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One of the most used applications being offered by SAP Profitability and Performance Management (PaPM) is managing Teams. As an overview, Administration section is composed of two components:
- Manage Default Settings - will let you configure specific settings for a new environment. To know more about how this is done, refer to YouTube – Manage Default Settings.
- Manage Teams – will grant security and administrations for assigning activities, events and reports to specific user groups (or what is being referred to as Teams in PaPM) that are having the same function in an organization. To know more about the creation of teams, refer to YouTube – Teams.
In this blog post, I will be focusing on Teams and its role on other relevant function and applications in PaPM. And the usual question is: What exactly teams do and how do these teams affect the activity processing? In which I will help you understand as well as its relation to what we call “Dual Control” in an Activity execution.
In general, the Teams application has its influence to at least these three (3) sections:
- Calculation Unit
- Manage and Deploy
- My Activities
Let me discuss each chapter, but before doing so, please take note that you will read a lot about “four-eyes principle”, “Submit, Approve, Reject” in this post, which are part of Dual Control functionality of PaPM that will be discussed further in the next blog post.
1. Calculation Unit
The Calculation unit is where you define process templates containing relevant functions and activities whose execution can be managed by assigning a user group or team to either Performer or Reviewer. These assignments to either Performer or Reviewer would be essential to the Dual Control mechanism in PaPM which utilizes the “four-eyes principle” – enabling the user to execute actions such as Submit, Approve, and Reject for activities defined in the Process Instance.
Detailed steps can be followed on how to create a process template in the Application Help – Calculation Unit.
For example, we have assigned teams as Performer and Reviewer to certain activities.
Since I am focusing on Teams’ impact in Calculation unit, let us focus on two columns. As you can see in the process template, there are two columns named Performer and Reviewer. It is optional to maintain these columns with suggested teams who are expected to Perform and Review certain activities.
Example:
In A0001 activity you can see that performer is USERTESTER and reviewer is TESTER. This means that the template is suggesting that only users under USERTESTER is to perform the activity and users under TESTER group should perform the approval or rejection.
Since this is just a template, adjustments of the assigned teams together with other attributes can still be done in a newly created process instance which is based on the process template created in Calculation unit. In the next point, I will be discussing how to create a process instance, as well as adjust attributes via Manage and Deploy application.
2. Manage and Deploy
From the application name itself, this application helps in managing and deploying process instance based on the created process template from the Calculation unit.
As I have discussed, after the creation and activation of a process template in the Calculation Unit, I will be guiding you on how and which attributes can be changed once the process instance has been created. To explain this thoroughly, I will divide this section into two:
2.1 Process Instance Creation
a. Go to the SAP Menu > Performance Management > Execution
b. Choose Manage and Deploy Processes or use transaction code NXI/P1_PROCESS
Hint: The application can be accessed via Fiori thru transaction code /n/ui2/flp.
d. Choose the Process template which you would like to use as a basis of your process instance then select Create.
Hint: To make it easier to locate the process template to be used for creating the process instance, add the Environment and Version fields in the create process instance window.
e. You will need to create your own Process ID to easily distinguish the process instance and description. In this example, I have created “PROC01” as the Process ID and “Process 01” as the Description. Once done choose Create.
f. The next screen will be visible, where you will be requested to optionally create a new report, if this is not intended just choose Cancel.
Just for the continuity of this blog post, I have created “REP01” as the Report ID and “Report 01” as the description of the Report then choose Generate.
Hint: The generated report can be accessed in My Reports application or via transaction /NXI/P1_REPORT.
g. Now that the process instance has been created, it will then be visible in below section of the Manage and Deploy screen. If in case, you cannot see any process instance in this section, including the one you just created, you may refer to this section of the Administration Guide – Maintain User Groups.
Hint: To make it easier to locate the process instance created, add the Environment and Version fields via Personalize button.
2.2 Process Instance Attribute adjustment
Now that we already know how to create a process instance, let us proceed to the next section of Manage and Deploy where we will be focusing on explaining the attributes that can be changed while the process instance is still on Open state.
In below image there is: Start Date, Due Date, Comments, Performer Group, Reviewer Group. Please take note of the changes done, especially for the attributes Performer Group and Reviewer Group, which will influence the accessibility of activities via My Activities application. Double click the image to see the descriptions of the attributes.
Hint: Performer Group and Reviewer Group columns are not displayed by default. These columns can be added via Personalize button.
For other relevant information on these attributes, you may refer to the latest version of the Application Help–Manage and Deploy
Now that I have guided you on how to create a process instance, as well as adjusting the attributes, we will now proceed with the last section of this blog post which is My Activities. But before proceeding to My Activities, the process instance which we just adjusted must now be deployed by choosing the Deploy button.
3. My Activities
All deployed process instances triggered from Manage and Deploy should be displayed in the My Activities application. To access My Activities, follow below:
- Go to the SAP Menu > Performance Management > Execution
- Choose Start My Activities or use transaction code /NXI/P1_ACTIVITY
Hint: The application can be accessed via Fiori thru transaction code /n/ui2/flp
Now that you have accessed the My Activities application, please take note that visibility of the activities will depend on the assigned teams to a specific user.
Let us use below activities and explain to you how teams can affect the accessibility of each:
1. An Activity assigned with Performer (USERTESTER) and Reviewer (TESTER)
When both Performer and Reviewer are defined, an Activity is only visible to a user who is assigned to these teams. Since both Performer and Reviewer are both filled, Dual Control is automatically enabled giving extra control to an activity via Submit, Approve and Reject buttons.
2. An Activity assigned with either blank Performer or blank Reviewer
In activities A0002 and A0003, it is evident that only one of the Performer or Reviewer has an assignment. When an activity has this state, it means that the activity is visible to all users assigned to at least one team, regardless of which team. It must not also be expected that Dual Control mechanism will work in this type of setting.
In a normal business setup, this kind of example is not encouraged, as this does not provide any additional control both in visibility of activities as well as with Dual Control activation.
3. An Activity assigned with blank Performer and Reviewer
Activity A0004 on the other hand is the proper setup in case dual control should not be triggered (unlike activity A0002 and A0003). By not having any team assigned in this activity, it can be interpreted that this activity must be visible to all users who has at least one team assignment and has access to My Activities.
4. An Activity assigned to the same team / usergroup as the Performer and Reviewer.
When Performer and Reviewer have the same assigned team, the visibility of the activity is only exclusive for the users assigned to it, in this case all users assigned to USERTESTER. Since there is no blank Performer or Reviewer, the system will enable the dual control mechanism which means Submit, Approve, Reject process is mandatory to complete an activity.
Unlike activity A0001 that you have different Performer / Reviewer teams, in this item a more sophisticated control has been created to make sure that the four-eyes principle takes place. For example, even if both Performer and Reviewer are assigned to the same team, it does not mean that one user can be both Performer and Reviewer. So, if USER1 acted as performer - meaning submitting the activity, another user will need to perform the review process such as Approving or Rejecting.
I hope the given 4 scenarios made you understand the behavior of assigning or not assigning a team as Performer and Reviewer in terms of their visibility, accessibility and Dual Control influence.
As we are now aware of the effects of Teams on PaPM Process Management and Execution, I am confident that you can enhance any ongoing activities and managing it better.
What other items can you add related to this post that I may have not mentioned? Please feel free to post a comment below! ?
While for other PaPM related questions, you can ask them through https://answers.sap.com/questions/ask.html and use primary tag: SAP Profitability and Performance Management or user tag: PaPM before submitting.
You can also read other SAP Profitability and Performance Management posts via https://community.sap.com/topics/profitability-and-performance-management .
Thank you for reading and watch out for another interesting topic on the next blog posts!
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