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SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP Netweaver – powered by SAP HANA, SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for Microsoft.
Summary
Since SAP Planning and Consolidation version 10, former 5.x and 7.x reporting functions named EVEXP and EVNXP are not supported anymore. This document will help you to rebuild your former EVEXP/EVNXP input schedules/reports used in BPC 7.x into the new EPM 10 reporting paradigm called SAP BusinessObjects EPM solutions, add-in for Microsoft Office 10.0.
Author: Patrick Favre
Company: SAP
Created on: 12 December 2012
Author Bio
Patrick Favre is a certified BPC consultant working in the SAP Customer Solution Adoption (formerly RIG) group. While Patrick has been working with BPC for over nine years, he has recently been focused on SAP Planning and Consolidation version 10 (version for Netweaver powered by SAP HANA, and version for Microsoft), with emphasis on the SAP BusinessObjects EPM solutions, Add-in for Microsoft Office 10.0.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
Jumping Into the EPM Add-in ............................................................................................................................. 5
Step By Step Procedure.................................................................................................................................. 5
Creating the EPM Add-in Report .................................................................................................................... 7
Mapping Table between EVEXP And EPM Add-in Expansion Parameters ................................................. 12
Customizing the EPM Add-in Report Layout Using Local Members ............................................................ 13
Enabling Formatting On the EPM Add-in Input Schedule ............................................................................. 19
EPM Add-in Academy ....................................................................................................................................... 24
Related Content ................................................................................................................................................ 25
Related Blogs ................................................................................................................................................... 25
SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, is part of the Enterprise Performance Management suite and provides everything you need to meet your bottom-up and top-down financial and operational planning requirements, as well as a complete consolidation and reporting solution through a single application and user interface.
It can be used for the Business Planning (Budgeting, Sales/revenue planning, Expense planning), Consolidations (Intercompany matching/reconciliation/ eliminations, legal consolidations), Forecasting and consensus building and Financial reporting and analysis.
SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP Netweaver can be powered by SAP HANA. With In-memory technology offered by HANA, SAP Planning and Consolidation for SAP Netweaver can handle big volumes of data easily, supports real-time planning and analysis, enables cross functional detailed planning and shrinks decision cycle time.
Key Benefits of SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP NetWeaver - Powered by SAP HANA:
Increased Agility – Helps to plan better and act fast with instant insight into all relevant information.
Boost Performance – Accelerate planning and consolidation processing leveraging the power of in-memory technology.
Engage Everyone - Simplify the input and exploration of data with a next generation mobile interface
Background
Customers still working with former BPC versions, such as BPC 5.x and BPC 7.x might still be using the legacy functions such as EVEXP and/or EVNXP functions. As a reminder, those functions had been introduced in the Outlooksoft product in year 1999 and were still backward compatible in version BPC 5.x and BPC 7.x, but best practice in BPC 5.x and 7.x was to use the EVDRE function.
Now, using SAP Business Planning and Consolidation version 10, while EVDRE is still backward compatible and supported in EPM Add-in, the functions EVEXP and EVNXP are no longer supported.
This How to Guide will help you recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like reporting structures in the EPM 10 front-end tool, called SAP BusinessObjects EPM solutions, Add-in for Microsoft Office 10.0. To simplify, we’ll call it EPM Add-in.
EVEXP Input Schedule
BPC 7.x Source Report
As said above, EVEXP function was used to build simple expansions either in rows or columns in former BPC versions. Generally, on BPC for Excel reports, the EVEXP function returns TRUE when an expansion is available.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
As shown in the next picture, this EVEXP function is an Account by Time report. In the row axis, we are displaying all Base Members before overall parent (EVBSS of NetIncome).
Basically, column E is retrieving the ID of the row expansion, and columns F thru S (as displayed in the screenshot above) are retrieving properties, descriptions and figures (using either EVPRO, EVDES, or EVGET functions).
Jumping Into the EPM Add-in
In the EPM Add-in, the reporting concept is different compared to what customers used to do with EVEXP. It’s a brand new user experience, focused on ergonomics and user-friendliness.
In following sections, you’ll go through all the steps to recreate this EVEXP-like structure in the EPM Add-in.
Step By Step Procedure
First of all, login to the front-end, by using a manually created connection or a predefined connection from the SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 10 Web Portal. Just refer to the EPM Add-in help to see how to use those types of connections.
Once logged in to your environment and model (formerly named appset and application in former BPC versions), the EPM tab is opened (1), and a blank sheet is also opened, with the EPM Context (2) on the top (formerly named Current View), and the EPM Pane (3) on the right:
Adjust the EPM Context to the same values displayed in the EVEXP input schedule.
Account: NetIncome RptCurrency: LC
Category: Actual Time: 2006.TOTAL
DataSrc: Input Measures: Periodic
Entity: SalesSwitzer
IntCo: Non_Interco
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
There are three ways of creating an EPM Add-in report:
- Using the New Report button in the EPM Ribbon.
- Using the drag and drop feature from the EPM Pane.
- Using the Member Recognition (by direct typing a dimension member in a cell).
In our case below, we’ll use the EPM Pane to create our report structure, but the New Report button offers exactly the same functionality. Drag and drop the Account dimension on the row axis and the Time dimension in the column axis.
The result will be displayed in your spreadsheet.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
Note: By default, notice there is absolutely no EVGET or EVGTS function used (as in our EVEXP report). The EPM add-in is handling the data retrieve without using those legacy functions.
Remember, our former EVEXP function was retrieving all base members before the overall NetIncome parent. To complete that, click the Account dimension in your Row Axis.
The Member Selector for the Account dimension will show up. First, switch to the ID and Description view.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
In the Dimension Members section, select NetIncome (1). From the Selection Relationship section, select Member and Base Level (2), and click on the right arrow (3) to add your selection to the Selected Member Window on the right (4). Finally, remove the existing selected member using the left arrow. The member selector should look like the following:
Click OK, and your row expansion should be displayed according to what we have just defined.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
Note: By default, the sorting is done on the HLEVEL property in the EPM Add-in, and by default, it’s taking care of the indentation. But you can turn this parameter off by accessing the Sheet Options – Formatting tab.
In order to have the same layout than our EVEXP report, let’s change the Time dimension to reflect all base members from 2006.TOTAL.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
Click OK, and your column expansion should be displayed according to what we have just defined.
Note: In EPM Add-in, you can display ID only, Description only or ID and Description in a single cell, which is different from former BPC for Excel reporting Mode. Once again, to change this, just click on your expansion link (Account
in above case) and change the view using the “Select members to display” icon.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
Customizing the EPM Add-in Report Layout Using Local Members
What the EVEXP report was also retrieving is member properties, such as the CALC and HLEVEL. With EVEXP, you could write the desired function on the first line of your expansion, and it was then copied down to the whole row axis defined in the DataRange parameter, when clicking Expand.
In the EPM Add-in, you can do exactly the same by using local members. First, verify that the Local Member Recognition is turned on. To do that, access the Sheet Options.
Then check Activate Local Member Recognition option and click OK.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
Then, select column B on your spreadsheet, right-click and insert two columns.
In cell B2, type in following formula: =EPMMemberProperty(, A2, "CALC")
Note: EPMMemberProperty is the new name of former EVPRO function. The first parameter of this function is the
connection parameter, which can be left blank when working with a single connection (model). On the other hand, if you’re building reports with several connections, it’s recommended to put the connection name, for performance
reasons.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
Under the Local Members tab (1), both created local members for CALC and HLEVEL properties are appearing (internally named LocalMember000 and LocalMember001) (2), and you can customize their descriptions and/or names if desired.
Here below, we will change the description only. Enter CALC for the description for LocalMember000 (3) and HLEVEL description for LocalMember001. Verify both local members are attached to the Column Axis (4). By choosing to attach these local members to the Column Axis, they will always be displayed, even if you change the structure of your column axis.
Then, click OK and your report will now look as follow.
As with the EVEXP report, you can group certain columns. To do this, select the desire columns (B and C) and click the Group button on the Excel’s Data ribbon.
.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
Now, the Save Data button is enabled on the EPM ribbon.
Enabling Formatting On the EPM Add-in Input Schedule
The new way of applying formats to an EPM add-in report is to use a formatting sheet. This feature is accessible by clicking the View Formats button on the EPM Pane.
This automatically creates an EPMFormattingSheet, where you can define formats. You can give it another name if desired.
In order to build the equivalent formatting as in our EVEXP report, you have to perform several tasks.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
And with a little bit of format customizing (adding borders, disable the Excel gridline, adding a logo, etc…), the result looks equivalent as our former EVEXP input schedule.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
Following the same approach as described above, recreating a former EVNXP-like structure in the EPM Add-in is far easier than in BPC for Excel.
In fact, using the drag and drop feature from the EPM Add-in, you just have to move several dimensions to the row or column axis.
In the below example, a nested expansion in columns is shown, by adding the Category dimension as inner dimension to our input schedule we have just created.
How To Recreate EVEXP/EVNXP-like Reporting Structures in EPM Add-in SAP Analytics Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)
Then, click on the Category link in the column axis, and select to expand both ACTUAL and BUDGET, as shown below.
By clicking OK, you’ll have a nested report in columns, with all base members from 2006.TOTAL as outer dimension, and BUDGET and ACTUAL as inner dimension.
Predefined EPM Add-in Templates
If you don’t feel comfortable starting an EPM Add-in report from scratch, you can open a predefined report. In EnvironmentShell, which is the environment delivered with the product, there are 5 predefined input schedules as well as 10 predefined reports, which act as a baseline for designing your report.
To access them, create a connection to your EnvironmentShell environment. by using a manually created connection or a predefined connection from the SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 10 Web Portal. Once again, just refer to the EPM Add-in help to see how to use those types of connections.
Then click the Open Server Root Folder link in the EPM tab.
On the Open window, choose either the Input Schedules node or Reports node, and expand the Templates folder.
EPM Add-in Academy
For other tips and tricks, or help on how to best utilize the EPM Add-in with Planning and Consolidation version 10 (both Netweaver and Microsoft versions), please visit the EPM Add-in Academy at following link: http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/CPM/EPM+Add-in+Academy
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