Sunday, July 8, 2018

Publishing Configuration Part 1

BusinessObjects and SAP - Publishing of Crystal Reports Part 1 of 3



In case you followed my blog series so far you should be in a situation where you have a running BusinessObjects Edge system with Crystal Reports, Xcelsius, Live Office and the SAP Integration Kit installed and you are able to logon to BusinessObjects Edge with your SAP credentials.
In the next step we will configure the publishing of a Crystal Reports where we first will save the report into the BI repository and then push it from the BI environment to the BusinessObjects Edge server.
In the last blog we did install all the required software so that we can no configure the BusinessObjects server to allow SAP accounts and SAP roles to leverage the software.
This image outlines the publishing process:

  • Step #1 : When a user attempts to publish one or more Crystal reports, BW looks for a Remote Function Call (RFC) destination (of type TCP/IP) that is configured to connect to this BW Publisher. The TCP/IP destination provides SAP BW with the name and port number of the SAP Gateway that the BW Publisher is registered with.
  • Step #2: SAP BW then communicates over TCP/IP with the BW Publisher Service, and sends the following information across the network:
    • The appropriate Crystal report file(s), with any required translated report strings.
    • A publishing command, if you are not using a local SAP Gateway.
    • The name of the appropriate Central Management Server (CMS).
  • Step #3: The BW Publisher Service responds by executing the publishing command, thereby invoking the BW Publisher. The BW Publisher logs onto the specified CMS as the user, and checks to see if the user has the appropriate permissions in BusinessObjects Enterprise to publish reports. If the user's rights are sufficient, the CMS allows the reports to be added to the system.
When publishing a report from Crystal Reports the report is published with the language from the SAP Logon as "master-language". Master-language in this case means that the string values from this report are stored in SAP translation tables with the configured language set as source language for the translation process.

Configuring the BW Publish service

As part of the installation of the SAP Integration Kit we did select to install the BW Publishing service. You can start the BW Publishing service via the Central Configuration Manager from BusinessObjects Edge.
The configuration of the service is done via the registry.
The path in the registry is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Business Objects\Suite 12.0\SAP\BW Publisher Service
There are three values that you can configure
Program ID
Type a descriptive string to identify the BW Publisher service. The Program ID can take any value, but must be 64 characters or fewer, and may not contain spaces. The Program ID is case-sensitive.
Gateway Host
Type the name of your BW server. If you have a BW cluster, enter the name of the central instance of BW.
Gateway Service
Type the port number that the Gateway Host is listening on. For example, type 33##, where ## represents the instance number of your SAP Gateway. Usually, the instance number is 00, and the value for this field is 3300.
After you entered those items in the registry you should be able to start the Publishing service and the service should keep running.
In my case I entered the following:
Program ID : VMW010_PUBLISH
Gateway Host : vanpgsap05.sap.crystald.net (which is my SAP BI Application Server)
Gateway Service : 3300
In case you entered everything correct you should be able to start the BW Publishing Service and it should keep running.
The publishing can also be configured using a SAP Gateway as an alternative for the Publishing Service.

Creating an RFC destination

As next step we need to create a RFC Destination in transaction SM59 and configure it to leverage the BW Publishing service.
You logon to the SAP BI System and start transaction SM59
I select the option "Create"
... and provide a name for the RFC Destination. As Connection Type I select TCP/IP (T) and enter an description as well.
As Application Type I select "Registered Server Program" and enter the Program ID that I configured previously for my BW Publishing Service as the Program here. Important - this is case sensitive.
I also enter the Gateway options:
o Gateway hostType the name of your BW server. If you have a BW cluster, enter the name of the central instance of BW. You must use the same BW server name here that you specified when you configured the BW Publisher service.
o Gateway serviceType the port number that the Gateway host is listening on. For example, type sapgw##, where ## represents the instance number of your SAP Gateway. Often, the instance number is 00, and the value for this field is sapgw00.
In my case I configured the destination as follows:
As final step I test my connection.

Create a BusinessObjects Enterprise server definition

So we created now the BW Publishing Service and the RFC Destination. In the next step we need to put the pieces together and define a definition of the BusinessObjects server in the transaction /CRYSTAL/RPTADMIN (part of the ABAP Transport from the Installation)
I start the transaction /CRYSTAL/RPTADMIN (Content Administration Workbench).
... and can use the "Add new System" icon in the Folder Enterprise System to create a new definition.

On the first tab "System" I can enter an Alias name for my system and I need to enter the CMS name (fully qualified) with port (in case you not using the default port).
The option "Default system" allows you to configure on BusinessObjects server landscape as the Default system for BI Roles that have not been assigned to a specific system.

On the "RFC Destinations" tab I now need to add the RFC destination that I did create in transaction SM59 previously.

On the tab "HTTP" I need to provide the following details:
o ProtocolType http (unless the web server that is connected to BusinessObjects Enterprise is configured to use https).
o Web server host and portType the fully qualified domain name or the IP address of the web server that hosts your BusinessObjects Enterprise InfoView or custom web application.
o PathThis path is essentially the virtual path that your web server uses when referring to the SAP subfolder of your BusinessObjects Enterprise web content (or the path to any customer web application). Do not include a forward slash at the beginning or at the end of this entry.
o Viewer applicationType the name of the viewer application.

On the tab "Languages" you can select the list of languages that will be leveraged for Crystal Reports. The system will take all string informations from the Crystal Reports and the text can be translated to those languages selected here and then there will be one report per language created automatically on the BusinessObjects Edge server.

On the Roles tab you need to select the list of roles that will publish the Crystal Report related content from their roles to the configured BusinessObjects Edge server. Based on this you can see that you could have on BI system pushing content to multiple BusinessObjects Edge system (example : one system separately for HR, one system for the rest).

On the "Layout" Tab you can define the base folder for the publishing and the security levels that you want to assign. These security settings will then be used as default settings in BusinessObjects Edge.
In regards to the folder structure the following explains how SAP Roles and Crystal Report objects in the SAP Roles are being created in the BusinessObjects Edge server.

When publishing, the top-level folder "SAP" and the folder underneath "3.0" (naming depends on the configuration in the Content Administration Workbench and the SAP Authentication in the Central Management Console) are created automatically.
Underneath the folder structure is created based on the values retrieved from SAP BW during the publishing process:
  • The Folder "SID" is replaced with the logical system name consisting of the SAP System ID and the SAP Client Number (for example, R37CLNT800).
  • The role folder is created based on the technical name and description of the role that has been used to store the Crystal Report object on the SAP BW system.
  • The report itself is saved to the actual role folder.
  • For each language the report is made available in, one report object is created.
For example, the following structure will appear on the BusinessObjects Enterprise system assuming the following values:
  • SAP system ID : R37
  • SAP client number : 800
  • SAP BW role name : Business Objects Training Role
  • Used languages : English, German (DE), and simplified Chinese (ZH)

We will continue in Part 2 with theconfiguration in the Content Administration Workbench and in Part 3 with the necessary security configurations.
For those that missed the installation parts, here are the links to the blogs:

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Same NR range in Invoice Verification (MIRO) and FI document

Step 1. Maintain FI document number range. Use transaction OMR4 and go to Number range for document types in FI. Select the company code for which you want to create the new number range interval and click on the change interval button. Insert a new document number range by clicking on the insert interval button on top of the screen.for example, I created number range interval 52 with the document numbers 5200000000 – 5299999999. Don't forget to set the external number range check box (Ext).
Step 2. Assign FI number range to FI document types. The second step is to assign the number range created in step 1 to the FI document type for invoices. Again use transaction OMR4 and go to Document type. Double-click on the document type, which you are using for LIV invoices. In my example, I used the SAP standard document type RE. In the number range field, assign the new number range interval 52
Step 3. Maintain MM document number ranges. Use transaction OMRJ and click on change interval button. Insert a new document number range by clicking on the insert button at the top of the screen. For MM documents, I created number range interval 52 with the document numbers 5200000000 – 5299999999. For the internal number range assignment, do not set the external number range check box (Ext).
Step 4. Update MM number range assignment. The last step is to assign the MM number range to your MM transaction via IMG menu path Materials Management>Logistics Invoice Verification>Incoming Invoice>Number Assignment>Maintain Number Assignments for Logistic Documents>Transaction – Assign Number ranges. Two transactions are available. LIV contains the following two internal transactions that are used for the MM document number determination:
RD: manual invoice entry (MIRO)
RS: cancel, reverse invoice (MR8M), evaluated receipt settlement (MRRL), EDI invoice receipt, invoicing plan (MRIS), and revaluation (MRNB).
You need to update the number range interval for transaction RD.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Setup of SAP SSO Service in SAP BO BI4.0 CMC


Setup of SAP SSO Service in SAP BO BI4.0 CMC

Setup of SAP SSO Service in SAP BO BI4.0 CMC

Product versions: SAP BO BI4.0

1. Steps required for setting SAP SSO Service in SAP BO BI4.0 CMC

  1. Log into SAP BO BI4.0 CMC as Administrator,
  2. Go to Authentication -> SAP
    Setup Entitlement Systems
  3. Import Roles
  4. Check if SAP Authentication is enabled on the Option tab
  5. Import keystore keystore.p12 file
    The message No key store file has been uploaded indicates no previous uploads

    (Please refer to Generate keystore and certificate for SAP BO BI4.0 for more details about how to create keystore)
  6. Setup Key Store/Private Key password, Private Key Alias and System ID
    System ID is PALM in this example. It has been defined when certificate is imported in SAP BW.
    Please refer to Import SAP BO BI4.0 certificate into SAP BW for more details
    (In below example the password is the same for both . It is admin1)
  7. Setup Security Token Service
    The Security Token Service is running as part of Adaptive Processing Server (APS)
    Go to CMC -> Servers and check if APS has Security Token Service

    If not, stop APS and add Security Token Service, then start APS

References and links

How to setup SSO against SAP BW with SAP BO BI4.0 Common Semantic Layer (UNX) or BICS
Generate keystore and certificate for SAP BO BI4.0
Import SAP BO BI4.0 certificate into SAP BW
Setup of SSO againt SAP BW for SAP BO BI4.0 BICS or JCO connections

 

Configuration steps to integrate BEx Web applications into BI 4.x

Configuration steps to integrate BEx Web applications into BI 4.x


Product versions:
Business Intelligence 4.0
Business Warehouse 7.x

Introduction

This article presents the pre-requisites for and detailed configuration steps to accessing BEx Web applications stored in a BW ABAP system from a BI 4.x (aka Business Objects Enterprise) system.

Configuration steps on BW ABAP backend

Step 0 : pre-requisites

  • SAP NetWeaver ABAP 7.01 SP08 or 7.30 SP01 (see Note 1476156 and Note 1471463)
  • ABAP stack only . No NetWeaver Java stack required, i.e. Portal and BI-JAVA components. Note that the BI 4.x system includes an SAP JVM and Java libraries required to run BEx Web templates.

Step 1 : define an RFC connection to the BI 4.x system

  • from the SAP GUI, use the SM59 transaction code to access the RFC connection configuration screen
  • select TCP/IP connections and click on the Create icon
  • From the Technical Settings tab :
    • specify a name for this RFC connection, you will re-use this name when configuring the BI 4.x system, in our example "VERIGTECH10_BEX_WEB"
    • connection type should be T
    • select the application type Registered Server Program
    • specify an alias (ID) for this program, in our example "VERIGTECH10_BEX_WEB"
    • set your main BW ABAP backend host as a Gateway Host, in our example cdphl338.phl.sap.corp
    • set the Gateway Service to sapgw##, where ## represents the instance number of your SAP Gateway. In our example, the instance
      number is 00, and the value for this field is sapgw00.
  • From the Logon and Security tab, select the option Send Assertion Ticket
  • Leave the MDMP and Unicode and Special Options tabs to default

Step 2 : add the BI 4.x web tier as a connected portal

  • from the SAP GUI, use the SM30 transaction code to access the connected portals (RSPOR_T_PORTAL) table view. Type RSPOR_T_PORTAL in the Table/View field and click Maintain.
  • you might get prompted to acknowledge a warning message, click on the green tick to acknowledge
  • click on New Entries to add a new entry to the table
  • define the connected portal as follows :
    • set the Destination as the RFC Connection you defined in the previous step, in our example "VERIGTECH10_BEX_WEB"
    • give the new connected portal a name (can be any value), in our example "BI4.0 on VERIGTECH10"
    • check the Standard Portal option if you want the BI 4.x system to become the execution server for BEx Web template developers. When checked, templates launched from Web Application Designer and queries launched from BEx Query Designer will execute within the BI 4.x system : a web browser window will open and launch the template via an OpenDocument URL.
    • enter the base URL of the BI 4.x web server in the URL Prefix field. In a default installation scenario, this would be the base URL to the Tomcat HTTP port, in our example "http://verigtech10.dhcp.wdf.sap.corp:8080"
    • select BOE under Platform. Note: you will not see this option if you did not apply SP08 for 7.01 or SP25 for 7.00 (see Note 1541365).
    • Select Use SAP Export Lib (PDF) if you want the ability to export BEx Web applications to PDF, PostScript and PCL files. The Adobe Document Services are not available in BI 4.x, hence the only option for printing is the Export Library for SAP NetWeaver BI.
  • save the new entry with the Save icon from the top menu bar
Note: more information can be found on that configuration step from the Help Documentation

Step 3 : define a Service user account for RFC connections

  • from the SAP GUI, use the su01 transaction code to create a user account that will be used for RFC connections from the BI 4.0 system
  • follow the usual steps to create a user account. It is recommended to define a Service account.
  • in our example, we are creating the account BEXATBOE which will be used from the BI 4.0 system, see the next section
  • only one role is required for that user, refer to the next article on the series for more details : Permissions and authorizations requirements for BEx Web into BI 4.x

Configuration steps on BI 4.0

Step 0 : pre-requisites

  • a BI 4.0 system running from a machine allowed to make RFC connections to the BW system

Step 1 : create an OLAP connection to the BW server

This can be done in 2 ways : from Information Design Tool (IDT) or the Central Management Console (CMC).
Note: If you have BI 4.0 patch 0.5 or earlier, do use the CMC method; the IDT method has a bug (ADAPT01505743) that was corrected in BI 4.0 patch 0.6 and later versions.

using Information Design Tool

  • from IDT, open a session to the BI 4.x server with a user ID that has permissions to create OLAP Connections (refer to this article for more details : Permissions and authorizations requirements for BEx Web into BI 4.x)
  • expand the Connections folder, pick the destination folder (it can be any folder although the default preference would be Common Connections / SAP BW)
  • right-click on the folder and select Insert OLAP Connection
  • specify a name for that connection (can be of any value), you will need that name when configuring the BEx Web Applications service later on. In this example, we entered BIR4BExWeb. Click Next.
  • select the SAP BICS Client for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.x middleware driver. Click Next.
  • set all properties as follows :
    • Authentication Mode : select "Use specified user name and password, Single Sign On from BI Launch Pad 4.0 to BW is not supported at the moment, hence we are setting the connection with a specific user account
    • Client is the client number for your BW ABAP backend system the BEx Web templates are stored into
    • User Name / Password : use a BW account that is defined on the ABAP backend (refer to this article for more details : Permissions and authorizations requirements for BEx Web into BI 4.x)
    • Language : EN
    • System ID : System ID of the BW ABAP backend the BEx Web templates are stored into
    • Application Server : host name of the BW ABAP backend the BEx Web templates are stored into
    • System Number : instance number of the BW ABAP backend the BEx Web templates are stored into
    • Click Next
  • Select Do not specify a cube in the connection option. You may observe a delay of a few seconds to be able to select that option, and wait until the available cubes are displayed. Click Finish.
  • the connection properties should look like this :

using Central Management Console

Step 2 : create a dedicated Adaptive Processing Server for BEx Web Applications

  • Log on to the CMC and go to the Servers section
  • Create a new server
  • Select the Service Category "Advanced Analysis Services" and Service "BEx Web Applications Service", click Next
  • The next screen allows you to add other services to your server : do not select any if you want this server to only process requests for BEx Web applications. It is recommended to use a server (or servers) dedicated to BEx Web Applications for scalability reasons; it also makes the troubleshooting and monitoring easier as you know only Bex Web Applications are processed by this server. Click Next.
  • Give your new server a name. I used "RIG.APS.BExWebOnly" with RIG the node name, APS for AdaptiveProcessingServer and BExWebOnly to indicate it is meant for BEx Web applications. Click on Create.
  • The new server will appear under the "Adavanced Analysis Services" category and as disabled.
  • Select the new server and enable it, before starting it.

Step 3 : configure the Adaptive Processing Server

  • select the newly created server and go to its Properties
  • scroll down to the BEx Web Applications Service section and set the various properties as follows :
    • Maximum Client Connections : 15 by default
    • SAP BW Master System : this is the name of the OLAP Connection we defined on the BI 4.x system (step 1), BIR4BExWeb in our example
    • JCo Server RFC Destination : this is the name of the RFC Connection we defined on the BW system (step 1), VERIGTECH10_BEX_WEB in our example
    • JCo Server Gateway Host : this should be the same value than defined in the RFC connection, i.e. the main BW ABAP backend host, in our example cdphl338.phl.sap.corp
    • JCo Server Gateway Service : this should be the same value than defined in the RFC connection, i.e. the Gateway Service as sapgw##, where ## represents the instance number of your SAP Gateway. In our example, this is set to sapgw00. Important: when using aliases, make sure they are configured as described in the SAP Note 52959 (e.g. for windows by maintaining file: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\services , refer to the Note for details)
    • JCo Server Connection Count : this is the maximum number of concurrent JCo connections to the BW ABAP system
  • click Save and Close
  • restart the Adaptive Processing Server for the changes to take effect
The configuration is now complete ! You should now be able to access BEx Web templates from BI LaunchPad, see the next article of the series for more details : How do end users access BEx Web Applications from BI 4.x ?.

References and links