Portfolio and Project Management Reporting Solution

Hi, in this blog I would like to share an approach for developing Real-Time Reporting Solution for SAP Project and Portfolio Management which we used in one of our implementation project. Our solution allows real-time reporting on SAP PPM data using user friendly Excel-based interface of Analysis for Excel.

Technical Architecture

Notes:

• SAP PPM functionality was included in SAP S/4HANA functional scope
• BW/4HANA system was used as reporting system
• Analysis for Excel was front-end solution
• Mostly integration between SAP PPM and SAP BW/4HANA was based on SAP SLT replication
• For some exception cases, e.i. some hierarchy extractors or extraction of extra long text of comments, ODP-SAPI extraction was used.
• Based of replicated PPM tables calculation views for master data and transaction data were created
• Almost all master and transaction data in BW/4HANA were populated using HANA models
• Using separate SAP BW/4HANA system is good idea for two reasons:
  • move system load of analytics tasks from SAP PPM system to separate system
  • make use of SAP BPC 11.0 in SAP BW/4HANA system for data corrections and approval process with back to SAP PPM retraction

Business Architecture

At the schema below there are some functional view from business side.

Note:

In report based on cProjects model users can view hierarchy, like:

• Portfolio
  • Bucket 1
    • Bucket 1.1
    • Bucket 1.2 
      • Bucket 1.2.1
        • Initiative 1
          • Item 1
          • Item 2
            • Project 2
              • Phase 1
              • Phase 2
                • Task 1
                • Task 2
                • Task 3
      • Item 3
        • Project 3
          • Phase 1
          • Phase 2
            • Task 1
            • Task 2
              • Task 2.1
                • Task 2.1.1
                • ……
          • Phase 3
            • Check list 1
              • CL Item 1
              • CL Item 2
              • ….

With bold there are Portfolio Management Entities, other – Project Management (cProject).

Technical notes

1. Consider for virtual master data approach useful wiki page: https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BI/Virtual+Master+Data+based+on+SAP+HANA+View
2. All main PPM entities (Portfolio, Bucket, Item, Review, Project, Phase, Task, Decision Point etc.) are based on GUID (RAW16). BW characteristics have CHAR32 type, for make things work convert GUID before mapping to characteristics in master and transaction data with rawtohex() function in HANA Calculation views.
3. Also it is very convenient to develop custom conversion routines for conversion GUID to EXTERNAL_ID and vise versa for all such entities. By conversion routine I mean setting in characteristic master data, like ALPHA.
4. For some cases, e.i. buckets hierarchy, it is possible with some assumptions create HANA Calculation view with flat hierarchy representation.Analysis for Excel function “Compact display in rows” is pretty good in reconstructing hierarchy view without real BW Hierarchy available. However in case of cProject Hierarchy this approach was not use due to unpredictable limit of task levels. In bucket hierarchy case we use assumption of no more then 6 levels of buckets.
5. In our solution we actively use AMDP methods of ABAP Class, for selecting data from Calculation Views or ZPPM schema in SAP BW/4HANA DB.
6. For making correct F4 Help for some variable (e.i. bucket levels characteristics) we use BADI: https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BI/F4+BADI
7. For creation of RRI to PPM WebDynpro (WD) Applications, like “Item Details“, we create custom target and form correct URL in ABAP logic. Details see in my next post: https://blogs.sap.com/2020/02/24/rri-jump-from-bw-reports-based-on-sap-ppm-to-ppm-webdynpro-applications/
8. Some additional comment here about PPM server host, it’s very convenient to create parameter in TVARVC table at SAP BW/4HANA to store in here and correct settings in each DEV, QAS, PROD systems.

Appreciations

I would like to thanks my colleagues:

• Scherbinina, Valerie – Project Manager
• Elena Egorova – PPM Solution Architect
• Damir Aitakov – PPM Consultant
• Artem Stankevitch – PPM Consultant

Without your functional experience and knowledge our reporting solution would not be possible.

______________________

Thank you for attention!