BW4HANA Workspaces

A BW Workspace is a dedicated area inside SAP BW/4HANA that is used to upload local data and combine this with central data. It exposes central EDW data in a logical way to be consumed and enhanced with local data by business users. BW Workspaces are integrated into BW4HANA, but in full control of business.

BW Workspaces are dedicated areas in a BW system where new models can be created based on central BW and local data files (i.e. flat files). The BW Workspace environment itself needs to be created, maintained, and controlled by IT. Once IT setup the BW Workspace, then the business users can subsequently use the BW Workspace to combine data from BW with data in flat files in order to react quickly to new and changing requirements.

There are some prerequisite for creating workspaces and those are: Activate the following ICF services in transaction SICF:

• RSL_UI_MY_WORKSPACE
• RSL_UI_CREATE_COPR
• RSL_UI_CREATE_PROVIDER
• RSL_UI_CHANGE_WORKSPACE
• RSL_UI_CHANGE_QUERIES
• RSL_UI_SUBMIT_DATA
• RSL_UI_CREATE_LCHA
• RSL_UI_CREATE_LCHY

Create the required roles and authorizations/authorization profiles. The authorizations are assigned using authorization object S_RS_WSPAC (workspace name and activities).

Authorization:

The following authorization templates are delivered for the three user roles:

• BW Workspace Administrator (S_RS_TWSPA)
• BW Workspace Designer (S_RS_TWSPD)
• BW Workspace Query User (S_RS_TWSPQ)

The below are steps to create/edit workspace:

Step 1: Go to transaction RSWSP

Step 2: Enter the name of workspace and click on create.

Step 3: Enter description of workspace.

Step 4: Setting Tab: This is general settings of workspace. Here add the expiry date for the workspace, set a prefix for the providers in the workspace so, all providers and transient queries in the workspace are then given this prefix, you can also mention the contact of the developer who needs to be contacted if the workspace encounters any errors.

Step 5: Central Providers tab: Add the required info provider to workspace as a central provider and select the required fields from it.

Step 6: Submission targets: Here you can add the required target info provider in which you want to load the data from workspace to BW. For our demo we are not using any targets.

Step 7: Remaining tabs will be automatically gets filled when business user use workspace later like local providers, queries and other things will be created. Just activate workspace as below.

There are two web-based environments for business users are available which includes BW Workspace Designer and BW Workspace Query Designer.

BW Workspace Query Designer

SAP BW Workspace Designer is a SAP UI5 based tool used by business users to create and edit queries and local providers on the top of BW workspaces.

There are some prerequisite for using SAP BW Workspace Designer i.e. activate the following ICF services in transaction SICF: /sap/bc/ui5_ui5/sap/rsl_wqd and /sap/bw/modelling.

For starting the application use transaction RSWQD or select the following directly in a web Browser enter following URLs in your browser, depending on which port is configured (HTTP or HTTPS). http://<Web Server Host>:<Web Server Port>/sap/bw/wqd/index.html

Step1: Select the workspace “ZWS_DEMO”

Step2: Create Info provider (Local provider). Say create from local data on popup screen enter name and select file which needs to be loaded and hit save button.

Step3: Create local composite provider: Select create to merge local data option and in popup enter name and select central provider and hit save.

Step 4: Add new dimension “Material Description” from local provider.

Step 5: Add new dimension’s name and select mapping column from available columns.

Step 6: Select option local provider and choose our created local provider ZWS_LP1 and add column from local provider to composite provider with mapping material number and transfer values and save it.

Step 7: Create local query as below and save and run it.

Step 8: Local query output: Shows added dimension material description with central provider data.

This is how we integrated new column from excel file with BW info provider’s data.

Thanks a lot for reading this blog post. Happy Learning!!!

References:

SAP Help Portal: https://help.sap.com/doc/saphelp_nw75/7.5.5/en-US/0a/1383fb489f4743862ee73e5d3f72d3/frameset.htm