I made a deal with one of my SAP NetWeaver colleagues - she would teach me about Guided Procedures, and I would provide her with a scenario using my favorite component, SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (BI). So, here it goes ...
Guided Procedures enable business users to build and execute automated processes. As a participator in a process, I may not be able to complete my activity with just the information passed to me within the process - I may need to do a little research. And BI is a great source of information for me, since my enterprise data warehouse can contain everything from very detailed departmental information to consolidated information gathered from across the enterprise and combining data from a variety of sources. I don't want to have to leave my Guided Procedure to get this information, though, so it needs to be available to me directly in the process.
In my scenario, I have a simple process in which:
- A user ("requestor") requests staffing for a project from the engineering department.
- The engineering department manager ("manager") approves the request.
- The requestor reviews the response and completes the process.
At some times, the manager may be able to respond immediately to the request, based on the manager's knowledge of workloads. In other cases, the manager may need to refer to BI information on staffing commitments and achievement of utilization goals to determine the right staffing. Therefore, the process must allow the manager to optionally access BI - which you can include in the process by defining an Info Callable Object for your BI information.
You can find the scenario, including the steps to create the BI Info Callable Object, in the Using SAP NetWeaver BI in Guided Procedures: Info Callable Object Scenario document. For more information on when to use guided procedures and examples of business scenarios, see the Usage guide for creating Guided Procedures blog.
