Selecting Time Periods when Linking Work Status with BPF Actions

[Former Member]

A feature of BPC is that you can add an activity to a BPF to automatically set work status. This is great because it means the integrity of planning data is protected without users needing to use various confusing Excel screens, often requiring multiple clicks.

We currently use Work Status to protect TIME/VERSION/ENTITY combinations to prevent users modifying data that is historical or not intended for planning.

The result is that in the Forecast, 6 months may be Locked (by an Admin), and 6 months may be unlocked (for planning)..

Above: Example of locked periods, plus planning periods. Ignore middle periods.

When creating a BPF Instance you can only select a single Time hierarchy node or member, meaning either 2017.06 or BAS(2017.TOTAL) will be set upon clicking 'Submit' or 'Approve'.

This results in either only a single period (2017.06) being Submitted, or an error because the user cannot set periods that are Locked back to Submitted.

Although we do have 'First Plan Periods' and 'Last Plan Periods' maintained in the Version, these selection are not available without using an ABAP BADI.

One alternative is to model a 'Planning Time Periods' hierarchy for each Planning cycle and use this in the BPF Instance, meaning only time periods in this hierarchy are set.

Sharing of your experience with how you may have handled this scenario would be much appreciated,

Nick

[former_member186338]

Can you explain what do you mean by:

"One alternative is to model a 'Planning Time Periods' hierarchy for each Planning cycle and use this in the BPF Instance, meaning only time periods in this hierarchy are set."

[Former Member]

Hi Vadim,

The BPF Instance and Templates can only have a single hierarchy node or time period selected for the Time dimension. Therefore, without modification of the TIME dimension hierarchies, you will only have 2017.TOTAL for example, which will include 12 periods.

If the user is not authorised to set all 12 periods (because 6 periods are set to Status Locked by Managers) the end user gets the warning that they are not authorised to change work status.

If the user uses Work Status screens in Excel or Web and manually select individual 6 periods (or hierarchies containing only only Unlocked) that are Unlocked, they can set the Work Status via BPF or Excel as expected. This however removes the functionality of being able to link BPF 'Submitted / Approved / Rejected' actions to the Work Status.

The last image of the original post depicts a 'PARENTH2' in the TIME dimension to have only periods that require locking by users, allowing for a BPF Instance to be deployed to a time selection without the inclusion of Locked periods.

Maybe SAP's intention was primarily based on closing down Actuals for a single period, or management of the Budget which will be a 12 month period, as opposed to a rolling forecast in which time periods for locking change each monthly cycle.

Nick

[former_member186338]

Yes, looks like the mechanism is useless for setting workstatus on number of months.

Please don't create multiple hierarchies in TIME dimension - a lot of issues will be present.

[Former Member]

Can you please be more specific on the issues present?

I have seen implementations where this has been configured without issue.

Cheers - Nick

[former_member186338]

In the old days with BPC 7.0 and early 7.5 I think it was possible. But when the 3 hidden time hierarchies were introduced to speed up calculations - adding extra hierarchy resulted in issues.