How-to Guide

SAP NetWeaver 2004s

How To…
Do Exception
Broadcasting
Version 1.00 – October 2006

Applicable Releases:
SAP NetWeaver 2004s
© Copyright 2006 SAP AG. All rights reserved. contained in this document serves informational
purposes only. National product specifications may vary.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the These materials are subject to change without notice.
express permission of SAP AG. The information These materials are provided by SAP AG and its affiliated
contained herein may be changed without prior notice. companies ("SAP Group") for informational purposes
only, without representation or warranty of any
Some software products marketed by SAP AG and its kind, and SAP Group shall not be liable for errors or
distributors contain proprietary software components of omissions with respect to the materials. The only
other software vendors. warranties for SAP Group products and services are those
that are set forth in the express warranty statements
Microsoft, Windows, Outlook, and PowerPoint are accompanying such products and services, if any.
registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an
additional warranty.
IBM, DB2, DB2 Universal Database, OS/2, Parallel
Sysplex, MVS/ESA, AIX, S/390, AS/400, OS/390, OS/400, These materials are provided “as is” without a warranty
iSeries, pSeries, xSeries, zSeries, z/OS, AFP, Intelligent of any kind, either express or implied, including but not
Miner, WebSphere, Netfinity, Tivoli, and Informix are limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability,
trademarks or registered trademarks of IBM Corporation fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.
in the United States and/or other countries. SAP shall not be liable for damages of any kind including
without limitation direct, special, indirect, or
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. consequential damages that may result from the use of
these materials.
UNIX, X/Open, OSF/1, and Motif are registered SAP does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of
trademarks of the Open Group. the information, text, graphics, links or other items
contained within these materials. SAP has no control
Citrix, ICA, Program Neighborhood, MetaFrame, over the information that you may access through the
WinFrame, VideoFrame, and MultiWin are trademarks use of hot links contained in these materials and does not
or registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. endorse your use of third party web pages nor provide
any warranty whatsoever relating to third party web
HTML, XML, XHTML and W3C are trademarks or pages.
®
registered trademarks of W3C , World Wide Web SAP NetWeaver “How-to” Guides are intended to
Consortium, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. simplify the product implementation. While specific
product features and procedures typically are explained
Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in a practical business context, it is not implied that those
features and procedures are the only approach in solving
JavaScript is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, a specific business problem using SAP NetWeaver. Should
Inc., used under license for technology invented and you wish to receive additional information, clarification
implemented by Netscape. or support, please refer to SAP Consulting.
Any software coding and/or code lines / strings (“Code”)
MaxDB is a trademark of MySQL AB, Sweden. included in this documentation are only examples and
are not intended to be used in a productive system
SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, and other environment. The Code is only intended better explain
SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as and visualize the syntax and phrasing rules of certain
their respective logos are trademarks or registered coding. SAP does not warrant the correctness and
trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other completeness of the Code given herein, and SAP shall
countries all over the world. All other product and not be liable for errors or damages caused by the usage of
service names mentioned are the trademarks of their the Code, except if such damages were caused by SAP
respective companies. Data intentionally or grossly negligent.
1 Scenario
You want to search BI queries for exceptions that have occurred and distribute these
exceptions to the end users by Email or via the central alert framework. This functionality
is called Exception Broadcasting. If you use the central alert framework, the exceptions
will be displayed in the Universal Work list in the Enterprise Portal.

2 Introduction
The solution presented here is based on SAP NetWeaver 2004s. The query that will be
used must have at least one exception. Once you defined and executed (directly or in
scheduled in the backend) an Information broadcasting setting of type “Distribute
according to exceptions”, the BEx Broadcaster checks, if the thresholds defined in the
query exception have been exceeded or not reached. In that case the BEx Broadcaster
immediately generates a document in accordance with the criteria defined by you and
distributes this to the recipients by email, to the portal, or as an alert.

-1-
3 The Step By Step Solution

1. As the first step you have to start the

Query Designer and open the Query
that should be checked for
exceptions.

2. Then you have to create the

exceptions for the query. In the
example we created 3 different alert
levels (Good 1, Critical 2, Bad 3)
based on the key figure sales.

-2-
3. If you want to use the central alert
framework you have to go to your
backend system and call the
transaction “ALRTCATDEF”. There
you have to create a new alert
category. First you have to enter a
description and to maintain the basic
properties for the alert category.

4. In the next step you have to create

container elements for BI
parameters that you want to transfer
via Information Broadcasting. Go to
the tab and press the icon “Create”.

5. For each container element that you

want to map to a BI parameter you
have to define a description and the
object type. You can choose the
setting “not defined” as object type.

-3-
6. In the next step you have to provide
a text for the alert message. This
message will be displayed in an
Email or in the Universal Worklist.
You can use variables in the
message text that you have created
as container element before. You
can include those variables in the
following way: &dist_channel&

7. Then you can enter a text and a

URL for a subsequent activity
(optionally). E.g. you can add a link
to a BI Query which should be
checked by the recipient in order to
react to the alert.

-4-
8. In the last step of the alert category
configuration you have to assign the
alert to the end users. You can enter
fixed recipients or roles. If you enter
a role, all users that are assigned to
that role will get the alert. You can
also enter roles, if you press the
button “Subscription Authorization”.
In that case the assigned users will
have the option to subscribe for the
alert later.

9. In the next step you have to call the

BEx Broadcaster and create an
Information broadcasting setting
based on the query, on which the
exception has been defined on. As
distribution type you have to choose
“Distribute according to exceptions”.
In the details you can either choose
the distribution type “Send Email” or
“Create Alert”, if you want to
distribute the alert via the Universal
Worklist. As selection criterion you
can either choose to distribute all
exceptions or you can choose a
specific alert level. In our example
we only want to distribute alerts,
which have the level “Bad 3”.

10. Then you have to assign the

corresponding alert category you
have created before to your
Information broadcasting setting.

-5-
11. In the next step you have to do the
mapping between the BI parameters
of the Query and the alert container
elements. These parameters will
then be passed over to the alert.

12. In the last step you have to save the

Information Broadcasting setting.
You can execute the setting directly
or you can schedule the execution
e.g. periodically each week.

13. If you execute the Information

Broadcasting setting directly, you will
get an information, whether the
setting has been executed
successfully or not. In our example 2
Alerts have been triggered.

-6-
14. As a result you will see 2 new alerts
in the Universal Worklist for all users
which have been assigned to the
alert corresponding alert category.
You can access the Universal
Worklist in the Enterprise Portal:
Business Intelligence ÆBusiness
Explorer Æ Universal Worklist.

-7-
4 Appendix
The following picture gives you an overview about the integration of Information
Broadcasting and the central alert framework:

You can find more information how to configure the Universal Worklist in the online
documentation. Further information regarding Information Broadcasting can be found
here.

-8-
http://service.sap.com/nw2004s-howtoguides