Importing Content to the SAP Analytics Cloud Content Network

Content that can be imported into your SAP Analytics Cloud tenant can be accessed by selecting either Transport or Content Network from the vertical navigation menu.

You can import:

1. Private Content
2. Samples
3. 3rd Party Content
4. SAP Business Content

Choose the type of content that you want to add to your SAP Analytics Cloud tenant. Once you select the content, a list of available packages is displayed. Any package that you have already imported to your system will have a check mark in the Imported column, as you can see in the previous image.

If you're importing content and you don't see the package you want, check the security settings.

1. Select Settings.
2. Toggle the Allow all the systems to share content switch.

   With the switch off, you only see content shared by the systems that you add to the table below. When you switch it on, you can block specific systems from using the table.

   
3. To block or allow imports from a specific system, select the Add System to block/allow content sharing icon, and enter the system URL.
4. Select OK, and then refresh the page to see an updated list of packages.

Select the package that you want to add to your system, opening a dialog for the selected content.

On the Overview tab, a summary of the import settings is displayed. If required, accept the terms and conditions to continue.

On the Import Options tab, you change select the required option for your import the Overwrite Preferences. If an object selected for import does not exist on your system, then the object is created, and its data will be imported. For objects that already exist in your system, the Overwrite Preferences determine whether to update the object and its data. You can select from the following options:

• Don’t overwrite objects or data: This setting prevents any existing objects in your system from being overwritten or updated with new data. You are notified if any of the objects selected for import already exist in your system. For example, you can choose this setting if you have replaced the data in an imported model with your own data and want to avoid overwriting this data.
• Overwrite data only: If you have made changes to the structure of an imported model and want to avoid losing those changes, then choose this setting. Data is imported into each object, but the objects themselves are not updated. The Privacy and Data Access Control settings for models, as well as the Permission settings for users and roles, remain unchanged.
• Overwrite objects and data: Objects on your system are overwritten and their data is updated. For example, you may choose this option if you are not using any of the content for business tasks.

  Select Remove permissions to remove data access and privacy permission settings from the overwritten content. The corresponding permissions assigned to each role are also updated. Use with caution, as this setting will overwrite object sharing settings.

If objects or data on your system will be overwritten by the import, a warning appears in the import dialog next to the relevant objects in the Content list. If you have made changes or enhancements to your sample content, follow the instructions in the Next Steps section of the warning to avoid losing your work.

In the Content list, choose which objects to import and whether to include the data for each imported dimension and model. You can select and deselect individual objects or types of objects, for example, models or stories.

The Impacted Object column shows warnings for objects that will overwrite content on your system.

Once Import is selected, the import process begins in the background.

• When the process is complete or if an error occurs, you receive a notification.
• If you selected Don’t overwrite objects or data or Overwrite data only, then a notification will let you know if any of the content wasn’t imported to avoid overwriting existing content.
• At any point in the import, you can check your notifications to track the process as shown in the following image.
  

To view the log of updates and imports for a package, select the package and choose History from the toolbar. Select Import Summary to view a detailed list.

After the initial import of content, there may be a need to update the content in the destination system. For example, if there were updates made to a story or a model in the development tenant and this content should now be updated in the production tenant.

For subsequent updates of content, there are few things to consider:

1. Use Overwrite objects and data to update content. Of the three import options, this is only option that will update the content that already exists in the destination environment.
2. Avoid using the Remove permissions option on subsequent updates.
3. Updates to import data models and public dimensions require additional considerations:
   • Data import jobs for the model are updated, so the jobs will have to be modified in the destination system to point to destination data sources.
   • Dimension data access control settings are reset regardless of the overwrite permission settings. They must be manually setup again in destination system.
   • Avoid updates to connections. In the following example, Connections has been deselected to exclude them from the update.
   • Choose whether to include or exclude model data during import based on scenario. Use this option, if the model structure will be updated and you would like to retain the existing data that's in the model in the destination system.
4. For live models, deselect any connections in the Content table before importing.
5. For objects such as stories and applications, deselect the dependencies such as models and connections during import, unless they are necessary.

When an object is transported from one environment to another, it maintains its unique ID. For this reason, it is possible to have two objects with the same name in a tenant after the promotion of content from one tenant to another. For example:

1. A user creates a story called MyStory in the SAP Analytics Cloud production tenant. It is given a unique ID, in this example ID 1.
2. An analyst creates a story called MyStory in the SAP Analytics Cloud development tenant. It is also given a unique ID, in this example ID 2.
3. MyStory is transported from the development tenant to the production tenant.
4. The production tenant now has two stories with the name MyStory. As each story has a unique identifier, the system simply adds the new story to the production tenant.

During lifecycle management, objects updates are done based on IDs:

• If the ID matches, then the object is updated with the imported content.
• If the ID doesn't match, then a new object is added.

Duplicate object names can be prevented:

1. Transport object that are created in production into development environment. In the example used in this lesson, MyStory with ID 1 should have been transported to the development tenant and updated instead of a new MyStory object being created.
2. Make updates to the content in development environment.
3. Transport the updated object back to production.

The objects IDs match in this case between development and production, so there are not duplicate objects.