Administering Story Reporting

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to enable Story Reports.

Story Report Enablement in SAP SuccessFactors

Story is available as a type of report in Report Center, and you can enable Story from the Upgrade Center after the prerequisites are met.

To enable Story Reports, your instance needs to meet the following requirements:

  • Identity Authentication Service (IAS) and Identity Provider Service (IPS) must be configured with your SAP SuccessFactors tenant.
  • Sync users from SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite to SAP Identity Authentication Service. Now, complete the following steps:
    1. Navigate to the Upgrade Center.
    2. In the <Filter By> list, select Analytics.
    3. In the Recommended Upgrades section, select the Stories in People Analytics upgrade link.
    4. Choose the Upgrade Now button, and on the confirmation popup, select Yes.

Enabling and configuring an Identity Authentication service is outside of the scope of this document. Please refer to supporting documentation on the SAP Help Portal or work with your implementation partners for the configuration.

User Syncing

Users that will be accessing story reports must be enabled in the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) solution. Before you perform the sync, verify the account has the appropriate permissions in RBP. The account must have:

  • Manage Integration ToolsAllow Admin to Access OData API through Basic Authentication.
  • Manage UserEmployee Export.

IPS Syncing

To perform the IPS Sync, complete the following steps:

  1. Go to your Identity Provider Service portal.

    Note

    The details for the Identity Provider Service portal follows the IAS configuration. If you do not have the Identity Provider Service portal information, contact SAP Cloud Support.

  2. Navigate to Target Systems to enable the newly configured SAP Analytics Cloud tenant.
  3. Select the tenant, select the Edit icon, choose Enable, and on the confirmation popup message that appears, choose OK. The status of the tenant changes to Enabled.
  4. Navigate to Source Systems and select your source SAP SuccessFactors tenant.
  5. On the Properties tab for the user that appears, ensure the role-based permissions mentioned in the Prerequisites have been enabled.
  6. Go to the Jobs tab, and for the Read Job type, choose Run Now.

You can track the progress of the read job from Job Logs. When the read job completes, the user sync from SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite to SAP Analytics Cloud is complete.

User Account Verification in SAP Analytics Cloud

For a user to be able to create Story Reports, their user information must be successfully synchronized to the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) instance and be assigned the appropriate role. When this does NOT occur, the result is a common issue where the user is unable to successfully create a new Story report. After selecting a new story report, the webpage is stuck in a blank loading screen or errors are displayed.

To validate the user exists and has the proper configuration, you can use the check tool in the SuccessFactors HCM Suite.

To perform a validation, complete the following steps:

  1. Navigate to Check Tool.
  2. Select Reporting from the dropdown menu.
  3. Expand ConfigurationSelect Availability of user record for People Analytics.
  4. Choose the Run button.
  5. Enter user ID or name.
  6. Choose the Run button.
  7. There will be a message in the next screen about the user's status. If there is an issue, you will see 1 issue found. Click on that link.

Result: The Detailed Results screen will display the status and the proposed solution.

Common Output Issues

Examples of common output when there is an issue:

Output issue: The selected user does not exist for People Anaytics.
Output issue: The Embedded_BI_Content_Admin role hasn't been assigned to the selected user.

If the User record exists for People Analytics check identifies that the user does NOT exist, you should run an IPS sync to create the user, or troubleshoot why the IPS sync is not working. The check tool The email address isn’t mapped to any user configured for Stories in People Analytics can aid you in troubleshooting.

If the User record exists for People Analytics check identifies that the user DOES exists but with configuration errors, you can run the User is correctly configured for Stories in People Analytics check to try to resolve the configuration issue.

Story Report and Schema Permissions

Once you enable a Story, users can access the story reports in Report Center. However, the permission to create a new Story or to access the data in a Story are managed using role-based permissions.

There are two levels of access you can set for a user on Story Reports:

  • Create Story: Allows you to create, edit, delete, share, import, export, duplicate, schedule, and add labels to Story Reports. You can work with the data from schemas selected for this permission.
  • Story Admin: Allows you to manage all reports of type Story. This permission also enables the All Reports tab in Report Center.

When you set permissions for story reports, you must assign permission to create Story reports and grant permission to access the appropriate reporting schemas. Additionally, you need to confirm or assign permissions to the data the report creator will be working with in the report.

Assignment of Permissions to Administer Story Reports

To assign a user as a Story Report Admin, complete the following steps:

  1. Navigate to Manage Role Permissions.
  2. Select the appropriate role.
  3. Verify that the Permission tab is selected and choose the Edit button.
  4. Choose Next to move to the Add Permissions tab.
  5. Navigate to the Manage Dashboard/Reports category in Administrator Permissions.
  6. Select the Story Admin.
  7. Choose Next to move to the Preview tab.
  8. Select Save to save the changes.
The Manage Dashboards / Reports page options are displayed.

Enablement of a User to Create Story Reports

To enable a user to create Story Reports, complete the following steps:

  1. Navigate to Manage Role Permissions.
  2. Select the appropriate role.
  3. Verify that the Permission tab is selected and choose the Edit button.
  4. Choose Next to move to the Add Permissions tab.
  5. Navigate to the Report Permissions category in User Permissions.
  6. Enable the following as necessary:
    • Enable the permission Create Story.
    • Select either All or individual schemas the role needs to access.
  7. Choose Next to move to the Preview tab.
  8. Select Save.
Create Story Report Permission highlighted.

Note

No user permissions are required to run stories that are shared with a user.

Note

Each enabled schema may require additional RBP permissions to create and run stories on that schema.

Schema Permissions Required for Using Story

The Create Story permission allows you to select the schemas that you can use in a story, but you can access the data from the schemas only after you enable the schema related permissions. The permission to create stories does not provide you access to the data you're trying to report.

The Create Story permission is not bound by target population. The permission allows you to use the fields from the selected schemas while creating a report. However, to access data from a schema, you need to enable the schema-specific role-based permissions.

For example, you can assign permission to the schema Performance Management in a Story. However, you need to additionally permission what data users can see when they create / run a report built using the Performance schema. The Data Access: Story allows users that run a report and only see the employee data limited to the target population of the permission.

Similar permissions exist for several schemas.

For the module specific details, please review the section Permissions Required for Using Story Reports in the document Stories in People Analytics on the SAP Help Portal.

The Performance user permissions settings screen with Data Access: Story 1 selected for 2019 Performance Review and 360 Data Access in the right panel.

SuccessFactors Learning Permissions in People Analytics

When a user runs a report in People Analytics, the report returns only data belonging to the security domains applied to their LMS Admin roles.

The roles and permissions that you have in the SAP SuccessFactors Learning application are carried over to People Analytics.

For example, if you have an administrator role in SAP SuccessFactors Learning Administration with View permissions, then you can view the same set of tables in People Analytics that was visible in the SAP SuccessFactors Learning application.

For more detailed information on security in SAP SuccessFactors Learning, see the guide for HR862: SAP SuccessFactors Learning - Security.

Story Performance Analysis Tool in Report Center

The screenshot shows sample output of the Story Performance Analysis Tool

SAP SuccessFactors has provided a Story Performance Analysis Tool within Report Center. This tool lets Story administrators evaluate the efficiency of a Story report. It helps identify areas for improvement and optimize report performance.

The Story Performance Analysis Tool assists administrators in capturing performance readings of a Story report. This tool’s dashboard provides detailed information and a breakdown of these readings.

The Story Performance Analysis Tool helps to analyze performance numbers for a Story report. With this tool, you can take targeted actions to enhance report performance and improve user experience.

Note

You must have Story Admin permission to access the tool.

Using the Performance Analysis Tool

The Performance Analysis Tool identifies processing time by document for three major areas: network, front end, and back end. Based on the problem area, you can access the appropriate KBAs, best practice documents, and Help articles to support you in making performance improvements.

To run and access an analysis:

  1. To open the Performance Analysis Tool, navigate to Report Center and select the Story Performance Analysis Tool.
  2. Select the date range.
  3. Select additional filters if necessary.
  4. In the list of results, select the document to analyze.

You can then review the values for backend time, network time, and front-end time, and follow the decision tree provided by SAP to determine where the performance issues are located and what resources will help you resolve them.

There are several strategies that can be employed when troubleshooting your system performance. Generally, it's advisable to reduce resource consumption before considering hardware upgrades or adjusting the design of stories and analytical applications.

The documentation on the tool is for the full version of SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC). Not all solutions supplied will be applicable to the embedded version of SAC that is part of SAP SuccessFactors.The image shows a flow chart for analyzing the output of the Performance Analysis Tool

SAP has provided a decision tree to aid in determining potential solutions. Please access the help documentation at Optimize System Performance with the Analysis Tool | SAP Help Portal to help optimize the story performance.

Administrative Auditing of Report Usage in Story Reports for Dashboards/Tiles and Table Reports

You can report the usage of the Table and Tiles/Dashboard using the Reporting Usage Data schema in Story reports.

Sample Reporting usage Data Screen.

It has the following tables:

All Report InformationProvides you with the basic information for Table and Tiles and Dashboard report types
Report Execution DetailsProvides you with the information about the actions performed, reports generated, and other execution related data
Table Report DetailsProvides you with the information about Table reports
Tiles and Dashboard DetailsProvides you with the information about Tiles and Dashboards reports
Table Reports Share DetailsProvides you with information about the share details of Table reports
Tiles and Dashboard Share DetailsProvides you with information about the share details of Tiles and Dashboard reports

The Reporting Usage Data schema offers usage-related information for the Table, Tiles, and Dashboard, which helps you plan your transition to Story reports.

Note: The report generation data can be retrieved for the previous 12 months from the current date.

Auditing of Report Usage Permissions Requirements

  • To be able to view the Reporting Usage Data schema, you must have the Create Story permission.

  • You must have the Story Admin permission to view the data retrieved from the Reporting Usage Data schema.

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