Setting Up an Entry and Approval System

Use

To set up an Entry and Approval system, you need to create models, model connections, and a context in the administration application. You also need to use Entry and Approval in the administration application to set default settings for the Entry and Approval application and the performance management model.

After you set up the Entry and Approval system, you can use the Entry and Approval application to manually enter data into a performance management model and monitor the data entry effort through a workflow process. Once the data entry process has been completed, you can load the data into the performance management model using Entry and Approval. For more information about the Entry and Approval application, see Entry and Approval.

Prerequisites

You are the strategy management administrator. If Administration is unavailable to you, it means you are not running the administration application as the administrator.

The model exists and is built for use with the application; the Actual and Target measures have short names that end in _ACT and _TAR respectively.

A role called SSM_Entry_And_Approval is created. The role contains all Entry and Approval administrators, data entry users, approvers, and yourself. This special role limits the users who can be assigned to workflow steps. Only the users of that role appear for selection in the Entry and Approval Administrators section of the Set Entry and Approval Defaults screen. In addition, only the users in that role appear in the Create Measures Set dialog box in the Entry and Approval application. The SSM_Entry_And_Approval may be renamed by the system administrator. If there is no SSM_Entry_And_Approval role (or renamed version), then all users appear. For information about creating the SSM_Entry_And_Approval role, see the Installation Guide for SAP Strategy Management on the SAP Help Portal.

Process

  1. Create a model connection for each Entry and Approval model. For more information, see Creating a Model Connection for an Entry and Approval Model.

    Entry and Approval requires a model connection to Application Server that can read dimension member and measure names without restrictions. You must make sure you have an MMADMIN user in MASTERDB and you must create a special model connection with that Application Server user for every model you want to use in Entry and Approval. This feature ensures that the Entry and Approval connection has access to all the information that is required. Users are connected to the model with the correct privileges and receive the full set of metadata. The model connection associated with the MMADMIN user has limited access to Interactive Publisher functions and features, which ensures a secure environment.

  2. Create a second, regular model connection to the performance management model with a standard Application Server user.

  3. Create a context associated with the performance management model and the non- MMADMIN model connection. You must define a context prior to using Entry and Approval to ensure proper delivery of Home Inbox notifications and e-mails when measure sets are released and data is submitted for approval.

    For more information, see Creating a Context.

  4. Set up entry and approval defaults. For more information, see Entry and Approval Defaults and Setting Entry and Approval Defaults.

  5. Launch Entry and Approval to begin working with the application. For more information, see Starting and Exiting the Applications.