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Introduction and Terminology

With Duet Reporting Management, report templates are defined in the backend and delivered to end users' Outlook following a role-based concept. These templates are organized in report catalogs as represented in the Outlook folder structure. Each template can be executed by end users with either the default parameters or any individual parameter values. After execution, the report is scheduled as a job in the backend. On job completion, the resulting report data is forwarded to the Outlook inbox where it is transformed into a mail item and formatted according to end users' needs.

 

Duet Role Concept

Duet comprises a set of predefined roles. These roles define which metadata scopes are delivered to the clients, in other words which features of which scenarios shall be available to which group of users. A common misconception is to mix up these roles with those listed in transaction PFCG. Latter define backend authorizations while Duet roles apply to Duet Server, Add-On and clients. Since the backend is the leading system, Duet roles are assigned to backend roles and included users are synchronized regularly into the corresponding Duet roles. You can find further information about the Duet role concept in the shipped documentation "ERP Configuration Guide".

You can find out all predefined roles of your Duet installation by calling a role management web service. Within the browser, open Web Service Navigator on the Duet Server with the following URL: http://😕wsnavigator and log in as J2EE Administrator. Select web service RMWrapper, then click on Test and select operation getMendocinoRoles. (Mendocino was the original project name for Duet, so please feel honored to execute an integral part of the Duet platform 😉 Click Send and provide Duet user credentials. The response will list all roles for all deployed Duet scenarios.

 

 

Role names follow a common pattern: SCENARIOCODE.Rolename. For Reporting Management, the only predefined role is REMA.Users. This means that all users with this role will receive the Reporting Management metadata scope to execute report templates. But it also means that all report templates will be delivered to all users. Given the situation you have a report catalog for different user groups, e.g. HR, Sales and Procurement. If you assign all templates in these catalogs to the Duet role REMA.Users, HR employees would be able to see and execute Sales reports and vice versa. The backend would return an empty report without any data because the backend authorizations are missing. But if you define your own Duet roles for each of the user groups, an HR employee will only be able to see and execute HR report templates. This blog describes the needed steps to set up your own Duet roles.

 

1. Prerequisites in Backend

As mentioned before, the backend is the leading system and Duet builds on top of its authorization mechanism. As prerequisite, determine a PFCG-type of role for each user group (e.g. HR, Sales and Procurement) that all users of this group are part of. The backend users assigned to these roles will be synchronized regularly into the corresponding Duet roles, which we are going to define in the next steps.

 

2. Duet Administration Environment

Logon to Duet Administration Environment in your browser and navigate to Role Synchronization. Select the backend system id and client from the drop down menu, then enter the role that the users of your new Duet Reporting group have in the backend in the text box "External System Role Name". Click Add, then repeat this step for all other Duet Reporting groups you want to define. Finally, click Synchronize Now to create corresponding groups in the User Management Engine (UME) of the Duet Server.

 

 

 

3. User Management Engine (UME)

Open User Management Engine (UME) on Duet Server by opening http://😕useradmin in your browser. Log in as J2EE Administrator and click on Groups in the menu on the left. When using Duet 1.0, perform these steps with UME roles instead of groups. The synchronized groups we just created in Duet Administration Environment follow the naming pattern DUET.SYNC.SID_CLIENT.BackendRoleName Predefined Duet roles are modeled as DUET.APP.SCENARIOCODE.Rolename group. To list all Duet roles for Reporting Management, you can search for all Groups starting with DUET.APP.REMA.*

 

 

To create your own group, click on the New Icon. Enter a group name starting with DUET.APP.REMA.* In the screenshots, this is DUET.APP.REMA.JochenTest. With our example, it could be DUET.APP.REMA.HumanResources. Avoid special characters, dots and spaces in the last part of group names. Click on Save, then select your group in the list and click on the Assign Groups button.

 

Click on the Add Groups button depicted by a + symbol, then search for DUET.SYNC.* to list all backend roles. Select the role that the users of your new Duet Reporting group have in the backend. You entered this role name earlier in Duet Administration Environment. Click Select and finally Continue. Now you have assigned your first own Duet reporting group to a backend role. Repeat these steps for the other roles, e.g. Sales and Procurement.

 

 

4. Duet Implementation Guide

Last step is to assign report templates to your newly created Duet reporting role in the backend. Go to transaction SIMGH, open "Duet Implementation Guide", click "Report Administration" and select "Create Report Catalogs", then navigate to the report template that your new user group shall receive. Select Assign Multiple Roles from the tree on the left, click on the edit symbol, then New Entries. Enter the role name in upper case, e.g. REMA.JOCHENTEST and click Save. From now on, this report template will be sent out to all users in any of the roles in that list.

 

 

 

Further Reading and Troubleshooting

Given the situation, you have created your own roles and attached templates to them, but these templates won't arrive in the end users' Outlook Inboxes, please take a look at the blog "5 steps to cure failing Duet Report Template delivery". This blog can also help you troubleshooting when you are just using the REMA.Users default role.

If all report templates arrived, but the data reports get stuck after executing a template on the client, I recommend the blog "Follow your ERP report in Duet"

In addition to the shipped documentation, please take a look at the Duet How-to Guides. For Reporting Management, these guides cover the following topics:

  • How to configure your Duet landscape for BW Reporting
  • How to Create and Configure System and Duet Time points
  • How to Add a Report Template to Duet

In any case, please share your ideas, comments and questions with the SDN community in the Duet [To remove] or in the comments section below this blog.