Introduction

As you guys may know, there’s a new direction for reporting in SuccessFactors that was recently announced. Sooner or later, SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) will replace most of current reporting tools—ORD, Adhoc, BIRT, YouCalc. So let keep yourself up-to-date!

*Updated on Oct 4, 2018

Going for forward, the connection between SAC and SF will use the SuccessFactors live connection for more tightly coupled live data retrieval and better query experience. It will also be included in the standard SF license at no additional cost.

Prerequisites

• SAP Analytics Cloud account (trial account is fine)
• SuccessFactors system access with necessary permissions
• SuccessFactors API user

Configuration: SuccessFactors

OAuth2 Authentication for API Access

Logon into a SuccessFactors system and go to “Manage OAuth2 Client Applications”.

To register a new application, click on “Register Client Application”.

Input a preferred application name and enter your SAP Analytics Cloud instance in the application URL. Then, click on “Generate X.509 Certificate” to generate a new certificate.

Put your SAP Analytics Cloud instance in the Common Name (CN) field and then press “Generate”.

On the following screen, click the “Download” button to save the private key file (Certificate.pem). Then click on the “Register” button.

After that, you will be taken back to the prior screen. Click “View” to get the API key.

Note down the API key. It’ll be used later in the subsequent step.

Configuration: SAP Analytics Cloud

Create a new SuccessFactors connection

From the menu, select “Connection”.

Add a new data connection from SuccessFactors.

Enter the required information.

• Connection Name: preferred connection name
• Service URL: SuccessFactors API endpoint. Find more info from the note “2215682 – Successfactors API URLs for different Data Centers”.
• User ID: SuccessFactors API user
• API key: Taken from the prior step

• Private key: Use the Certificate.pem file that you downloaded earlier
• Company ID: Your SuccessFactors Company ID

Create a new model

Now the SuccesFactors connection is ready. Go back to the main screen and select Create–>Model to create a new data model.

Select “Get data from an app” and then choose “SAP SuccessFactors” on the right-hand side.

Select the newly created connection and choose Create a new query.

Enter a query name. And you can either choose to build a query from scratch or select a template query.

For this blog, I’ll start with the Headcount template query.

Predefined data selection is presented and you can add, modify, or delete the selected data as required. Then click “Create”.

Once the model has been created, data can be viewed, put in some formulas, adjust formatting, etc.

Data is visualized on any column you click. For example, when I click on the column “Job Title”, I see how many FTEs per position.

Create a story

If you reach the above step, it means you already have data in your hands. Now you can make it more attractive for presentation.

From the main screen, select Create–>Story.

There are several templates to choose from. I select the “Report” template as an example dashboard.

The dashboard gets data from the model you created earlier. Now you can make your data more meaningful through data visualization.

More details can be found on https://www.sapanalytics.cloud/help-library/.

Conclusion

After spending some time with SAP Analytics Cloud, I think it’s a good platform to visualize data with its simple user interface. Eventually, I believe that, SAP Analytics Cloud will become one reporting platform for SuccessFactors reporting. So let’s start learning now!