Configuring Multi Actions

Multi actions help you orchestrate a set of planning operations across multiple models and versions. They link together a sequence of steps such as data actions and version management steps, which all run from a single planning trigger. Multi actions can help planning users save time when they need to run multiple data actions in a sequence, publish versions, or both.

If multi actions are available in a basic or extended story, you can run them to carry out complex or repetitive planning operations more quickly and accurately.

You can add parameters to your multi actions to prompt you for values while running the operations and to make them easier to update and reuse.

Consider using multi actions if your planning process involves running data actions on multiple versions or models or publishing data between data action steps.

Find out how Jen uses multi actions in her forecast income statement to quickly rerun multiple data actions at once when she learns of a labor rate increase from HR.

Multi actions include the following features:

1. Orchestrated execution of several SAP Analytics Cloud components:
   • Data Action Step: Runs a data action with parameter values that you specify in the step, either by setting fixed values or by applying parameters from the multi action.
   • Data Locking Step: Allows data locks to be set directly from the multi action trigger. Setting data locks protects your data from unwanted changes.
   • Version Management Step: Publishes a version from the model that you specify. You can set the version, or apply a parameter from the multi action.
   • Predictive Step: Runs a time series forecast predictive scenario to answer business questions using a predictive model. This step retrains a predictive model based on the current state of your data, and then writes a forecast to a public or private planning version.
   • Data Import Step: Runs using data imported from other sources. You can use data from multiple different sources by adding multiple data import steps to the multi action.
   • API Step: Integrates on-premise and cloud-based external applications using an HTTP Application Programming Interface (API).
   Note

   If you will be adding multiple data actions based on the same model and version, it is recommended to embed these data actions into a new data action first. You can then add the new embedded data action to your multi action to improve performance.
2. One click or schedule execution:
   • In the story, you can trigger multi actions with one click
   • Can be scheduled from the calendar
3. Business value:
   • Lower cost-of-development
   • Simpler end-user experience

Let's compare data actions and multi actions.

A data action consists of one or more steps for the same model. A data step can have another data action embedded into it as long as they all belong to the same model.

You can use an embedded data action step to run another data action as part of the one you’re working on. Combining these steps with dynamic parameters lets you reuse data actions from the same model and set different source or target members.

A multi action bundles multiple data actions into one.

In the following example, one multi action has been created to run three data actions involving two different models. The Copy Hours data action actually copies labor hours from the HR model to the Expense model.