Create Processes

Use the SAP Analytics Cloud calendar to create processes that help manage your calendar events.

Context

You can structure your workflow with a process that serves as parent event of related calendar events. The child events can be tasks or even other processes with their child events.

Processes can be for you alone or you can assign them to your colleagues. You can even assign processes to colleagues who are not yet members (do not have SAP Analytics Cloud accounts). Use their email address and they will receive information on how to get an account.

You can define the start date according to your needs:

Set the start date and time.
Let the task start once another calendar event reaches a certain status (Successful, for example), or several other calendar events reach one of the defined statuses.
If your process is grouped within a parent process, let it start at the same time as its parent process.

Procedure

In the Calendar, select (Create) Process.
Provide an Event Name.

Select the start condition:

Start By	Description
Time	Set the Start Date.
Dependency	The start date of your process depends on other events and their status. Select  Add Events to define which events your process shall depend on. Under Statuses, select which status these events need to meet before your process can start. Note All of the selected events need to meet any of the chosen statuses before your process can start. For more information, see Define Dependencies Among Calendar Events.
Parent Process	Your process will start at the same time as its parent process. Note If you haven't added a parent process to your process yet, you'll be asked to select one.

Set the Due Date.
Optional: To structure your workflow, you can add the process to another process:
- Choose Add Parent Process and select the process.
- If you selected a process in the calendar before creating this process, this process will be selected as a parent process by default. You can remove or edit it to add a different parent process if needed.
Note

You can select only the processes that you can edit. You need to be the owner or the assignee of the parent process.

To see the relationship between calendar events and their parent processes more easily, use the List workspace.
Select Create.

The process is added to the calendar and opened in the Details panel.
Optional: In the title area, select a different style for the process or create a new style.

The style is a user-specific setting. The selected style is only visible to you.
Optional: Add work files (stories or analytic applications) to the process, or provide a URL.
- As the owner, upload a work file, or add a URL.
  
  You can add a URL by selecting Add URL from the dropdown menu.
  
  The assignee can edit the work file, or upload additional work files.
- As the owner, you don't provide a work file or a URL.
  
  The assignee can upload his or her own files to Work Files. While the assignee is working on the process, only he or she can see their own work files.
Optional: Under Description, you can add some details or instructions you'd like to share.
Optional: To set reminders, select Add Reminders and fill in the required time settings.
Optional: If you want the process to start automatically, select the appropriate option depending on the chosen start condition:
- Activate the process and its child events at start date automatically: The process and any child events will be activated automatically at the selected start date.
- Activate the event automatically once any status of the dependencies is met: Once all selected events your process is dependent on have met any of the selected statuses, the process and any child events will be activated automatically.
- Activate the event automatically once its parent process starts: The process and any child events will be activated automatically at the start date of the parent process of this process.
If you want to edit your process before sending it out to others, do not enable this option.
Note
Please note the following conditions:
- Before you can activate the process, you need to have an assignee defined.
- If the process has child events, either the parent process or one of its child events need to have an assignee defined.
- If a child task is a data locking task, you need to define a context additionally.
Optional: Decide whether to set the process to status Canceled on the due date: If so, select Cancel the process and its child events on the due date automatically.

Child events that haven't been finished on the due date of the process will also be canceled on this date.
Optional: With the context, you define which data your event refers to.In the Context section, select a planning model and some filters.
The filters are applied to the work files of the event.
Note
The transfer of the filters has the following restrictions:

It is not supported for models with user-managed time dimensions.

It is restricted to the capabilities of the filter parameters provided by the SAP Analytics Cloud URL API. For more information, see Filter Parameters.
Add people to the process: Add one or more assignees, and if needed, additional owners for your process, or share your process with others.
- You can add individual users or teams that have been created in SAP Analytics Cloud:
  
  Adding teams instead of individual users may help save you time, and you don't need to define who's taking care of the process. You can choose to Resolve the team so the individual users are displayed, and adapt the list according to your needs.
  
  Note
  
  After you resolve a team, the reference to that team is removed. Instead, the system behaves like you added all the team members individually. Any changes to the team on the SAP Analytics Cloud Security page (like adding or removing team members) will not be reflected in the People section of your calendar task.
- You can also add someone who isn't already a member:
  1. To add a non-member, in the appropriate People section, select the dropdown list and then select Invite Non-Member by Email.
  2. Type the person's email address.
- To add yourself as assignee, select the dropdown list next to Add Assignees and then select Add Myself.
- You can also use a process as a parent event without any assignee: Before activating the process, you need to add at least one child event to it that can be activated.
Tip

If you add someone and then decide to substitute yourself or someone else for one of those roles, select the user name or the team name, and then choose Change from the dropdown menu. In the Change User dialog, select the new name for the role.

If you add 7 or more users or teams as owners, assignees, or viewers, only the first 5 user or team names are displayed and a link (... 3 More, for example) lets you access a dialog with the complete list of added users and teams. In this dialog, you can can search for user or team names, and you can add, change, or remove them.
Note

If you share a process, you share all child events with that viewer automatically. The viewer has an overview over all shared child events.
- If you remove a viewer from a process, all child events will remain visible to that person.
- If you remove a viewer from one of the child events, this child event will be visible to that person with limited information only. Under Hierarchy, only child events that are shared with this person will be displayed, and a number will indicate child events that are not shared with this person. For example: Child Events (4+1) means that 4 child events are shared, and one child event isn’t visible to this person.
Optional: If you haven't done so already, you can add the process to another process in the Hierarchy section.
- Choose Add Parent Process and select the process.
- If you've already set a parent process, it is displayed as the parent process. You can select it to see its details. You can remove or edit it to add a different parent process if needed.
Note

You can select only the processes that you can edit. You need to be the owner or the assignee of the parent process.

To see the relationship between calendar events and their parent processes more easily, use the List workspace.
Optional: Provide further information by adding additional files.

Everyone involved in this event can view the files. These can be stories, analytic applications, or PDF documents with further instructions or references, for example.
Optional: Under Private Memo, you can add personal notes that are only visible to you.
When you're finished filling in the details and are ready to send the process out, do one of the following:
- If the status is Inactive, select Activate or Activate & Notify.
  This option is also available when you click on the arrow next to the status in the header section.
  
  When you activate the task, and you've added some teams that haven't been resolved yet, the teams are resolved automatically. You can remove individual users of the team, for example. Users assigned to multiple teams are only counted once.
- If the status is In Progress, select Update and Notify.
- If you've adapted an existing process, select View Changes to review all the changes that have been applied; decide whether to send them out or delete any of the changes, and then select Update.
Optional: Once you've activated the process, you may want to send an immediate reminder to the assignees: In the Time section, select Send Immediate Reminder and enter some text as message.

The assignees will be notified right away.

Results

Notifications are sent to the applicable people.

Next Steps

Generate Child Events for Your Process

If you want to quickly add child events to your process, you can use the Calendar wizard to generate tasks and processes from an organizational dimension. See Generate Tasks and Processes with the Calendar Wizard.

Use Your Process as Parent Process

If you set your process as parent process for other processes or tasks, you'll see the direct child events in the Hierarchy section of your process, where you can change the status of all or individual child events, or navigate to their details.

If there are 7 or more direct child events, only the first 5 will be displayed and a link (... 2 More, for example) is added that lets you access a dialog with the complete list of direct child events. In the Direct Child Events dialog, you can search for events, change the status of all or individual child events, and navigate to their details, if needed.

Note

When you activate a process with child events, all valid child events will be activated as well. In addition, you have the option to transfer the roles of the parent process to the child events as follows:

The assignees of the parent process become owners of all child events.
The owners and viewers of the parent process become viewers of all child events.

Child events that can't be activated, won't inherit any roles. See also: What prerequisites need to be met before I can activate a calendar event?

As the owner of a parent process, you can decide to transfer the roles before activation. To do so, select Transfer Roles NowPeople section.

Change the Duration of Your Process

When changing the duration of a parent process, you can decide if you want to change the duration of its child events as well, or just the process itself. If you decide to change the duration of both process and child events, the child events are adapted as follows: in the

The start and due dates of manual child tasks are changed according to their current ratio to the start and due dates of the parent process.
The start date of automatic child tasks is changed according to its current ratio to the start date of the parent process. The duration of automatic tasks is fixed and won't be changed. It is 0 minutes by default, 10 minutes if you selected the Estimated Due Date checkbox, or calculated if you've defined an estimated due date.

Change the Event Type

To reduce the steps of your workflow, you can convert your process to a general task. See Convert Calendar Events.