Understanding Important Areas Affecting Performance

The SAP development team is dedicated to constantly improving the performance of their solutions, including the SAP Integrated Business Planning, add-in for Microsoft Excel. You will usually see smaller or larger performance improvements in every new release.

However, certain aspects affecting performance in the planning views, are in the hand of the consultants who implement or upgrade the solution. It is important to know what the most impactful actions for improving performance are and how to plan the implementation, so that your solution optimal for users.

One of the common and most visible experiences with the system performance is working with the SAP IBP template in Microsoft Excel.

The time the user waits for the system to respond to his request (for example, opening a planning view, saving data, creating a planning note, and so on) consists of both front-end and back-end time. The following are several steps in the process of opening a template/favorite.

Steps of the process when opening template/favorite:

1. SAP IBP Back end collects the data.
   1. The back end can be sped up with configuration.
   2. Filtering applied by end-users also helps with it.
2. Microsoft Excel UI downloads and saves the file from the back-end server.
   1. The bigger the file, the longer it takes.
3. Microsoft Excel opens the workbook from the storage location/disk.
   1. Use a local file path instead of a network share to store the workbook. See User Settings for path.
   2. Check for unused space in the planning view.
   3. Check image sizes in the planning view (for example, company logo).
   4. Check if VBA code is needed, as opening an .xlsm workbook is usually slower than opening an .xlsx workbook.
   
4. Microsoft Excel UI triggers a refresh.
5. Microsoft Excel UI waits for a query.
6. Microsoft Excel UI writes and renders the data and calculates SAP IBP Formulas or local members if any.
   1. Complexity of calculations of SAP IBP Formulas or local members can play a role.
7. Microsoft Excel UI applies specified formatting.
   1. Complex formatting, especially conditional formatting rules, play a role here.
8. Microsoft Excel UI applies VBA code.
9. Microsoft Excel UI calculates alert key figures and cell fixing.

• SAP IBP Backend (calculation graphs and configuration)
• SAP IBP formatting in Excel UI
• Writing and rendering the data in Excel

Other factors that influence performance and that might not be in control of the end-user can include:

• Local User’s PC (hardware, software installed)
• Version of SAP IBP, add-in for Microsoft Excel, and its behavior

The network also plays a significant role.

Global Configuration Parameters of Group PLAN_VIEW have a direct impact on the behavior of the SAP Integrated Business Planning, add-in for Microsoft Excel, and have an impact on performance. Working with global configuration parameters is discussed in the SAP IBP 300 course. It is worth mentioning here, that an increase to the common parameters, such as maximum number of cells displayed in a planning view, number of planning views that can be open, number of time levels (for telescopic views), and so on, comes with a performance price.

The fact that your connection speed is not optimal does not mean you should be concerned. If the performance you experience when working with SAP IBP is adequate, the pop-up may safely be ignored.

If you work in a region with poor infrastructure or if you are working with a mobile connection, you may never reach a connection speed better than 250 milliseconds.

Performance depends on many things and the network speed is just one factor. The connection speed function is only a tool to give you insight into one easy-to-measure aspect of the add-in's response time. Use the information as an input for troubleshooting performance issues. In addition to using the add-in to measure your network speed, you can also do an internet search for "internet speed test" and run one of the tests offered there.

What you must know is that if your connection is slow, that fact alone may add a second or two to the add-in's response time and that that portion of the response time is out of our control.

In case you encounter templates or planning views with a huge number of empty rows and/or columns below and on the right to the data, clean them up.

This situation can arise due to creating new templates based on another template or repurposing a favorite that was created to support some other aspect of the business process.

Empty rows and columns can have a performance impact when opening the workbook.

You can simply delete the excess rows/columns and update your template/favorite.

Alternatively, some Microsoft Excel versions have a function called Clean Excel Formatting (located on Inquire tab) that allows doing that with one click.

You can consider activating the Inquire tab on your PC to have access to the specific workbook options that are provided there.