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 manage or view your automatic data action task. If you don't have the appropriate permissions to run the data action, you can change the assignee from yourself to another user who has the necessary permissions and send a permission request. Once the assignee agrees, the task can run automatically at the specified start date or start condition.

You can define the start date according to your needs:

Set the start date. Need to schedule something on a recurring basis? You can set up recurrence, and change individual occurrences as needed.
Let the task start once another calendar event reaches a certain status (accomplished, for example), or several other calendar events reach one of the defined statuses.
If your task is grouped within a parent process, let it start at the same time as its parent process.

Procedure

In the Calendar, select (Create) Data Action Task.
Provide an Event Name.

Select the start condition:

Start By	Description
Time	Set the Start Date.
Dependency	The start date of your task depends on other events and their status. Select Add Events to define which events your task shall depend on. Under Statuses, select which status these events need to meet before your task can start. Note All of the selected events need to meet any of the chosen statuses before your task can start. For more information, see Define Dependencies Among Calendar Events.
Parent Process	Your task will start at the same time as its parent process. Note If you haven't added a parent process to your task yet, you'll be asked to select one.

Optional: To specify the duration of the task, you can do the following:
- To change the default duration from 0 minutes to 10 minutes, select Estimated Due Date.
- If you suppose that the duration of the task will be different, 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.

Optional: If the start condition is set to Time, you can set up recurrence: 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 two preceding task occurrences that are 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, turn off the corresponding option that's available depending on the chosen start condition:
- Activate the event at start date automatically: The task will be activated automatically at the selected start date.
- Activate the event automatically once any status of the dependencies is met: Once all selected events your task is dependent on have met any of the selected statuses, the task will be activated automatically.
- Activate the event automatically once its parent process starts: The task will be activated automatically at the start date of its parent process.
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 or edit it to 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 according to the selected start conditions, unless you've turned off the option to have it activated automatically.

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.
Optional: In the title area, you can select a different style for the task or create a new style.
Optional: Under Description, you can add some details or instructions you'd like to share.
Optional: To set reminders, select Add Reminders and fill in the required time settings.
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.
Set parameters for your data action, if needed.
- 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.

Optional: Add people to the task.

Select Add Owners.	To let more people monitor and manage the task, you can add additional owners.
Select You in the Assignee section, and then choose Change from the dropdown menu. In the Change User dialog, select the user name of the person you'd like to send a request to run the data action with their permission.	If you don't have appropriate permissions to run the data action, you can change the assignee from yourself to another user who has the necessary permissions and send a permission request.
Select Add Viewers.	If you want other people to be able to see the task, you can share the task with them.

As owners and 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.

Tip

If you add someone and then decide to share the task with someone else, select the user name or the team name, and then choose Change from the dropdown menu. In the Change User dialog, select the new name.

If you add more than 5 people as owners or viewers, a link (... 3 More, for example) lets you access a dialog with the complete list of added users and teams. In this dialog, you can can search for user or team names, and you can add, change, or remove them.

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 or edit it to 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're finished filling in the details and are ready to send the task out, do one of the following:
- If the status is Inactive, select Activate or Activate & Notify.
  This option is also available when you click on the arrow next to the status in the header section.
  
  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 status is In Progress, select Update and Notify.
- If you've adapted an existing task, select View Changes to review all the changes that have been applied; decide whether to send them out or delete any of the changes, and then select Update.
- If you replaced yourself with another assignee, select Start Permission Request.
  
  Note
  
  If you don't start the permission request, the task will automatically be canceled at start date.
Optional: Once you've activated the task, you may want to send an immediate reminder to the assignee: In the Time section, select Send Immediate Reminder and enter some text as message.

The assignee will be notified right away.

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. If you replaced yourself with another assignee and sent the permission request, but the assignee didn’t grant permission before the task started, the data action won't run and the task status will be set to Canceled.

Next Steps

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