Insight Publisher V5.2 – User Guide

PostedMay 22, 2022

UpdatedMay 23, 2023

1. Overview

Insight Publisher is an efficient solution that automates the reporting scheduling and distribution. Insight Publisher extracts any report data in any format, on any media, anytime.

Insight Publisher expands and customizes SAP’s inherent reporting capabilities from a central point of control and enables to orchestrate the automation and customization of the numerous reports efficiently. Furthermore, Insight Publisher turns the report into the full-fledged interface, ensuring full data integrity.

Insight Publisher offers a new user experience with an efficient, intuitive and easy to use interface to customize and schedule the reports across the organization.

Insight Publisher solution has two versions: one for IT and one for the users issuing the reports. The IT version is an enhanced version, allowing issuing all reports. Additionally, it allows performing administrative and maintenance tasks and interacting with the log files.

Insight Publisher’s IT User Guide maximize your user experience and guides you step-by-step, tackling systematically all the issues that might arise during Insight Publisher’s daily usage.

Functionality

DPRO’S Publisher addresses and streamlines the everyday need for the very same information to be extracted, viewed and manipulated by various internal and external enterprise users.

Publisher handles:

Any report and model
Any format – The tabular extracted data can convert any report to all the supported formats:
- XLSX
- HTML
- Text delimiter: CSV, Tab Separated Values (Tab), and any free selected delimiter.
- PDF
- XLS
- XML
Any media – The extracted and converted data can be sent over all standard media:
- E-mail (list of recipients and SAP standard distribution-list)
- SMS
- FTP Server
- File directory (Presentation server and Application server).
- Snapshot
- Fiori Notification
Anytime – ALV publishing process can be triggered by all events. ALV reports can be activated either immediately upon request (foreground or and background):
- Manually upon end-user request in foreground
- Periodically Synced to another event. The report will run in the background as scheduled.

Insight Publisher is composed of the following the Administration and Configuration components:

Administrator – Manages and controls the various instances of the publisher and its jobs.

Configurator – Sets the parameters for data retrieval, formatting and publishing/distribution.

2. Publisher Administration

Job Administrator serves as Insight Publisher’s cockpit and a constant monitor of all the jobs.

Enter transaction /DCM/PUBLISHER_ADM.

The following screen appears:

The screen is separated in to two areas:

On the left panel:

Help button – this button opens two direct links
1. User Guide – a direct link to the Insight Publisher user guide at the Insight-SAP knowledgeable website.
2. Release Notes – a direct link to the Insight-SAP release notes document.
3. Open Service Ticket – a direct link to Insight-SAP support team where you may open a ticket.
Favorite – you mark Insight Publisher jobs as your favorite – by clicking on a Insight Publisher will execute it directly.
Recently Used – A list of your previous used Insight Publisher jobs – by clicking on a Insight Publisher jobs will execute it directly.

On the right panel:

A select option and parameters that will help you narrow the list of the available Insight Publisher jobs.

The Administrator consists of two layers:

Jobs – Displays the various distribution profiles defined in the system. Each profile is composed of specific configuration settings and the corresponding scheduling data.
Alerts – It displays inter-profile exceptions.

Jobs

Job Administrator allows its users to view, at a glance, the entire system status. Warning and errors are displayed both at profile level and across profiles (i.e., the same report is distributed several times).

Job Group – manage and maintain a separate authorization (the object authorization – /DCM/PBADM) by the relevant Job Group (IE: FI, Logistic, IT, etc.) to each report in Insight Publisher.

By using the relevant icons the existing distribution profiles, users can edit and create new profiles. Each profile can be reconfigured and rescheduled- CRUD (Create Read Update & Delete).

From the Pull down Menu press Goto->Snapshots in order to navigate to creation/update of Snapshot key directly from Insight Publisher selection screen.

Trigger Job On Demand

You can easily define a job to be executed by event.

Export/Import a Job

You can Export and then import an Insight Publisher Job with all it’s attributes to other clients or even into the same one.

Export an Insight Publisher Job
- At the Insight Publisher Job list Select a Job to export and then from the Toolbar Menu select JOB->Export.
- An Export file will be saved.

To import an Insight Publisher JOB
- - At the Insight Publisher Job list from the Toolbar Menu select JOB->Import.
- An dialog screen will popup to choose the file to be imported.

Simulate Execution

Simulate Execution button is an essential and unique feature allowing:

To test the ALV report just after definition and ensure it provides the relevant information.
To run a failed report again (as per the RED color failure indication). The IT administrator can simulate the failure and understand its cause.
You can simulate the Job in Foreground or in Background mode.

Display all Jobs

Each job’s full information is available by clicking on the relevant job line via the standard SM37 (Overview of job selection) functionality. All instances are listed by time.

Further drill down information is available per individual job, by clicking the Job log (see example below), Application Servers, etc.

Alerts

The ‘Alerts’ button displays all conflicts and alerts from all profile definitions, according to color code.

3. Publisher Job Configurator

The Configurator sets the parameters for data retrieval, naming convention, formatting and publishing/distribution.

The configurator is accessed when Creating, Changing or displaying a Insight Publisher Job.

Data Model

The Insight Publisher’s Configurator uses stand-alone classes (interfaces) – one per each section. Each of those interfaces is solely responsible for specific functionality, e.g., the Formatting interface is responsible for the data formatting while the Distribution interface takes care of the various distribution models. Each interface defines a set of methods (activities) that each of its successor classes must implement.

The above-described data model enables the user to add new functionality to each of the sections. By inheriting the corresponding interface and coding the new functionality, new requirements can easily integrate into the existing data model.

On top of the flexibility, the data model allows each of the already existing functionality classes to be enhanced or (better) inherited, replacing its original predecessor. This way, customers may pick the enhancement method according to the change granularity.

Create/Maintain a New Job

When creating a new job, three parameters should be defined first:

Short text – title name of the job.
Job group – only the relevant Job group will have access to authorize the job. Optional.
External ID – A logical name to define the Insight Publisher Job ID.
Smart – Enabled –defines if the report should support SMART.
Background user – enter a username that will run the job (Optional, the creator of the job will be the default).
Server – enter on which server the job will run.

Press the Continue button .

The Insight Publisher Job Configurator screen will Appear.

The Configurator encompasses the following sections:

Program Run Attributes – the ALV-base reports and its variants.
Data Split –the distribution method for multiple entities.
File – the extracted-file name convention.
File Formatting – the structure conversion of the extracted data (pdf as default).
Distribution Method – defines how to send the report and the distribution model.
Publish Log – whether or not to send a log and the distribution entities.
Advanced – couple advance feathers

Important Note:

The fields Background user and Server can be customized in /DCM/PUBLISHER_IMG.

Program Run Attributes

First Step: Select “Standard Report” or Insight Creator Variant using the Radio button.

STANDARD REPORT

Transaction Code – Type the Transaction code or find it on the help screen.
Program Name – Type the Program name or find it on the help screen by the transaction.
Report Variant – Choose the relevant Variant from the selected program.
Layout – Choose the relevant Layout from the selected program.

Transaction Code Search Help (F4) – You can use this search help to choose three types of SAP Reports. each type has it’s own search help Tab:

Report by Transaction – Search and choose an SAP or a custom developed transaction.
Suggested Transactions – These are Insight-SAP suite transaction that can be used to create new Insight Creator variants. In order to use them you first have to execute them separately and define a Variant to be used.
- /DCM/CLEAR_LOG – Insight Creator Changer module – A report used to display the changes tracking report from the Insight-SAP Change.
- /DCM/FILE_VIEW – File Viewer – Enables creating a Insight Publisher Excel-In Variant based on an external file like Excel Sheet.
- /DCM/IDOC_MONITOR – Insight Creator IDoc Monitor+ module – A report used to display the IDocs monitor+ report from the Insight-SAP IDoc.
- /DCM/SE16N – General Table Display – Enables the usage of a database table (like SE16N) to create a Insight Creator Variant.

The screen after filling the relevant data should look something like the following:

Insight Creator VARIANT – Publish an Insight Creator variant via Insight Publisher

New Transaction Code – Select an Insight Creator variant transaction.
Variant ID – Select the Insight Creator variant.
Variant Name – Select the selection variant from Original Report. Optionally only in cases that is optional only if in the Insight Creator of variant flags is on.
Insight Creator Layout – Select the relevant Layout from the Insight Creator.
Display Mode – Select Standard, Aggregation – Detailed, or Groups (According to the the selected Insight Creator attributes).
Graphs Attachment – Check if you want to include Graphs from the selected Insight Creator (if exists).

Data Split

This section defines the distribution method for multiple entities and has two main options: multiple selection or layout.

Multiple Selection – is a unique and extremely useful feature. It allows the definition of reports and their distribution to many recipients. Each recipient will only receive its relevant part. For example, suppliers get a weekly report of all their awaiting POs. The purchase manager will get the full report including all the suppliers, while each supplier will receive only his awaiting report respectively.

Selection Screen Field – Type the field which the Multiple Selection refers.
Dynamic Selection Field – Selection is a main – if the selected program includes Dynamic Selection, then the user can select one of the values.

Layout Content Field – a variant to be selected which describes a certain column in the report by which it will be sent to each business entity separately. The report will be issued once, and the system knows to send only its relevant part to each entity (for example vendor (K), customer (D) or employee (P).)

Record Split – One use case of Publisher is sending a separate notification per record (instead of one notification for all the records).

One example for such scenario is sending a separate SMS for each record.

This option can be be set in combination with the standard split options and not as alternative to them because (at least for now) the dynamic recipient can be set by split value.

In case of split by record, the record number should be included in the following objects in order to verify a unique name:

The filename.
The snapshot cumulation value.

Split – Split to separated Emails according to selected Business Entity.

Type – Choose To, CC, BCC
Multi spec descr. – Enable to replace the dynamic symbols with the value text in the texts of Email.
Entity Type – Select one of the many types (Email, Distribution list, or a business entities).
Std No. –If a user sends a message externally from the SAP System, their standard address is set as the sender address in the communication type used. This indicator is then important if several addresses are maintained for one communication type.

Important Note:

This selection also defines the Business Entity in the distribution method – Email.

Publisher Job Business Entity

File

This section includes the File Naming conventions. This functionality enables users to manipulate and control the name of the yielded file. Adding date & time help set a unique file name per distribution.

File name Prefix – As a default, the file name prefix is set to the name of the selected report. The user may override this prefix by typing in any other File name prefix.
Created On – The date on which the data was extracted is then formatted according to the selected date format and concatenated to the name prefix separated by underscore “_”.
Created At – The time at which the data was extracted is then formatted according to the selected time format and connected to the name prefix (and creation date, if set) separated by underscore “_”.
With Selection Value – Split by selection screen parameter / dynamic selection (multiple) (populated automatically – not changeable).
With cumulation value – Split by ALV field.
Value/Counter Drop down – Controls whether to set the value itself or a counter (populated automatically – not changeable).
With record number – split by record (populated automatically – not changeable).

File Format

Insight Publisher supports most of the standard industry formats.

The Formatting section is composed of the following elements:

XLSX: Setting the XLSX file format yields a Microsoft Excel® Excel file with a ‘.XLSX’ extension. It is possible to define the Headers type of and the Columns width (automatic/optimized to content). Selection values from selection screen can also be presented in a new worksheet.
Text Format: Setting Text file format yields delimiter-separated values. Insight Publisher enables using any ASCII character as the data delimiter. To enable associating the Comma-Separated-Value file (CSV) with Microsoft Excel®, Insight Publisher uses the common .CSV as the file extension.
Publisher Job File Formatting
PDF: Setting the PDF file format yields a PDF file with a ‘.PDF’ extension.
XLS: Setting the XLS file format yields a Microsoft Excel® Excel file with an ‘.XLS’ extension
XML: Setting the XML file format yields an XML file with the technical field names as tags. The resulted file uses an ‘.XML’ extension.
Publisher Job File Format XML
HTML: Setting the HTML file format yields a well-formed HTML file with the technical field names as tags. The resulted file uses the ‘.HTML’ extension. There is an option to add the file to the message body. It is possible to define in which code the HTML will be in field code page. Selection values from selection screen can also be presented in the bottom of the HTML. When HTML OPTION is selected a checkbox will appear “In Message Body”.
Publisher Job File Format HTML

File Extension – Some of the file formats may have more then one extension available.
Code Page – Available to textual formats only to choose the desired code page..
Safe – This checkbox controls whether to generate a safe file. Setting this checkbox will set apostrophe (‘) prefix in any cell value which starts with: Equals to (“=”), Plus (“+”), Minus (“-“) or At (“@”). Some spreadsheet viewers applications (Microsoft Excel, Google Spreadsheets, OpenOffice, etc.) are vulnerabe to CSV injection (Read more at https://owasp.org/www-community/attacks/CSV_Injection).
Header Type – Defines whether a header-record will be placed in the file and if affirmative sets the filled names format. The currently supported formats are technical, short & long names.
Column width (XLSX only) – Defines if the column will be marked as “Optimized to Content” or Automatic”.
Selection values adds a list of all selection values (Selection screen parameters and dynamic selections) which were used for the selection of data. Including selection value adds info about the table contents (What content was selected)
Formatting – You can define a different format of date, time, Decimal, and optimized the values.

Distribution method

Insight Publisher supports most of the industry standard distribution channels. The extracted data can be emailed, sent to remote and secured FTP server or saved in the file directory. Insight Publisher enables the selection of more than one option.

The Distribution method section is composed of the following elements:

E-mail
SMS
FTP
File directory
Snapshot
Fiori Notification

Email

When selecting the e-mail media, Insight Publisher offers the following options:

Addressee
- Type – Choose To, CC, BCC
- Entity Type – Select one of the many types (Email, Distribution list, or a business entities).
- Business entity – The Key Value relevant to the Entity Type selected.
- Name – The description of the business Entity Key Value.
- Std No. – If a user sends a message externally from the SAP System, their standard address is set as the sender address in the communication type used. This indicator is then important if several addresses are maintained for one communication type.
Delete Row – Delete selected rows.
Distribution list – A shortcut to SAP Transaction SO15 – Distribution List.
Message context
- Subject – The subject of the distributed data.
  - Insert Variables – You may use this button to easily add Variables to the Subject text.
- Text Name – Use email body from standard text (SO10 – SAPscript: Standard Texts)
  - Select the Standard Text language
  - Create Text button – A shortcut to SAP Transaction SO10 to create a new Standard Text.
  - Change Text button – A shortcut to SAP Transaction SO10 to change the Standard Text selected.
- Graphics File – This is the place to select the picture that will be added to the mail.
  - Graphics Button – A shortcut to SAP transaction to add and maintain Graphics.
Appointment – If checked the email will be sent as an appointment (calendar invitation)

Publisher Job Distribution Method Appointment

Send Options – Select Email attributes:
- Request Status – Select an option form the pull-down menu.
- Report Status by Mail – Select an option form the pull-down menu.

Important Note:

Blacklisted email-addresses can now be maintained via Insight Publisher IMG – transaction /DCM/PUBLISHER_BLIST.
E-Mails won’t be sent to blacklisted addresses.
You can temporary stop sending emails by adding the email to the Black list with “Valid To” parameter.

SMS

This option provides the ability to send an SMS.

When selecting the SMS media, Insight Publisher offers the following options:

Addressee
- Entity Type – Select one of the many types (Email, Distribution list, or a business entities).
- Business entity – The Key Value relevant to the Entity Type selected.
- Name – The description of the business Entity Key Value.
- Std No. – If a user sends a message externally from the SAP System, their standard address is set as the sender address in the communication type used. This indicator is then important if several addresses are maintained for one communication type.
Delete Row – Delete selected rows.
Distribution list – A shortcut to SAP Transaction SO15 – Distribution List.
Split – Split to separated Emails according to selected Business Entity.
- Business Entity – Select one of the many types (Email, Distribution list, or a business entities).
- Std No. –If a user sends a message externally from the SAP System, their standard address is set as the sender address in the communication type used. This indicator is then important if several addresses are maintained for one communication type.
Message context
- SMS Content – Enter the text to be sent.
  - Insert Variables – You may use this button to easily add Variables to the Subject text.

FTP

FTP – Insight Publisher renders the following data fields to define the connection string to the target FTP client:

FTP user
FTP password
FTP server
RFC Destination
FTP Path

File directory

Insight Publisher supports all forms of the application server, both physical & logical.

File Type – Saving a file onto the application server is possible using two methods:

Physical Directory – (Default) The user may prefer to use a physical directory location.
Logical Directory – The framework may use a logical path name to point to the required path location. Using SAP transaction file, one links the logical path to a corresponding physical one. This parameter must be set for each SAP client since the logical path name may point at the different physical name for each client.

Directory Path – the destination folder for the file.

Overwrite File (Optional) – The checkbox allows the user to write in the same location, utilizing the same name, which will then overwrite the existing file. It is up to the receiving party to ensure that relevant information is not lost.

Snapshot

This option provides the ability to take a snapshot of the report.

Key – logical name of the snapshot, can be set by job group. Customized in /DCM/PUBLISHER_ING.
- Create Button – A shortcut to the Snapshot Key customization.
Mode – Select one of the options (Create new, Append, or Override last).

Fiori Notification

When selecting the Fiori Notification media, Insight Publisher offers the following options:

Addressee
- Entity Type – Select one of the many types (Email, Distribution list, or a business entities).
- Business entity – The Key Value relevant to the Entity Type selected.
- Name – The description of the business Entity Key Value.
Delete Row – Delete selected rows.
Split – Split to separated Emails according to selected Business Entity.
- Business Entity – Select one of the many types (Email, Distribution list, or a business entities).
Notification
- Notification Provider ID – The Publisher dedicated Provider ID (Can’t be changed).
- Notification Priority – Select the priority (High, Low, Medium, or Neutral).
- Message Context
  - Content – To Crate or change press the Editor button
    - You can add variables to the text by pressing the “Insert Variables” button.

Important Note:

This feature requires NW 7.51 or above (and FES 3.0 or above).

Publish Log

Publish Log is an extremely useful feature that allows report creators or others to receive real-time information regarding the success/failure of running the report.

Success/Failure Information Notification – can be sent directly to the e-mail of either the report creator or any other person.

Advanced

Publish without data – Turn up this flag to send notification email even though not founded data to publish to addresses.

Read in local memory only – In some cases (e.g. in transaction OV51), this may lead to incorrect results in generated file: All columns/values are displayed in single column (pseudo list mode) instead of as table.
When “Read in local memory only” flag is set, data table is taken from ALV memory and display correctly like the layout view (instead of from list). In such case, ALV sort/filter (and subtotals) aren’t being taken.

4. Publisher Operation Modes

Indeed, Publisher supports the basic and most intuitive operation-mode namely, Periodical jobs.
By scheduling a periodic job, the content is pushed to the recipients from time to time.

Nonetheless, Publisher supports other operation-modes that easily solve day to day business challenges.

The supported Operation Modes are:

Periodical – Push
On Alert – Push on Problem
On-Demand (SMART) – Pull

Periodical

The most common usage of Publishing is based on Periodical Pushing of content towards a set of recipients. The recipients could be internal (CFO, buyers, or clerks to list a few) or external (customers, vendors, partners, etc.).

Examples are daily sales results, weekly aging reports, and monthly customers’ debts.

Needless to say, that a one time Publishing is a private case of the general Periodic Job.

On Alert

As Publisher, by default, does not send empty content (no data found), an Alert mode could be utilized.

That is to say, whenever one wants to get an alert per specific event, a corresponding Publisher Job could be configured. This Publisher Job will invoke a Report that points on the needed alert.

For example, if in the organization no-one should issue a quotation for over 1M$, do set a variant in the quotation-report that displays all quotations over 1M$. This report will normally yield an empty list. Schedule this Publisher Job periodically (hourly, daily, weekly, etc – depending on the urgency of the needed alert) and send the result to the firm’s CEO.

Now, since usually no quotations for over 1M$ are issued, the CEO will get nothing. However, as soon as someone will issue such a quotation, the CEO will get that quotation as a mail to her inbox. Voalá.

To even better utilize the Publisher alert operation-mode, the resulted list could be split by responsibility and the relevant managers will get a copy, whenever such a quotation was issued by their division.

On-Demand

The On-Demand Publisher (formerly SMART) offers yet another operation mode by which Publisher content is pulled rather than pushed.

The worst problems of SAP outbound interfaces solved-

Periodically sending emails out of SAP to stakeholders is a common practice in SAP. Examples are daily sales results, weekly aging reports, and monthly customers’ debts. Yet, these outgoing emails produce significant flaws that we tend to ignore.

Let’s review these issues:

First, the email rarely arrives at precisely the right moment it is needed, and thus the content is getting stale with every passing minute.
Second, all the recipients get the same content, regardless of their authorization level, preferred language, and formatting preferences (date/time/numbers). Simply put, the SAP authorization concept is completely ignored when the content is published.
Third, the SAP user scheduling the needed background job must have extensive enough authorization to pull all the required data to be sent out. This explains why many companies’ users running the background jobs are often equipped with an SAP_ALL authorization profile.

Insight Publisher contains a module named On-Demand Publisher (formerly known as SMART). With On-Demand Publisher enabled in the system, SAP users (and SAP users only) can now send requests for content as emails to Publisher. The email is sent to a dedicated Publisher address within the organization containing the name of the required Publisher report in the title and the required format (Excel, HTML, TXT, and others). As soon as Publisher receives such an email, it verifies the sender’s identity (as an SAP user) and makes sure that the requested Publisher report exists and is SMART-enabled. If all security checks are confirmed, Publisher will invoke the report using the requester’s credentials, format it as required, and reply to the sender’s email address.

This is how On-Demand encounters the previously discussed challenges.

First, since the content is pulled from SAP rather than pushed, the requester governs timing and can ask for it on-demand.
Second, since the report is invoked with the requester authorization profile, the user will get precisely what she is entitled to view – not a penny more, not a penny less. In addition, the user will get the outcome in her preferred language, and the date/time formatting will match her preferences.
Third, no background job is needed in such cases, and the scheduler authorization level becomes redundant.

And there’s more – much more.

The ability to get on-demand 9and in seconds) any SAP reports on one’s laptop or mobile phone changes how we interact with SAP. CFO’s may now ask for updates on the company’s Nostro account (divided by currencies) anytime. Technicians can ask for the next task in line as soon as they complete a task. Buyers can ask for the current POs confirmation statuses.

The ability to get the information on-demand turns things upside down. When one gets the required information, she knows that it is reliable, up-to-date, and the exact SAP report requested. If the same information is needed again in a few hours, the user can make an additional request to SAP merely by replying to the original email.

The ability to get any SAP report by email on-demand enables the unification of the published content and endless options for collaboration. The content is published safely and securely as the content is verified against the requester’s authorization level.

5. Running Log Viewer

This section will show how to run the Insight Publisher’s log viewer.

Login to SAP
Go to the Insight-SAP transaction in ‘/DCM/PUBLISHER_LOG’ (T-code). You might want to save this transaction in your favorites.
The following window will open:
Publisher Job Log Viewer
Enter selection parameters and Click on ‘Execute’ button .

A report with all relevant Insight Publisher jobs will be displayed.

Important Note:

It is possible to filter by a specific screen field by choosing a parameter.

6. Advanced Development

E-Mail Distribution Method Validation

You may implement BAdI /DCM/ADA_DIST_METHOD_BADI to do custom validation checks against the email recipients (email addresses).

Copyright

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the express permission of D-PRO Innovation Ltd. The information contained herein may be changed without prior notice.

SAP® is the registered trademark of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries.

D-PRO Innovation Ltd. is not affiliated or related to any division or subsidiary of SAP AG.

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