Possibility of "BI HANA & EPM" refresh?

[rohitashsharma]

Please note for refresh purpose we use tool “BI HANA & EPM”” and this refresh is via excel which has add in tools. please suggest if its possible to automate refresh through Alteryx.

[Yoshiro_Fujimori]

Hi @rohitashsharma ,

If you want to run a workflow in a predefined interval (if you mean it by "refresh"),

you may want to consider "Designer plus Desktop Automation" add-on.

https://help.alteryx.com/20223/designer/schedule-workflows

[rohitashsharma]

No it is not the requirement,

I have BI HANA & EPM databases and it is refreshed every month or when required, however this refresh task is completed via excel which has add in tools as in the screenshot attached . please suggest if its possible to automate refresh through Alteryx.

[Yoshiro_Fujimori]

Hi @rohitashsharma ,

I am not sure what the two Add-Ins are supposed to do.

But if you want to schedule a job which runs automatically every month, it still would be achieved by "Designer plus Desktop Automation" add-on.

https://help.alteryx.com/20223/designer/schedule-workflows

Using Alteryx Server may be another way, but it would be too much for automating just a single task..

https://help.alteryx.com/20223/server/schedule-workflow

[leofrancia]

Hi @rohitashsharma,

I was an SAP Basis administrator in my past life so I can relate to your requirement. Can I assume that your main concern is that your Excel refreshes from EPM add-in are taking too long, hence you are exploring Alteryx?

As you are aware, SAP EPM Excel Add-in has business context on the table structures and the ability to do formatting within Excel. Extracting data from SAP HANA (assuming you have an SAP HANA database) to Alteryx will require you to recreate the business context in SAP EPM Add-in to Alteryx. If you are comfortable with recreating the EPM business logic, and assuming you are using SAP HANA, you can do this via the Input Data tool (see screenshot). A really big caveat: you need to ensure that the business context is mapped 1:1 from SAP EPM Excel Add-in to Alteryx and that you have done functional testing to avoid having incorrect calculations in the Alteryx version of your EPM report.

The recommended approach is to review your SAP environment and your SAP EPM Excel Add-in version as slow response times in your refreshes may be due to outdated versions, add-ins, etc.

Do let me know if my assumption on the intent of your question is wrong. :) Thanks.

[rohitashsharma]

Hi @leofrancia ,

Yes! You are absolutely correct this is what I was looking for, however still seems a lengthy process and also IT admin involvement to create connections before recreation of the reports/parameters.

Thanks you so much for your response, will help me a lot.

[leofrancia]

Thanks for the feedback, @rohitashsharma.

Let us assume you are still evaluating the automation of EPM refresh in Alteryx. I would like to share two considerations:

1.  If your EPM refreshes need to be scheduled because you have plenty of reports, this is where  @Yoshiro_Fujimori's point on Desktop Automation will help. So while it is true that you will spend some time refactoring your EPM report to Alteryx, it is worth considering how much effort you are taking to manually extract using the SAP EPM Excel Add-in to evaluate your Alteryx use case. E.g. do you get frequent time outs using the SAP EPM Excel Add-in due to large data, etc?
2. Do you need to enrich (e.g. from external data) or do custom transformations in the Excel output coming from SAP EPM Excel Add-in after you extract via the standard process, anyway? Are these custom steps not addressable by SAP EPM Excel Add-in? 

If the answer to the two questions above is Yes, the Alteryx use case becomes "warmer" 🙂. Let us know how you go!