SAP BI Version Management Options – Get Latest and Create Copy

This blog will outline the SAP BI Version Management options – Get latest version and Create Copy. As a continuation of the SAP BI Version Management series, this blog will add to the concepts and options discussed in previous blogs of this series.

Get Latest Version

As the name implies, this will get the latest version of report from VMS and will write it back to CMS. In other words, if there are any changes to the CMS version it will be discarded and latest version in VMS will be stored as current CMS version. This is much like restoring a particular version from History menu but this options always restores the CMS version from latest VMS version.

Basic workflow of “Get Latest Version” option

SAP BI Version Management Options – Get Latest and Create Copy

When a Developer/Admin initiates “Get Latest Version”, latest VMS version will be copied to CMS version and replace the last checked in CMS version. CMS version which are not checked in will get discarded.

Considering the example of Webi report here – There are two Current CMS/VMS versions:

A change has been made – State Column set as “Section” and changes have been saved

This will generate a new CMS version. Now executing “Get Latest Version” will discard changes and restore CMS version from latest VMS version.

After executing “Get Latest Version” – CMS version will be restored from Latest VMS version.

Executing the report on Launchpad will bring up the report that does not have a section.

Create Copy

Create copy is more like “Branching” done in software development. When create copy is performed, another copy of the report is created from the latest VMS version. However, when creating a copy, CMS version number and VMS version numbers won’t be updated in the VMS. Newly created report will not be part of the VMS and “Add to VM” should be performed separately to manage versions of the copied report.

Basic Workflow of “Create Copy” option

When a developer/admin invokes the “Create Copy” option, a new report is created from the copy of the latest VMS version. In this case, current CMS version will remain untouched. This option is similar to “Get Copy of Version” available in History menu except for the fact that this always creates a copy from latest VMS version.

In Version Management, executing “Create Copy” creates a new copy of the report with name denoting that it is copied from existing report and has date/time mentioned in it.