Product Information
SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 – Technology Topics – Part 1: Analytics, Enterprise Search, Extensibility, Hybrid Cloud ERP, Identity and Access Management
Dear SAP S/4HANA Cloud enthusiasts, welcome to PART 1 of my blog illustrating the latest and greatest technology highlights in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 for Technology Topics. As in my last blog on Technology Topics in S/4HANA 2005 – Part 1: Analytics, Enterprise Search, Extensibility, and Hybrid Cloud ERP, I will present the key innovations when it comes to embedded analytics, Enterprise Search, extensibility, hybrid cloud ERP, and Identity and Access Management (IAM).
In PART 2, you will learn what you should know about integration, localization, master data, migration, responsibility management, and user experience.
Watch my video to get a quick overview of our 2008 technology highlights:
Part 1 (this blog)
Analytics
Enterprise Search
Extensibility
Hybrid Cloud ERP
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Analytics
Enhancements of Treasury Executive Dashboard
Let me start off with the pre-delivered embedded SAP Analytics Cloud content. As you are well aware the ‘Treasury Executive Dashboard’ app in Finance was one of the first dashboards that we delivered. It allows treasury risk managers to visualize real-time insights into treasury operations and has been continuously enhanced over the course of the last releases. It shows different KPIs such as liquidity, cash position, debt volume, counter-party limits and volume of bank guarantees.
With SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008, it has been extended by several new charts for credit lines and bank fees on the Bank Relationship tab. This means that a whole new section on bank fees has been added to the dashboard. In addition, the financial status shows the credit line by company code and bank group.
If you are interested in other embedded SAC dashboards, I recommend you to read the Analytics section of my 2005 Technology Topics blog.
Enterprise Search
Autosuggestions for Search Attributes
The next innovation that I would like to point your attention to is from the area of Enterprise Search. With SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008, the ‘Manage Search Model’ app has been enhanced so that inside a search model, you can enable or disable the use of autosuggestions for a specific field of this search model by means of a toggle button on the details screen of the respective field.
This has the effect, that if an end user types something into the search bar, there is an autosuggest running in the background which checks what the user might mean and suggest available suggestions for the respective field in the search model. As you can imagine, this makes searching for business users much more efficient. The autosuggestion function is especially helpful for high-use search attributes.
Fig. 3: With SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008, administrators can enable autosuggestions for high-use search attributes in the ‘Manage Search Model’ app
Extensibility
Custom CDS Views for Extensibility Template
The first extensibility topic are the extensibility templates. As you know from further releases, this is an innovation which is especially helpful for implementation partners as it allows you to distribute in-app extensibility content across system landscapes.
If you are interested in further details about extensibility templates, I recommend you to read the extensibility section of my 2005 Technology Topics blog. Before the 2005 release, it was possible to transport custom business objects, custom code lists, custom fields, custom logic, and custom libraries. With the 2005 release, this has been enhanced further to allow for custom analytical queries as extended items.
Now, with 2008 we have reached an important milestone by adding custom CDS views to the list of extensibility items to be used with our extensibility items. An important prerequisite, however, is that only those custom CDS views that have been created with the new Custom CDS View app can be used as extended items for extensibility templates. Custom CDS Views created with the old Custom CDS Views app can be migrated to the new one.
Fig. 4: As of SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008, implementation partners can use custom CDS views in extensibility templates to transport in-app extensibility content from their Q system to the Q systems of their customers
Further Information
- Blog ‘SAP S/4HANA Cloud Extensibility: Extensibility Templates’ by Thomas Schneider
- SAP Help Portal: Extensibility Templates
Hybrid Cloud ERP
Sales Processing using Third-Party with Variant Configuration
For the sake of completeness, let me quickly outline an important innovation in the area of hybrid cloud ERP. Based on customer feedback, the existing Hybrid Cloud ERP scenario for central stock drop shipment with or without advanced shipping notification has been enhanced to allow for configurable products by integrating advanced variant configuration. There is a new scope item for this available called ‘Sales Processing using Third-Party with Variant Configuration (4R6)’.
With this process, the standard sales order automatically creates a purchase requisition for the materials to be delivered by third-party vendors. The purchase requisition is transferred into a purchase order and sent to the vendor. Once the vendors has sent a shipping notification, a statistical goods receipt can be posted. Once this has taken place, customer invoices can be created and issued based on the goods receipt quantities. After the shipping notification, the invoice receipt will be posted based on the invoice sent from vendor. You can also run the process without Shipping notifications. In that case, you can create the customer billing document based on the invoice from the vendor.
Fig. 5: As of SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008, you can benefit from sales processing using third-party with variant configuration
For more information, check out the comprehensive Hybrid Cloud ERP 2008 Release Highlights blog by my colleague Shiva Kumar H S.
Identity and Access Management
Business Role Changes After Upgrade
With the new ‘Business Role Changes After Upgrade’ app, which is very helpful for your post-upgrade activities. After an upgrade if you want to get transparency over all of the changes to the business catalogs and restriction types and you want to maintain the corresponding restrictions, you can use this app. Please use this catalog only for the upgrade support (and only in the Q system)
Fig. 1: The new ‘Business Roles Changes After Upgrade’ app provides transparency on changes to business catalogs and restriction types and allows you to maintain them directly from there
More Information
IAM Change Overview
Similar to the previous releases, also for SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008, there is an SAP Note called ‘2933309 – Identity and Access Management (IAM): Change Overview for SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008’. This SAP Note has a release-specific change overview document attached to it which covers all changes relating to Identity and Access Management (IAM) which have been introduced compared to SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2005. The changes listed in the attached central spreadsheet cover:
- New, renamed, deprecated, or deleted apps
- New, renamed, deprecated, deleted, or dependent business catalogs
- New and renamed business role templates
- Renamed business groups
- Restriction type assignments
- New and renamed business role templates
Fig. 2: The IAM Change Overview for SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 comprises all IAM-related changes compared to SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2005
More Information
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info: http://www.sap.com/s4-cloudrelease
- Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 Release Blog
- Link Collection – Technology Topics with SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
- Embedded Analytics: SAP Analytics Cloud in SAP S/4HANA Cloud – Link Collection here
- Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
- Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
- Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community: register here
- Feature Scope Description here
- What’s New here
- Help Portal Product Page here
- Implementation Portal here
Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via LinkedIn or @DeissnerKatrin