Authorizations for Reporting

Use

You use this function to grant different privileges to users of the Consolidation System (SEM-BCS) for accessing consolidation reports.

Integration

The authorization concept of SEM Business Consolidation is linked to the SAP Authorization Concept and also the authorizations of SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (BI), which are based on the former.

Features

Authorizations for reporting in consolidation are managed by authorization objects, which are centrally defined for each InfoProvider in BI. InfoProviders supply queries with data. The same applies to the database lists in consolidation. However, instead of using queries, these lists access InfoCubes and DataStore objects directly. Consolidation-specific authorization objects do not exist for reporting.

Authorization Check

Which authorizations are checked depends on the type of report the user requests, and on the report's source of data:

  • Technical reports (data lists) require:

    • BI-specific authorizations of Warehouse Management (WHM)

    • BI-specific reporting authorizations (RSR) that refer to either the transactional InfoCube for totals records or a DataStore object for document data and additional financial data

  • Business reports (virtual InfoProvider) require:

    • BI-specific authorizations of Warehouse Management (WHM)

    • BI-specific reporting authorizations (RSR) that refer to the virtual InfoProvider for totals records

Special Considerations for the “Consolidation Group” Characteristic

The following applies whenever you have assigned characteristics with the role consolidation group to BI-specific reporting authorizations:

Note Note

If you have assigned reporting authorizations for characteristics with the role consolidation group to the transactional InfoCube for totals records or to a concurring DataStore object, you have to enter an asterisk (“*”; for all values) for the consolidation group characteristics when running technical reports (data lists). If this is not done, all attempts to access the InfoProvider fail.

End of the note.

The reason for this special consideration is because the data records in the InfoCube for totals records contain values in the Consolidation Group field only if they were posted with posting level 00, 10, or 20.

However, this special consideration does not apply to authorizations in the virtual InfoProvider for totals records. This is because the data records in the virtual InfoProvider are dynamically supplemented with the consolidation group characteristic, and because these reports are typically created with a reference to the consolidation group. Hence, for reporting on the virtual InfoCube, not only are you able to define authorizations for certain consolidation groups, this is typically even essential for proper business reporting.