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Report and Analytics is a very strong and demanding tool in every organization and SAP also acknowledge the same for its customers. Currently we have multiple option of scheduling reports for our BizX users in SuccessFactors (offline and via email), but when it comes to schedule a report for an external user or a non BizX user we have only one option – transfer via SFTP.
SFTP is a good, secured option to transfer files to external vendors through SuccessFactors, but it has its own limitation and downsides. Companies using this option must accept cost of setting SFTP structure or use services of third party who already have this setup established. This is not an issue for big or well stablished organizations, but it may concern smaller organization.
Today, I am sharing my experience with similar kind of challenge that we had faced for our organization and the alternative we have created to save this extra cost.
Problem Statement:
HR need to schedule monthly report to a vendor as for one of their business needs. This vendor is a small organization and does not have any kind of SFTP system to receive automated files from SuccessFactors. IT department is not ready to share company’s SFTP credentials outside the organization and that left us with few options to fulfill this requirement.
- Manually share the files to vendor on monthly basis
- Use a third-party service to complete this requirement.
On reviewing these options, we have found that it has its own limitation,
- Manually sending monthly report needed an FTE to dedicate their few hours every month from their scheduled job and send these files. Also, it creates dependency and risk of missing the schedule due to human error.
- Using a third-party service will result in, company must pay extra cost per month for these schedules.
Therefore, business want to create an alternative option which is more sustainable and cost effective
Solution Implemented:
Process Overview
Since the basic requirement to schedule a report via email is, that the recipient need to be in BizX environment. Therefore, we decided to create a basic user profile with minimum information in our system.
Example: Basic User Import fields
Key points to be consider while creating the profile –
- It should have minimal information needed to create a profile
- It should not have any organization details, so that this user cannot be picked in any of the report as part of headcount or any activity.
- Most important - This profile should have the external user email ID mapped under email field. This will help to schedule the report directly to user mailbox and provide extra brownie points in term of security as vendor does not need to access the system to get the report neither you need to share login password with the vendors.
Once the profile is created, next step is to create a role in RBP with a limited access to execute report center and have read access to the fields related to report that needs to be schedule. This will make sure –
- User will not get a blank field even if there is data available in system.
- If in given scenario you need to give login access to the external employee, you can control his access to data
Once the role is defined, assign this role to respective granted and target permission group
Last but not the least, once the user and its role is define we scheduled the reports to the respective vendor mail box via report center.
- Go Reporting > View Schedules
- Switch to Legacy Report Distributor
- New Bundle > Name Bundle and Configure it how you like.
- Add Item > Add Excel Table/CSV Table >
- Select the Destination, E-Mail
- Add recipients > search for user > add user
- Schedule > Click on Add > update schedule requirements
Example: Report Schedule
Note: If while adding the recipient you do not find the user, login/proxy as user and access to reporting once. The user will start appearing under add recipients
To Conclude:
This is a very simple arrangement that consultants can use to schedule report to the users which are not part of the organization, and where you do not want to spend some dollar in sending report via using third party. I thought to share this process with the community as it has help me in saving some thousand dollars annually for my company.
Also, this whole setup is done in EC and schedule is completed via report center, it also helps in decreasing dependency on integration center for report scheduling.
Hope you all will like this write up and it will help the new consultants to contribute more for their organization. Please review this article and share your feedback and questions.
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