SAP Analytics Cloud - Activate / Deactivate

JimmyYang · ‎04-12-2023

We are happy to introduce one of the most highly voted influence request called Activate/Deactivate. This feature will allow you to deactivate users and free up the user’s license. It is scheduled to be released in Q2 2023 release of SAC

Background

In SAP Analytics Cloud's user management system, users in the system only have one state: activated. So when you create a new user, not only will they consume a license, the only way to free up a license is to delete this user.

Not only is this frustrating, but it adds additional complications because the private content gets transferred to another user upon deletion. So what happens when users go on paternity leave and you want to disable access to the tenant, but this user will eventually come back and need access to the system and their private files? What happens when you have run out of licenses? There would be no way to deactivate these users in SAC. So the only way is to delete the user.

Solution

To address this challenge, we are introducing second state to users, which is the deactivated state.

This will achieve a few key objectives:

Deactivated users cannot log into the SAC system.

Licenses are freed up when a user is deactivated.

Content is maintained under the deactivated user

So now as an SAC Administrator, I can manage and control the license usage by activating / deactivating users.

Limitations

SCIM integration was not part of the original scope of this feature. This means that through API, there is no supported way to deactivate / reactivate users. We have future plans to incorporate this feature, but no current timelines or roadmap. ** As of March 19th 2024, there is no timeline for the release of activate/deactivate with SCIM API. I will update this blog as soon as I have a timeline **

Demo

The process of deactivating a user is very simple and straightforward, so let me show you how this works:

Go into SAC > Users.

Select the user and click on the deactivate users icon:

You will be prompted with info and an option to email the user:

Click Deactivate and it's done.

The users page will show a deactivated icon next to the user now.

The monitoring page will show you how many deactivated users there are.

Simple as that!

former_member714862 · ‎04-13-2023

Dear Jimmy

Will it be possible to manage this via SCIM API, if so what will be target field name .

Regards,

Selva

alessia_pozzi · ‎04-13-2023

Dear Jimmy

We are after "something" which can quickly enable\disable a group of users access to SAC - for instance when we actualize monthly data; can this be the approach?

What happens when we re-activate a user which has been previously inactivated? Does the user get all functionalities and personal "items" (for instance private versions) back? Anything lost?

I am interested to understand if mass activation\deactivation (switch on\off flag) is supported too.

Thanks a lot

Regards

Alessia

JimmyYang · ‎04-13-2023

Hi Selva,

We have plans for this in SCIM as well but we haven't started development yet.

Best Regards,
Jimmy

JimmyYang · ‎04-13-2023

Hi Alessia,

We don't currently have plans to activate/deactivate teams but I am open to hearing your business case in more detail.

When a user is deactivated, private content is still maintained under the user and no content is moved/lost. Activating the user will just restore the user so you can login and consume 1 additional license.

Best Regards,
Jimmy

martijn_bosman · ‎04-14-2023

Hi Jimmy,

The notification email I received states the following:

We have good news for you! The request has been set to the status Delivered. Please check the comment below for details how to make use of the new feature.

Delivered in Q2/2023
This will be released in Q2. See release blog

The blog mentions: It is scheduled to be released in Q3

Please let me know when we can expect this to be available? Release and date

Highly appreciated.

Many thanks, Martijn

julian-ludwig_bohn · ‎04-14-2023

Hi Jimmy,

I do not understand the following sentence:

"In SAP Analytics Cloud’s user management system, users in the system only have one state: active. So when you create a new user, not only will they consume a license, the only way to free up a license is to delete this user."

--> Is this correct? We also have User, which are not assigned to a Role or to a specific Team and are therefore not counted as a licence. A deletion to free up a licence is from my point of view not correct.

The idea is nice to activate and deactivate the user , but without having a SCIM Interface this is not operatable. If you have more than 1000 User then there should be an automatic way to unassign/deactivate user.

Furthermore it would be nice, if there are some rules like "If a user has not LOG In the last three month, please deactivate the respective users" or something like that - we would love to get more flexibility.

Currently we are doing this by API, but all automatically. Manual activation/deactivation is a good starting point, but should not be the end. Please be aware, that the Users are assigned to roles directly. Most of the cases, users are assigned to Teams and Teams to Roles. This is then another use Case.

JimmyYang · ‎04-14-2023

I'm sorry this was a typo. It should be the Q2 release of SAC. Corrected now

JimmyYang · ‎04-14-2023

Hi Julian-Ludwig,

Users without a role or team consume a BI license.

I understand the importance of having feature parity in SCIM and the UI, so we will be reviewing the requirements soon.

I like this idea of a deactivate users automatically after X months (I think it's been suggested in another thread). I'll review this feature request and see what we can do.

Best Regards,
Jimmy

julian-ludwig_bohn · ‎04-14-2023

thank you!

alessia_pozzi · ‎04-17-2023

Hello Jimmy

We run some regular maintenance routines (for instance monthly), where we actualize existing SAC data set for the past months and we need all the users to be out of the tool to get the data set stable. We send out communications to all teh SAC users but we are never 100% sure that they refrain from usign the tool for the maintanence window (2 to 4 hours for instance).

It will be great to have something that will allow to mass disable users during the maintenance window and get re-activated post that.

Hope this helps to get the context of the request.

Best Regards

Alessia

ramumoraboyina · ‎05-09-2023

Dear Jimmy,

We have tested in our test tenant (2023.08) and after deactivated the user, the running publcations and import jobs are keep in Open status and failing with "Schedule Publication completed with status Failure because scheduler rights are revoked". These are not going into Pause or hold status.

For import jobs are getting error"This import job didn't run as scheduled because the user who created the schedule is deactivated. To import data, you can refresh the job manualy or create a new schedule"

we expected these will go into Paused status automatically once user deactivated.

Ashish_Farkya · ‎05-09-2023

Thanks a lot, SAP for this enhancement! This is very helpful feature when it comes to User maintenance.

Thanks,
Ashish

JimmyYang · ‎05-09-2023

I will investigate this behavior thank you Ramu

JefB · ‎05-30-2023

Hi jimmy.yang2 did you review the feature parity between SCIM & UI already?
Is there any rough expectation when the SCIM API extension can be provided? (Because in Q3 2023 customers need to be ready for license limits)

ramumoraboyina · ‎06-05-2023

Hello Jimmy,

We have created the influence ticket for this improvement.

"After deactivated the user, Import jobs or publications should be stop and will go into Pause status (Instead of keep failing) and once activated again those should be run."

https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#/idea/302719

Thanks.

JohnL · ‎08-16-2023

A nice blog on finding inactive users: How to Find Inactive Users in SAC | SAP Blogs 💯💯💯

rasmussen_anders · ‎09-08-2023

Hi Jimmy,

which rights are required to enable/disable user? i have created a new simple role for testing purpose.

The role only allows for 'read' & 'update' rights on 'users' and is assigned to my test user.

Logging in with my test user:

The user list can be displayed successfully

A user can be highligted which makes the 'deactivate button' clickable

However nothing happens when the deactive button is clicked

When I redo the above steps with my administrative user I recieve the popup as shown in your blog.

Thanks

Best regards

Anders

rasmussen_anders · ‎09-08-2023

Hi Jimmy,

SCIM disable/enable functionality is very essential due to lack of concurrent licenses going forward.

Can you provide a status on the progress of this requirement?

BR., Anders

JimmyYang · ‎09-08-2023

I would consider this a bug. I will log it with the development team

JimmyYang · ‎09-13-2023

Hi Anders,

We will begin the development in Q1.

Best Regards,
Jimmy

rasmussen_anders · ‎03-05-2024

Dear @JimmyYang ,

do you have any news in regards to API support for deactivating/activating of users? I have found several improvement requests on customer influenze, but they also involve some sort of automation. First off we simply need the ability to modify the value of the user property IS_USER_DEACTIVATED.

Best regards Anders

JimmyYang · ‎03-12-2024

Hi @rasmussen_anders ,

Development has been paused as we have conflicting priorities. We are still analyzing the use case of activate/deactivate via API. Yes there are multiple influence requests opened. A few focus on automating the deactivation of inactive users. This would be dependant on activate/deactivate in API as a parent story.

Once I have a firmer date I can update this thread.

Best Regards,
Jimmy

denis_pozdniakov · ‎03-13-2024

+1 voice for SCIM API support for user activation/deactivation as soon as possible