Reviewing the Appropriate use of Story Reports

Stories provide reporting, insights, dashboards, and more, and allow you to perform cross-suite reporting using live transactional data across the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite.

The story type of report in Report Center is part of the Story Reports solution and is based on integrating the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite with SAP Analytics Cloud. After creating a story, you can add and edit pages, sections, and elements. You can share your story with others so they can use the report you've made. It is a presentation-style report that features charts, visualizations, text, and images to illustrate data. A story mainly involves building a query and using it to create the report.

Whichever view of a story you are using, the key to the underlying data lies in the measures and dimensions defined in the story's model or dataset.

• Measures represent quantities that provide meaning to your data. For example, HRIS examples include total number of employees, average salary, or recruitment costs.
• Dimensions represent categories that provide perspective on your data. For example, employee demographics, payroll records, or training history.

Together, they are the framework for viewing data in interesting ways.

A report that deals with the operational (day-to-day) needs of an organization is referred to as Operational Reporting. These reports are typically required to check the current state of any entity and, therefore, run on Transactional Databases. To better decide if the report falls into the Operational Reporting or Analytics realm, refer to the points below:

• Story Reports generate queries in real-time using live data; calculations and results are not pre-aggregated or pre-computed.
• The tool is optimized for fast transactional processing, making it suitable for operational (rather than analytical) reporting.
• Effective and relevant filters must be applied to queries to manage data volume and ensure report performance.
• Story Reports should be designed for distinct target audiences, rather than attempting to meet the needs of diverse users with a single report.
• The overall performance of Story Reports depends on page weight, which is influenced by the number and type of widgets used.
• Advanced or process-heavy features such as data blending or linking multiple tables should be used judiciously, as they may impact system stability and report responsiveness.
• Story Reports are ideal for delivering up-to-date operational insights and supporting day-to-day business decisions.

As a report designer, use the correct solution to meet the desired outcomes.

The following would be inappropriate use cases for using Story Reporting:

• For dumping data to CSV or XLSX for analysis with external applications, such as spreadsheets

• As an intermediate step for integration into other systems

• For reports that need to include more than a million cells, more than 120 columns, or more than 30 tables

• Using Data Warehousing (ETL) techniques instead of Operational Reporting Use Case

For some of these use cases, CPI, Integration Center, Workforce Analytics, and Canvas reports may be better suited.