Intro
As usual, there are a variety of routes to get to the same point-B. Not all made equal and suitable for everybody. I will overview two methods to educate on S/4HANA Analytics: SAP Education training course vs. Self-education at your own pace.
SAP Education Course
Introduction or front-end
If you ask me, I rarely take “Introduction” type of training, because the intro-picture one can get himself or see at conference presentations. If you feel like, though, you have a choice of either of the two:
S4H400 SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics Foundation,
or
S4F07 Financial Reporting in SAP S/4HANA
What is the difference between the two? Well, the first one is shorter, 2 days, and is geared towards BI people, the second one is 3 days, so you may get a bit more and with more Finance-related examples. Since they are very similar in their content, I would book the one that runs sooner or is closer to your home.
Modeling in the Back-end
I hope by now you know that Virtual Data Models are implemented in S/4HANA using the CDS-views. So you want to familiarize yourself with them. Again two options here:
S4H410 S4/HANA Analytics: Modeling Basics with Core Data Services (CDS Views),
or
S4D430 Building Views in Core Data Services ABAP (CDS ABAP)
Which will give a good intro into back-end model building. Unfortunately, schedule is scarce and not all your questions may get answered (try asking about your custom-built time- and language-dependent hierarchy with authorization variable thereon ;). What is the difference between these two? Again, the first one is shorter, 2 days, geared towards getting BI folks up to speed with Core Data and Services, whereas the second one is 3 days and will be more suitable for ABAP people getting their skills up to date on CDS. There is a more noticeable difference in content, e.g. on authorizations, AMDP, etc. But, again, book the one that suits your schedule best.
Self-paced
Now those who have access to Learning Hub and Youtube, but no time / budget to fly in for the official training.
First 50% of S4H410 exercises (available on Learning Hub) are based on SFLIGH tables and are equivalent to recordings on SAP HANA Academy channel. Check out
this playlist, namely videos:
till “SAP HANA Academy - SAP S/4HANA: Core Data Services - 04 Creating Consumption Views”
- From SAP HANA Academy - SAP S/4HANA: Core Data Services - 12 Prepping Views for Associations
till SAP HANA Academy - SAP S/4HANA: Core Data Services - 21 Testing Consumption Views
Other 50% of S4H410 exercises are based on the views non-existent in the trial / demo systems, therefore you will need to adapt self-exercises, to use e.g. view I_GLAccountLineItemCube as your source.
This self-paced way should take you 15 to 25 hours in total, which is very hard to fit into one week, but it depends on the number of distractions. The drawback of self-study is that you have nobody to ask questions, but you can email me and I will try find time to answer.
Bonus
Irrespective of the way you choose, I sense a few topics deserve an additional (not-yet-existing) exercise on its own, but you have to make a case for yourself to see it in action:
- “Modification-free extensibility” is theoretically explained in Course S4H410 /S4D430 and there is something in ABAP channel
- Creation and consumption of a custom hierarchy (Product, Organization, or so) deserves an exercise on its’ own, too. For now, you can check this blog post
- Association to- and Annotations of- a time-dimension would be also nice to have in the exercises due to their wide practical application
- Authorizations – no exercise and help is a little helpless. You can check this blog post for an good example
Outro
Overall, I think it is a good moment to start the S/4HANA Analytics consultant journey. There are yet very little of us. Unfortunately, there is no certification exam as of yet, which normally motivates to better “digest” the course content, but I would expect it to appear shortly.
Pick what suits you better and have fun learning!
--
Dmitry Kuznetsov
BI consulting
