Introduction:

The Report Distributor tool allows users to schedule and distribute reports via e-mail, send reports to a FTP server, or run reports offline. Foremost, create bundles containing the necessary reports & then select the items to distribute, the destination, the recipients, and the schedule.

This blog gives details on creating Report Bundle with necessary reports & then distributing the reports via e-mail in Excel / CSV format as an e-mail attachment to users.

Third-party / external service providers like Security, Cafeteria, Office Administration etc. require updated employee data on day-to-day basis for providing services to employees, however they necessarily need not have access to SAP SuccessFactors system. Also, accurate filters could be used to ensure that only Department, BU or Location specific data is sent to respective external service providers across various sites.

Environment: Report Distributor

Constraints:

• External user would be setup in Employee Central as a Contingent Worker with basic information.
• External user will not have Login permissions into SAP SuccessFactors instance.
• The report should be in Excel format enabling the user to operate on the data for further usage.

Solution:

Prerequisite:

Foremost, you should have a report designed, which is to be sent through email.

Navigation:

Report Centre > View Schedules > Switch to Legacy report Distributor Tool

Resolution:

The Report Distributor tool allows users to schedule and distribute reports via e-mail.

It also allows sending reports to a FTP server.

In this blog, we will see how Report distributor as a tool be used to –

1. Schedule a bundle with Export Type as MS Excel OR CSV
2. Email report to specific user/s in MS Excel or CSV format as an attachment

Step 1. In the Report Distributor, under Menu option, click on New Bundle.

Report Distributor – Menu

Add New Bundle Window pops up.

Add New Bundle Window

Enter a unique identifiable name of the Bundle.

Select the Page Size, Export Type and Export Format.

Export Type & Export Format defines the form in which the user shall get the report. Note that Export Type does not have MS Excel or CSV as an option to download. Nevertheless, it is possible to download / Export report in CSV or MS Excel format. The option to export report in MS Excel / CSV format appears after creation of the bundle.

Report Export Type Options

After the creation of the bundle, it will appear under the bundle list.

Report Distributor – New Bundle Creation

Step 2. Click on the “Add Item button” under the Items to add desired reports to the bundle. Multiple reports could be added to a single bundle.

The following three options are available –

1. Add Report
2. Add Excel Table
3. Add CSV Table

Report Distributor – Add Item

• Add Report

Allows adding reports from Report Center to the bundle.

Add Report to bundle

• Add Excel Table

The next-generation XLSX was introduced in 2007 and is Microsoft Excel default format. XLSX delivers the same content within a smaller, more efficient file, benefiting both SAP SuccessFactors resources and your local environment.

Add Excel Table to bundle

You can download the Excel file for single-domain and cross-domain Table reports and Export mode in the XLSX format by default.

The Multi domain reports are downloaded in the XLS format.

5 million rows is the limit for report queries.

There are native limitations with Microsoft Excel product.

Microsoft Excel limitation

• Add CSV Table

Reports which are created using “Integration Center” has file “Encoding as UTF-8” and the reports which are created using “ORD” and scheduled via “Report Designer” in csv format has the file “Encoding as UTF-8-BOM”. The UTF-8 BOM marker is expected for CSV exports. Without it, Excel does not work when opening CSV that have foreign characters.

Add Csv Table to bundle

There’s no row limit for CSV reports (which means CSV reports exceeding 1,048,576 rows can be exported from SAP SuccessFactors) Microsoft Excel limits the number of rows to 1,048,576.

Option 2 supports a Microsoft Excel based output whereas option 3 supports CSV format. Thus although PDF or MS Word Export format is selected while creation of the bundle, it would be superseded with the selection of an Excel table or CSV Table.

Step 3. Click on “Destination” tab to configure the report destination. In this blog, we will focus on Email option as the destination wherein Excel file is transferred as an email attachment to the recipient’s setup for this bundle.

Report Distributor Destination: E-mail

Click on “Edit Recipients” link. This link will route to the “Recipient” Tab.

On the “Recipients” tab, click on the “Add Recipients” button.

Add E-mail recipients in bundle

Add Recipients would pop up a Wildcard search window to search for users (recipients).

In the Wildcard Search box enter the User Name of the user and click refresh list. Select the user and click on Add.

Add Users to Bundle

The user will be added to the list of recipients. Likewise you can Add or Remove recipients of the report for the selected bundle from the below screen.

Recipients list for this bundle

Step 4. Schedule the bundle.

To schedule the Report Distributor to run at a certain time, click on Add button to configure the schedule.

Schedule Report Distributor for periodic run

In the scheduler, enter the start date, time (data center time) and the frequency.

Report Distributor: Scheduler

Step 5. Customize Report Output Format

Once the bundle is successfully created, you can customize the output format of the report. This step is to validate if the report would be generated & sent as an attachment in Excel Format. Furthermore, the Excel format can be toggled between XLS & XLSX as required.

Select the bundle -> Menu -> Edit

Edit Bundle

The Edit Bundle option shall show Excel file format based on Excel table added to the bundle as per Step 2.

Here you can choose between XLS and XLSX as the report generation option. Likewise the file would be generated and sent as an E-mail attachment.

Step 6. Customize email template used in Report Distributor.

In the Report Distributor, under the Menu option, click on Edit E-mail option in the dropdown.

Report Distributor: E-mail

This opens a window for configuring E-mail message.

Bundle E-mail message

Default in one bundle will reflect in all existing bundles.

To change the e-mail template for specific bundles select the ‘Override for bundle’ option.

On Completion, option will send completion message to the sender upon completion of the Report Distribution process.

E-mails sent from the Report Distributor use the Default [email protected] / [email protected] e-mail addresses.

You can change the ‘From Address Prefix’ ONLY i.e., replace ‘Reporting’ with a different term.

SAP currently do not have the option to change the domain to something other than successfactors.com / eu

Result: This blog will help you to successfully schedule report for offline execution, generate the reports at a regular cadence and then distribute the reports via e-mail in Excel / CSV format as an e-mail attachment to users.

Coming Up: As a continuation of this blog (Part 2), I’ll discuss about scheduling reports for offline execution, especially the data intensive ones and how you can send reports to SFTP (Secured File Transfer Protocol) sites to offload processing for reports with large data volumes.

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