creating Review Booklets

Ready-to-use Review Booklets are delivered as part of the standard content of SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics.

You can customize a standard Review Booklet by first creating a copy of it, and then making the changes. The Fiori app Review Booklet Designer is provided for this purpose. This app is used by the key business user and does not require any coding knowledge. However, it is essential that the key business user who uses this app is familiar with the underlying data sources.

In this lesson we will work through the creation of a Review Booklet but first let's take a look at the overall architecture of a Review Booklet with reference to the diagram above.

A Review Booklet is organized using Pages that are grouped using Page Groups. Each page displays a Row Set and a Column Set to form a cross-tab. One each page is a filter panel where a user can apply filters to the data. A user can also add additional dimensions to the results to expand the details. The pages follow a layout pattern that displays a pivot table alongside a chart, or a pivot table alongside another pivot table. Different pages can have different layout patterns.

Column and row sets are predefined combinations of measures, dimensions and structures that allow the user to swap between different layouts. For example, a column set might display sales revenue for current year and last year with % variance, whereas another column set might display quantities for this period and last period with absolute variance. A row set might display sales teams by regions by country and another row set might display product by product group. Column and row sets provide a simple way for a user to quickly switch to a new business perspective without having to manually construct the report elements.

The underlying data source to a Review Booklet is the Data Provider. A Data Provider is bound to one CDS analytical query. But you can define multiple Data Providers for each Review Booklet so that data can come from different analytical queries. All elements of the Review Booklet originate from the underlying analytical queries. You cannot create new query elements in a Review Booklet, such as calculated measures or structures.

The Review Booklet Designer is a Fiori app that you use to maintain Review Booklets.

You launch the app by opening the Manage KPIs and Reports app and choosing the button Review Booklets.

Once you launch the app you are presented with a list of all Review Booklets. The list contains Review Booklets that are delivered by SAP and those which are created by key users. The Review Booklets that are delivered by SAP are marked with an SAP logo. You cannot change these. You begin by making a copy of a standard Review Booklet. You are then able to make changes to your copied version.

Let's follow the work-flow to create a Review Booklet.

On the General tab you provide a description. Here you can also view useful information such as who create the Review Booklet and when, and who was the last person to change it.

On the Analytical Queries tab, you create one or more Data Providers. A Data Provider is bound to one analytical query. For each Data Provider you create one or more Column Sets and one or more Row Sets. A column or rows set defines a set of measures, dimensions and structures that can be selected by the business user at run-time and provides different way to present the data. The Review Booklet developer chooses the measures and dimensions from the bound analytical query. The row and column sets are used in the next step when the pages are created.

A Review Booklet uses Pages to present business information. A Review Booklet usually contains many Pages so Page Groups are used to organize the Pages. At run-time, the Page Group appears as the main button in the Review Booklet. When you select the Page Group button, the Pages appear in the drop down selector.

For each Page you choose a basic layout. For example, you can choose to display a single pivot table (cross-tab) on your page, or a pivot table combined with a chart. Or perhaps you would prefer to split the Page so it displays two pivot tables side-by-side.

Within each Page you choose one or more of the Column Sets and Row Sets that you created earlier when you defined the Data Providers. These are used to define useful layouts that are configured by arranging measures and dimensions into meaningful shapes. At run-time, the business user can select the most useful column and row sets that you have assigned to their Page.

Within a Page, you also define filters.

On the Variables tab you see all the variables that are defined in the analytical queries that you have assigned to Data Providers in the Review Booklet. As well as choosing default values for each variable, you can decide if the variables should be visible or hidden to the business user. You can only hide variables if they are not mandatory. The business user is able to show any hidden variables at run-time and of course, change the variable values.

If your Review Booklet contains multiple Data Providers, all variables that are common to the analytical queries of the Data Providers are merged so they don't appear multiple times. For example, a variable such as fiscal period might be required by all queries, but the value a business users chooses at run-time is usually applicable to the entire Review Booklet.

Variables can be assigned to the booklet level or page level. If you assign variables to the booklet level then all pages are affected by the filter value entered at run-time by the business user.

A Review Booklet contains many column sets, row sets, filters and variables. It is easy for the business user to become overwhelmed by long lists of these elements and it makes it difficult for them to find what they are looking for on the drop-down lists.

To fix this problem, you can organize Review Booklet elements into meaningful Groups. This means that the business user is presented with the elements such as variables, in groups on the drop-down lists. For example, you might organize the date-related variables into a Group called Time so they are easier to locate instead of them being lost in a single list that contains all variables.

Most business reports present columns using different styles. For example, the actuals column might appear in bold. The previous period column might appear in a lighter font. The variance column might appear in italics. Each structure in the Review Booklet can be assigned to a Semantic Style. The styles are predefined and you cannot edit or add to them, but there are many styles to choose from and they represent all common styles used in business reporting.

Quite often, when working through the results of a Review Booklet, a business user wants to explore a value in more detail but the Review Booklet does not provide a possibility to drill deeper. For example, a business user notices a low profit value for a region and wants to check that the invoices have had the correct discount values applied. But the Review Booklet does not provide the invoice details.

Using the Review Booklet Designer you can assign jump targets to the values in the Review Booklet. For example, you could assign the jump target app Display Invoices to the field Invoice Number. This means when a user selects the invoice number in the Review Booklet, using the jump target menu they could jump into the app that displays a list of invoices.

One of the key features of this type of navigation is the retention of the filters and settings from the Review Booklet. So in our case, we would jump into the list of invoices but only for the invoices that relate to the time period and company code already applied in the Review Booklet. We do not lose the navigation context of where we are.

A jump target is defined by specifying a Semantic object and an Action.

When you have finished working through the tabs of the Review Booklets Designer, you save the configuration with the status Final and then create a Fiori tile to launch the Review Booklet.

The business user does not use the Review Booklet Designer app to launch their Review Booklets.

Launch the video to learn how to create a new Review Booklet.