Use BI Content

When customers decide to implement reporting with SAP BW/4HANA, there is often much pressure to provide first reports without time-consuming optimization. For the first results, and to get an impression of the power of SAP BW/4HANA, especially for a pilot project, it is useful to use the predefined structures. SAP supports such rapid implementation by providing BI Content for many typical scenarios. However, checking BI Content is an ongoing process that lasts until you finish creating an SAP BW/4HANA data model. The process remains a first step for implementing extra requirements.

If you want to work with BI Content, we recommend that you proceed as follows, similar to the procedure for SAP BW/4HANA projects proposed in the last unit:

1. Define the tasks and roles of your employees. Determine the necessary key figures or information that your employees require to fulfill their tasks. For this, you can use the role-based BI Content.
2. Using the information that you acquired in step one, define a data model for your requirements.
3. Compare the results from your requirement analysis and your data model with the BI Content. Usually, you perform a top-down comparison, that is, you search for key figures, reports, and DataStore Objects (advanced) in BI Content that are required.
4. Determine the differences between your own data model and the BI Content.
5. Depending on the object type, you can extend or modify the BI Content, use it as a copy template for your own objects, or create your own objects in your namespace, regardless of the BI Content.

The following are useful sources to find the correct BI Content:

• RSA1: Metadata Repository and BI Content section
• Release notes on SAP Service Marketplace and in the documentation

The following examples show that you can profit from a combination of BI Content objects and custom-defined objects:

• You can add a BI Content characteristic as an attribute of a custom-defined characteristic InfoObject.

• You can refer to a BI Content unit or currency in a custom-defined key figure InfoObject.

• You can add both custom-defined and BI Content objects in the same object.

• You can use a BI Content object as a source in a data flow that fills a custom-defined object, or conversely.

The following information provides tips and recommendations on using BI Content in specific SAP BW/4HANA project phases.

Business blueprint and realization.

• You can use BI Content to gather ideas, as an information source.
• If the customer requirements partly correspond with the BI Content, you can use BI Content as the basis for subsequent enhancements.

In the realization phase, you have the options to:

• Activate the BI objects, and use them 1:1 without changes. This is recommended especially for time characteristics, technical content, and characteristics that are widely standardized, such as country, or controlling area.
• Activate the BI Content objects, and modify them. This is recommended if you want to implement global requirements that are your enterprise wide standard. The D version remains available, and can be re-installed if you want to discard your adaptations. (However, be aware that in this case, you lose all modifications.)
• Activate the BI Content objects and use it as a template for an own object. Some SAP customers follow the guideline to copy any BI Content object to a customer namespace as soon as you change the definition in any way so that you do not lose any adaptation when you re-install the BI Content. Other SAP customers only create copies when the change is required for local adaptations. You can create different copies and change them independently. This gives you the most flexibility. The original active version remains available as it is delivered. Do not create too many copies, rather, try to re-use as much as possible.
• Create a new, separate object independent of BuI Content. You can use the content objects as suggestions.

After going live and for continuous improvement.

• After a BI Content release is upgraded, you can re-install the BI Content objects.
• Check for BI Content support packages to re-install objects shipped with this support package.

In both cases, you have the following options:

• If you have modified the BI Content object and the object type supports the Match function, the changes from SAP and your customer-defined changes can be integrated into a new version. In some cases, the integration is automatically done, for example, if new InfoObjects have been added to an InfoObject Catalog, they will be added to the current active version. In other cases, such as different settings for a characteristic property, a dialog box appears in which you can choose if you want to switch to the new BI Content setting. The default setting is keeping the customer version.
• If the object type does not support the match function, or you choose not to use it, you substitute the customer version with the SAP version if you activate the new delivered SAP content.
• If you have created a copy of the BI Content, activation of new content does not affect your copy. Manual adaptation of the copy is necessary.

Some object types do not support the merge (match) option. You can only activate or install these objects and overwrite an existing A version, if necessary. These objects include, for example:

• Queries and Query elements
• CompositeProvider
• Currency Translation Types
• Unit Conversion Types
• Workbooks
• Roles

You can install, activate, and modify these objects, or you can activate and use them as templates (Queries, Web templates).

You can merge other objects in BI Content. You can determine the differences between the active and delivered version and then merge the objects. For example, you can add the new attributes of a characteristic from BI Content to a characteristic that you have activated.

Identify whether the properties, which are compared between the active version and delivery version, can be matched automatically, or whether you must do this manually. If you are sure that the object will be used in the same way after you install BI Content, you can perform an automatic match for those properties. When you perform matches manually you must decide individually for each property whether the characteristics from the active version are to be retained, or copied from the delivery version.

Example of an automatic match:

More customer-specific attributes have been added to the customer version of an InfoObject. In the BI Content version, SAP has delivered two more attributes that do not contain the customer-specific attributes. To be able to use the additional attributes, the delivery version has to be reinstalled from BI Content. At the same time, the customer-specific attributes are to be retained. In this case, you have to set the indicator (X) in the checkbox. After installing the BI Content, the additional attributes are available and the customer-specific enhancements have been retained automatically. However, if you did not select the match indicator, the customer-specific enhancements in the customer version are lost.

Example of a manual match:

The customer version and BI Content version of an InfoObject have different texts. In this case, the two versions have to be matched manually. When the BI Content is installed, a detail screen appears. Here, you specify whether you want to apply the text from the active version or from the BI Content version.

Usually, when versions are matched, changes or additions to list-based settings (such as the list of attributes, list of fields, and list of processes involved) in BI Content are added to the customer version. Alternative settings (such as descriptions and checkboxes) are either retained from the customer version during automatic matching, or must be manually matched.