HCM Analytics using SuccessFactors- Connectivity to SAP Analytics Cloud using OData- Part 2/3

SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) is SAP’s premier cloud-based, data self-service and visualization tool. Since SuccessFactors (SF) is also cloud-based, SAP Analytics Cloud offers connectivity to SuccessFactors as well.

SAP Analytics Cloud offers a generic OData connector that can connect to the OData API of SuccessFactors. For information regarding the OData API, please refer to blog- https://visualbi.com/blogs/sap/successfactors/hcm-analytics-us…nectivity-part-1/. The OData connector can connect to any generic OData service, and is offered as an acquire only data source which can be configured in SAC.

Entities and connectivity:

SuccessFactors is a collection of various entities, and the connection to SF is always based on an Entity, regardless of whether you access it as an OData source or through the native connection. These entities are further grouped into modules like Human Capital Management (HCM), Employee Central, Recruiting, Onboarding, Performance and Goals, Compensation, etc. based on the core process they represent. An organization might not have all the modules but might have only specific modules implemented.

Note: Please ensure that OData access permissions have been granted to the user ID, before proceeding.

You can access the list of entities in your SuccessFactors instance by going to the OData service and listing all the entities. This can be accessed using the following URL:

https://<hostname>/odata/v2/

Here, the Hostname will be your SuccessFactors instance which can also be seen from the URL you use to access the SuccessFactors cockpit. The above URL will list out the entities available. You can further filter the list, by going to a specific entity or collection. For example, the User collection can be accessed using:

https://<hostname>/odata/v2/User

Described by the Entity type named “User” in the metadata document. The query can be made more complex by including filtering, paging, sorting, and joining of entities (known as expanding in OData). The general structure of an OData URL for SuccessFactors is:

https://<hostname>/odata/v2/EntitySet[(keyPredicate)][/navPropSingle][/NavPropCollection][/Complex][/Property]

The hierarchy of data structure in SuccessFactors is: