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Author's profile photo Roman Moehl

Integrate Automatic Data Locking for Your Planning Workflows with SAP Analytics Cloud Calendar

Motivation

Recent innovations of SAP Analytics Cloud calendar provide a powerful toolset to take your planning process to the next level. Features like dependencies and automatic data locking tasks give you control to lock and open data slices just at the right point in time during your planning workflow.

In this blog, we will look at how you can enrich your data collection and review tasks with automatic data locking.

Scenario

Inspired by the ABC computer scenario, there are two personas that we want to support in our scenario:

  • A country manager plans budget for the respective country and submits the data for review. Once the country manager has submitted the data, no further data changes should be possible for their data slice.
  • A region manager reviews the budget submitted by the country manager. The region manager wants to make sure that data that has been submitted remains locked and is protected against further data changes.

How do we achieve that? Let’s examine the required modeling steps in SAP Analytics Cloud calendar.

Modeling

The data collection step of the country manager fits perfectly well to a general task. We can add a story as a work file and set up a context for the correct country.

General%20task%20with%20work%20file%20and%20context

General task with work file and context

 

So far, so good – but how can we make sure that once the general task is submitted, the data is locked before the region manager can start their assessment? We need dependencies and automatic data locking tasks to get that working.

Let’s start with the data locking task. Since we’ve chosen an automatic execution, the data lock will be applied behind the scenes without any user interaction. As a next step, we need to decide on the timing. The lock should be applied after the general task has been submitted, that’s why we add a dependency in the create dialog.

Setup%20of%20a%20dependency%20in%20the%20create%20dialog

Setup of a dependency in the create dialog

Before activating the data locking task, a few more adjustments are required. The data slice that should be locked is defined in the Context section. By default, the data will be locked.

Context%20and%20data%20lock%20states

Context and data lock states

What is the purpose of the Reverted State in the Context section? If the regional manager rejects the submitted data, then the general task should be reopened. To give the country manager a chance to adjust budget values, the data lock needs to be reverted as well. To achieve that, we set the Reverted State to Open. At runtime, locking data and opening data locks is performed automatically without any user interaction.

As a last step, we need to add a review task for the region manager. A story and a context make sure that the reviewer has the right data for their approval step. We add a dependency to the automatic data locking task.

Dependency%20for%20the%20review%20task

Dependency for the review task

 

We’re set and done. Here’s the full sequence of tasks:

Tasks%20chained%20by%20dependencies

Tasks chained by dependencies

Summary

Event-based triggering of data locking tasks makes sure that the data is locked and opened at the right point in time. It is a powerful asset for enterprise planning workflows.

Check out further resources:

Please share your feedback or thoughts in a comment.

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      5 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Hugh Gledhill
      Hugh Gledhill

      Hi Roman Moehl,

      In this scenario, do the country and regional managers need to be maintained as "Data Locking Owner" in the region dimension?

      The issue we find with data locking in SAC is that a data locking owner for an entity is almost always its manager as well, unless you have a very shallow hierarchy. Because of this, we can never ensure data remains locked, because the owner / manager always has the ability to unlock it later on. There is no control over this. I've raised the issue via improvement request 264219, but there has been no update in the last 18 months.

      Thanks,

      Hugh

      Author's profile photo Roman Moehl
      Roman Moehl
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Hugh Gledhill,

      thank you for your comment and question.

      In general, the user that is added as the assignee of the Data Locking task is used to set the data lock. That user can be the task owner (default), country / regional manager or somebody else that may have an admin-like role for the data locks of the model.

      If the user is another user than the owner of the automatic Data Locking task, then that user has to approve to set the data lock. See online help: https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_ANALYTICS_CLOUD/00f68c2e08b941f081002fd3691d86a7/91fa3cbbd46d457ab04f9ef3c7901655.html

      The assignee of the Data Locking task would need to be able to set the data lock that is defined by the context. There are several ways to accomplish that. Maintaining the user as "Data Locking Owner" is one way to do it. See online help: https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_ANALYTICS_CLOUD/00f68c2e08b941f081002fd3691d86a7/e07d46e950794d5a928a9b16d1394de6.html.

      Hope my reply is helpful.

      Best regards,

      Roman

      Author's profile photo Hugh Gledhill
      Hugh Gledhill

      Hi Roman Moehl,

      Thanks for your reply. Regarding your last point: "The assignee of the Data Locking task would need to be able to set the data lock that is defined by the context. There are several ways to accomplish that. Maintaining the user as "Data Locking Owner" is one way to do it"

      My understanding was that the user which changes the data lock status must be assigned as the "Data Locking Owner", whether that is done via a Data Locking task or manually. Your comment suggests that this is not required, and that there are other ways to allow users to change the data lock status - could you elaborate on what the other ways are? I couldn't find reference to them in the online help.

      Thanks,

      Hugh

      Author's profile photo Roman Moehl
      Roman Moehl
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Hugh Gledhill,,

      thanks for your follow-up question.

      There are permissions required to set up and work with data locking. The section "Data Locking Permissions" in the online help describes the permissions and the roles that include them by default: https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_ANALYTICS_CLOUD/00f68c2e08b941f081002fd3691d86a7/e07d46e950794d5a928a9b16d1394de6.html

      For example, a user with the Admin role has the required privilege to change the state of data locks. Those users may not need to be maintained as data locking owners in the driving dimension(s) explicitly.

      Changing any lock state may also require permissions for the specific model and dimensions involved. See section "Detailed Permissions for Data Locking Tasks" on the same online Help page mentioned above.

      Best regards,

      Roman

      Author's profile photo Hugh Gledhill
      Hugh Gledhill

      Hi Roman,

      Thanks for the clarification. A user either needs to be assigned as the data locking owner, or have an admin or admin-like role in order to change data lock states. Unfortunately both options have the limitation described in my original comment, where in most cases these users can freely lock or unlock their entity at any time.

      Thanks,

      Hugh