Technical Articles
Federated SAML SSO with Azure AD and SAP HANA – [bonus track feat. AfO]
Abstract.
Due to the popular demand I decided to record a bonus track to the [Federated SAML SSO with Azure AD and SAP HANA] blog post featuring AfO.
Indeed, SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office [AfO] is a popular [MS Office plugin] among the business analyst community.
SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office helps you to gain insight into business data.
It comprises the following MS Office add-ins: Analysis Add-in (Analysis Plug-in and BPC Plug-in) and EPM Add-in.
Let me further show how one can leverage SAP HANA Live Connection (InA endpoint) with Federated SAML SSO authentication, we have implemented so far, with the Analysis for Office plugin in MS Excel.
Putting it all together.
As said AfO is a powerful plugin to Excel or PowerPoint. And as a business user, you most likely know how to use it.
The plugin installation.
You can download the software from SAP Service Marketplace – [link] (Please note this may require having a valid S-User with the download rights)
Good to know:
| 1. | The installer is available only for Windows OS (not for MacOS). |
| 2. | The installer requires a compatible version of Windows MS Office be installed beforehand. |
| 3. | Both 32-bit and 64-bit MS Office versions are supported. |
After successfully validating the installation wizard steps one should see the following installation screen:
How to create a new SAP HANA Connection?
The only little help one may need with is how to create a [live] connection to your SAP HANA cubes or dimensions.
Open MS Excel. Go to Analysis. Insert Data Source.
Right click in the Select Data Source/Show Connections pane to create a new connection:
The SAP HANA InA endpoint connection.
You need to provide the following information:
| Description | Free text |
| Scheme | HTTP or HTTPS |
| Host Name | The hostname is the FQDN of the SAP HANA InA endpoint |
| Port | the port number of your SAP HANA InA endpoint; (if Scheme is HTTPS then Port = 43xx, if Scheme is HTTP then Port = 80xx) where [xx] is the 2-digit SAP HANA instance number (90) |
| Authentication Type | The authentication type is Automatic which means AfO will use whatever type of authentication as is implemented on the SAP HANA backend for the InA endpoint |
From now on you can start using the connection to bring your data into AfO:
Good to know:
You may create live connection with any flavour of SAP HANA on premise backend and SAP HANA Cloud service like SAP HANA Cloud for instance.
If using SAP HANA Cloud or SAP HANA service on Cloud Foundry [CF] you may need to additionally deploy the InA provider application on CF.
Please go to Analytics adapter for SAP HANA extended application services, advanced model for more details.
Additional resources
|
SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office | Community resources HAA (HANA Analytics Adapter) and Analytics for Office | HANA Academy and the Partner Innovation Lab |