Setting a Hierarchy for the Subplan 

Use

You establish a connection between process-oriented objects of the Status and Tracking System and data-oriented objects of the planning environment by assigning a planning area, a characteristic, and one of the available hierarchies to the subplan. If necessary, you can choose different versions or validity periods for a hierarchy.

Assigning a hierarchy-bearing characteristic containing the master data of the relevant organizational structure of your company is a central setting in Customizing for the Status and Tracking System. As a result of this, you transfer the hierarchical structure of a part of your organizational structure (for example, by a hierarchy that is defined for the characteristic cost center) to the planning process within a subplan. This means the subplan is split by the assignment of a hierarchy into as many individual tasks as the hierarchy contains nodes. Since the hierarchy is assigned directly to the subplan, it is valid for all the planning sessions that belong to the subplan.

Even if a hierarchy for a characteristic is normally always used as a hierarchy that represents the organizational structure of your company (or a part of it), such a choice is not imperative. You can also a hierarchy for a characteristic that represents, for example, article groups or regions if the responsibilities in your company are oriented towards such categories.

Prerequisites

You can use BW hierarchies as hierarchies that are defined for the characteristics of the planning area that you want to use when editing the subplan. To determine a hierarchy, at least one of the characteristics in the planning area that you assign to the subplan must have a hierarchy. A hierarchy that you want to assign to a subplan must have the following attributes:

●      The planning area must be a basic planning area. You cannot use multi-planning areas in the Status and Tracking System.

●      The hierarchy should contain an individual top node at the uppermost level. The top node must be a text mode. This serves as the heading of the hierarchy.

This prerequisite is not fulfilled for hierarchies that you have extracted from an SAP System into SAP BW. But you can insert a text node as a top node for such an extracted hierarchy subsequently. You use the SAP BW hierarchy maintenance for this.

 

●      Only one individual characteristic node can be assigned directly under the text node. Additional characteristic nodes can be attached and additional levels inserted under this individual characteristic node. Text nodes are not permitted at these lower levels.

●      Each characteristic node can only be used once in the hierarchy.

●      Interval nodes are not allowed.

The hierarchy-bearing characteristic must be contained in the planning area that you assign to the subplan. But it is not necessary that this characteristic is also used in the planning levels.

Procedure

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        1.      On the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Business Planning and Simulation → Status and Tracking System → Customizing.

The system displays the initial screen for customizing the status and tracking system.

        2.      Select Determine Hierarchy for Subplan and choose Execute.

The system shows the screen for hierarchy settings.

        3.      Specify which Planning Area you want to use.

        4.      Enter the Characteristic whose hierarchy you want to assign to the subplan.

        5.      Enter the Hierarchy required for the characteristic.

        6.      Enter the date up to which the hierarchy you entered is valid.

If the hierarchy you entered is not time-dependent, you must still enter the validity end date predefined by the system in this case 31.12.9999.

        7.      Under Name Resolve, enter one of the available implementations for the Business Add-In contained in the Status and Tracking System for name resolve.

The implementations offered here contain functions with which you can determine the assignments available in the system between characteristic values of the hierarchy-bearing characteristic and the system users that are assigned to these characteristic values. A conceivable implementation could, for example, determine the user who manages the cost center for every cost center. If you want to use one of the implementations offered then you no longer need to manually maintain the assignment of responsible persons in one of the later steps of Customizing. Implementations are available for the following characteristics of the SAP Business Information Warehouse:

·         Organizational unit (0ORGUNIT)

·         Funds center (0FUNDS_CTR)

        8.      Enter the Subplan that you want to assign the settings made in the previous steps to.

You can save the current settings permanently by creating a variant. To do this, choose  Goto → Variants → Save as Variant and assign a name to the variant.

Result

You have created the prerequisites in order to make the settings valid for every organizational unit on completion date, responsible person and layout for the detailed arrangement of the different combinations of subplan and planning session. You can make the settings that you have made here visible on the initial screen of Customizing for the Status and Tracking System by selecting the appropriate subplan from the dropdown list, and choosing the pushbutton  Display Assignment.

 

See also:

Setting the Date, Person Responsible and Layouts