SAP Data & Analytics: My experience setting up SAP Analytics Cloud, Excel Add In for Microsoft Office within the enterprise
Introduction
So you're thinking of deploying the SAC Analytics Cloud, Excel Add In for Microsoft Office! Here's some lessons learnt I picked up along the way in a locked down enterprise environment and how I went about navigating some of the challenges getting this Excel Add In setup.
First I tried installing the Excel Add In myself
SAP Help shows you how to search for the Excel Add In and install it yourself under "Deploy the add in as a user". In my situation this part was locked down so I was not able to install it myself. ☹️
Raise a ticket with IT Helpdesk
So I raised a ticket with IT Helpdesk but then due to the smaller audience of this particular tool, I had to jump on a call and explain how the tool needed to be setup. This was before SAP had help documentation under the topic "Deploy the add-in as administrator".
Rather my conversations went a bit like this:
- "Can you help me find the person who locked down Microsoft Excel?"
- "Let them know we have approved usage of SAP Analytics Cloud and this Excel add-in is critical to using SAP Analytics Cloud"
Once we got ahold of the administrator of Microsoft 365, we then had to work together to understand what was required. This required a few back and forth Zoom calls to understand the SAP help documentation but also test changes made by the Office 365 administrator.
AD Group creation and SAC Tenant Configuration
First off, because we had a sizable audience of users who wanted this Excel Add In, we created an AD Group.
The second part was to also push down the SAC tenant configuration. When working with my Office 365 administrator, I had to share with them the help documentation from section "Tenant Configuration"
So once we had our AD Group setup - by simply adding users the following actions took place:
- Access would be granted to the Excel Add In which would remotely update their Excel once added to the AD group
- The Tenant Configuration would also be pushed down at the same time
Sometimes we had to ask users to wait a little bit but usually after 24 hours these changes would populate to users accounts.
I hope this brief account helps you a bit better with your setup of the SAP Analytics Cloud Excel Add In! It took me a few weeks but we eventually got there in the end.
Additional Reading and References
Check the on-boarding section for detailed documentation on how to get this feature setup.
🙋🏻♂️ I might need additional help!
If your organization needs a helping hand on any SAP technology topics, please feel free to reach out to me at ben@ben-kwong.com