Schedule Data Actions in the Calendar

In the SAP Analytics Cloud calendar, you can create automatic data action tasks that help you define the start time of your data action. Data actions are a flexible planning tool for making structured changes to model data, including copying data from one model to another.

Prerequisites

To create an automatic data action task, you must have existing data actions in the designer. For more information, see Create a Data Action.

Context

Automatic data action tasks can be for you alone or you can let others view your automatic data action task, too.

Need to schedule something on a recurring basis? You can set up recurrence for a data action, and change individual occurrences as needed.

Procedure

In the Calendar, select (Create) Data Action Task.
Provide a Name.
Set the Start date and time.

Optional: Select Add Recurrence and then fill in the settings.

Option	Description
Recurrence Pattern	Set the task to repeat by Minute, Hour, Day, Week, or Month.
Every	Set the recurrence frequency. For tasks that occur in a minute interval, enter a number between 5 an 9999. The minimum interval is every 5 minutes, the default interval is every 30 minutes. Note A high recurrence frequency like every 5 minutes can put extra load on the system and may slow it down. Automatic data action tasks with a preceding task occurrence that is still running are automatically canceled. For tasks that occur in a weekly interval, pick a specific weekday. For tasks that occur in a monthly interval, define the day of the month. For example, you can set the task to occur on the 5th day every 2 months. When you enter `31` as day of the month, the event will occur on the last day of the month (February 28th, March 31st, April 30th, for example).
Start Date of First Occurrence	Set the start date and time for the first occurrence.
End Recurrence by	Set when the recurrence pattern ends: End Date: fill in the end date details. Repetitions: set the number of repetitions; this includes the first occurrence. No End

Note

Note that you can't add a recurrence when a parent process is selected.

Optional: If you don't want the task to start automatically on the selected start date, turn off Activate the task at start date automatically.
Optional: If there's an overall process for the task, such as the Q3 2021 Forecast, add the task to the process:
- Choose Add Parent Process and select the process.
- If you selected a process in the calendar before creating this task, this process will be selected as a parent process by default. You can remove it and add a different parent process if needed.
Creating this structure helps you stay organized when the planning process involves unlocking, updating, and locking data at different times.

Note

You can select only the processes that you can edit. You need to be the owner or the assignee of the parent process.

If you've set up recurrence for your task, you can't add it to a parent process.
Select Create.

The data action will automatically run on the selected start date.

Note

As soon as the event is In Progress, you can no longer edit it.

The event is added to the calendar and opened in the Details panel.

If you created a recurring event, the Details panel will open with the Series tab selected instead of the Occurrence tab.
In the title area, you can select a different style for the event or create a new style.
Optional: If you suppose that the duration of the task will be different from the default duration of 10 minutes, select Estimated Due Date and specify the due date you expect.

Note

The duration of an automatic task is fixed. Changes to the parent process won't influence the duration of the automatic data action task.
Select a data action from the dropdown list.

If you want to edit the data action or get familiar with its steps and parameters, select (Open in Designer).
In the Follow-Up Action section, choose whether to publish the target version automatically when the data action finishes running.
Note
- All unpublished changes to the target version will be published, even if they weren’t part of the data action.
- If you're running the data action on a BPC write-back model, you'll need to publish the version manually.
You may need to set parameters for your data action, too. If you have parameters without default values, you need to add values. To set a number parameter, you can type a value. To set a member parameter, you can either type a member ID or a description, or choose a value by selecting Select Member. If there's a default value you can select the icon to switch between that value or a custom value. For more information, see Add Parameters to Your Data Actions and Multi Actions.

Note

If a parameter represents a source or target measure, keep in mind that different measures can have different value ranges and numbers of decimal places. See Limits on Value Ranges and Decimal Places for Measures for details.
If you want other people to be able to see the task, select Add Viewers.
- You can add individual users or teams that have been created in SAP Analytics Cloud:
  
  Adding teams instead of individual users may help save you time, and you don't need to define who's taking care of the task. You can choose to Resolve the team so the individual users are displayed, and adapt the list according to your needs.
  
  Note
  
  After you resolve a team, the reference to that team is removed. Instead, the system behaves like you added all the team members individually. Any changes to the team on the SAP Analytics Cloud Security page (like adding or removing team members) will not be reflected in the People section of your calendar task.
- You can also add someone who isn't already a member:
  1. To add a non-member, in the appropriate People section, select the dropdown list and then select Invite Non-Member by Email.
  2. Type the person's email address.
Optional: If you haven't done so already, you can add the task to a process in the Hierarchy section.
- Choose Add Parent Process and select the process, for example, the Q3 2021 Forecast.
- If you've already set a parent process, it is displayed as the parent process. You can select it to see its details. You can remove it and add a different parent process if needed.
Creating this structure helps you stay organized when the planning process involves unlocking, updating, and locking data at different times.

Note

You can select only the processes that you can edit. You need to be the owner or the assignee of the parent process.

If you've set up recurrence for your task, you can't add it to a parent process.
When you have finished filling in the details, you may select View Changes to review all the changes that have been applied; decide whether to save them or delete any of the changes.
Select Update below in the Details panel.

Make sure to click the dropdown list next to the status and then select Activate & Notify.

When you activate the task, and you've added some teams that haven't been resolved yet, the teams are resolved automatically. You can remove individual users of the team, for example. Users assigned to multiple teams are only counted once.

If the task has already been activated, you can select Update and Notify to confirm your changes.

Results

Notifications are sent to the involved people. After running the data action, its status will automatically change to Successful or Failed, depending on the outcome.

Next Steps

To view the data action status in the Data Action Monitor, click Monitor in the Details panel of the data action task.