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Plan reporting for Duet Enterprise

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Applies to: Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP

This article contains guidance to help you understand, plan, and deploy Duet Enterprise reporting features in SharePoint Server sites. The reporting feature of Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP enables the integration of SAP reports from SAP ERP or SAP Business Warehouse systems into Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP sites. Reports can be requested from lists of available reports, and when a report is requested by an authorized user, it is generated in the SAP system and routed to the appropriate reports library in a reporting site in SharePoint Server.

In this article:

  • thisProduct_2nd_CurrentVer reporting overview

  • Configuring a Web application for reporting

  • Integrating reporting into Web sites

  • Reporting Scenarios

Duet Enterprise reporting overview

The Duet Enterprise reporting feature combines SAP report-generation capabilities with SharePoint document management capabilities. It enables end-users to request SAP reports from inside a SharePoint Server site. These reports are generated on the SAP system and correctly routed and stored in SharePoint Server 2010 document libraries so that authorized users can view them.

Duet Enterprise reporting is implemented as a SharePoint Server 2010 feature and can be enabled at the site collection and site levels. After reporting is enabled for a specific site collection, a site owner can enable the feature on any site in the site collection to let site users request SAP reports from an SAP ERP or SAP Business Intelligence system and have them routed into a SharePoint document library. SAP reports can be requested by any site user who has the necessary permissions. (By default, these capabilities are included in the Duet Enterprise sites.) The reports that are available, and the permissions to view them, are based on an SAP report catalog that is maintained in the SAP environment. For more information about how to configure reports in the SAP system, see the Configuring Reporting section in the Duet Enterprise SAP Deployment Guide.

A solution that is based on Duet Enterprise can integrate reporting into as many sites as is needed. All reports for the sites in a particular Web application are routed to the correct libraries in that Web application by the OBAFileReceiver Web service, which is connected to that Web application when the Web application is configured for reporting. This architecture is illustrated in the following graphic. In the SAP system, an SAP Document Publisher asynchronously processes each report and routes it to the appropriate SharePoint Web application through a port associated with that Web application.

Duet Enterprise Reporting overview

Duet Enterprise reports contain business data that is protected in the SAP system by permitting only authorized users or roles to request or view the reports. Reports can be either assigned to a particular user or to an SAP role, depending on the report template. During report delivery, the SAP system uses an external content type property to pass the list of users or roles who can view the report to SharePoint Server. When a report is delivered to a target site and library, its permissions are configured to reflect the permissions information that was sent by the SAP system.

The following illustration traces the end-to-end process, starting from when a user requests a report and ending with the delivery of the report to the appropriate site and library.

Duet Enterprise Reporting workflow

  1. From a Reports page, a user clicks Run Report.

  2. The Run Report action is associated with the report’s external content type in the Business Data Connectivity service. The request contains all the metadata needed to ultimately route the report back to the correct location.

  3. The report request is received by the SAP Web service that is included in Duet Enterprise.

  4. The report is processed asynchronously by the SAP system. The requests are queued and processed in jobs.

  5. When the report is generated it is given to the SAP Document Publisher, together with permissions and other data, to schedule its delivery.

  6. The report is delivered together with its properties to the OBAFileReceiver Web service.

  7. The OBAFileReceiver Web service moves the report to its appropriate document library and folder and sets permissions on the report.

  8. An authorized user can then view or download the report.

Configuring a Web application for reporting

The OBAFileReceiver Web service receives reports from the SAP system and, based on each report’s metadata, routes each report to the appropriate reports library. To make available the reporting feature in a Web application, the OBAFileReceiver Web service must be running in the server farm and the Web application must be configured to make that service available from the Web application.

To enable using the OBAFileReceiver Web service, you must extend the Web application that will use it by creating an additional zone in which the service can run securely. This zone must have the following characteristics:

  • It must use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

  • It must use claims authentication

  • It must use Windows authentication and Basic authentication

  • It must be bound to a certificate that is trusted by the SAP system

After the new zone for running the Web service is created and configured, you create a site collection and then, by using the DuetConfig.exe utility, you configure the Web application to connect to the OBAFileReceiver Web service. When you configure reporting for a Web application, you also supply the account name that will be used by the SAP system to communicate with the OBAFileReceiver Web service (this is the account name which the SAP Document Publisher uses to publish reports), together with the URL of the root Web site of the zone that you created to connect to the Web service. For a complete description of how to configure a Web application for reporting, see Enable a Web application to receive reports (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=191895).

Important

  • Duet Enterprise reporting requires that the reporting models are imported into the Business Data Connectivity service. This can be done during product deployment. For more information, see Import models (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=205813).

  • The application pool account for the Web application in which the Report Publishing site is running must have Execute permission to the specific finder method in the SAPRoles external content type. This is necessary so that queries to determine whether a role exists (role search) can be run in the SAP system. The same application pool account must also have permission to the SAP system to perform the search. Note that the application pool account will be the same one recorded in the Duet Enterprise Deployment worksheet (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=205392), listed in the “Service account for the Duet Enterprise sites Web application” row of Table 3.

Integrating reporting into Web sites

You can integrate SAP reports into a Web site in your Duet Enterprise solution in two ways:

  • When you configure Duet Enterprise starter services, reporting is integrated automatically into the set of sites, with all the required features enabled.

  • You can add report libraries to any existing sites. To do this, you must enable the following features:

    • In the root site of the site collection that will contain the reports, enable the feature Duet Enterprise Report Content Types and make sure that the feature SharePoint Server standard site collection features is enabled.

    • In the site that will contain the reports, enable the feature Duet Enterprise reporting. After this feature is enabled, all reporting capabilities will be available in the site.

Reporting Scenarios

The scenarios in this section use the following personas.

  • Naoki Sato is the SharePoint Server 2010 system administrator at Contoso, Ltd.

  • Michel Pereira is a sales manager at Contoso, Ltd.

  • Tali Roth is a sales director at Contoso, Ltd., and is Michel’s manager.

  • David Longmuir is the sales site administrator for Contoso, Ltd., and works primarily with the Sales department; he is also the site administrator for the Customer Entity Center site.

Scenario 1: Configure new Duet Enterprise reporting feature

The collaboration Web site used by Michael Periera’s sales team is located on a server farm on which Duet Enterprise is deployed. Michael’s team members currently view the reports that they have permissions to directly on the SAP system. He wants to take advantage of the integration between SharePoint Server 2010 and the SAP system that Duet Enterprise provides to have the reports routed into their collaboration site. They submit a request to their IT department to configure their site to support reporting. The request ends up in Naoki Sato’s queue.

Naoki, the farm administrator verifies that the Web application in which the sales team’s collaboration site runs has not yet been extended to communicate securely with the SAP system. By using SharePoint Server 2010 Central Administration, he locates the Web application and extends it by creating an additional zone that is configured for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and claims authentication. He then creates a site collection and connects to the OBAFileReceiver Web service by using the DuetConfig.exe utility. The Web application is now set up to receive reports. Naoki sends email to David Longmuir, who is the site collection administrator for the sales team’s collaboration site.

Using the instructions that Naoki sent him, David configures the site collection to receive reports. In the root site of the site collection that will contain the reports, he enables the feature Duet Enterprise Report Content Types and checks that the feature SharePoint Server standard site collection features is enabled. He then visits the collaboration site, which is one level below the root of the site collection, and enables the feature Duet Enterprise reporting. He then verifies that the Reports Library is created in the site. Users of the Contoso Sales Team site are now able to request, receive, and view SAP reports from their collaboration Web site.

Scenario 2: Duet Enterprise Report collaboration

David, in his secondary area of responsibility for Contoso, Ltd., configures related reports for the Customer Entity Center site that he administers. David wants to enable the sales team to use Duet Enterprise reports that focus on a particular Contoso, Ltd., customer. He enables Duet Enterprise reporting for collaboration on the Customer Entity Center site by using steps similar to those he followed to set up the Contoso Sales Team site for reporting. David wants to customize the Customer Entity Center Instance site template to enable reporting. He creates a test site by using the Customer Entity Instance master template and customizes it by enabling the Duet Enterprise reporting feature. He then configures related reports and the parameter mapping from the customer entity context so that Tali and Michel do not have to re-enter this information for every report generation. After David customizes the Web Parts and pages and enables Duet Enterprise reports on the instance sites, he saves his customizations as a site template that other instance sites can use, and recreates the report views that he wants to make available in the site template. This automatically enables Duet Enterprise reports for every new customer instance site.

Tali shares a report about a new customer opportunity with Michel. Tali wants to quickly address this new customer opportunity so she decides to create a collaboration context for the customer using the collaboration feature. Once the site is created, Tali views the related reports on the landing page and runs the Opportunity Summary report. Once the report is generated and delivered, she can see it in the related documents as a new document. She decides to obtain feedback from all the sales managers including Michel. Tali shares this report with all the sales managers on the team and sets the permissions accordingly. Tali then sends an e-mail request for feedback. Michel is now able to view the report from the collaboration context (landing page) and quickly provides feedback to Tali that all of the sales managers can see.