Exploring Data Actions

You are a planner, working with your team to create a forecast income statement for 2025. But first, you have been asked to calculate projected labor expenses for that year.

A data action is a flexible planning tool for making structured changes to planning data in SAP Analytics Cloud. Modelers design the data actions and planners run them in stories or schedule them in the calendar.

A data action is created based on a planning model and consists of one or more steps that are carried out on a public or private version.

Data actions are used to process mass amounts of data.

Some use cases for data actions include the following:

• Carry out planning tasks automatically
• Copy by model and across models
• Allocations
• Currency translation
• Calculations

Some features of data actions include the following:

• Sequence data action steps
• Embed data actions (just like an include)
• Schedule or ad-hoc execution
• Include prompts for flexibility
• Integrate prompts and story filters

Data actions can be created from the Navigation Bar or from Files.

Recent data actions will also show in the Recent Files section of your home screen.

• Steps in a data action are executed sequentially.
• The result of one step is available for the subsequent steps.
• For each step, the execution scope is defined via filters.

The following types of action steps are available:

• The copy action copies data within a model based on a set of rules, filters, and aggregation settings. For example, you can use it to copy data from 2018 to 2019 or Actual data to Budget data. With the Copy action, you copy a value from only one dimension member, but you can copy to multiple dimension members.
• The cross-model copy action allows you to copy data from a different source planning model based on a set of filters and automatic or manual mapping between dimension members.
• Each step of an advanced formulas action allows you to create calculations to apply to the data. For example, you can use scripting to calculate opening and closing balances of headcount based on hires and terminations, looping through the data by time.
• An allocation action creates a new allocation or use an existing allocation step.
• An embedded data action runs another data action as part of the one you’re working on. Combining these steps with dynamic parameters lets you reuse data actions with different source or target members.
• A conversion data action is used for models with measures, conversion steps let you copy between measures while applying currency conversion.

Setting parameters result in prompts when they're run in a story. Prompts are like variables, in that they make the data actions flexible and dynamic.

When a data action is executed from a story, as in the following example, the parameters related to the data action prompt you for source and target data.

Parameter Values are determined by:

• Member selection in the story
• Default values in the data action parameter definition
• A story filter
• An input control

Parameters Type can be based on members or numbers:

• Member: Creates a parameter that represents a dimension member. For example, this type of parameter lets you change the year that you're copying data to or from.

• Number: Creates a parameter that has a numeric value. For example, this type of parameter is added to advanced formulas, and can let you prompt users for values such as growth rate or gross margin percentage.

The Model assignment:

• Can be set to the Default Model. In this case, the model is inherited from the data action header.
• Can be set to a specific model. In a copy step, this can only be the same model as in the data action header. In a cross-model copy step, this could pertain to either the source or target model.

Data actions can be executed in multiple ways:

• From a story.
• From an extended story.
• From the SAP Analytics Cloud calendar.
• From SAP Analytics Cloud, Add-in for Microsoft Office.

In this section, we’ll focus on using the SAP Analytics Cloud calendar to schedule the data action as a task.

Using the calendar, you can schedule a data action. If a data action takes a few minutes to run, you can schedule it to run at night.

Data action statuses in the calendar:

• Before the data action runs, its status will be Open.
• After it runs with no issues, the status will be Successful.
• If something goes wrong, the status will be Failed.

When scheduling a data action, prompts must have assigned parameter values.

Data actions can be used in other data actions that belong to the same model.

For example, you create a data action that calculates subscription revenue based on booking data, with a dynamic parameter for the product type. Using embedded data action steps, you can reuse that data action multiple times in another data action and you can specify a different product type each time.

This lowers the cost of development and maintenance.

Here are some other features of embedded data actions:

• Parameters of outer data actions can be linked against required parameters of inner data actions.
• Parameters of inner data actions aren’t prompted on execution; each must be assigned a value in the designer.
• You can’t use a data action within itself.

When data actions are scheduled from the SAP Analytics Cloud calendar or executed from a story, you can use the Data Action Monitor to check the status.

The Data Action Monitor shows:

• When the data action was triggered
• Who triggered the data action
• Where the data action was triggered
• Which values were used as parameters
• Number of records and duration
• The data action job history will remain based on a retention period of 30 days (default)