Explaining Story Reports

Story is a presentation-style report that uses visualizations (chart, image, text, table, shape) to describe data.

Story Reports consist of pages. Pages are made up of:

• Visualizations of Data
• Filters and Input Controls to manipulate the data

Stories involve queries that retrieve data that you want to report AND widgets that represent the data. To build or update queries, you work in the Query Designer. To manage the representation of the data the queries retrieve, you work in the Story Designer.

With Story Reports, you can:

• Perform suite-wide analysis by including data from multiple SAP SuccessFactors modules in one story. For example, Performance and Goals, Employee Central, Recruiting, and other modules.
• Search for fields across all schemas.
• Report on data from product schemas that are not supported by other reporting tools in SAP SuccessFactors:
  • Onboarding (2.0)
  • Job Profile Builder
  • Spot Awards
  • Custom MDF Objects
• Use additional calculated functions not available in other SAP SuccessFactors reporting tools (for example, CONTAINS, ADDDAYTODATE, UPPERCASE).
• Perform date calculations and calculations on Boolean fields.
• Create and display ratios in the story report (for example, gender ratio).
• See relevant fields automatically for the data elements linked using joins without manually navigating the data model.
• Create shortcuts for accessing your favorite Story Reports from the Home page by adding them to the Reports tile.

A query model represents large amounts of business data using common business terminology. The Query Designer enables you select the fields you want to use to create reports using Story.

The queries you build using the Query Designer are stored within the stories and cannot be accessed outside the story. You can create multiple queries (also known as datasources) in a story.

• Starting point for People Analytics stories
• Ability to select tables & columns from across multiple SAP SuccessFactors modules
• Search schemas to easily find schemas/tables
• Easy drag-drop UI for user-friendly query building experience

Story Design is the process of designing interactive reports using the data which has been saved using Query Designer.

The Story Designer provides the user interface (UI) to build the story pages.

Benefits:

• Allows users to derive insights from the data interactively
• Gives users the flexibility in visualization of information, a key element in reporting

The Built-In Support displays relevant knowledge-based articles and guided answers for Stories in People Analytics.

Benefits:

• Improves the ease of design and the usability of Story reports
• Provides just-in-time information

Story Reports allows report creators to include data from multiple SAP SuccessFactors modules and set up multiple pages within a single story.

This makes it possible to reduce the number of reports shared with managers, thus making it easier for users to navigate and for the central team to maintain fewer reports.

Benefits:

• Report users have fewer reports to consider. This makes it easier to find the information.
• The central reporting team has fewer reports to maintain and document.

Linked Analysis allows you to make dashboards interactive. You can configure charts to act as filters for other components on the page.

Clicks or selections in one chart can filter other charts and tables in the story. You can specify if the selection should filter all charts on the page or only selected visualizations.

Benefits:

Serve many different users with a single dashboard, thus reducing the work for the central reporting team.

• Users need a simple dashboard to view the story.
• More advanced users can filter and drill into the data for more insights without asking the central reporting team for new reports.

Data access is defined automatically based on the Role-Based Permissions (RBP) settings of the underlying application.

This means that the data an end user can see is secure right down to the individual cell for RBP-supported applications. The data a user can see in a Story is also specific to their individual access.

Benefits:

• Serve many different users with a single Story, reducing the work for the central reporting team
• Simplify administrative overhead by removing the need for duplicate report permission setup
• Safely distribute reports to any user within the organization

The Story Reports created using People Analytics will be available in a listing of Report Center along with other types of reports per users' roles and permissions.

Stories can also be run, edited, renamed, deleted, scheduled, exported, labeled, and generate shareable links directly through the Report Center.

Benefits:

• Unified view of all reports in Report Center
• Permission-based user’s view of stories
• Easier to manage different reports from a single UI

To help your company start using Stories in People Analytics to deliver meaningful business insights, SAP SuccessFactors provides Story templates. Although Stories can be designed without a template, pre-configured approaches can be a great way to start. These templates are available via the Content Store.

Benefits:

• Start reporting on commonly needed data without the requirement to build the report from scratch
• Support modification of the templates to match unique use cases for your organization
• Great learning opportunity to see how data can be displayed within People Analytics

Examples:

• Private Contact Phone and Email
• Manager Dashboard
• Turnover Analysis