change the measure in the charts in the tiles also. Just specify a default Key Performance Indicator here.

3) After this, you can add a evaluation on the KPI created. Specify the input parameters for the CDS view if any. (If you have input parameter as DATE remember to cast it as Char as currently S4 HANA 1610 gateway server doesn’t accept a DATE type, we are working on this.

4) You can activate and configure the tile now.

5) You should maintain  a transport in flpd_conf and flpd_cust layer for you smart business tile based on a KPI to be activated.

6) open sap gateway and go to transaction /ui2/flpd_conf and /ui2/flpd_cust. Maintain a transport here.

7) Open the configure drill-down tile and define a view for your smart business tile. You can save the view in the transport created. You can have multiple views and all of them are embedded in a tile that can be launched from the fiori Launchpad.

8) Users can define their own views based on their requirements.

Analysis Path Framework (APF)
APF can be used when an analyst doesn’t know where to look for in the data available. It is easy to use with drill-down capability on measures so that an analyst can make a decision.

1) You need to define a configuration for the APF.

2) You can define the categories. Categories are the specific attributes on which you want to perform the analytics based on the measures defined in the CDS view.

3) You can now define steps in each category and add different types of charts in the config.
Properties have to be defined in your entity set on which you need to drill down. By default select all your measures in the properties.

Point that need to be considered while implementation is the placing of filters. Many issues were encounter because of this.

All the input parameters must be bound to a filter and the order of defining filter is very important.

Your first input parameter should be your first filter and second input parameter should be your second filter. You need to specify a default value for each input parameter

4) Save your configuration and launch the APF config. The configuration is local and needs to be manually transported to different systems. You need to copy the .properties file and .JSON file and then import these two files to other systems such as Quality and Production.

5) The action should be executeAPFConfigurationS4HANA and the configuration selected should be the APF configuration as defined earlier.