Enabling Stories in People Analytics: Transforming...

shrutithakkar · ‎2024 May 30

INTRODUCTION

To meet the evolving needs of modern enterprises, SAP has introduced Stories in People Analytics. This innovative approach integrates the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite with SAP Analytics Cloud, providing a robust platform for creating detailed, presentation-style reports.

Stories empower users to transform raw data into insightful narratives, using a combination of charts, visualizations, text, images, and pictograms. This not only enhances the comprehensibility of the data but also facilitates effective communication across teams.

ADVANTAGES

Leverage improved schema structures that allow the right data elements to be found quickly and easily, including important fields being automatically suggested.
Use the additional available calculated functions (for example, CONTAINS, LENGTH, UPPERCASE).
Perform date calculations and calculations on Boolean fields.
Create and display ratios, like gender ratios, in the report.
Create reports irrespective of your data access permissions. This means you can add fields to the query even if you don't have the relevant data access permission. However, when you run the report, you won't see any data for such fields.
See relevant fields automatically for the data elements linked using joins, without needing to manually navigate the data model.
Report on fields from different schemas, which are linked using auto joins and semi-hard joins.
Create shortcuts for accessing your favorite Story reports from the Home page, by adding them to the Reports tile.
Use Proxy Now to run, edit, create, or delete Story reports on behalf of the proxy user.

IMPLEMENTATION

Step 1: Enable Stories via Upgrade Center Task

Skip this step 1 if Stories are already enabled in your tenant. This can be validated by navigating to Upgrade Center -> Completed Upgrades.

Log in to SuccessFactors > Go to Admin Center> Navigate to Upgrade Center.
In the Filter By list, select Analytics.
Under Recommended Upgrades, click Stories in People Analytics.

Click Upgrade Now, and on the confirmation pop-up click Yes.
Check for a successful upgrade via the “View Recently Completed Upgrades” link in the Upgrade Center.

Once the task is successfully submitted, you may have to wait for 45-60 minutes for backend configuration jobs to successfully complete.
a. Job type in Provisioning: Configuration Job for Stories in People Analytics.
b. This job is automatically triggered by the Upgrade Center task and should not be triggered via any other means.

Step 2 - Conditional Authentication configuration for Corporate Identity provider

If your organization does not use a Corporate Identity Provider, you can skip to Step 3: IPS user sync
If your organization has a Corporate Identity Provider, please follow the below guidelines to add additional settings, validate, and ensure configuration in Identity Authentication is compatible with running Story reports.

Log on to the Identity Authentication Service as an IAS admin and go to Applications & Resources, select the Applications tab.
In the Bundled Applications section, choose the SAP Analytics Cloud tenant (mostly configured as SF Analytics). It is configured either at the same level as the SAP SuccessFactors tenant, or under the SAP SuccessFactors tenant as its child application.
Edit the Conditional Authentication details.
Ensuring that the set of rules used for the SAP Analytics Cloud tenant and the SAP SuccessFactors tenant are the same. This should be already set in the SAP analytics cloud tenant is tagged as a child application to the SuccessFactors tenant.

In the Default Identity Provider field, select the Identity Provider that you are using to authenticate users on the SAP SuccessFactors tenant, and save the changes.

Go to Identity Providers, select the Corporate Identity Providers tab, and select your corporate identity provider.

Ensure that the Forward All SSO Requests to Corporate IdP option in the SINGLE SIGNON section has been disabled.
Configure Identity Federation, enable the Use Identity Authentication user store option in the User Store section, and save the changes.

Note -

In IAS, the SAP Analytics Cloud tenant is always configured as a child application of the SAP SuccessFactors tenant, except for the SAML 2.0 Configuration and the Subject Name Identifier settings, which always inherit the rest of the settings in the SAP Analytics Cloud tenant from the parent application.

Source-

Target-

If the inheritance gets disabled because of any custom configuration, use the Inherit from Parent link to re-enable the inheritance and save the changes.
Ensure that you use the same Corporate Identity Provider for both the SAP Analytics Cloud tenant and the SAP SuccessFactors tenant.

Step 3: IPS user sync

It is important to know if your systems are configured with ODATA IPS connector or SCIM IPS connector to synchronize users between SAP SuccessFactors, IAS, and SAP Analytics Cloud tenants.

If you are using an ODATA IPS connector, you will need to ensure the below permissions.

Manage Integration Tool- Allow Admin to Access OData API through Basic Authentication
Manage User Employee Export

If you are using SCIM IPS connector -
SCIM IPS connector with client certificate authentication does not have any pre-requisites of permissions.

Please validate in both Source IAS and Target SAC transformation in IPS to ensure permission-based sync relevant configurations and attributes like hasEmbeddedAnalyticsPermission exist in transformation.

Perform user synchronization:

Navigate to Target Systems to enable the newly configured SAP Analytics Cloud tenant.

Select the SAP Analytics Cloud tenant, and click the (Edit) icon (next to Target Systems) on the left pane.
Click Enable at the bottom of the left pane, and on the confirmation pop-up message that appears, click OK. The status of the tenant changes to Enabled.
Populate the Source System by performing the following:

In the Target System Details section, click Edit.
On the Details tab, in the Source Systems field, select the SAP SuccessFactors tenant and save the changes.
Go to the Properties tab to ensure that the following Standard properties are added and available in the newly configured SAP Analytics Cloud tenant. This is just a check to ensure user performance is optimized. If this is not available, please add the property.
Navigate to Source Systems and select the same SAP SuccessFactors tenant.
Navigate to the Jobs tab (it only appears in the Source system), and for the Read Job type of job, click Run Now.
You can track the progress of the read job from Job Logs.

Step 4: Grant Story report permissions

After enabling Stories in People Analytics, you can view existing story reports in the Report Center, if any. However, the rights to create a new story or to access the data in a story are managed using role-based permissions.

Create Story: Allows you to create, edit, delete, share, import, export, duplicate, and add labels to Story reports. Only the schemas that are selected for this permission are available while designing the Story reports.
Story Admin: Allows you to manage all the Story reports. It enables the All Reports tab in the Report Center. This permission also allows you to access the Content Store (for template stories) in the Import dialog.
Schedule Reports: This allows you to schedule Story reports.

For more details on permissions, please refer to the guide here

Once permissions are updated, we are good to go for creating story reports in SAP SuccessFactors.

A short video guide on how to create your first Story. Hope this helps to get started and explore the story section.

CONCLUSION

The introduction of Stories in People Analytics marks a significant advancement in the area of HR reporting and data visualization. By integrating the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite with the SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP has created a powerful tool that not only streamlines the reporting process but also enhances the ability to communicate complex data through engaging, presentation-style reports.

Stories offer an innovative solution to transform raw data into meaningful insights, enabling better collaboration and more informed strategic planning.

Hope this blog gives some insights into how to enable story reporting in SAP SuccessFactors.

Thank you for taking the time to read it!

If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment below. I hope you found this post informative and helpful. Feel free to share your experiences as well; learning from each other is always beneficial!