SAP Analytics Cloud - License Usage Limits

[JimmyYang]

Status - Enabled

The release of license usage limits feature has been fully rolled out to SAC across landscapes in NEO and CF. 

Overview

We will be introducing important changes to license usage limits in SAP Analytics Cloud. This will be taking place in the Q2 release 2023 Q3 release sometime in calendar Q3 for SAC (CF and NEO). In this blog I’ll outline all the changes and what this means for you.

 

Licensing Usage Limits Today

With SAP Analytics Cloud, you can choose the number of Business Intelligence, Planning Standard, Planning Pro and Analytics Hub licenses. When you create a user, the user is assigned one of these licenses based on the role they have. If you create a user even though there are no licenses left, there would be a warning message at the bottom of the screen, but the user creation process would still succeed.

New License Usage Limits Behavior

The new behavior will mean that user creation/update workflows will fail if there are no licenses left. To unblock these administration workflows you will have 3 options: purchase more licenses, removing users or deactivating users (mentioned in this blog).

The license usage limits will impact all operations that involve user licenses. This table will describe the areas that will see changes:

 

 

	Users Page – creating/updating/activating users Teams Page – adding/deleting users to teams Roles Page – adding/deleting users/teams to roles Requests Page – approving requests that grant roles to users
	Importing Users from File – Importing via CSV
API	SCIM API
SAML	Dynamically Created Users Roles/Teams SAML Attribute Mapping

Surplus Licenses

There will be the ability to exceed a lower license type if a higher license type is available. This is done automatically. The user will still show the same license type in the Users page, but you can see in the Monitoring page that they are using a surplus.

As an example, if there are 0/10 Planning Professional Licenses used, but 10/10 BI licenses used. If you try to create a new user with a BI Role, this will still work because there are Planning Professional licenses used.

Example Demo

To give you an idea of how this will work, let me demonstrate the following:

• how to find your current usage


• successful creation of a user with licenses remaining


• failed creation of a user with no licenses remaining


• deactivating users to free up a license

 

Current usage

You can view the current license limits and your consumption through the Monitoring Page

Go to System > Monitoring

 

In the above image, you will notice that Planning Professional has reached 10/10, Planning Standard is 3/10, Business Intelligence is 9/10

 

Successful User Creation

Based on the monitoring page, I have room to create 1 user that will use a Business Intelligence license. I will use the BI Admin role for this.

This user creation is successful!

Checking the monitoring page, the Business Intelligence licenses has increased by 1 and I am now at my license limit for Planning Professional and Business Intelligence.

 

 

Failed User Creation

I will now try to create a new user with a Planning Professional license (Admin role). Remember that I am at 10/10 for Planning Professional licenses. In addition, Surplus logic does not apply in this case because Planning Professional is the highest license type.

This operation will not succeed, and I will get the error:

**Note, if you try to create another BI user, even though there is 10/10, this is allowed with the surplus logic because there are free Planning Standard licenses **

Deactivating a user to free up a license

The Planning Professional license is fully used up. To free up a license, I can use the activate/deactivate feature, which will allow me to deactivate a user and give back a license.

Going into the Users Page, I select T1 and click Deactivate Users. This would free up a Planning Professional license.

 

I can now repeat the user creation from the previous step and it will succeed.

Additional Information

Default License

If a user is created with no role, the Business Intelligence license will be provided automatically to this user. This is applicable if there is no other default role specified.

Concurrent Licenses

Concurrent licenses are not impacted by the license usage limits. This only applies to named users licenses

 

 

How to Prepare for the changes?

With the license usage limit update, you may be wondering what you have to do to prepare for these changes. The first thing is to understand what tasks will be impacted. Essentially any user workflows would be impacted. Here is a short list of the typical workflows:

• creating users


• updating user's roles (adding and removing)


• activating a user. The previous role consumes a license that has reached the limits.


• updating roles


• adding users and teams to roles


• updating teams


• deleting teams and roles (users will get the default BI license)


• approving roles for users


• user creation / updates through scim (which include role and team assignments)


• users that are dynamically created on login and the default role has reached capacity


• users that assigned roles through saml attribute mapping

For any tenants that are currently exceeding licenses, your users will still work. This means that users will still be able to log into the system and everything will remain functional. However, any updates to these users that will impact licenses will not be possible. It is strongly recommended that you become compliant by deactivating users, deleting users or increasing your licensing.

 

To increase your licenses, please reach out to sapdigitaldeals@sap.com or your SAP Account Executive .

 

I hope this blog was helpful and provides you with enough information on the new feature.

[JefB]

Hi Jimmy,

1. Does this impact tenants on test-service?
   or is it only blocking on productive tenants?
   
   Because on a test service each license is a planning professional license.
   Even though developers / test users would in practice only need a lower license (and mirror exact same roles as production), the system would now force you to assign planning professional, correct?


2. Is there an easy & automated way to de-activate dormant users (not logged in >3months) instead of manually clicking.

[JimmyYang]

Hi Jef,

Yes this affects test-service tenants as well. In test-service tenants, there are only Planning Professional licenses granted, so users would need this license when they are created.

We have plans to expand SCIM to allow for deactivation of users, but this development has not started yet. Through the UI, there is no easy and automated way to de-activate dormant users. But, I like this idea! Could you create an influence request and I can review it with the team?

Best Regards,

Jimmy

[alessia_pozzi]

Hello

jefb pls let me know which is the influence request when you log it; I will definitely vote for it to be taken into consideration!

Thanks a lot

Regards

Alessia

[JefB]

hi Jimmy, Alessia, thank you and here is the influence request!
https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#/idea/299903

[Wu-Dongxue]

Hi, Jimmy.

Thanks for sharing. I understand the API can be impacted when the number of BI licenses exceeds. But when the licenses are enough. Can I change the user's activation via SCIM API -PUT Request body "active": true, (or false)? Does this object value impact the consumption of the named licenses?

Many thanks,

Wu

[hugh_gledhill]

Hi jimmy.yang2 ,

 

Will the user creation process be updated to allow assignment of users to teams at the point of user creation?

 

Our users inherit roles and associated licenses from the teams they are assigned to, rather than being assigned roles directly. If we aren't able to assign teams at the point of user creation, these licensing changes would force us to assign new users directly to a role, then later assign teams, then remove the direct role assignment.

 

Thanks,

 

Hugh

[JefB]

Exactly.. wondering too if it will be blocking in such cases!

[JimmyYang]

SCIM active is not yet implemented and does not control the activate/deactivate state of users. We plan on addressing this at a later point in time.

[JimmyYang]

Hi Hugh,

The user creation process does not allow for assigning into a team directly. I understand the scenario and I'll review this with the team to solve this problem. I have a few ideas.

 

Thanks,
Jimmy

[Wu-Dongxue]

Hello Jimmy,

 

Thanks for the response. It is greatly helpful.

 

Best regards,

Wu

[torsten_wirth]

Hello,

at least for test systems this is a very bad idea because there are only planning professional licences on this systems. In past BI licenses were not checked on test systems which means unlimited BI users could be created. That was wrong.

Due to the fact that licences are also linked to authorizations in case of planning / planning professional it makes no sense to grant every user planning professional if they don't neet it.

Based on the latest changes we now have the problem that we have e.g. 50 BI users (which have no license anymore because on test system only planning professional licenses do exist). It seems to be that the only workaround is at the moment to switch every user which currently is using a BI license to Planning Professional which also grants more authorizations.

That means in our case if enough planning professional licenses do exist e.g. 60 and total and we have 5 planning professional users and 50 BI users there should be no errors and warnings because BI is included in Planning Professional licsense and we do not want all BI Users Planning Professional rights and therefore do not want to use this license.

Regards,

Torsten

[JefB]

Indeed. As workaround, you could create a new blank Planning Professional Role, and assign it to all users in your test-service tenant. Then make that role the 'default assigned role' upon user creation.

[JimmyYang]

We are looking at this scenario and determining the best way to address it. In the meantime, Jef's suggestion is the current workaround.

[ramumoraboyina]

Hello Jimmy Yang,

We can see in this post,  This will be taking place in the Q2 release 2023 Q3 release.  Then it wont effect in Q2 release right?

[christoph_baierl_audi]

Hello jimmy.yang2 ,

this change is not a small one... this affects the way of using the test-tenant at its core functionality in many companies.

I guess the feedback from the companies was enourmous, maybe most of it in the background. So thanks to that, it will not take place in Q2...

Nevertheless it seems that SAP is willing to change this, but there are a few open questions for the customers how to handle that change in the very short time - now until Q3 release, and be able to act in the tenant after the rollout of this change. The workarounds are nice, but i guess we will go into a deadlock until we got enough licenses... and even that tooks quite a long time and is very ambitious to handle this until mid of August, while it is still not clear what usertypes are purchasable.

What is the plan for the usertypes in the test tenants? Will there be really only Planning-Professional Users? If yes, i guess a lot of customers will prepare productive-tenants with a lot of BI Users and a few of PP Users, as this is mainly the setup of companies iam in contact with.

As we need to shift licenses and usertypes in our test-tenats, this information is necessary for us if we want to provide a serious service in our company.

Regards

Christoph

[JimmyYang]

Yes this license usage limits feature is delayed until Q3.

[JimmyYang]

Hi Christoph,

The usertypes will still be the same, but the licenses available in tests will be Planning Pro licenses. With that in mind, BI users can still be used, but they will consume the next higher available licenses which is a Planning Pro.

Best Regards,
Jimmy

[weiwei_chen]

jimmy.yang2

 

I see the feature is now delayed to Q3 QRC.

 

However, there are some customers on Fast track see this feature already enabled for their system? are we rolling back this feature for those customers until later as well?

 

best,

Weiwei

[JefB]

Hi All,

Monitoring the assigned license per user over time is also very difficult in the tool today, so please consider voting on this request as well!

299296 - Report on assigned license per user overtime

[Rik]

As a workaround, the SAC Tenant API can be used to 'dump' this information into a datawarehouse solution to build up the history.

[JefB]

Do you mean the SCIM API to retrieve user details?
The activation/deactivation of users is not supported yet in the SCIM API, so your nr. of assigned licenses per user at that point will not be 100% correct.

[s_schneemann1]

Hi Jimmy and Jef,

Is creating a "blank" planning professional licence role really an equivalent for creating a BI user? Can I create a (planning professional) role with the exact same permissions as a BI User and it behaves exactly as a BI role? We sometimes have to simulate scenarios for testing whether you need planning or BI Users so this is an important thing to know for us.

Regards,

Sandra

[timo_schefold]

Is there a special handling for SAC Users (typically consultants) who are SAP employees?
Especially think of customer (implementation) projects where SAP (consulting) is doing an SAC project and SAP employees are working - typically temporarily - on a customer's SAC tenant.
What about these users? Do we expect, that an SAC customer is paying for respective SAC licenses? (Pls consider that SAC licenses are valid (= paid) at least for one year - often for 3 years. So there is no model for a "temporary" license...)

Thanks, Timo

[JimmyYang]

Hi WeiWei,

The same schedule applies for fast track customers.

Best Regards,

Jimmy

[JimmyYang]

Hi Timo,

We can look at this use case, but right now there is no way to differentiate between a regular user and user that is created from an SAP employee (with the exception of a support user).

Best Regards,
Jimmy

[ManjunathGudisi]

Hi jimmy.yang2 How would this impact the customers who have concurrent licenses. Can you please explain a scenario with an example. Thanks Manju

[JimmyYang]

Hi Manjunath,

Concurrent licenses are not impacted by this change. If you want to adjust the users from a named license to a concurrent license (if available), this can be done by simply reassigning the concurrent role to the user.

Best Regards,
Jimmy

[JimmyYang]

We are making sure that Planning Professional licenses can be used in place of Planning Standard and BI licenses. We refer to this as the surplus logic. So this means if you have 50 Planning Professional licenses and no Planning Standard and no BI licenses, you can still create 50 users with BI roles.

This is really important in the test systems as there is only one license type and the full ability to create users with any roles will exist.

 

[LaceyRao]

hi Jimmy,

You mentioned that Planning Professional licenses cover Planning Std and BI, meaning if they have enough Planning Prof licenses, let's say 20 Planning Professional, 0 Planning Standard + 0 BI, they still can create, e.g. 10 Planning Prof + 5 Planning Std + 5 BI? It will work as long as the total number does not exceed 20?

If the statement above is correct, does the same logic apply to Planning Standard? I mean if the customer has spare Planning Std. licenses, can they create BI users?

Thanks,

Lacey

 

[JimmyYang]

Hi Lacey,

Yes this surplus licenses calculation scenario you just described will be possible.

Best Regards,

Jimmy

[JimmyYang]

Hi Sandra,

We are adding a surplus calculation logic to make this simpler. It allows you to use a higher license in place of a lower license. So in your case, it will allow you to use a Planning Professional License for BI role. This will be simpler and more straight forward than the original workaround.

Best Regards,
Jimmy

[HerveKauffmann]

Hi Jimmy, Does it has an impact on SAP Analytics Hub customers?

[JimmyYang]

Yes will impact SAP Analytics Hub licenses as well.

[timo_schefold]

Thanks Jimmy,

ok, that puts us in a difficult situation with the customer. Additional aspect is that the customer has a SAP AMS (application management support) contract in place, where SAP is doing (consulting) support activities. Typical setup is that there is a pool of SAP consultants - with frequently changing assignments on support/consultant tasks.

The consequence that the customer has to pay SAC licenses for a "pool" of SAP consultants does not really fit...

Regards

Timo

 

 

[JefB]

Timo, this 'pooling' approach is very common and a challenge for every consultancy (SAP or non-SAP) to justify on client side, especially since concurrent licenses are suddenly not sold anymore.
Btw, wouldn't a different treatment for SAP employee/consultants create an unfair advantage?

Fortunately the new user de-activation feature helps a bit to manage named user license consumption, but that is still a tedious manual process.

[JohnL]

A nice blog on finding inactive users: How to Find Inactive Users in SAC | SAP Blogs 💯💯💯

[akosfuresz]

Hi Jimmy,

 

The release is already there, but license enhancement seems not to be active?

Did you make any changes for the delivery schedule?

 

Kind Regards,

Ákos

[JimmyYang]

Hi Akos,

This should be toggled on sometime this week in a phased approach.

Best Regards,

Jimmy

[SayedZubair]

Dear jimmy.yang2

Deactivating users is not as easy as its shown 😞  ]t is easy if you have couple of users to be deactivated. But with 100s of users that should be deactivated its a pain point. There should be some simpler solution for this. Also with this feature it has not just disabled creation of users but also any user assignment to Team, removal of users from Team, Assigning teams to roles, removal Team from Roles etc. are all affected.

How can we over come this?

 

Regards,

Sayed Zubair

[JimmyYang]

At the current time we have no ability to activate/deactivate users per team. This is something I can review with our product team.

In addition we are reviewing the feature to allow for activate/deactivate via SCIM API. This is still in consideration with our Product Teams.