Implementing Data Locking for a Model

Implementing data locking in a model allows you to apply set up locks on specific data intersections of a model. This prevents changes to the data by either data entry or by other planning operations in a story, such as allocations. There are some things to remember:

• Data locking must be enabled in the model preferences.
• You must have the proper permissions to configure data locking.
• In a story, locked and restricted cells for public versions appear as read-only.
• You can delegate ownership of the data locks to members of a dimension.
• Data locking owners can change the state of the locks that they own.

Go to Model Preferences of the planning model and click Access and Privacy. Activate Data Locking and set the Default Lock State. The default lock state can be either Open or Locked.

In the following example, you can see that Data Locking Ownership is enabled, allowing the following columns to be maintained:

1. Data Locking Owner: This property is created in the Organization dimension when data locking is enabled. The Owner property requires either teams or users, or both.
2. Person Responsible: The Person Responsible property is used to determine the owners. Users here can be inherited from the Owner property.
3. Reviewer: This is not used in data locking (it can be used in a calendar process).
4. Hierarchy: A hierarchy is required so that statuses of parents can be inherited by children, for example. Children inherit the locks of parents.

Version and Date are mandatory driving dimensions. The driving dimensions further define the specific intersection of data that will be locked.

For example, if you want to lock data for a specific member of an Organization dimension, you would need to include the Organization dimension as a driving dimension.

Select the data region for the lock. In the following example, 2021, Midwest, Forecast version is selected.

Select Show Grid to display a grid of the driving dimensions where you can set the lock state of each intersection:

• Open: Values are unlocked for this combination of members in table, and can be changed by any users who have permissions to enter values for the model.
• Restricted: Values can be changed only by a user who has effective ownership of locks on this combination of members. Select the restricted cell and select Add Owner under a driving dimension and choose one or more owners for the selected member of that driving dimension.
• Locked: Values cannot be changed for this combination of members in a table.

When you change the state for a parent member in a dimension, the same state is applied to its children as well. For example, if you lock North America, then the United States and Canada will also be locked.

In the example below, you select the Configure the Data Lock icon to open the Data Locking dialog. Then, after adding Entity as a new driving dimension, you select the Enable Ownership option. This prompts the system to look up owners from the Entity dimension. The Organization Type dimension is Entity, however, this depends on the dimensionality of the model as to which dimension is the Organization Type. For example, in cost center planning, the Cost Center dimension would be the Organization Type dimension.

• Data Locking Owner: Can contain one or more teams and users.
• Person Responsible: Can contain only one user.
• Review: A custom property and can contain only one user.

Performance in planning models depends on queries and planning actions. These two factors can be optimized to reduce processing time when working with large public versions.

By optimizing the planning area, you keep the data size manageable and can work on data that’s relevant to you. You can think of the planning area as a version’s data used for all planning actions, that you can filter out and refine for a private version. Its size will vary depending on the model settings. Optimizing the planning area is especially useful when you’re trying to limit the data size of a model with a large public version.

You enable optimization of the planning area in the Model Preferences, under the Data and Performance tab. Click the toggle under the Optimize Recommended Planning Area section. Select whether you want to limit the planning area based on data locking, data access control and model privacy, or both. Note that for both options to be effective, data access control and data locking must be enabled and configured.

You can limit the size of the planning area by using data access control, data locking, or both. This corresponds to the recommended planning area that decreases the size of a private version size when you create it based on data access and data locking.

• Data access restrictions give you access to the data for which you have write access.
• Data locking restrictions give you access to the data regions that are unlocked. When you edit a public version, or create a private one, the application stores a reduced data snapshot but still shows locked data outside of that snapshot.

When working with a public version in a story, the planning area filters the data based on what data you've permission to edit. Only data that you've edit permissions for will be put into edit mode. When creating a private version, you have the option to copy the recommended planning area to the private version. Data actions and multi actions only affect data within your planning area.

When using data locking, there are two related settings in data tables in stories:

1. Data Disaggregation: The data disaggregation settings provide more control over how values are spread from parent members to leaf members. Enabling the following options will change how data disaggregation will occur and prevent disaggregation to those locked (by data locking) or invalid (due to relationship validation) leaf members that would otherwise normally receive values.
2. Input Enablement: Some restrictions automatically make cells appear as read-only in a table, while other restrictions allow you to edit the values in restricted cells but won’t allow you to publish changes to restricted members.

In a story, you can set and view data locks by cell.

The statuses include:

• Open: Any user with the appropriate authorization can change the data.
• Locked: No one can change the data.
• Mixed State: A combination of open and locked statuses, for example, a parent will have a mixed state if one of its children has a different status.

Turn the indicators on or off in a story by going to More Actions → Show/Hide → Data Locks from the story table.

Data locks can be scheduled in the SAP Analytics Cloud calendar as long as:

• There's a single owner.
• There's no assignee support.
• There's no parent process.

If a user is logged on as the owner, they can change Restricted data.

If a user is logged on as a non-owner:

• Assuming they have the Planner Reporter role, they can’t change the data lock status.
• They can set the cell to ignore data locks and change the data but they can't publish it.

In order to use data locking, non-owners require a role that includes Read access to the Data Locking activity (in a role).

Visit the SAP Help Portal for more information on Permissions.