SAP BPC Certification Books (BPC 410,BPC420,BPC430,BPC 440)

SAP BPC Certification Books (BPC 410,BPC420,BPC430,BPC 440) Hi Are you looking for SAP BPC Certification Books 1.BPC 410 (Aprial; 2012) 2.BPC 420 (2012) 3.BPC 430 (2012) 4.BPC 440 (2012) 4 Books (399$) Discount price 99$ Only  Paypal ac : sapmdmtutorials@gmail.com    Once you pay the money send a conformation mail to info@sapnwtraining.com  We will send Download links.   for more information  info@sapnwtraining.com   SAP BOBJ  Certification Materials (BOCE10,BOE310,BOW310,BOX310,BOX310 Dashboard,BODS30)  :  BOCE10  Crystal Reports :Fundamentals of Report Desing  (2011) BOE310  Business Objects Business Intelligence Platfrom : Administration And Security (2011) BOE320  SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform:Administering Servers (Windows)(BOE320) (2011) BOW310  Interactive Analysis Report Design I (2011) BOX310  SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0: Core (BOX310) SAP BusinessObjects - Business Intelligence (2011) BOX310  SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0: Core (BOX310) (2011) BODS30  Data Services - Data Quality Management (2011) 99$   Paypalid:sapmdmtutorials@gmail.com Send me conformation mail to info@sapnwtraining.com

Posted on: 14 August 2012 | 1:24 pm

The Little Known Avenue of Influence: The Customer Broadcast Series

A few months ago, I received an invitation to participate in the Customer Broadcast Series.  Having never heard of the program – and, unless you or your company have participated, I’m guessing you haven’t either – the message indicated that I was recommended to present by Jens Koerner.  Jens had recently heard me present my company’s story of our SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation (“BPC”) implementation at the ASUG Fall Focus: Roadmap to ROI event and thought I’d be a good candidate to participate in the program. What I came to realize through the email invitation, as well as the link provided above, is that the Customer Broadcast Series is yet another way that you can “positively influence product direction based on your implementation experiences, use cases and plans for future use”.  As such, it’s another feedback mechanism that provides direct access to SAP’s Solution Management and Product Development teams.  Other avenues of influence include CIO Councils, Influence Councils/Focus Groups, Usability Activities and participating in Ramp-Up for given products, but those tend to require longer-term commitments or travel to conferences in order to participate.  Of course, the latest avenue of influence—Idea Place—is still in beta, but BPC is one of theproducts for which ideas can be submitted and Idea Place doesn’t require much beyond simply posting your suggestions for improvement. The great thing about the Customer Broadcast Series is that SAP customers (and not just big, well-known customers) get direct, one-on-one exposure to SAP employees for the length of the webcast, which is typically 45-minute presentation and a 15-minute question and answer session.  Customers aren’t required to invest any additional time or dollars other than time spent on developing the presentation.  Since the webcast is only open to SAP employees, customers also don’t have to worry about being completely open about their implementation experience at the risk of sharing secrets with competitors or sounding overly critical in front of other customers if things didn’t exactly go smoothly during the implementation. The Presentation Itself After receiving the invitation to participate, I asked Jens whether I should just give the presentation that I delivered at Fall Focus, and his response was that it was my forum to talk about “the good, the bad and the ugly” of our implementation.  Given that insight, and coupled with the instructions in the invitation, I used the bulk of my existing presentation which covered such items as our implementation timeline, resources utilized on the project and how we integrated BPC with our existing BW system; however, I added some results from our recently completed internal questionnaire that our BPC users completed, as well as some pain points of our solution and some ways that we envision using BPC in the future.  I’d say that I didn’t spend more than a few hours in coming up with the presentation that I’d deliver. As far as logistics go, SAP handles sending out the invitations and setting up the webcast environment so that all I had to do was to login to the webcast software a few minutes before the presentation was to begin.  The session was even recorded and posted to SAP’s internal portal so that those interested in viewing the presentation but unable to participate in real-time can watch when they have an opportunity. The presentation itself was pretty much a breeze for me (although it’s more difficult than I’d thought it would be to sit in a room and talk at my computer for 45 minutes and not be able to see heads nodding or people dozing off), as I’d delivered the bulk of it several times at various ASUG events and internal training sessions.  Some of the participants on the call had some thoughts on some potential solutions for a few of our paint points and I fielded a few questions from the participants and, for the most part, I’d like to think that the webcast went off without a hitch. The Hidden Benefit About a week or two after the Customer Broadcast, I was greeted with an email from James Lim of the BPC RIG team as he wanted to inquire further about one of our product (rather than process) related pain points.  After exchanging a couple of emails and speaking on the phone, I was able to convey our pain point (not being able to either sort or search for a particular dimension member when utilizing the EVDRE: Insert Member function in our BPC input schedule) in as much detail that James needed to take back to the development team.  While I don’t believe that we’re the only customer who has expressed the desire for this functionality (based on conversations that I’ve had), I’m happy to say that a change is coming in a future BPC Service Pack that will solve our issue. Conclusion If you’re looking for an easy way to draw some attention to your implementation and are willing to share “the good, the bad and the ugly” of your experience with SAP, the Customer Broadcast Series is a great way to provide feedback and help drive the future of the products that you’re using.  Who knows, maybe you can get some of your pain points resolved as well.

Posted on: 14 August 2012 | 1:20 pm

Note 1657623 - SAP Buffer Tuning for BPC 10NW

Summary Symptom Prior to this note, it was not clear which SAP buffers were used for BPC Meta/Master Data server side caching.  This meant that SAP buffer sizes had to be calculated manually and the tuning/sizing of these buffers specifically for BPC NetWeaver was a difficult process Other terms BPC Performance, BPC Memory Management, BPC System Tuning, BPC Server Caching Reason and Prerequisites The default profile parameters related to SAP buffers are not optimized for the new BPC NetWeaver Meta/Master Data caching mechanism.  These new caching mechanisms in BPC NetWeaver rely heavily on having sufficient sizes set for specific SAP buffers.  If these SAP buffers are not configured correctly for BPC NetWeaver, then BPC Meta/Master Data cannot be fully cached within the Application Server Memory.  If the BPC Meta/Master Data is not fully cached, additional overhead will be added to the back end server runtime due to direct database access and this will impact the overall performance of BPC NetWeaver. Solution The buffer parameters listed below must be set to an appropriate size in order to properly utilize server side caching of BPC Meta/Master Data. SAP Table Buffer ( See note 480710 for details ) Parameter: zcsa/table_buffer_area Parameter: zcsa/db_max_buftab Shared Object Buffer ( See note 1657612 for details ) Parameter: abap/shared_objects_size_MB This buffer is only used when shared memory is turned on for BPC NetWeaver. Please see note 1657612 for additional details on how to enable shared memory for BPC NetWeaver. Export/Import Buffer ( See note 702728 for detail ) Parameter: rsdb/obj/buffersize Parameter: rsdb/obj/max_objects You only have to adjust this buffer if note 1634921 is applied or BPC 10NW has been upgraded to SP04 After applying this note or upgrading to BPC 10NW SP05, you can run the report UJA_BPC_BUFFER_SIZER to calculate the recommended size of the buffers listed above. Note The buffer sizes are calculated based on the total volume of Meta/Master Data for the BPC Environments specified; it does NOT take other SAP Applications into account. You must determine the final profile parameter values by combining what is calculated by the tool along with all other external factors (such as hardware capacity of your server, and usage of the buffers by other applications). You will need to re-adjust the parameters when the meta/master data volume grows dramatically. BPC 10 NetWeaver will not use the Shared Object Buffer by default. As of SP05, you can switch it on in the IMG after you have set it to an adequate size. Please see note 1657612for additional details on how to enable shared memory for BPC NetWeaver. If profile parameter zcsa/table_buffer_area is greater than 2GB and your Application Server is on a 32bit platform, you need to adjust shared memory pool 19 to '0' ( profile parameter: ipc/shm_psize_19 ).

Posted on: 22 February 2012 | 9:23 am

Business Objects Planning and Consolidation(BPC) - Data Push from BPC Cube to BW Cube through APD

Scenario This scenario will show how to push data from BPC Application to BI Introduction The Data Manager module in SAP Business Objects Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP NetWeaver, utilizes SAP NetWeaver Process Chains, and provides a way for business users to execute these chains via Data Manager Packages. Technical Information to the developer: Since this development is involved the push data to BI for reporting. 1) A query is developed on BPC application Multi provider. The Bex query is referenced in APD. The filter setting will be done inside the query designer for everytime the user likes to change the selection in pushing the data from BPC. 2)  Create the required BI structures (InfoCube, DSO[Direct Update, Standard], InfoSource, DTP) as shown in screen shot below 3) Data is pushed through APD : Below is the screen shot for the data flow in BI through APD. Here we are assigning source field to Target. This is a ABAP routine that need to be developed according to the requirement source fields (BPC) to target fields (BI) mapping. Finally the data is sent to BI direct update DSO in BI and then from Direct update DSO to Standard DSO further to target cube on which BI reports  will be developed. 4) Create the Process Chain that will be triggered from BPC Data Manager. This process chain is created on APD, which is pushing data from BPC cube to BI cube as mentioned in above screenshots. 5) Create DM package inside BPC application to trigger the Process Chain Chavi Jindal   I am SAP BI-BPC & ABAP Certified Consultant. Having overall experience over 5.6 years. I have worked for couple end-end implementation projects as well as support projects.

Posted on: 22 February 2012 | 8:29 am

BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Consulting

Many companies wonder that SAP strategy is used for business planning and consolidation with the recent trend in business objects and outlook soft. Let's see how SAP has been incorporating the outlook soft technology into business planning and consolidation. And let also see how these application can be compared to the existing SAP and business application. Business Planning and Consolidation – BPC is a tool and is a part of SAP enterprise performance management. BPC Consulting is one of the components of SAP that is focused on financial performance management. It is used to help the organization to manage their financial planning, consolidation and strategic reporting needs. The current business planning and consolidation comes in two version. One is to integrate the SAP net weaver and the other is a standard Microsoft version that is used to accommodate the current outlook soft technology. EPM – Enterprise Performance Management is a new module that improves the integration among the financial performance management tool and the other SAP applications like net weaver, BI, and GRC (SAP Governance, Risk and Compliance). As a part of this module SAP introduces BPC consulting. This application can be used as a choice to move forward in budgeting, planning, forecasting, and financial consolidation. After the implementation of business objects and outlook soft, SAP found an overlap of products and made a decision to place the duplicate product in maintenance mode. This is made possible with a clear articulated maintenance rules, migration kits, and declaration of functional parity. BCP Consulting expertize in working with multinational corporate managers and executives in order to meet their organizational and professional goals. With the help of BPC, a team can be made more effective and efficient by raising their profile among the high competitive corporate environment.

Posted on: 21 February 2012 | 11:31 am

SAP definitive strategy for planning technologies moving forward: What the word on BPC, BI-IP and SRC?

What is happening to BI-IP? BI-IP is not disappearing and continues to be supported by SAP to 2013 (2016 with extended maintenance). For any customers who are currently implementing BI-IP, SAP recommends you continue on your BI-IP project, and evaluate BPC for your future needs. SAP will continue to invest further in BI-IP as a "planning engine" (or "planning framework"), rather than as a planning toolset as it is today. The idea behind this change is that planning applications from SAP can then be developed on top of the planning engine. Does that mean BPC will sit on top of BI-IP in the future? Firstly, it is important to understand that BPC has a "dual-stack" release strategy. When SAP acquired OutlookSoft, the product ran completely on a Microsoft platform (Windows Operating System; SQL Server; Analysis Services; Reporting Services; DTS/SSIS, etc). SAP is continuing to invest strategically in the Microsoft based version of BPC to maintain our commitment to customers (the official name is "SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for the Microsoft platform", but it is sometimes unofficially referred to simply with an "M" suffixed after the release name... e.g. BPC 7.0 M, would refer to version 7.0 of BPC running on the Microsoft platform). While the Microsoft platform is suitable for many customers, there are also a lot of SAP customers who run NetWeaver BI, and want to leverage their NetWeaver BI system. Therefore, since the acquisition of OutlookSoft, SAP has been working on integrating BPC to the NetWeaver BI platform. The official name for this release is "SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP NetWeaver", and is sometimes unofficially reffered to with a "NW" suffix, to indicate the NetWeaver based version of BPC (e.g. BPC 7.0 NW). So, there are 2 flavors of BPC - one based purely on Microsoft technology, and the other that is NetWeaver based. Customers can freely pick which platform they prefer, and SAP is continuing to invest in both versions going forward. Now the dual-stack release strategy is clear, obviously the pure Microsoft based version of BPC will not have any integration to BI-IP. For the first NetWeaver based version of BPC (BPC 7.0 NW), there will be integration to some aspects of the BI-IP engine. For example, BPC leverages the write-back functions and locking engine of BI-IP, and, under some circumstances, it will also use the same functions for reading data out of a cube too. However, to be perfectly clear - while BPC 7.0 NW does use some of the same the core engine components from BI-IP, BPC 7.0 NW does not use, and there are no future plans to use, aggregation levels/filters/queries/etc. Another important distinction to make is that BPC is, intentionally, not directly integrated into the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), but operates in its own namespace in the NetWeaver BI system. This means that you can't use the BPC client/front-end for reading and writing out of an existing InfoProvider in your system. The reason why this was an intentional design decision, is that if BPC was completely integrated into the EDW, with its shared dimensional model, no business users would ever be able to maintain their own applications (like creating their own dimensions or "characteristics" in NetWeaver BI terms) without impacting the whole EDW. Obviously, no IT department would ever want to allow business users to make changes to the entire EDW. Instead, BPC allows the users to modify the structure of the cube, create their own hierarchies and properties of dimensions (or "attributes of characteristics" in NetWeaver lingo), etc - all from within the BPC application, using a very business-user friendly UI that any business analyst would be comfortable with. In contrast, these types of modeling capabilities are not even available in BI-IP. In BI-IP, you have to go into the NetWeaver BI Administrator Workbench (RSA1) to do any real modeling, because all BI-IP modeling is done "on top of" the cubes. BPC on the other hand directly integrates to the underlying InfoCubes/InfoObjects, etc. So, this design approach actually maximizes the flexibility of the solution AND puts all of this power into the hands of the business without reliance on IT! I have to say, we are pretty proud of this functionality too! In terms of future integration, SAP continues to evaluate the individual features/functions in releases beyond the upcoming 7.0 and 7.0M releases. That means we will evaluate BI-IP capabilities for future BPC releases, but it is not the intention to have BPC leverage every single feature/function provided in BI-IP as soon as possible. Rather, we will be gathering feedback on the BPC 7.0 NW release, prioritizing any enhancement requests, and then evaluating what we might be able to leverage from BI-IP to fulfill those requirements. One topic that we are strongly evaluating is around leveraging FOX functions in BPC - but if and when this would happen is still being discussed. So BPC won't be a new front-end on top of BI-IP? No. It is not our intention to just make BPC a front-end tool. BPC is a complete planning application that will leverage some of the core engine components from NetWeaver BI and BI-IP, but it will not become just a front end tool. But I heard that BPC isn't scalable. Should I choose BI-IP for large deployments? No, this is not true. There are many customers on the pure Microsoft platform with large deployments of BPC with thousands of users, so it's simply untrue to say that BPC isn't scalable. It is also important to note though the scalability must be evaluated in the context of an application function. BPC is a "Performance Management application" and was never designed to store line item detail - it is not a data warehouse. BPC 7.0 NW will also be available directly on NetWeaver BI in a matter of weeks, and most readers probably already know that the SAP NetWeaver BI platform is highly scalable with many customers publicly lauding its ability to reach Terabyte data volumes (although again it is important to note that regardless of platform, BPC is still not intended to be a data warehouse!). Furthermore, BPC cubes in the NetWeaver BI release will be able to utilize the BI Accelerator to further improve scalability and performance. When will BPC 7.0 NetWeaver be available and where can I get more information? BPC 7.0 NW will be available in Ramp Up at the end of July 2008. Ramp Up's do not go for a fixed period of time at SAP, so a precise General Availability (GA) date is not known, however the initial expected length of a Ramp Up is approximately 6 months. In terms of requirements, BPC 7.0 NW will require NetWeaver BI 7.0 Enhancement Package 1, and BPC will technically be installed as an Add-On to the BI system. Currently, as the product is still not even in Ramp Up yet, little information has been published on the 7.0 release at this point in time. Obviously, as we get into the Ramp Up, this will change and we will begin releasing much more information (to the Ramp Up customers first). If you or a customer you're working at, is looking to implement BPC this year and wants to go with the NetWeaver version, customers should contact their SAP Account Executive, who can ensure they receive answers to their questions. I am also planning on publishing another blog soon to dispel (or confirm) some of the rumors around what BPC 7.0 NW is and is not, so look for that shortly. I also want to mention here that there will be a migration tool which supports customers who implement BPC 5.1 now (on the Microsoft platform), and later wish to migrate to the NetWeaver version. Obviously, there are very major architectural differences between the releases, so the migration tools will only be able to automate so much (for example, any custom DTS/SSIS tasks would need to be rebuilt manually), but we have been able to automate a significant portion of the migration. As above, more detailed documentation on the migration tools will be forthcoming closer to the release date. Will there be any migration tools to go from BPS or BI-IP to BPC? Currently, we are still evaluating the feasibility of such a migration. There are major differences in the way these products work, so an automated migration would be very difficult and would not give you any opportunity to leverage a lot of the additional functionality in BPC. So SAP will continue to evaluate providing such tools in the future, but there are no firm plans in place today to develop these migration tools. Will BPC allow me to customize a solution as much as I could with BI-IP? Absolutely. If you wish to do a lot of customization, BPC is an extremely flexible and extensible solution, so you feel totally comfortable that you will be able to tailor the solution to your individual needs. For example, you can create custom stored procedures (or ABAP logic in 7.0 NW) for completely custom planning functions; you create custom ETL tasks (in SSIS in Microsoft, or Process Types in NW); there are exits for custom VBA logic on the front-end; there are API's available completely customized application; and many, many other types of places where you can customize the solution. The great thing about BPC that is so enciting to customers is that end-users don't have to know any of these more technical topics to build an application - they are there if you want them, but you aren't forced to learn them to build powerful applications quickly. Why would I want to go with BPC instead of BI-IP? Every single planning product on the market, no matter which vendor it is from, will have its own set of strengths and weaknesses. So you can try and do a side by side feature/function comparison, and you will find there will be a few features and functions in BI-IP that arent in BPC, and this should not be a surprise. On the other hand, SAP obviously acquired OutlookSoft because it contained a lot of additional functionality not found in BI-IP/BPS. I know this better than most as I was the person responsible for the functional and technical analysis of OutlookSoft before the acquisition, and I have had a long NetWeaver and SEM background before this so I know all our existing products in detail too. However, doing feature/function comparisions is really missing the strategic value BPC offers. The most important points to consider are: SAP is developing and investing heavily into BPC. As I mentioned, BI-IP as an engine will still be invested in, but for creating planning applications, BPC is the product that SAP is investing in heavily, with a large development team and significant go-to-market focus. BPC provides integrated Planning, Reporting and Financial Consolidations. SAP is also investing in BPC as both a planning and consolidation product with excellent financial reporting capabilities. That means BPC is uniquely positioned as a unified solution that is capable of both planning and consolidations and financial reporting in a single system. Even if you arent looking to implement consolidations now, having a single system where you can leverage all of the same master data, metadata, and application artifacts is a huge advantage. BPC is administered by Business Experts, not by IT. For any IT owned systems, a very significant pain point for an end user is having to wait for IT to make their requested changes. Because BPC can be maintained by the business, it puts the power back in their hands. This concept is often a hard pill to swallow (at least initially) for IT as it can be a little scary to think of putting this much power into the hands of the business. However, with some reflection, it is evident that if the business doesn't get the changes they want in a timely manner, they just turn to using spreadsheets, and this is much worse! In BPC, the system and data are still centralized, and that gives IT the opportunity to govern and monitor the changes while not becoming a bottleneck during the process. It really is the best of both worlds. Fast implementations and best in class usability. BPC really has one of the best user experiences of any product in the market (we will be sure to get some new demos of BPC 7.0 NW onto SDN very soon so you can see this for yourself), and the implementation times for BPC are quite rapid. Faster time to delivery, combined with better usability means happier users and better adoption throughout the business. Integration to FPM (Financial Performance Management) suite and Business Objects BI. The 7.0 releases will contain new functionality and the NetWeaver BI integration, but in the future, SAP is also integrating BPC into the overall FPM suite of products (including Strategy Management and Profitability and Cost Management), and the Business Objects BI toolsets. Customers continue to validate SAP BPC is the right choice. Everyday we are seeing an unbelievable amount of interest in BPC. There are many independent analysts validating the strategy to go forward with BPC, and we are seeing customers are constantly selecting it as their solution of choice: "SAP reported that over the past several months more than 100 customers worldwide purchased SAP® solutions for enterprise performance management with the intention to replace Hyperion solutions from Oracle." http://www.sap.com/usa/company/press/press.epx?pressid=9100 Extensive Product Functionality. There are a lot of capabilities in BPC that are really impressive. To name just a few: Work Status, Business Process Flows, Word and PowerPoint integration, the guided Action Pane across all user interfaces, Data Auditing, Dimension Member formulas that save having to create and maintain multiple Structures, Dynamic Templates for reporting, Books and Distributor/Collector functionality, Park'N'Go for offline planning, tight Excel integration allowing for advanced reports to be created using just Excel without any other client tools. SAP BPC Interview Questions

Posted on: 21 February 2012 | 11:30 am

SAP Business Planning and Consolidation-Introduction

  SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP Net Weaver is a robust planning and consolidation application that can meet all of your budgeting, planning, consolidation, and reporting requirements. It supports the full array of top-down and bottom-up financial and operational planning needs as well as consolidation processes necessary to ensure the smoothest, most timely financial close possible — all through a single application. As a result,you gain the confidence to meet increasingly stringent regulations and reporting requirements across the globe. BPC Overview BPC Administration The Administration module allows administrators to perform setup and maintenance tasks for Business Planning and Consolidation applications. Activities You can access the Administration module by going to http://<server>/osoft and choosing BPC Administration . Select one of the application sets for which you have administrative rights.You can use the Connection Wizard to refresh the list of application sets, if necessary. Note : If you get a prompt to update files, select Yes . BPC for Office: The BPC for Office client includes interfaces for Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. These interfaces leverage your familiarity with the Microsoft Office applications of Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, enabling you to collect, analyze, and store financial data and efficiently distribute enterprise performance management reports. The interface for BPC for Excel is  the primary interface you use, complemented by features of the interfaces for BPC for Word and BPC for PowerPoint. Features With BPC for Excel, BPC for Word, and BPC for PowerPoint, you can perform the following tasks: •   Utilize the powerful and flexible formulas and functions within reports and input schedules to retrieve, display, and submit data for a real-time view of the financial position of your organization. •  Use predefined report and input schedule templates that you can also customize to meet your specific business requirements. •  Instantly change the information you see in a report or the entities, accounts, time period, and so on of input data simply by changing your current view. •  Display accurate, live data from the database within Microsoft Excel worksheets, Microsoft Word documents, and Microsoft PowerPoint slides. •  Analyze data in reports, perform data entry in input schedules, and distribute information based on user access rights when you are completely offline from the system. •  Submit budgets with a wide range of supporting attachments in the form of spreadsheets, documents, and presentations

Posted on: 18 February 2012 | 6:21 am

SAP BPC 7.5 Netweaver Frequently Asked Questions

TELL ME BREIFTLY ABOUT UR PROJECT? What dimensions u took in your project? Secondary dimensions for entity and category? Mandatory dimensions for currency translation? What is EVHOT, EVCGP? What is offline distribution? What u know about Work status, is parent is highest or owner? Explain your applications? Tell me about budgeting process in your application? What dimensions u used for budgeting? Why u used macros? What method u used in macros? In bi system where do u go and check the code? What is the mandatory thing u need to do in input schedule before sending the data? What is NPV in budgeting? How many tables in DSO? In bi system where u go and check the cube? What is static and dynamic report and when u makes it static and dynamic? Did u use your own packages? How transaction upload takes? Gold Stone Hyd: What are Roles & Responsibilities you involved in? Business Blue Print? Did you created Application set or Copied from existing one? Max No of Dimensions there in Consolidation application? What are Mandatory Dimensions? Rate & Ownership? Work Status? Admin & Excel? Reference Dimensions? How you create Balance Sheet in BPC by keeping Category in Rows and Time in Columns? Member Set Option( BAS, ALL, SELF)? Where you Implemented Script Logic? How you resolve Loops? Difference Between Webi and Deski? Live Data / Static Data? What is Xcelsius? Aggregate Awareness? Static Data /Dynamic Data which one you build in BPC? Can you do reporting and input schedule on single report? Distribution ( BPC Office)? Publishing? SAP Manila Interview: What is the mandatory thing for currency conversion? How is budgeting done? What forecast have you done? To what extent you have the data? For how long you went for the prediction? At what level you did the planning? What did you do with the final result? How the retraction is done? Blue Print Stage? Decisions? How u understand the Client business? Managerial consolidations Factors and developed reports? HP Chennai: Significance of  NEWID? Tell me some Dimensions and their Properties? Tell me about Option Range? What is the Use of NO SEND function? Tell me about Expansion Range (ALL, BAS, Member, Self)? Tell me Currency Translation Set-Up? What is Rate Dimension? EVTIM? EVTRIM? Records added how will they add in BPC? Blue print Off Line Budget Process? Phases & Flow of project? Type of reports you created? Tell me about Cash Flow? Direct Flow and Indirect Flow? Tell me about Script Logic step by step? Do you know MDX? Customer Menu Creation Flow? BPF Security? Tell me about Transformation Files and Conversion Files? Where we will see Transformation Files? What is Flow Dimension? What are Mandatory Dimensions? What is Brokerage? Tell me about Get only range EV Function? How you did Currency Elimination? And Set Up? What is Default Logic? What are Business Rules? What are Custom Menu? Creation & Flow? What are Expert Routines? What are the Data Source types you used? Tell me about SSIS Package? PWC Mumbai: What are your Primary Responsibilities? Did you Used Scripts? Where? If I delete a Member of a Dimension what happened in transaction data? Tell me about scoping? What is lite optimization? Consolidation process? Inter-company elimination?  Matching & Booking? Why? Reports (Month /Year—5.1) (Month/Year/Day/Week Level in 7.0)

Posted on: 18 February 2012 | 6:11 am

What is SAP BPC

  What is SAP BPC SAP Business Objects Planning and Consolidation (formerly OutlookSoft) is a corporate performance management tool that can cater for all types of planning and forecasting, from simple small processes to complex multi layer processes, while also providing consolidation and easy to use reporting. SAP BPC offers a robust, multiuser platform, which is fully integrated with Microsoft Excel.  Initially leveraging off the power of Microsoft SQL Server and Analysis Services there is now another version that uses SAP Netweaver as its back-end database. Although similar, especially to the end user, these two versions of the product do offer different functionalities (see whitepaper) The main features of SAP BPC are: Multi-Dimensional The multi-dimensional nature allows users to “slice and dice” the data according their needs. Dynamic As SAP BPC utilises OLAP technology, this means that data is available as soon as it has been entered – no need to aggregate data! Workflow Management Enables an organisation to keep track of its progress through a budget/forecasting process

Posted on: 18 February 2012 | 5:30 am

BPC 7.5 CLIENT INSTALLATION SCREEN SHOTS

  BPC 7.5 CLIENT INSTALLATION SCREEN SHOTS Download links for Prerequisite softwares: Dotnetfx: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=262d25e3-f589-4842-8157-034d1e7cf3a3&displaylang=en msxml: http://www.microsoft.com/downLoads/details.aspx?familyid=3144B72B-B4F2-46DA-B4B6-C5D7485F2B42&displaylang=en msxml3: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=28494391-052B-42FF-9674-F752BDCA9582&displaylang=en vbrun60sp5: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bf9a24f9-b5c5-48f4-8edd-cdf2d29a79d5&displaylang=en vcredist_x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf&displaylang=en .Net framework 1.1 MSXML 4.0 Select “Install Now”. MSXML 3.0 Select “Install”. VB 6.0 Service Pack 5 VC++ 2005 Prerequisites installation is finished. Then install client software.

Posted on: 18 February 2012 | 5:25 am

BPC 10 MS/NW - Sending and retrieving comments in an EPM Add-in input form

Introduction Very frequently, while customers are opening their planning period to entity owners or managers, they would like to attach some comments, explaining their figures. In the new EPM Add-in, if you use the standard way of inputting or retrieving comments (via the comment button), you are not able to see them directly in Excel cells, but in an Internet Explorer window instead. In this blog, you will learn how to use the EPMCopyRange formula in order to dynamically send and retrieve comments in an EPM Add-in input form. Create your Balance Sheet input form Launch the EPM add-in and choose a valid Planning and Consolidation connection. Once logged-on, click the New Report button. Drag & Drop PRODLINE dimension in rows, TIME dimension in columns, and all other dimensions, ACCOUNT, CATEGORY, ENTITY, RPTCURRENCY, MEASURES, in page axis. Click on PRODLINE dimension in row axis, select All Product Lines account and Member and Descendants as for the relationship, and click the OK button. Then, click on TIME dimension in column axis, select 2012.TOTAL member and Member and Descendants as for the relationship, and click the OK button. Finally, on your page axis, select Third Party sales member for your ACCOUNT dimension, Budget member for your CATEGORY dimension, United States  member for your ENTITY dimension, LC member for your RPTCURRENCY dimension, and Periodic member for your MEASURES dimension. Then, move the Total placements on the top right, by accessing the Sheet Options and selecting the Top radio button on the General tab. On the same tab, check the Use as Input Form box, to allow data input. Then, on the Refresh tab, select the option Calculate parents in hierarchies (same as the SumParent option in former EVDRE reporting mode), and click OK. Your input form should look like below. Notice that APL member is calculated on the fly, as soon as you input a value in its children. Building the EPMCopyRange formula in order to allow comment input in this input form. Insert 5 new rows on the top of this sheet. In cell P2, enter following formula: =EPMSaveComment($O2,,$A2,$N$12,$A$6,$A$7,$A$8,$A$9,$A$10) Then, choose a grey background in cell O2. Then, in cell A1, type-in following formula and press Enter: =EPMCopyRange("000",TRUE,B2:P2) Note: “000” is the ID of your Default Report, TRUE is for rows expansion (FALSE would have been applied to the columns), and B2:P2 is the formatting range you’ve just defined for your data range. Finally, type-in Comment input in cell O11, and Comment send in cell P11, and click the Refresh button. At that point, type-in following comments and click the Send Data button: APL Comment in cell O13 FPS Comment in cell O14 RPG Comment in cell O15 SPT Comment in cell O16 STR Comment in cell O17 Result should be this one: Finally, hide column P and rows 1 to 4 for visibility purpose. You now have the last comment being displayed in the rows, following the defined expansion on the rows. BONUS You can use the same way of building the EPMCopyRange formula to retreive Work Status in an Excel cell. In fact, by having your Entities being displayed on the row axis, you can use the EPMWorkStatus formula (instead of EPMSaveComment in the example above), as the source range for your EPMCopyRange.

Posted on: 4 February 2012 | 12:08 am

EPM Add-in report with multiple Categories in SAP BPC, version for Microsoft and NetWeaver 10

EPM Add-in report with multiple Categories in SAP BPC, version for Microsoft and NetWeaver 10 With the new user interface in BPC 10, one might wonder how to create a report rendering two different Categories: Actual data for closed months and Plan data for the outlying months.  Follow the below instructions and you will impress your client in no time.  First, we need to create a property informing the system which months are closed or what the beginning Plan month is.   One way is to create a property on the Category dimension named OPENING_MTH and the administrator updates this monthly.  One advantage of this is your Categories can have different beginning months.  Another was is to create a property on the Time dimension (CLOSED) with valid values of “Y” or blank.  Either way will work and you should base your decision on the businesses requirements.  For this blog, we focus on the later and create a property on the Time dimension.  Create CLOSED Property on the Time Dimension Login to BPC 10 Portal and click Planning and Consolidation Administration. When the Administration tab opens, click Dimensions. Highlight the Time Dimension and click Edit Structure (at the top).  Be careful to not double-click on the Time dimension as that will take you to the Time dimension members.  Once you are in the Structure of the Time dimension, click Add and then select New Property. Type in CLOSED for ID and Name will default with CLOSED.  You can change the Name to something else that is more informative like Closed Actual Months or Actual Months.  Enter 1 (one) for the Number of Characters as this will be either a “Y” or blank.  Click OK to when finished. Save the dimension by clicking Save. Click Close when the dimension has finished saving. Either double-click on the Time dimension to open it or single click and choose Edit Members. Find the newly created CLOSED property when the Time dimension opens. Enter a “Y” in all months, quarters, and Years that are closed.  In the below, I have enter a Y for month January, February, March, April, May and Quarter 1 for 2010. Save and Process the dimension. When the splash screen asking to take the environment offline, click No. When the Time dimension has finished process, click Close. Now it is time to start configuring the actual report.  To do this, click on the EPM Office Add-in for Excel. Choose the correct model (in BPC 7.x, this was an application) and click OK. At the prompt, supply a valid user ID and password and click Logon. Since we are going to be creating formulas above the report, place your cursor in cell G7 and click New Report under the EPM ribbon. Drag the Account dimension to the Row axis and the Time and Category dimensions to the Column axis. Click the Category dimension to open the Member Selector.  If there are any members in the Selector Members box (on the left), highlight them and click the left arrow.  Choose Actual from the Dimension Members pane.  Ensure Member Only is selected for the expansion (at the bottom), and then click the right arrow.  Click OK when done. Click the Time dimension to open the Member Selector.  If there are any members in the Selector Members box (on the left), highlight them and click the left arrow.  Choose a single month and select Member Only in the Selection Relationship dropdown (bottom).  Next, click the right arrow to bring the selection into the Selected Members pane.  When finished, click OK. Click on the Account dimension and choose accounts that you have Actual data for.  In this example, I chose Context (Net Income) and to show the Member and Children.  Now that the report layout is complete, click OK. The report should look like below, assuming you used the same dimension members. In cell F1, type in the formula =EPMContextMember(,”Time”).  Since there is only one active connection, the first parameter can be left blank.  The function EPMContextMember is the new version of EVCVW from BPC 7.x.  Click OK when finished to save the formula. In cell G1, type in the formula =LEFT(F1,4)&”.01”.  In my environment, the months are represented by numbers (01, 02, 03, etc), but if you can just as easily have .JAN, .FEB, .MAR, etc.  This will be taking the current year in cell F1 and adding a suffix of .01.  Basically, our report will always start with the first month of the year, in this case January. In cell G2, type in the formula =EPMMemberProperty(,G1,”CLOSED”) where G1 is the first month of the year and CLOSED is the property you defined in the Time dimension.  EPMMemberProperty is the new version of EVPRO.  Again, since we are only using one connection, the first parameter can be blank. In cell G3, type in the following formula: =IF(G2=”Y”,”Actual”,”Plan”). In cell H1, type in the formula =EPMMemberOffset(,G1,1).  EPMMemberOffset() is the new version of EVTIM(). Next, copy the contents in cells G2 and G3 to H2 and H3, respectively. Copy the contents in cells H1, H2, and H3 out 10 (ten) columns to column R. Next, we need to manufacture the time dimension.  In order to do this, click in cell G5 and enter EPMMemberDesc(G1) for the first parameter.  Click OK when done. We are going to do the same thing for the Category dimension.  In cell G6, type in EPMMemberDesc(G3) to display the correct Category Member. Technorati Tags: Now, copy cells G5 and G6 out to column R. Click the Refresh Report and two different Category dimensional data will be rendered in the same report. Bonus: Now that you have created this, it takes one formula to create a Rolling 12 report.  In cell G1, enter the following formula, change the Time Current Context to 2010.Q2, and click Refresh: =IF(EPMMemberProperty(,F1,"Level")="Year",LEFT(F1,4)&".01",IF(RIGHT(F1,2)="Q1",LEFT(F1,4)&".01",IF(RIGHT(F1,2)="Q2",LEFT(F1,4)&".04",IF(RIGHT(F1,2)="Q3",LEFT(F1,4)&".07",IF(RIGHT(F1,2)="Q4",LEFT(F1,4)&".10",F1))))) Robert Marshall   is a member of the BPC CSA team sap bpc tutorials pdf, sap bpc tutorials, sap bpc tutorials download, sap bpc interview, questions, sap bpc interview questions pdf, sap bpc interview questions free download, sap bpc interview questions and answers

Posted on: 4 February 2012 | 12:06 am

How to manage scope changes with SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 10.0, Version for SAP Netweaver Starter Kit for IFRS? Part 7

Each blog introduces a practical guide that deals with the following questions: -          What are the regulation requirements that applies to the business case -          How to handle the business case in the starter kit for IFRS -          What are the impacts on the financial statements The business cases presented in these blogs are included in the set of data provided with BPC NW 10.0 Starter kit for IFRS. You can consult them in the database. Please, refer to the operating guide delivered along with the starter kit for further detail on the consolidation process. These blogs have been written by members of the SAP EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) Starter Kits & Innovations team that develops starter kits on top of SAP financial consolidation products, Financial Consolidation (FC) and Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC). The starter kits are preconfigured contents created to deliver business logic, to speed-up the application deployment and to provide guidance to help maximize advantages of the product. The contents provided in the starter kits consist of reports, controls and rules for performing, validating and publishing a legal consolidation in accordance with IFRS. SAP starter kits for IFRS are provided to BPC/FC customers at no additional charge; they can be downloaded from SAP service market place at http://help.sap.com/. Now to the seventh blog! Presentation of the business case Year 2013 P7 owns 100% interests of subsidiary PS7 and 100% interest of subsidiary PS71 A fair value adjustment has been accounted for in PS71: (USD6 000 – 33% deferred tax = USD4 000) A goodwill of USD6 000 has been posted on PS71 Year 2014 PS71 net income = USD15 000 At the end of Year 2014, PS71 is merged into PS7 PS7 increase its share capital with 2 000 shares (nominal value of USD10) à USD20 000 PS7 accounts for a share premium of USD65 000 (total equity USD85 000 – increase in share capital USD20 000) P7 individual accounts in 2014 (including intercompany accounts) PS71 individual accounts in 2014 (with intercompany accounts): Detailed merger of PS71 into PS7: PS7 individual accounts (with intercompany accounts): Practical guide Please click here to access the practical guide Acknowledgements to Laetitia Lamoureux, Caroline Verrier and Jean-François Bouillon from the EPM SK&I team for their high contribution to the "Consolidation Practical guide". Your comments about the contents are very welcome. Let us know what you wish to write about. http://forums.sdn.sap.com/forum.jspa?forumID=400 Facebook http://www.facebook.com/sapifrs Twitter http://twitter.com/SAP_IFRS_XBRL

Posted on: 4 February 2012 | 12:02 am

How to manage scope changes with SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 10.0, Version for SAP Netweaver Starter Kit for IFRS? Part 6

This series of seven blogs is dedicated to handling scope changes using “SAP® BusinessObjectsTM Planning and Consolidation 10.0, Version for SAP Netweaver Starter Kit for IFRS". The objective is to illustrate in the BPC Starter kit for IFRS some of the most frequent scope changes. Part #1: Acquisition of a subsidiary (full goodwill method) Part #2: Loss of control without any retained interest Part #3: Acquisition of further equity interests from Non Controlling Interests Part #4: Partial disposal of an investment in a subsidiary while control is retained Part #5: Step acquisition Part #6: Loss of control while retaining an interest - this blog Part #7: Internal merger between two subsidiaries Each blog introduces a practical guide that deals with the following questions: -          What are the regulation requirements that applies to the business case -          How to handle the business case in the starter kit for IFRS -          What are the impacts on the financial statements The business cases presented in these blogs are included in the set of data provided with BPC NW 10.0 Starter kit for IFRS. You can consult them in the database. Please, refer to the operating guide delivered along with the starter kit for further detail on the consolidation process. These blogs have been written by members of the SAP EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) Starter Kits & Innovations team that develops starter kits on top of SAP financial consolidation products, Financial Consolidation (FC) and Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC). The starter kits are preconfigured contents created to deliver business logic, to speed-up the application deployment and to provide guidance to help maximize advantages of the product. The contents provided in the starter kits consist of reports, controls and rules for performing, validating and publishing a legal consolidation in accordance with IFRS. SAP starter kits for IFRS are provided to BPC/FC customers at no additional charge; they can be downloaded from SAP service market place at http://help.sap.com/. Now to the sixth blog! Presentation of the business case Year 2012 P6 (USD) purchased a 100% interest in subsidiary PS6 for USD125 000 PS6 Fair value of net assets is USD100 000 A goodwill of USD25 000 was recognized. Year 2013 PS6 Profit for the year = USD20 000 Year 2014 P6 disposes 75% of its equity interest in PS6 for USD115 000 P6 resulting 25% on PS6 is classified as an associate under IAS28 and has a fair value of USD38 000 P6 individual accounts in 2014: PS6 individual accounts in 2014: Calculation of the gain on sale of 75% of PS6:   Fair value adjustment on 25% retained interest of PS6:   Goodwill on the 25% of PS6 Practical guide Please click here to access the practical guide Acknowledgements to Laetitia Lamoureux, Caroline Verrier and Jean-François Bouillon from the EPM SK&I team for their high contribution to the "Consolidation Practical guide". Your comments about the contents are very welcome. Let us know what you wish to write about. http://forums.sdn.sap.com/forum.jspa?forumID=400 Facebook http://www.facebook.com/sapifrs Twitter http://twitter.com/SAP_IFRS_XBRL

Posted on: 24 December 2011 | 2:12 pm

EVDRE Memberset Selector in Treeview

In SAP BPC 7.x EVDRE you may want to filter members according to both attribute values and/or member selections. You can find these complex selection examples in "Usage and Considerations of EVDRE" document like "SELF,DEP and ACCTYPE="INC",ID=Account:SalesKorea". For some of end users it may be complicated to hardcode this selection string into EVDRE Dimension Memberset field. For one of our clients we decided to leverage MS Excel VBA functionality to achieve easy selection of dimension members in an EVCVW functionality fashion. Of course you can argue we may achieve this functionality with defining hierarchies in dimension but I personally do not like to have many many hierarchies, and prefer flat dimension structure. Lets start with a EVDRE(1x1) in "Sheet1" which has material dimension in row expansion. As you can see Memberset is by default SELF,DEP. In Sheet2 prepare a EVDRE for only ROW expansion listing Material dimension and place properties which you want to construct hierarchy based on these properties. In BPC MS you can also use EVLST function but since in NW version you do not have this functionality it is better to use EVDRE. In Excel VBA Editor start with inserting a UserForm. You can use default controls like combobox, listbox, checkboxes but if you want to use Treeview you have to add Treeview control from "Additional Controls..." From "Additional Controls" list you can add Microsoft TreeView Control, version 6.0 Place Treeview and two command buttons into your UserForm. First command button will construct treeview from a selected region in Sheet2.  VBA coding will be similar to the below one: Dim nodItem As Node Dim rangeaddress As Range Dim level1 As Range Dim level1name, level1key, level1text As String Dim level2 As Range Dim level2name, level2key, level2text As String Dim dimmember As Range Dim dimmemberkey, dimmembertext As String Dim TreeView As TreeView Set TreeView = UserForm1.TreeView1 TreeView.CheckBoxes = True TreeView.Nodes.Clear Set nodItem = TreeView.Nodes.Add(, , "ROOT", "ALL") nodItem.Expanded = True level1name = "GRUPICI" level2name = "YAYINEVITEXT" Set rangeaddress = Worksheets("Sheet2").Range("B138").Cells For Each c In Worksheets("Sheet2").Range(rangeaddress.Value).Cells Set level1 = c.Offset(0, 1) level1key = level1name & "=""" & level1.Value & """," level1text = level1.Value Set level2 = c.Offset(0, 2) level2key = level2name & "=""" & level2.Value & """," level2text = level2.Value Set dimmember = c.Offset(0, 3) dimmemberkey = "ID=""" & c.Value & """," dimmembertext = dimmember.Value On Error Resume Next TreeView.Nodes.Add "ROOT", tvwChild, level1key, level1text TreeView.Nodes.Add level1key, tvwChild, level2key, level2text TreeView.Nodes.Add level2key, tvwChild, dimmemberkey, dimmembertext Next Second Command Button enables user to write selected nodes into a cell seperated with commas. Code for second button will be like this: Dim filterdestination As Range Set filterdestination = Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A2").Cells Dim TreeView As TreeView Set TreeView = UserForm1.TreeView1 Dim FilterString As String For Each tnode In TreeView.Nodes   If Not tnode Is tnode.Root Then     If tnode.Checked = True Then      FilterString = FilterString & tnode.Key     End If   End If Next If Len(FilterString) > 0 Then   FilterString = Left(FilterString, Len(FilterString) - 1)   filterdestination.Value = FilterString   Unload UserForm1 Else   MsgBox ("Please Select Material") End If Now our UserForm is ready for users to call, so place a Shape object in Sheet1 and assign a macro to this shape. When you click on shape object you will get a hierarchical representation of Material dimension like this After you select dimension members and attribute nodes and click on commandbutton2 as you can see comma seperated memberset is written to destination cell specified in code. Now you can pass these selected values to EVDRE Memberset field. In case of no selection you may want to use EVCVW option, so using an IF formula for checking empty selection will be beneficial. SAP BPC allows us to use flexibility of Excel, in this example I have tried to show a simple solution. I hope developers may add some simple but handy functionalities in coming service packs. You may want to examine a simple macro example without EVDRE's, download here Best Regards

Posted on: 8 December 2011 | 2:11 pm

BPC WebFolder maintenance program

Like any other solution BPC needs to be maintained and needs general housekeeping. Recently, I have been assisting customers with various performance related issue. One of the first things that strike me is that the general housekeeping of BPC is not being done. A simply example would be the maintenance of the WebFolders. (Please Note: This blog is applicable to the MS Version) The BPC WebFolders is like a file server, it still needs to adhere to best practises. In doing the performance troubleshooting, I often find that performing some basic maintenance on the WebFolders structure can go a long way in improving the overall performance of the SAP BPC solution.  General best practise recommendations are: Remove any EVDRE debug files Remove any files in the PrivatePublications that are older than 6 months Remove *.TMP files older than 6 months (You could remove all of the files, it is a copy of your imported data, technically speaking that data is already in the database) Remove *.LOG files older than 6 months Remove any inactive / old / backup reports or input schedules that are not being used This kind of housekeeping can be done manually at regular intervals, but it would be way better if this could be automated and scheduled. Hence the reason for this blog. I wrote a simple C# console application which recursively would go through the WebFolders and remove the files which need to be removed. It is a simple application which can be expanded to do more tasks. You can download the program from the following link: http://db.tt/QT1wwlaM You can download the source code from the following link: http://db.tt/FKRlfFwp How the program works.. Pre-Requites:  .NET 2.0 Framework Essentially the core of the program is in the config file. It is called MaintainBPC.exe.config In the file you will find the following configurable parameters which have to be amended to reflect your environment CleanWF_Log_File – This is the a log file where the operations of the program will get recorded to BPC_WebFolders_Path – This is the path of the BPC WebFolders Deletion_Period – This tells the program how old the files must be before deleting them Delete_Ext – This tells the program which files to delete, this is an important configuration parameter, as you don’t want to delete any input, reports, script logic files, etc Prod_Mode – this tells the program to move the files and not to delete the files (this provides an extra layer of security, as you will have to manually peruse the TobeDeleted folder before deleting the files ToBeDeleted_Path – this folder will be used when Prod_Mode is set to true This program has been tested on BPC 7.0 and 7.5. I haven’t tested it on BPC 10 MS version yet.  I am not a programmer, so I am pretty sure that there are ways of improving the program. Please Note: This program will not be supported by SAP product support and as not standard functionality nor delivered with SAP BPC. Please test the program thoroughly before deploying and RULE 1; always ensure that you have working backups. Hopefully this program will help out some of the customers in automating some of the maintenance around the BPC WebFolders.

Posted on: 6 December 2011 | 2:10 pm

BPC 10 for NetWeaver Authentication Scenarios

Overview One of the major differences in BPC 10 for NetWeaver from previous releases is that all client to server traffic from the EPM Add-In (Office client) and Web client go through NetWeavers WAS (Web Application Server) as opposed to the .NET server.  Since the web server performs authentication services, this change brings new options and security considerations to the table. Client Communication Overview As I alluded to earlier, there are two primary ways users access BPC 10: The EPM Add-In which is the new office client. The BPC Web client which has been totally redesigned in this release. Both clients access content in BPC by querying RESTFUL web services, which is similar to previous versions – just a different format.  Why am I going over all this?  The different clients each support different authentication mechanisms, in addition to the web services themselves.  The chart below provides an overview of what is supported where.  We will cover each scenario in more detail later on. Basic Authentication Basic authentication is used in the EPM Add-In by default and results in a prompt for your username and password during each login. This authentication type is not secure unless using SSL as usernames and passwords are only Base64 encoded.  Due to this, SSL should always be used when using basic authentication. HTML Form based Authentication HTML form based authentication is used by default by the BPC web client and results in an HTML form that prompts you for your username and password. Like basic authentication, form based authentication requires SSL (HTTPS) to be secure “across the wire”.   Due to this, SSL should always be used when using form based authentication. Client Certificate Client certificates are supported by both the EPM Add-In (for BPC 10 NetWeaver connections) and the BPC web client.  Users are not prompted for credentials when using client certificates, and as such it provides Single Sign On capabilities.  The configuration of client certificates is beyond the scope of this blog; however they basically work like this: The BASIS team installs an SSL certificate on the BW instances and enables the HTTPS protocol. The BASIS team then maps X.509 certificates to BW users (using STRUST, etc). The security or networking teams deploy user specific X.509 certificates to end users’ desktops. When a user executes a request, the client (either the EPM Add-In or web browser) verifies that it trusts the server certificate, and the server verifies that it trusts the client certificate allowing each side to validate each other’s identity before carrying out the request. Client certificates must be installed in the end users’ desktop certificate store to be used with the BPC web client or EPM Add-In.  Additionally, you must enable client certificates for the EPM Add-In connection by checking the Client Certificate checkbox and selecting the appropriate certificate in the connection manager. This authentication mechanism is convenient since it delivers SSO but comes along with more overhead then the other scenarios, since the X.509 certificates have to be maintained and deployed to end users systems. SAP Logon Ticket SAP Logon ticket’s allow users to obtain a ticket (which is stored in the form of a MYSAPSSO2 cookie) from one system and use it to authenticate to other trusted SAP systems.  SAP Logon tickets can also be used to generate reentrance tickets, which can be used by applications other than browsers (like the EPM Add-In) for authentication purposes without prompting users for credentials. This makes a number of single sign on scenarios possible.  For example: A user can login to the EPM Add-In from the BPC web client without being prompted for credentials using a reentrance ticket. A user can logon to an SAP Portal instance, connect to the BPC web client (as a new page in Portal Content) and launch the EPM Add-In while only having to log in once – at the Portal. A user can logon to an SAP Portal instance and launch the EPM Add-In directly while only having to login to the portal. Note – This doesn’t work out of the box, but I was able to create a relatively simple web application that can be deployed in an AS JAVA portal that enables this behavior.  It will be posted to SDN as an HTG soon. Like the basic and html form authentication models, it is crucial that all communication occurs over HTTPS to ensure that the MYSAPSSO2 cookie is not compromised.  This scenario also requires that the BASIS team configure the required SAP systems to “trust” each other. SAML 2.0 SAML 2.0 authentication is not used directly by any of the BPC clients at this time, but is supported by the BPC Web Services.  SAML 2.0 may be valuable for integration and custom development scenarios. Suggestions… I have but one suggestion and if you’ve made it this far, you probably already know what it is.  Whatever authentication mechanism(s) you chose to deploy, ensure you enable and use SSL / HTTPS.  Your network security auditors will thank you.

Posted on: 22 November 2011 | 5:38 am

Ownership Manager System Generated Proposals from SAP Business Objects Planning and Consolidation 10.0, version for Netweaver

Similar in function to the Dynamic Hierarchy Editor available in BPC 7.x versions, the SAP Business Objects Planning and Consolidation 10.0, version for Netweaver (BPC10NW), Ownership Manager allows the definition of complex holding/subsidiary relationships that can be time, category, and scope specific.  The organizational structures defined by Ownership Manager are also used by the Consolidation Monitor and the Controls Monitor to display and status the defined organizational levels. New to the Ownership Manager functionality is the ability for the BPC system to propose key consolidation parameters.  There are three main prerequisites for activating system calculations for ownership manager: 1. Model and Master Data requirements Ownership manager functionality requires a configured ownership manager model as defined by :  Ownership-based Hierarchy Requirements .  Summary requirements: Required member ids in the O_ACCOUNT (ownership model account) dimension: METHOD METHOD_SYS is populated by the system to store the generated proposal for the consolidation method PCON PCON_SYS is populated by the system to store the generated proposal for the consolidation rate POWN POWN is also known as the ultimate percent ownership of an entity by the holding company. It is the calculated share percentage based upon a specified calculation method (Direct Share or Group Share).  For the Direct Share calculation, the percent ownership is assumed to be 100% of the subsidiary ownership.  For Group Share calculations, the percent ownership is the product between the various subsidiaries percentages.  Example: Holding Company (H1) owns 70% of subsidiary (S1) and S1 owns 50% of subsidiary S2. Using the Direct Share method, the ultimate percent ownership of S2 is 50%. Using the Group Share method, the ultimate percent ownership of S2 is 35% (=70%x50%). directly or indirectly PCTRL PCTRL identifies the ultimate percent of control for each entity in a model.  Member ids used internally during Ownership Manager Calculations METHOD_SYS METHOD_SYS is populated by the system to store the generated proposal for the consolidation method PCON_SYS PCON_SYS is populated by the system to store the generated proposal for the consolidation rate POWN_SYS POWN_SYS is populated by the system to store the generated proposal for the financial interest rate, or percent shares owned. Shares Owned contains the number of shares and voting shares that an entity owns of another entity. PCTRL_SYS PCTRL_SYS is populated by the system to store the generated proposal for the percent of subsidiary control Required O_ACCOUNT Dimension Properties The IS_INPUT property for the O_ACCOUNT dimension identifies the dimension members which can be displayed in the Ownership Manager hierarchy display. 2. A Defined Method Business Rule: The Method Business Rule table supports the Ownership Manager calculations by identifying a relationship between a range of shares allowing a system derived consolidation method (METHOD) as well as a proposed Financial Interest Rate (PCON): indentifying source accounts Indentifying target accounts Indentifying source flows Indentifying target flows Note the unique syntax for identifying the share ranges.  0.20<,<=0.49 is interpreted by the system as a range definition:  “any value greater than 20%, through any value less than or equal to 49%”. 0.50<,<=1.00 is interpreted by the system as a range definition:  “any value greater than 50%, through any value less than or equal to 100%”. 3. Implementing a Cross Ownership Matrix Automatic ownership calculations require additional information to allow the ultimate ownership share ownership values.  An input schedule providing details on Percent Control and Percent Ownership data must be provided by entity and intercompany partner.  Data is saved to the OWNERSHIP model. In the following example: - Germany controls 80% of a UK subsidiary, and the UK subsidiary controls 60% of a French subsidiary - Germany owns a 70% share of a UK subsidiary, and the UK subsidiary owns a 50% share of a French subsidiary Note: Share and control data must be entered without any scope (group) specification (i.e.: S_NONE).  Once all prerequisites have been completed, the user can request system generated ownership manager calculation through the CALCULATE option available in the edit mode of the ownership definition: User can select the accounting principle for calculating the ultimate ownership and control (Direct or Group share methods). Checkbox options allow the user to update the “Current” sub column values for Method, Percent Consolidation, and calculated ownership percentages. A graphical illustration of the data flow between the three prerequisites:

Posted on: 22 November 2011 | 5:36 am

SAP Change and Transport System for SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for Microsoft platform

The requirement to integrate into a change control infrastructure refers to the set of concepts, procedures and tools involved in managing information related to the software or application lifecycle, i.e. application lifecycle management (ALM) from initial installation and deployment to end of maintenance and replacement. SAP Business Objects Business Planning and Consolidation, version for Microsoft platform (BPC MS), now supports the SAP Enhanced Change and Transport System (CTS+) to implement and operate proper change control procedures. BPC MS software objects, which had been changed and modified in a development system, can now be efficiently and effectively transported into pre-production and production systems. This facilitates the application’s compliance with IT management standards and practices, i.e. that software changes are quality assured before applied to any productive system. The assumption behind being that development activities are performed in development systems (DEV), changed or modified software objects are consolidated in consolidation systems (QAS), and after quality assurance, these changes and modifications are applied in productive systems (PRD). BPC MS supports the controlled transport of the following object types: Table 1: Transportable Objects of BPC MS SAP Change and Transport System (CTS) together with SAP Change Request Management (ChaRM) and SAP Change Diagnostics as part of SAP Solution Manager Diagnostics (SMD) provide the infrastructure and the tools to implement and support the processes and tasks of Software Change Management and Change Control. CTS organizes transport requests and transports objects between systems of a system landscape, i.e. a transport landscape. Enhanced CTS or CTS+ is an add-on to CTS which enables the transport of non-ABAP objects across CTS+ enabled systems. Another component of CTS, the Transport Management System (TMS), manages the distribution of transportable objects within the transport landscape and triggers their import/deployment into the target systems. BPC MS 7.5 (as of SP06) and 10.0 (as of SP01) are CTS+ enabled, i.e. make use of CTS to achieve the following goals: Transport changes and modifications through multi-tier product system landscape Avoid multiple changes and modifications in different dependent repositories Enforce similarity or equality of all systems in the product system landscape Record and control changes and modifications In essence, the purpose of transporting content with CTS is to ensure that two or more BPC MS systems maintain the same content - by transporting it from one system to another in a controlled way. Figure 1: Example of a BPC MS Transport Route in a Transport Management System BPC MS provides a user interface to easily work with Change and Transport System. The integration is part of the BPC MS Administration Client. The well-known BPC Action Pane offers the action “Transport Content with CTS” (or Ctrl + F8). The following screenshots are taken from a BPC MS 10.0 system. Figure 2: BPC MS Action Pane in the Context of Environment Tasks including Task Transport Content with CTS In sub-screen “Transport Content with CTS”, the transport object selection as well as transport request review is executed. Figure 3: BPC MS Environment Task of Selecting Changed Objects for Transport/Export For a detailed description of requirements and prerequisites, setup and configuration steps, as well as application and usage of CTS for BPC MS please refer to SAP Note 1582525 and SAP SDN article Using SAP Change and Transport Management for SAP Business Objects Planning and Consolidation. The functionality will be briefly introduced in SAP TechEd 2011 session ALM 219

Posted on: 22 November 2011 | 5:16 am

Demystifying Financial Consolidation Part I

In this blog series, we will be covering concepts related to financial statements consolidation. As the topic is bit complex for people from non-finance background, I will start from the basics covering each and every term, what it means, and relevant context and so on. In this series I won’t be covering how these things are implemented in BOFC or BPC but the functional knowledge required to implement it. Before moving on to this topic we need to understand why we are required to consolidate financial statements. We observe lot of merger/acquisitions happening around us every day, recently we have seen Google acquiring Motorola mobility for $ 12.5 Billion, Microsoft acquiring Skype for $ 8.5 Billion and the list is endless. These acquisitions were friendly acquisitions, means the management of Target Company wanted to sell the company to the acquirer, whereas in a hostile takeover Target Company management does not want to sell the company to the acquirer. Hostile takeover are portrayed in negative shade, than friendly acquisitions but both create and destroy value to the shareholders in long term depending on the post acquisition scenarios/synergy and on lot of other factors. Management of Target Company takes lot of steps to prevent acquisition in hostile takeover. If the company is owned more than 51 percent by one individual or group of people then hostile takeover can’t happen. Even if the acquirer company acquires 49 percent stake in the company it won’t be able to govern it or control it as rest of the 51 percent stake is with other party. We can take the case of Wipro, in it approx. 70 percent equity stake of the company is owned by Azim Premji and members of his family, therefore acquirer can’t acquire more than 30 percent in Wipro so hostile takeover can’t happen. Hostile takeover happens when the management of the target is not willing to sell the company, or if there is difference in the valuation of Target Company between target & Acquirer Company and lastly sometimes because of vested interests of management in the company. To prevent hostile takeover, the management of Target Company can takes lot of steps: Poison Pill: In it, the management of target company gives right to the existing shareholders to get more shares of the company at price far below than fair value. Current shareholders will get this option only when other company acquirers a certain percentage stake in the company. This way target company increases the cost of acquisition for the acquirer company and is beneficial for the shareholders. These again can be divided further, but we won’t be going deep in it. In 2004, News Corporation used this method to ward off acquisition from US cable group Liberty Media. It allowed its shareholders to increase stakes in the company at half the price if some acquirer buys more than 15 percent of the company i.e. company offered to its existing shareholders to buy new shares at half the price. White Knight: Management of the target company which is currently looked for hostile takeover looks for some other company whom they can sell their company at friendlier terms. Sometimes, management of the target company puts his own interest first, as in a hostile takeover most of the management is removed while in friendly acquisition it depends on the negotiation and sometimes current management is allowed to continue. Around three months back Teva acquired Cephalon by outbidding hostile acquirer Valeant. Teva offered 12 % percent premium to Valeant’s offer. Staggered Board of Directors: Instead of electing all the directors every year, in staggered boards only a fraction of the members of board of directors are selected every year. In this case, even though the acquirer company acquires majority stake in the target company, it takes 1-2 year to get actual representation in Board of members depending on the fraction of the members of boards of directors selected every year. Selling the crown jewels: management of the target company sells vital assets to make the target less attractive Greenmail or greenmailing is the practice of purchasing enough shares in a firm to threaten a takeover and thereby forcing the target firm to buy those shares back at a premium in order to suspend the takeover. There are lots of other tactics to discourage acquisitions by Target Company in case of hostile takeover; we can’t cover all of them in detail. These tactics are normally used in combinations instead of only one technique. We have seen normally staggered board of directors being applied along with Poison pill provisions. From the view point of Acquirer, it looks at the earning potential of the company, if it makes economic sense for it to acquire target company (Financial Analysis & Modeling), if it is in line with its strategic vision, if it will be able to realize synergy between both the companies, if it will be able to gain tax benefits out of it and so on. Whenever one company acquires another company, we need to write it in our books of accounts the money we paid to acquire the company, the assets we acquired and the liabilities we inherited. There are various methods of consolidating financial statements depending on the equity one holds in the target company. The basic rule is if acquirer holds between 0-20 percent, the stake will be valued at fair value, in case of 20-50 percent stake we opt for equity method and in case of 50-100 percent stake we go for acquisition method (purchase method in IFRS3 2004). According to new IFRS guidelines, if the company owns more than 50 percent stake in the target company it will be called as subsidiary and if the percentage stake lies in between 20 to 50 i.e. significant influencer it will be an associate. These guidelines also covers lot of scenarios like if the acquirer company owns more than 50 percent stake in the company but is not able to govern the company because of some reasons than we can opt for equity method and vice-versa i.e. if the acquirer owns between 20-50 percent but it is able to govern the policies of the target company then it can opt for purchase method. In the next blog, we will look at the various terms used in consolidating financial statements, their utility and how they are calculated like fair value, goodwill, ownership, control etc. Once we are clear with the basics, we will further look in detail acquisition method (purchase method), equity method and proportional method of consolidating financial statements Prior to 2001, we used to have one more method of consolidating financial statements i.e. pooling method, but the same was discontinued by regulatory bodies. We will also cover some of the differences between both the methods (Purchase and Pooling), though it is not required to understand it but knowing it will help us to appreciate the purchase method.

Posted on: 22 November 2011 | 5:15 am

How to manage scope changes with SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 10.0, Version for SAP Netweaver Starter Kit for IFRS? Part 1

This first series of seven blogs is dedicated to handling scope changes using “SAP® BusinessObjectsTM Planning and Consolidation 10.0, Version for SAP Netweaver Starter Kit for IFRS". The objective is to illustrate in the BPC Starter kit for IFRS some of the most frequent scope changes. Blog #1: Acquisition of a subsidiary (full goodwill method) - this blog Blog #2: Loss of control without any retained interest Blog #3: Acquisition of further equity interests from NCI Blog #4: Partial disposal of an investment in a subsidiary while control is retained Blog #5: Step acquisition Blog #6: Loss of control while retaining an interest Blog #7: Internal merger between two subsidiaries Each blog introduces a practical guide that deals with the following questions: -          What are the regulation requirements that applies to the business case -          How to handle the business case in the starter kit for IFRS -          What are the impacts on the financial statements The business cases presented in these blogs are included in the set of data provided with BPC NW 10.0 Starter kit for IFRS. You can consult them in the database. Please, refer to the operating guide delivered along with the starter kit for further detail on the consolidation process. These blogs have been written by members of the SAP EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) Starter Kits & Innovations team that develops starter kits on top of SAP financial consolidation products, Financial Consolidation (FC) and Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC). The starter kits are preconfigured contents created to deliver business logic, to speed-up the application deployment and to provide guidance to help maximize advantages of the product. The contents provided in the starter kits consist of reports, controls and rules for performing, validating and publishing a legal consolidation in accordance with IFRS. SAP starter kits for IFRS are provided to BPC/FC customers at no additional charge; they can be downloaded from SAP service market place at http://help.sap.com/. Now to the first blog! Presentation of the business case Practical guide Please click here to access the practical guide The Next Blog In the next blog of this series, we will look at the loss of control without retaining an interest in a foreign subsidiary Acknowledgements to Laetitia Lamoureux, Caroline Verrier and Jean-François Bouillon from the EPM SK&I team for their high contribution to the "Consolidation Practical guide". Your comments about the contents are very welcome. Let us know what you wish to write about. http://forums.sdn.sap.com/forum.jspa?forumID=400 Facebook http://www.facebook.com/sapifrs Twitter http://twitter.com/SAP_IFRS_XBRL

Posted on: 22 November 2011 | 4:13 am

Making The Case for Investing in Financial Excellence

One of the fun aspects of working closely with a wide range of retailers is the friendly competition and passionate sharing of ideas that highly competitive retailers show when they have the chance for dialog. It's always fun to listen to companies like Under Armour and New Balance as they highlight their differences but then also dive deep into what they can learn from each other's internal processes. This week 30 current and potential customers from 16 companies met at SAP's Newtown Square campus to share best practices in driving Financial Excellence using SAP's Business Planning and Consolidation solution. The highly focused two day event gave a sharp and vivid snapshot of how some of retail's most innovative companies are using BPC to transform the role that their finance functions play. Financial Excellence for Retailers Making the case for excellence is always a challenge for any supporting function in a retailer. Executive leadership and key stakeholders rightly focus transformation close to the customer, where the connection between investment and increased sales or increased GMROI is clearly visible. What this week's discussion showed though is that flexible tools like BPC can drive real transformation in finance and enable finance functions to provide much stronger value to the business. Here are a few examples of how customers are using BPC to dramatically improve their own processes, better inform the business and deliver tangible results: New Balance reduced their monthly financial close from several weeks to just a couple of days Given that more than 40% of a typical retailer's SKUs are unprofitable based on Net Margin Return on Investment level - merchants need to see this data and use it to transform their assortments Even with a complex landscape of legacy systems, Charming Shoppes is able to deliver full store P&Ls to each of its 6,900+ stores to empower store management No business can grow 300% without changing the way it plans - in the middle of the Nook's unexpectedly dramatic growth, BarnesAndNoble.com was able to deploy BPC in just seven weeks so that it now has the ability to plan and adapt successfully for its new world By assessing total cost of risk at store level, Family Dollar is able to drive highly effective loss prevention Under Armour is now able to complete a bottom-up budgeting cycle in just two weeks instead of 8 weeks Leading multi-banner retailers using shared service organizations for key back office functions can provide the business with clear visibility on shared service usage and costs to enable them to control their shared service costs Flexible and Intuitive Tools Deliver Ongoing Transformation In addition to the significant value customers have been able to deliver, one of my other key takeaways from the event was that the BPC tools are so flexible and intuitive (thanks partly to the familiarity of Excel) that both finance and business users are constantly pushing to use them more widely and expand their use within the company. Successful and flexible Enterprise Performance Management empowers executives, finance, IT and the business to focus on what they do best. Executives get rapid and actionable insight that they can use to drive strong performance. Finance has robust tools that allow their operational processes to be streamlined and enables them to invest in developing new insight, improving the strategic dialog with the business and driving incremental performance. The business no longer has to wait for IT or finance to let them access new data or detail and can get the answers they need when they need them. And IT... gets to put a solution in place and see the business vigorously engage and want to expand it to new areas, contribute to its administration and own the data in a way that can take years to achieve with other solutions. it's very much to the credit of SAP's partners who focus on implementing Enterprise Performance Management and BPC that so many customers at the event were able to enthusiastically share evidence of how their organizations continue to extend using the strong foundation their implementation partner had put in place. Throughout the two days, customers mentioned that the expertise they had relied on from Aster Group, Column5, The Glenture Group, Sandpoint Consulting and SAP Consulting had been one of the most crucial success factors in their successful transformations. Now Make It Real Time Looking into the very near future, Steve Townsend of SAP gave a vivid outline of how SAP HANA will enable customers to take the scattered legacy of data sources that they have to aggregate, transfer and consolidate today and provide amazing fast access to real-time data with no aggregation. Combining this power with tools like Sales Analysis for Retail, a great foundation of retail intelligence available today using POS data feeds, will transform the speed at which customers can respond to the dynamic retail environment of rapidly changing consumer preferences, highly volatile demand, and long, risky supply chains. What if every financial report and dashboard in your company was in real time? Replay your last major holiday event or promotion - if the lessons learned in preparing for and executive the event could have been identified and responded to in real time, think how the results could have been significantly improved. Find Out More More details on SAP BPC can be found here and any of us on SAP's Value Engineering team would be keen to work with you and your customers on developing the case for implementing or extending your use of SAP BPC.

Posted on: 22 November 2011 | 4:13 am

SAP BusinessObjects Operational Performance Management Elite Enablement - Spend 3.0, Supply Chain 2.0, Data Enrichment 1.0 - Sep 26-30, 2011, Palo Alto

BE THE FIRST TO HAVE LIVE SPEND 3.0, SCPM 2.0 and DEC 1.0 EXPERIENCE at the SAP BusinessObjects Operational Performance Management Elite Enablement. After successful Elite enablement sessions for BPC in US, Shanghai and (soon to come) in EMEA and a great PCM 10.0 Elite enablement session in Palo Alto, we felt that is was time to extend the offering to the Operational Performance Management (OPM) suite that is part of EPM 10.0: SAP BusinessObjects Spend Performance Management / Spend Analytics 3.0 (SPM) SAP BusinessObjects Data Enrichment and Classification 1.0 OnDemand (DEC) SAP BusinessObjects Supply Chain Performance Management 2.0 (SCPM) This action-packed week conducted by OPM product and solution management and Customer Solution Adoption (CSA – former RIG), will provide customers and partners invaluable "hands-on" exercises and information to ensure you hit the ground running with the latest OPM suite. In addition to mingling with the solution experts you will also have the opportunity to meet our OPM executive leadership team. This Elite enablement workshop will cover a large variety of topics including: Day 1 – Hands-on walk thru of new features in SAP BusinessObjects Spend Performance Management 3.0 (SPM), SAP BusinessObjects Supply Chain Performance Management 2.0 (SCPM) & SAP BusinessObjects Data Enrichment and Classification OnDemand (DEC) including What-If-Analysis, Advanced Analytics and Risk Management Integration Day 2 – Product deep dives covering User Interface configuration, data sourcing and integration from SAP ERP, integrating Spend and Data Enrichment & Classification Day 3 – Product deep dives (continued): Extensibility of SPM data model, integration of External Factors, Risk management integration and related applications configuration, Integration of SPM & BPC Day 4 – performance tuning SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3, SCPM, SPM, DEC, Backend Modification to extend out-of-the-box functionalities (JAVA and ABAP Extensions), standard transports, install, security Day 5 – SAP In-Memory (HANA), best practices project setup, documentation, issue handling, project scoping Also hear from the experts on the roadmap and future of OPM and OPM with HANA – SAP's in-memory technology. We will distribute iPads to the participants to support the exercises. Space is limited so register today! We will be limiting space per company in order to ensure we can meet the demand from all partner companies, so we encourage you to respond quickly to ensure your registration. What other Elite enablement is coming up? A BPC 10.0 MEGA Elite training completely on BPC 10.0 NW is planned for Nov 14-18, 2011 in Philadelphia. For the first time this will be open for over 100 customers and partners to go hands-on and dive deep into BPC 10.0 NW. Register here. Contact liz.fitzgibbons@sap.com for details and follow us on Twitter at #BPCElite or directly @SAPEPMRIG and @jenskoerner Also SAPinsider is hosting a 3 day BPC bootcamp seminar in Chicago, Orlando, Amsterdam, Las Vegas and Philadelphia for customers and partners. For details check out www.bpcbootcamp.com and http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/24378

Posted on: 22 November 2011 | 4:12 am

Debugging BPC 10 for NetWeaver

Debugging in BPC 10 In my opinion the ability to debug is one of the biggest advantages in the BPC for NetWeaver platform.  It has proven to be a huge asset when writing custom logic (BAdi’s and custom integration scenarios) in addition to general troubleshooting tasks. The good news is that the latest release of BPC for NetWeaver (BPC 10) also allows you to debug the BW tier but there have been a couple of changes that you need to be aware of: The .NET tier has been removed from the 10.0 release of BPC for NetWeaver.  This means you don’t have to map accounts on the .NET tier to enable debugging anymore. The entry point for debugging has changed After reading this (short) blog you will be prepared to debug BPC 10 for NetWeaver to your heart’s content. Let’s get started… Setting up your debug user The only thing you need to start debugging BPC 10 is a valid BW user account with the same access as the BPC BW System Account.  You can find the required roles in section 4.1 of the Installation guide. Once that is complete, grant the user the appropriate rights to the environment / model (application set / application) and set your breakpoints. Where do I set my breakpoints? There has been a pretty good amount of rework in the UJ package for BPC 10 and this has also impacted where you need to set your breakpoints.  I’ll cover two different scenarios below, debugging EPM Add-In and Administration functions and debugging data manager packages. Debugging EPM Add-In and Administration functions Log into the BPC client you want to debug (EPM Add-In or Web Administration console) with your BW debug user account. Go to the portion of the use case you want to debug, but don’t execute the action yet. Log into SAPGUI with your BW debug user. Go to transaction SE80 Navigate to the class CL_BPC_REST_RES (under package UJX, embedded package UJX0). Go to line 56 of the HANDLE_REQUEST method and set an external breakpoint. Note – If you know the specific location you want to debug you can set the external breakpoint there and skip the breakpoint mentioned above. Switch to the BPC client and execute the action you want to debug. This will launch a SAPGUI debugging session The case statement on line 60 will get you to the code you need to evaluate. Debugging Data Manager Packages Log into SAPGUI with your BW debug user. Go to transaction SE80 Navigate to the class CL_UJXD_PACKAGES_RES (under package UJX, embedded package UJXD). Go to line 179 of the DO_POST method and set an external breakpoint. Switch to the BPC client and execute the data manager package you want to debug. This will launch a SAPGUI debugger Double click on the ‘ls_package_run-if_debug’ exporting parameter and set its value to true (represented by the character X). You can then continue to any downstream external breakpoints you already set (for instance, in your BAdi) or can step through the code line by line.

Posted on: 22 November 2011 | 4:10 am

How to manage scope changes with SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 10.0, Version for SAP Netweaver Starter Kit for IFRS? Part 2

his series of seven blogs is dedicated to handling scope changes using “SAP® BusinessObjectsTM Planning and Consolidation 10.0, Version for SAP Netweaver Starter Kit for IFRS". The objective is to illustrate in the BPC Starter kit for IFRS some of the most frequent scope changes. Blog #1: Acquisition of a subsidiary (full goodwill method) Blog #2: Loss of control without any retained interest - this blog Blog #3: Acquisition of further equity interests from Non Controlling Interests Blog #4: Partial disposal of an investment in a subsidiary while control is retained Blog #5: Step acquisition Blog #6: Loss of control while retaining an interest Blog #7: Internal merger between two subsidiaries Each blog introduces a practical guide that deals with the following questions: -          What are the regulation requirements that applies to the business case -          How to handle the business case in the starter kit for IFRS -          What are the impacts on the financial statements The business cases presented in these blogs are included in the set of data provided with BPC NW 10.0 Starter kit for IFRS. You can consult them in the database. Please, refer to the operating guide delivered along with the starter kit for further detail on the consolidation process. These blogs have been written by members of the SAP EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) Starter Kits & Innovations team that develops starter kits on top of SAP financial consolidation products, Financial Consolidation (FC) and Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC). The starter kits are preconfigured contents created to deliver business logic, to speed-up the application deployment and to provide guidance to help maximize advantages of the product. The contents provided in the starter kits consist of reports, controls and rules for performing, validating and publishing a legal consolidation in accordance with IFRS. SAP starter kits for IFRS are provided to BPC/FC customers at no additional charge; they can be downloaded from SAP service market place at http://help.sap.com/. Now to the second blog! Presentation of the business case Year 2013 The 1st of January, parent company P2 (USD) acquires 100% interest of subsidiary PS2 (EUR) for USD 95 000 in cash. PS2 net value of the identifiable assets and liabilities is EUR 87 500 Goodwill calculation = EUR 7 500 (x rate: 1 USD = 1 EUR) PS2 profit for the year = EUR 10 000 (average rate for 2013: 1 USD =0,80 EUR) On December 31st, the exchange rate is 1 USD =0,85 EUR Year 2014 PS2 goodwill impairment = EUR 4 000 PS2 profit for the year = EUR 15 000 The 1st of December P2 sells its 100% controlling interests in PS2 for USD 100 000. The average rate from January 1st to December 1st is 1 USD = 0,75 EUR. The spot rate on December 1st is 1 USD = 0,80 EUR Note: For a matter of simplification, the case study is displayed on two years even if it is not fully relevant from an IFRS perspective (e.g. IFRS5) PS2 net assets at the disposal date is EUR 112 500 (87 500 + 10 000 + 15 000). PS2 individual accounts converted in USD and including goodwill are as follows: Calculation of net gain/loss on the disposal Practical guide Please click here to access the practical guide The Next Blog In the next blog of this series, we will look at the Acquisition of further equity interests from Non Controlling Interests (Equity transaction) Acknowledgements to Laetitia Lamoureux, Caroline Verrier and Jean-François Bouillon from the EPM SK&I team for their high contribution to the "Consolidation Practical guide". Your comments about the contents are very welcome. Let us know what you wish to write about. http://forums.sdn.sap.com/forum.jspa?forumID=400 Facebook http://www.facebook.com/sapifrs Twitter http://twitter.com/SAP_IFRS_XBRL

Posted on: 22 November 2011 | 4:09 am