Reporting Based on Business Context Viewer (BCV)

In PPM, you can analyze various objects like items, buckets, and portfolio initiatives. For reporting, you can use different reports like timeline monitor and different types of charts and tables. These reports are based on different techniques, such as BI reports, GANTT Charts based on Java, and queries based on BCV. In this lesson, we focus on BCV-based reports.

BCV is a standard framework to show context-related information for Business Suite applications. A benefit of BCV is that you can display context-related information in a side panel. However, PPM is just one of multiple Business Suite applications that use BCV.

You can use reporting cockpits for dashboards and individual items. Reporting cockpits in dashboards provide information about the following:

• Expected Commercial Value (ECV)
• Schedule
• Risk versus reward

Side Panel for Detail Screens

Reporting cockpits in the item detail screen show a side panel. The side panel contains overview graphics, query views, and dashboards.

The details of the items in the side panel are as follows:

• Overviews are role-dependent previews or quick views. They are offered as thumbnails in the side panel but can be enlarged for further analysis.
• Query views are predefined graphical representations of selected data.
• BCV dashboards are arrangements of query views from BCV. If synchronization of table columns is switched on, filtering of data in one query view automatically filters data in the dashboard's other query views.

You can personalize reports in the reporting cockpit. In each report, the Settings button allows a number of personalized settings.

You can personalize reports in the following ways:

• Set up the description for a report
• Specify the chart type
• Select columns in tables
• Specify sort options
• Filter
• Set up x-axes, y-axes, and labels
• Create favorites
• Save your personalization

BCV has an architecture that separates the configuration from the graphical representation in the front-end application.

An administrator creates analytics content by defining the data provider, and setting up BCV queries and query views based on this data. By defining query view lists, overviews, and dashboards, the administrator can arrange this analytical information in the BCV front-end application. The administrators can be split by applications to have a decentralized approach. The end user (in this case, a portfolio manager or a project manager) can show context-related analytics with BCV front end through the side panel, BCV dashboard, or analytic view.

A prerequisite for reporting based on BCV is that a specific role must be assigned to the user. In the standard delivery, you can assign the composite role SAP_RPM_BCV_USER_COMP. You can assign a user to a role with transaction PFCG. Alternatively, you can assign a role to a user with transaction SU01.

There are a number of technical prerequisites. For example, the SAP Business Suite Foundation must be implemented. Check the master guide for PPM for details.