Drill-Through Setup

You use this function to set up drill-through definitions. Drill-through definitions allow users to access source data from a report. Source data includes content that can be accessed from a URL.

Prerequisites

You must have proper security rights to define drill-through definitions. See the Security Guide available on the SAP Help Portal for more information.

Features

Setting up Drill-Through to a URL

You set up URL-based drill-through definitions within a model. After you set up at least one drill-through for a model, it is available to users of reports that reference that model.

You can map the URL parameters to dimensions or user-defined values.

When you map a parameter to a dimension, you also choose a dimension property, such as ID or DESCRIPTION. When the user performs a drill-through in a report, the parameter value is taken from the property value of the selected data cell. For example, if you select the ID property of a dimension, the member IDs are mapped. If you select another property of a dimension, that property value is mapped. Therefore, you can send either the dimension member or the value of a property.

When you map a parameter to a user-defined value, you can hard code a value or use %CurrentUser% or %CurrentDate%. If you specify a user-defined value in the mapping, when the user performs a drill-through in a report, the parameter value is based on the user-specified value.

Note

The system supports the variables Current Date and Current User in the mapping. The format of Current Date is %CURRENTYYYYMMDD%, where YYYYMMDD is replaced by the current year, month, and day. You could then use %CURRENTYYYY% for sending out only the current year. The format for Current User is %CURRENTUSER%.

The system supports using environment parameters and model parameters in a URL. The format is %parameter%. When an environment parameter and model parameter have the same name, drill-through uses the model parameter prior to the environment parameter.

Executing a Drill-Through

You can use the EvMNU macro MNU_eTOOLS_DRILLTHROUGH_RUN to execute a drill-through using the syntax MNU_eTOOLS_DRILLTHROUGH_RUN("drillthrough id").

If you have defined a drill-through in the Administration view for a model, a menu item appears under the Drill-Through menu in the menu bar of the report. This menu item has the same name as the description that was entered in the Administration view when the drill-through was defined. To access the drill-through information, select a cell in the report and then select the menu item from the Drill-Through menu. A web browser opens. The information that displays depends on the following items:
  • The URL specified in the Administration view
  • The URL parameters specified in the Administration view
  • The data cell that you selected in the report
Note
The URL and the URL parameters appear in the address bar of the browser. Also, even if the selected cell does not contain data, the drill-through is performed.

Activities

To define a drill-through for a URL:

  1. In the Planning and Consolidation Administration screen, under the Features section, choose Drill-Through.

  2. Select New, then enter a drill-through ID and description.

  3. Enter the target URL, select the model from which the drill-through can be launched, and enter parameter mapping information to indicate one or more dimensions and associated properties or user-defined values.

    Example

    You can specify http://www.google.com/search? as the URL and q, which is a known Google parameter.

  4. Save the drill-through.

You can also edit and delete drill-throughs in the Planning and Consolidation Administration screen by selecting Drill-Through under the Features section.

Example

Example 1

This example describes a scenario of drilling through to a URL.

You want to search the member of Category in a Web site called MySite. You can define a drill-through, setting the URL as www.MySite.com. The parameter for MySite is q so in the Parameter column, you enter q. In the Dimension or User-defined Value column, select the Category dimension.

In the report, users can execute this drill-through to see the search results.

Example 2

This example describes another scenario of drilling through to a URL.

When SAP BusinessObjects Financial Information Management (FIM) is used to load data into Business Planning and Consolidation from external data sources (flat files, tables, 3rd party applications, or other EPM applications), this data is often transformed and aggregated. Business Planning and Consolidation stores only the final data, and you may want to drill-through into the details of the data that is stored in a FIM repository (staging area). A URL-based drill-through makes this possible.

When defining the drill-through, the URL is set to the <FIM Application>. URL parameters are dimensions in the Business Planning and Consolidation model that pass the context (for example, time, account, etc.), of the data being queried. All data associated with the context is returned and displayed in the FIM drill-through report.