Technical Articles

October 2, 2019 2 minute read

Is Advanced Reporting Refresh included in my BizX Instance Refresh?

SuccessFactor BizX Instance Refresh is a very common process of copying data and configuration from source to target, without impacting the integrations in the target.

The source is the instance from which data and configurations are copied to the target instance.
The target is the instance to which data and configurations are copied using Instance Refresh.

Types of Instance Refresh:

There are multiple Post refresh activities that need to be performed to provide the end to end refresh experience to customers. Advanced Reporting Refresh is a part of Post BizX Refresh Activities.

Why Advanced Reporting Refresh is required post-BizX Refresh?

Advanced Reporting work on the views which are created from Employee Central Configurations and these views should always be in sync with EC configuration (data model, MDF, FO etc). The Report created from the Advanced Reporting data source will be created from these views and pull the data from Employee Central.
After BizX Refresh, the target instance will have a new configuration and therefore the Advanced Reporting views need to be refresh to sync with new EC configuration.

Do I need to create a separate incident for Advanced Reporting Refresh?

No. Advanced Reporting Refresh is part of BizX Refresh and will be taken care with BizX Refresh request. No separate incident is required to request an Advanced Reporting Refresh.
- For Manual Refresh: Advanced Reporting refresh will now be taken care with the Incident created for BizX Refresh. No separate incident is required.
- For Automatic Refresh (Instance refresh tool): The Tool has the ability to perform the Advanced Reporting Refresh.

Any Issue with Advanced Reporting after BizX Refresh?

For Manul Refresh: Confirm in the original incident (created for BizX Refresh) if the Advanced Reporting refresh is completed or not. If confirmed, and still issue exists, raise an incident for the SuccessFactors Analytics team with the below information.
- The incident number created for BizX refresh.
- Describe the issue in detail and if the issue is impacting all users/reports.
For Automatic Refresh(Instance refresh tool):: If the refresh process is completed and you see any issues with Advanced Reporting, please raise an incident with SuccessFactors Analytics team with below details:
- When the automatic refresh happened?
- What are the source & target instances?

Does Refresh Process also include transferring of my Advanced Reports from source to destination instance?

No. Currently, ORD(Live data & Advanced Reports) or Canvas Reports are not transferred from source to destination during refresh. You need to manually download these report definition from source instance and upload to destination. See below Knowledge Based Article for more details
- Transferring reports in Report Center enabled instances
- Transferring reports in non-Report Center instances.
Only Adhoc, Dashboard and Tiles and transferred during refresh.

Some of the Advanced reports are throwing an error after BizX Refresh.

This could be expected behavior.
Few reports could no longer be valid after refresh because you have refreshed your configuration. You should revalidate your reports and see if there are valid errors due to mismatch in the existing report configuration and new EC configuration. If you see that the configuration errors during validation are not correct as those configurations are maintained in EC, please raise the incident with the SuccessFactors Analytics team. For Example: The error says that a table is missing, then check if you have that table in EC available or not.
For more information see Validating Advanced Reports

2 Comments

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Erik Ebert

October 2, 2019 at 2:28 pm

Nice overview and as expected. I have a few follow up questions since this is not 100% clear in your article:

You say "Currently ... Canvas Reports are not transferred from source to destination during refresh".

#1. Does this mean that existing Canvas (ORD) reports in the destination instance are still there after the instance refresh, or are all existing reports deleted (purged, blanked out, removed - what word is most appropriate)

#2. If Canvas (ORD) reports have been shared in the source instance then these sharings are not carried over to the destination instance. Correct ?

#3. Why are Canvas (ORD) reports not included in the instance refresh; is there a logic to this and something SAP is working on ?

#4. If the customer has LMS then LMS is also part of the refresh. How about LMS PRD reports ?

Best regards,

Erik Ebert, GP Strategies

Parveen Kumar Singh

Blog Post Author

October 2, 2019 at 6:15 pm

Hi Erik Ebert ,

Please find the answers below:

The existing reports in the destination instance will still be there and will not be deleted.
Correct. If you are transferring the reports manually from source to destination(as explained in article), the sharing will not be carried over. You will have to share the reports again in the destination instance.
As you might know, Canvas reports are created in "Online Report Designer(ORD) tool" which is an integrated solution in BizX. Canvas reports are stored on different stack outside BizX, therefore, BizX Refresh doesn't include them. Yes, there is some work going on to include transferring these reports in the future.
LMS is outside my area of expertise so can't comment on it but you can refer to KBA https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2165346

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Parveen Singh