Custom Relative Selects in C4C Analytics

[VinitaSinha]

C4C Analytics already offers Relative selects for selection parameters in the Reports – be it standard reports or custom ones. Typically, the relative selects related to Authorizations are already offered by SAP – eg: My Sales Unit, My Team, My *. Similarly, some standard relative selects are already offered for Date fields. Below are some examples that are already supported in the standard for Date and Employee ID. There are more of course. They are available in the standard reports, and if the same data type has been used for the custom reports – eg: If you created a custom date field, then the standard relative selects for the date fields would be available in your custom reports too

Examples of standard relative selects





When to create a custom Relative Select

Apart from the standard relative selects, SAP also offers the capability to create your own custom relative selects, and in this blog we will explore the same

Here are some use-cases.

Sales Organizations as selection parameters already offers Relative Selects based on Authorizations – EG:

Functional Units in My Area

My Assigned Sales Organizations

My Assigned Sales Units

Apart from these standard ones, if you would like to create specific options for specific Sales Orgs or combinations, you can create your own Relative Selects

Eg: A relative select each for Sales Orgs in the Europe Region, Sales Orgs in the Americas Regions and for Sales Orgs in the Asia Pacific region

You can have other use cases as well for having relative selects for Dates – Eg Current Fiscal quarter. What is current can be defined by you – say in Jan, you define the current Fiscal Quarter as Jan-Apr 15^th . When you are in Mid-April, you can change the values to reflect 16^th Apr-Jun instead, which will then be your current fiscal quarter. It is totally dependent on how you define the time period

How to create the Relative Select

To create a custom relative select, you need to go to Business Analytics -> Common Tasks -> Relative Selects and create your own Relative Select

After the Name and Description, you should choose the TYPE of Relative Select you want to create. The types offered pertain to Date related types, Data Source etc

In our example we will use the Data Source option so as to get associated characteristics of that Data Source and create our select options on that. I will choose the Data Source for "Opportunity Header and Item" Data Source, and the characteristic Sales Organization. Hence, I will be able to select those Opportunities that belong to the Europe region or Americas Region or Asia Pacific Region





As I would like to use the same relative select for my Account related reports as well, I also add the Account Details data source.

Now that I have specified the Data Sources and the characteristic, I want to specify the VALUES for this relative select. How your values can be specified here depends on the field Value Entry – Any Selection/Interval/Multiple Values/Single Value. Eg:

Interval would allow you to enter a range

Multiple Values would allow you to enter multiple values but with an Equal to sign

Any selection is the most flexible and allows you different options like Between, Equals, Greater than etc

For the Europe Relative Select, I have specified specific values for Germany, Denmark, Austria and France (DE, DK, AT and FR)



In the same manner, I have created two other Relative Selects for Americas and Asia Pacific

Just like the Data Sources option for relative select, here is an example using the Date option for a custom defined Current Quarter



Using Custom Relative Selects in Reports

After having defined the Relative Selects, they will be available in the standard and custom reports for the Sales Org Field and the Date field, as long as the reports are based on the Data Sources or Type we used.

Eg for the standard Opportunity List report view and Account Details report, you can see that the custom relative selects are available as a selection option for the Sales Organization selection parameter



Results are retrieved accordingly





 

Example of using Custom Relative Selects in Fixed Value Selections

Check out my blog on Fixed Value Selections on how to use Fixed Value Selections. As an extension to that, you can use Custom Relative Selects – Eg: to make sure the reports retrieve the results only for your custom defined current quarter, you can define your relative select as a fixed value selection in your custom reports

In this custom report based on the “opportunity Header and Item” Data source, I specify the Current Quarter Relative select as a Fixed Value Selection on the Close Date field. Hence, when this report is launched, it will only retrieve Opportunities for which the close date lies in the custom defined date range of the Demo Current Quarter (01/01/2017 – 04/15/2017)





One point to note is, that the UUID fields are typically not available for Fixed Value Selections on Relative Select values. Eg: we defined the Sales Org relative select on the Sales Organization field which is a UUID field. This would not be available during report creation with Fixed Value Selections. If the Sales Org ID field is available instead (eg: with the Opportunity Header DS), then you can use it

Summary

Using Custom Relative Selects can help you group the selection options more logically, can be used across data sources and reports with characteristics with the same data type, and where possible, you can use them with fixed value selections as well

Cheers !

Vinita