Product Information
SpinifexIT Easy Reporter for SAP HR Payroll – Deep dive session 1
Over last 4 months I have been working on SpinifexIT tool to develop reporting and analytics in SAP HR-Payroll. It offers a great tool to quickly develop insights into critical HR data but not limited to like people movements, secondments, on-cost values of Annual Leave, Long Service Leave etc.
When I scoured the internet I could not get much about SpinifexIT tool deep-dives so here it is. I am offering some tips and tricks to develop quick reports through SpinifexIT tools. Also happy to stand corrected and would be great to see some insights from other experts as well.
One of the most powerful feature is the PD structural report development. It runs via the Organisational Management layer in SAP HCM and can be a solid foundation to get details of vacant and/or leader positions, other details on positions like PA/PSA (if maintained on position in HRP1008), Authorities and Resources, Planned Compensation and host of other relationships.
It is crucial to understand the business requirement to ensure correct foundation to use – The PD structural or the PA (Employee level) information in the report.
Note that there is a significant performance issue if the search object type in the above snapshot is not the Org Unit (O) which is the top of the organisation generally. But you can run it at any Org Level. The report does take a long time to process if you instead search for a Position (S).
When you choose the PD structural report in the 1st tab, for an OM level reporting, subsequently, in the 2nd tab “Report Columns” tab, you can go to Org Management on the left side, PD structural within and then choose the OU or the Position or the Person to start with. Note that from the ABAP database perspective, it is now using only the HRP tables and not the PA* tables.
The more straightforward and intuitive report development is from the Employee Level or on the 1st tab of any report development through Spinifex, the Employee Report or PD structural report radiobutton in the first screenshot above. I will not go through the easy ones here but would rather share my experiences with things which I found useful.
Scenario: Show 2 position IDs for an employee, one current and the second one, previous to the current position. We assume for simplicity sake here that Infotype PA0001 has the latest position as the current record and the immediate previous is a different position ID. These 2 positions to appear on the same row will require an ABAP code which could be complex but Spinifex has a powerful feature.
For this requirement you would first need to drag and drop a calculation field from the left side, which is under Additional Functions. Use the calculation field as an output format of “D Date Format” and configure as below to get an end date minus 1 new calculation field in the output row.
Next, to get the previous position ID, use the PA0001 position field from the left side under Master Data >> Infotype Data >> 0001 Organisational Assignment but configure the Field Settings as –
Date to read Data – “E Read data based on a date column on the report”
Select Column with Date – Your Calculation Field
Select Column with Employee No. – Employee No.
And there you get the previous position in the same row as the current position! Quite handy and you can understand that this feature can be used similarly to develop other powerful insights.
Scenario: Sometimes the business requirement for an employee report requires historical information of all positions since his hire date but with certain filters being applied either on dates, actions on PA0000 or any other filters.
In this case it is better to start the report settings using the “Up to today” radiobutton on the selection screen of the 7th tab “Review and Test Report”. This gives all the records and then you have the flexibility to filter out certain records based on the 4th tab “Define Filters” as shown below as an example –
Combine this with the Advanced Column feature of “Merge” and you have a very powerful tool within Spinifex to slice and dice the data as the report requirement dictates. More on the Merge feature in the next blog.
We’ve been using Easy Reporter since 2012, and like it’s ability to combine data from Org.Management, Personnel AdministrationTime Evaluation, Payroll Results, Success Factors data and more (even some external data) into a single Report.
There may not be many documents on other sites, but SpinifexIT does provide many documents, videos and webcasts on their products (spinifexit.zendesk.com).
Thanks Remi. Yes, seems like a good repository of tips and tricks on Zendesk!
Thank you,Remi. This site is a good for beginners like me.
Thanks,
Manjula
You should also inquire about their webcasts.
Yesterday, they had a pretty instructive one titled
"Timing Is Everything - Optimize your Report Building Process with Easy Reporter's Timing Options"
Hi Shireesh. Great article and really I'm really happy that you are getting some good use of Easy Reporter. The aim of Easy Reporter is really to do most of what you can do with ABAP programming but to then easily change the reports on the fly (And by an end user).
Now that you are really good at building the reports, one of the areas that many customers make a lot of use of, is the Email distribution and also the File Outputs. The emails are a great way to really save the time of running these reports by scheduling them overnight and having the emails sent out to the appropriate people. In addition, the report can then be attached in many formats for viewing including PDF or Excel files.
I hope to see more from you as you continue to use Easy Reporter,
Best Regards,
Darren Souter
SpinifexIT Global Solution Architect
Thanks Darren. Yes have used the output section quite extensively. Works great and is very effective to send out reports in an automated manner!
Hi Darren,
One quick qtn. Is SpinifexIT Easy Reporter a 3rd party tool which get intergrated with SAP. How is the Landscape of SAP , SAP SF and SPinifex
Thansk,
Ashwini
Hi Ashwini,
Easy Reporter can report across both SAP HXM (Whether it is SAP On-Premise, Employee Central Payroll or S/4HANA), as well as SuccessFactors (Employee Central, Recruiting and several other modules).
In terms of the Architecture, Easy Reporter is installed within the SAP Environment. This is via a SAP Transport. It then has direct access to the HXM data, but can also access SuccessFactors using the oData API's.
This then allows you to create all of your Payroll Reporting or Interfaces, but then combine in SuccessFactors Data when fields only exist in SuccessFactors.
Most of our customers who have both SAP HXM (Including Payroll) and SuccessFactors, combine Easy Reporter with our SuccessFactors Connector.
Hope this helps. If you would like any more information, please feel free to reach out. I'm confident that we can cover off any of your reporting needs and remove many of the manual processes that you might have.
All the best,
Darren Souter
Hi Darren/Shireesh,
Are there any prerequisites to output the report to a PC file or to email the reports. Thank you.
Regards
Manjula
Hi Manjula,
Apologies for the (LATE) reply. The Standard Easy Reporter solution will allow any report to be emailed or saved into a file. Most of our customers are taking advantage of this functionality, where they can either fully automate the distribution of reports internally, or even using the option of creating file outputs, to create interface files that can be used internally or externally.
All the best, Darren Souter
Hello Shireesh,
Is there a way to use the position that you pulled on the date manipulation trick that you showed as an input on the OM side to get the related objects on that position?
The scenario is I am trying to get the manager of the employee who has already left the company (current position 99999999).
Regards,
Chad
Hi Chad,
Apologies for the late reply. But : To answer your question, yes, this should be possible. Actually : Many of our customers had the same issue, which is why we also have an option to read the position based on the termination date.
We then can either use our pre-defined fields which show the Employees Manager (So : It would display the manager prior to termination).
If you require a more complex object, then it is also possible to use any evaluation path and navigate from the employees Org Unit or Position, to any object.
Hope this helps. Please feel free to reach out directly to me, if you would like us to arrange to show you any of this.
All the best,
Darren Souter
Hi
is SpinifexIT Easy Reporter a 3rd party tool to be intergrated with SAP?