Call for Response: Your Top 5 Workflow Reports

Question

Dear Workflow Community,
I am writing here to gather input in regards to specifications we currently prepare. As part of our new BPM solution “NetWeaver Business Process Manager” we specify currently the requirements for reporting and process analysis.
Since I strongly believe we have some of the best workflow experts here in SDN, I would like to ask for response on the following questions:
<b>1. What are the top 5 reports you run over your existing workflow deployment?</b> Please list both SAP pre-delivered and custom developed reports. The more details you can provide the better we can understand your requirements.
<b>2. What are your top 5 pain points when designing and deploying these reports? </b>
Thanks a lot.
Best regards,
Ralf Schaub
SAP NetWeaver PMSOA Product Definition
SAP AG
Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16
69190 Walldorf
mailto: [email protected]
http://www.sap.com

Answer 1

Hi Ralf & others,
I’m happy to hear that SAP is actively thinking about this issue, since it is an issue in the most implementations we do. I have read through the different posts and recognize a lot of problems and it’s funny to read how every one has their own way of tackling these problems.
Maybe it’s because I’m a consultant and don’t spend much time in maintenance but I don’t use standard transactions a lot, since they offer so little possibility to select on business data as Martin mentioned. Of course during development you use transactions like SWI1, SWPR, SWEL etc etc but after the go-live we advise the customer to use the custom made reports. (Of course if you built the workflow correct and the agent determination is done properly, you shouldn’t need standard workflow transactions…in an ideal world..;)
The way these reports are built up can roughly be in two ways:
1 – Old fashioned: First you make a selection on business data, like invoices (again..;) then you find the related workflows, and depending on the reporting demands you extract relevant information from the workitems and their containers. We mostly use function modules during this process like:
-     SWI_WORKITEMS_OF_OBJECT_GET
-     SWW_WI_CONTAINER_READ
-     SAP_WAPI_GET_DEPENDENT_WIS
-     RH_WI_ORGTASK_GET
Especially the FM SWW_WI_CONTAINER_READ is very slow and inefficient, also because after execution you have to loop through the output of this one and find the relevant element and value you are looking for. (Maybe it would be an idea to make it possible to add the possibility to select on ELEMENT and it’s VALUE. This would make it much more efficient.
2 – New style: Since a little while, during implementations where we expect high volumes, we make use of the WORK ITEM exits. This means that during the development of the workflow, you already start thinking about which information you want to use in reporting and that after the execution of vital steps (especially important status changes) in the workflow you transfer the relevant data to a custom-made table. When you built your report, you use this Z-table. This has proven to be a very powerfull tool which makes your reports a LOT faster!
Maybe it would be possible to add somekind of functionality to the workflow builder or the definition of the task to add a Tab for reporting. Here it would be possible to say for example which container elements you want to transfer to some kind of special reporting table….Im just thinking out loud now.
I hope this is a little usefull four you.
Kind regards & good luck!
Erik
PS Arghadip, I came across this topic since Im working for a customer now which has a running workflow for approving invoices, but they want more reporting possibilities. We are looking at the different possibilities, also BW/BI. So Arghadip I am very curious to some details on the BW reporting you used in your project, since I dont have any relevant experience in this. Could you share some of that experience with us, or shall we set up another thread on this? This would be greatly appreciated.