SAP BI Version Management – Restore Deleted Content

This is part of the SAP BI Version Management blog series.

SAP BI Version Management comes with some handy features that would assist when there is a need to restore deleted content/reports. Even if not designed for this purpose, this feature is built inside Version Management. However, only limitation to leverage this option is that object should have been added to VMS before it is deleted. SAP BI VMS also supports restoring older versions of deleted reports and it is not limited to latest version in VMS.

View Deleted Resources

This option helps admins/developers to view/restore deleted reports from VMS to CMS.

A sample WEBI report is already added to VMS and there are 3 versions of the report in VMS

SAP BI Version Management – Restore Deleted Content

Now it is accidentally deleted from Launchpad. Once it is deleted from Launchpad, it will disappear from Version Management System as well.

Now “View Deleted Resources” option should be executed. This will bring up the deleted report as it was managed by VMS

To restore a specific version of the report, select “History” option after selecting the report. Selecting “Delete” option in missing file list will permanently delete the report from VMS. When deleted from VMS, they cannot be restored to CMS.

Click on “Get Version” after selecting the required version. If Revision Number 2 is select for restore, it will be restored back to CMS

However, VMS will continue to hold all three versions and any required version can be imported back to CMS from VMS version.

Note: Even though SAP BI VMS supports restoring of deleted content, it is not similar to “Recycle Bin” available in 4.2 systems. Recycle Bin will allow restoration of content that are not added to Version Management. However, Version Management can restore multiple version of the report added to VMS.

Delete

Delete option on SAP BI VMS will remove the report from Version Management. However, deleting the report from VMS will not delete the CMS version. It will delete all versions of the report stored in VMS and once it is done, versioning is not possible.

To remove report from VMS, select the report and select “Delete”

After Delete, all VMS versions will be deleted and it will be back to square one.

Object removed from VMS can be added back to VMS using “Add to VM” option. However, that will mean beginning the versioning from scratch and versions stored as part of previous version management won’t be available anymore.