A Story Report is a presentation-style report that uses charts, visualizations, text, images, and pictograms to describe data. A story report mainly involves building a query to create the report Story Reports in Report Center are part of the People Analytics solution, and they are is based on the integration of SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite with SAP Analytics Cloud. After you create a story, you can add and edit pages, sections, and elements. You can share your story with others for future use.
You might use a Story Report to:
- Provide line managers a holistic overview about their team.
- Provide recruiting process status from requisition, application and offer letter data.
- List work address, phone numbers, email information, and organizational information of the employees in a company address book.
With story reports, you can:
- Search 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 and Custom MDF Objects.
- Use additional calculated functions not available in other SAP SuccessFactors reporting tools (for example, CONTAINS, LENGTH, UPPERCASE).
- Perform date calculations and calculations on Boolean fields.
- Create and display ratios in the Story Report (for example, gender ratio).
- Create reports irrespective of your data access permissions. This means, you can add fields to the query even if you don't have the relevant data access permission. However, when you run the report, you won't see any data for such fields.
- See relevant fields automatically for the data elements linked using joins, without needing to manually navigate the data model.
- Report on fields from different schemas, which are linked using auto joins and semi-hard joins.
- Create shortcuts for accessing your favorite Story reports from the Home page by adding them to the Reports tile.
- Use Proxy Now to run, edit, create, or delete Story reports on behalf of the proxy user.
Limitations and Important Notes for Story Reports
PeopleAnalytics Story Reports currently have some known technical gaps and special scenarios.
Beforeyou try to create a Story Report to meet a specific requirement, you may want to review the current limitations that could prevent you from meeting your desired outcome.
The list of limitations and known gaps is dynamic and is subject to change with upcoming enhancements. Current limitations include:
- The schemas for Recruiting Marketing, Recruiting Posting, Onboarding 1.0, are not supported. However, the schema for Onboarding (2.0), which replaces Onboarding 1.0, is supported.
- The JDM (Job Description Manager) schema is not available.
- Profile Preview is not supported in story content. You can use the hyperlink functionality as an alternative approach.
- Transient data (for example, fields calculated in real time in the UI such as Salary or Compa-Ratio) is not supported.
- Sensitive fields can't be used as filters, and they can't be used in Calculated columns.
- Exporting to Microsoft Word format is not supported for Story Reports.
- The languages Arabic,Hebrew and Vietnamese are currently not supported.
- Action Search shortcuts do not apply for Story Reports.
- Scheduling SAP SuccessFactors Learning stories is not supported.
- SAP SuccessFactors Learning is not integrated with other modules of SAP SuccessFactors.
- Due to low usage, support for the Intelligent Services schema in Story reports has not been planned.
- Data from Stories is not available for use in the Insights panel.
- Story reports that you create using Performance Management, Goal Management, 360 Reviews, Career Development Planning, Compensation, or Recruiting based schemas might not work properly when transferred from one environment to another (using the Import and Export functionality).
- Stories in People Analytics doesn't support the use of Proxy URL to access the SAP SuccessFactors tenant. This means, you won't be able to use Story reports, if you use a Proxy URL to access the SAP SuccessFactors tenant.
- If you enable optimized view mode, note that:
- Grid pages are not supported in the optimized view mode. Before enabling the optimized view mode, rebuild the affected pages using Canvas.
- Non-optimized presentation table isn't supported in optimized view mode. Before enabling the optimized view, enable the optimized presentation table in the Builder panel.
- Local range filters with unrestricted drilling aren't supported in optimized view mode. Before you enable the optimized view mode, enable Unrestricted Drilling in the Edit Filter Panel.
- Sections must start on a new page, else it isn't supported. To fix this issue, select a section, go to the Styling panel, select Show all instances on pages, and then choose Start section on new page.
- The Explorer mode isn't supported in optimized view mode. This can be replaced by Data Analyzer in Optimized Design Experience.
- In the Optimized Design Experience mode, note that:
- Clock widget, error bar, and conversion of story filters to page filters aren't supported.
- Blended tables aren't supported.
Additionally, there are some module-specific gaps in the reporting schemas for different modules. You can review these gaps in the document "Stories in People Analytics" on the SAP Help Portal.
Inappropriate Use Cases for Story Reporting
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 Reporting Use Case
For some of these use cases, CPI, Integration Center, Workforce Analytics and Canvas reports may be better suited.
