How To Configure And Install People Intelligence I...

Introduction & Backgrounds

Traditionally, consultants used the SuccessFactors OData API to pull HR data into SAP Datasphere, SAC, or other analytics tools, and then built models manually. This required knowing which APIs to use, significant modeling effort, and often suffered from performance issues as data volumes grew.

People Intelligence, delivered as part of SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC), replaces this approach with a native, pre-built analytical framework. It hides the complexity of multiple APIs, improves data consistency, and gives HR leaders a comprehensive, near real-time view of the workforce across the full employee lifecycle — from recruiting to onboarding through performance, learning, and time management.

Architecture Overview

The diagram below shows the People Intelligence architecture alongside the traditional SuccessFactors OData API approach (shown for comparison). The grey box “SAP Foundation Service” is the key differentiator — it handles SuccessFactors data today and is designed to incorporate other Lines of Business (S/4 Public Cloud, S/4 Private Cloud, Ariba, Concur and more in future releases).

Steps 0 to 4 in this blog each correspond to configuring one of the components shown below.

Step 0- Prerequisites & System Requirements

Systems Required in SAP4ME

Before starting, ensure the following systems are provisioned and included in one BDC Formation in SAP4ME:

BDC Cockpit
SAP Datasphere
SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)
SAP SuccessFactors

In SAP4ME navigate to Portfolio & Products → Business Data Cloud → Customer Landscape → Formation. Cockpit, Datasphere, and SAC must all be in the same data center.

SAP4ME Customer Landscape — BDC Formation showing all four required systems in Ready status

What happens in the background when a Formation is created?

The tenants (SuccessFactors / Foundation Service, Foundation Service/ Datasphere, Datasphere/ SAC )in the formation automatically exchange required trust and connections — customers do not need to configure this manually.
A container in SAP Foundation Service is provisioned in the same data center as the Cockpit and Datasphere, preparing the environment for data products. Actual data loading does not happen yet at this stage.

⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid

Wrong data center: We frequently see customers provision SAC, Datasphere, and the Cockpit in a data center far from their users, requiring a full re-provisioning later. Pay close attention to the region and hyperscaler when provisioning tenants.
Adding the wrong SuccessFactors tenant to the formation. Contact your SuccessFactors owner which tenant could be connected.
If a SuccessFactors tenant is added and Data Packages or Intelligent Applications are installed, but the tenant is not intended for long-term use, ensure that all Intelligent Applications are uninstalled and all Data Packages are deactivated before excluding the tenant from the SAP4ME formation. This ensures that business data and metadata in BDC Foundation Services, Cockpit, Datasphere, and SAC are properly cleaned up.

Official SAP documentation: Prerequisites for Using People Intelligence

Below is also a very good blog for provision steps in SAP4ME: Introductory Guide to Provisioning of SAP Business Data Cloud

Step 1 — Configure in BDC Cockpit

1.1 Required Roles, Connections and Entitlement

To manage the system landscape and install data packages and Intelligence Applications, you need the “BD Administrator” role in the BDC Cockpit. Ask your system owner to assign this role after the Cockpit is firstly provisioned.

You can see the predefined role in cockpit as below

Predefined roles in BDC Cockpit — assign BD Administrator to proceed

Under System Landscape, you will see all systems (Datasphere, SAC, SuccessFactors) included in your formation. If you have multiple formations in SAP4ME, all will appear here.

System Landscape in BDC Cockpit showing all formation members

Test the connection to SuccessFactors. The screenshot below confirms a successful connection between Foundation Services and the SuccessFactors tenant.

Connection test result — Foundation Services to SuccessFactors: successful

💡Unlike S/4 Private Cloud integrations, you do not need to create users or certificates in SuccessFactors manually. Certificate exchange happens automatically when the SuccessFactors tenant is added to the formation in SAP4ME.

Below is the first view of Intelligent Applications and Data Packages available under the category “Human Resources”. This screen may change as new data products and Intelligence Applications are released.

Available Human Resources Intelligent Applications and Data Packages in BDC Cockpit

⚠️No Applications visible?
If you do not see any Intelligent Applications or Data Packages after completing the above steps, the People Intelligence entitlement is likely missing.

For customers, contact your account team to verify the relevant Material (People Intelligence ) and SKU (8020315 ). Or admin user can check on its own in SAP4ME –> Portfolio and Products –> My Purchased products, search “People Intelligence”.

For partners, please contact your contact at SAP or check Note3710828 – TDD Partner – BDC Cockpit – No Available Applications and Packages

Data Packages vs. Intelligent Applications — What is the Difference?

There are two types of installable content in BDC Cockpit:

Data Packages: Activate the replication of LoB (SuccessFactors in our case) data into the BDC Foundation Service. Datasphere and SAC are not involved at this stage.
Intelligent Applications: Deploy the full analytical stack — data products into Datasphere, views, analytic models, data access controls, and SAC stories.

When only Data Packages are installed — data flows to Foundation Service only; Datasphere and SAC are not involved

Below illustrate if Intelligence applications are installed. It trigger installations of data products into datasphere, create relevant views, analytic models, data access control in datasphere and also the relevant SAC stories.

When Intelligence Applications are installed — full pipeline including Datasphere models and SAC stories

Technically, installing an Intelligent Application already includes activating the required data products. However, we strongly recommend activating data packages first, then installing Intelligent Applications separately. This makes each step easier to monitor and simplifies troubleshooting if an error occurs.

10 of Available Intelligence Applications (as of April 2026)

Workforce Composition Insights
Workforce Compensation Insights
Skills Insights
Learning Insights
Goals Insights
Performance Insights
Succession Insights
Career Development and Planning Insights
Time Management Insights
Onboarding Insights

These require the following 8 data packages, which must be activated in order:

1. SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Data Products — must be activated first

2. Below no sequence requirements.

SAP SuccessFactors Skills Data Products
SAP SuccessFactors Learning Data Products
SAP SuccessFactors Succession and Career Development Data Products
SAP SuccessFactors Performance and Goals Data Products
SAP SuccessFactors Time Management Data Products
SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding Data Products

3. SAP SuccessFactors Cross Workforce Data Products — must be activated last

Recruiting Insights requires below data packages

1. SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Data Products (first)
2. SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Data Products (last)

💡Always check the latest requirements here: SAP Help: Prerequisites to Install PI Intelligent Applications

1.2 Activate Data Packages

Follow the sequence above, one package at a time. Start with Employee Central Data Products — it contains 21 data products. Click Activate.

Employee Central Data Products — 21 data products ready for activation

Select the correct SuccessFactors source system. If you have multiple formations with different SuccessFactors tenants, or multiple SuccessFactors tenants in one formation, several source systems dropdown list will appear.

Select the correct SuccessFactors source system for the data package

The initial activation may take time depending on data volume. You can monitor each data product's status individually. Once all are active, you will receive a notification that the package activation is complete.

Data product activation status — monitor each product's progress in BDC Cockpit

OPTIONAL: During this phase, data flows from SuccessFactors to the Foundation Service. Once complete, data products can be consumed by downstream targets (e.g. Databricks, Snowflake) depending on your BDC Connect configuration in the formation.

You can browse activated data products via Cockpit → Catalog and Marketplace → Search, filtering by source, lifecycle status, or data product name.

BDC Catalog — activated data products with sharing options to Databricks, Snowflake, and other targets

At this stage, no SAP managed spaces or models are created in Datasphere yet, and no SAC stories are created. Repeat the activation for each required data package in the correct sequence.

1.3 Install the Intelligent Application

Once all required data packages are activated, install the People Intelligence application from BDC Cockpit. This creates spaces and models in Datasphere and imports stories into SAC.

The Intelligent Application detail screen shows the required data products (already active from Step 1.2) and the contents to be deployed.

Intelligent Application install screen — required data products already active; click Install to deploy to Datasphere and SAC

After clicking Install, BDC Cockpit checks the data product status and imports packages into Datasphere and SAC. Install each required Intelligence Application — the installation order among applications does not matter.

Step 2 — Configure in SAP SuccessFactors

2.1 Assign Required Authorization to the SF Admin User

In SuccessFactors Admin Center → Manage Permission Roles, search for “manage analytics” and select Analytics Admin.

SuccessFactors Admin Center — assign Analytics Admin permission role

2.2 Configure Derived Data Products in Admin Center

In SuccessFactors Admin Center → Manage Analytics Data Products, configure the derived data product settings. Note these settings apply only to derived data products, not primary data products. Currently there is no filter on primary data products but there is plan to make enhancement. In addition, sensitive data which enable Audit Log in SucessFactors will not get extracted. The fileds will be filled with NULL value in BDC for the moment.

Manage Analytics Data Products in SuccessFactors Admin Center

The settings are specific to your organization's HR processes. For example, you define what constitutes a hiring event in Employee Central:

Employee Central derived data product settings — defining hiring event criteria

💡After publishing configuration changes, allow several hours for the changes to be reflected in derived data products and the Intelligent Applications that consume them. Reference: Derived Data Product Configuration Settings — Reference and Recommendations

Step 3 — Configure in SAP Datasphere

3.1 Required Roles in Datasphere

Your Admin user requires the following roles to manage spaces:

- Data Warehouse Cloud Administrator
- Data Warehouse Cloud Integrator
- Data Warehouse Cloud Space Administrator
- Scoped Data Warehouse Cloud Integrator
- Scoped Data Warehouse Cloud Space Administrator
- Data Catalog Administrator
- BDC_Scope_Space_Admin

To view the relevant spaces, add them to your space role. The space structure after installing People Intelligence is:

Ingestion space: replicate data (default) or federate data products from Foundation service.
Preparation space: views, models, and data access controls maintained at this space
Application space (one per Intelligence Application): analytic models, shared views, and data access control applied at this level

See the SAP Help documentation for the full space structure details.

Datasphere space structure after installing People Intelligence — ingestion, preparation, and application spaces

💡All SAP Managed Space are defined with not Enable Space Quota. This is to prevent locking space especially when the data volume is big in Ingestion space. Please do not change this.

3.2 Maintain Data Access Control

Navigate to Data Builder, select your preparation space (typically named SAP_SF_XX), and search for “Permission”. You will find the data access control table with technical name sap.sf.wrk.Permissions.

Search for the Permissions table in the Datasphere preparation space

Upload the permission table. The example below gives a single user full access across all restriction dimensions. Use a unique Permission ID for each row when adding multiple users.

For more granular restrictions, see: Create an “Operator and Values” Data Access Control.

Verify Data Access Control in the Analytic Model

Navigate to the application space for Workforce Composition and open the Analytic Model sap.sf.wrk.RL_CoreWorkforce.

Analytic Model in the Workforce Composition application space

Preview the result. Data should be visible here. If the data source has data but measure columns are empty, the data access control was not configured correctly — and SAC will also show no data in that case.

Analytic model data preview — measures should show values if DAC is configured correctly

⚠️Empty measures in the preview?
If your data source has data but the measure columns are empty, your data access control is almost certainly misconfigured. Fix the Permissions table first — SAC will also show no data until this is resolved.

Optional: Monitor the Import in Datasphere

Review import logs for tables, replication flows, and model deployments via Datasphere → Transport → Monitor. This view only appears after installing an Intelligence Application, not after activating data packages alone.

Datasphere Transport Monitor — package import status

Detailed import progress view in the Datasphere Transport Monitor

Step 4 — Validate Reports in SAP Analytics Cloud

Once all steps are complete, you can view the pre-built SAC stories. You need the BI Admin role in SAC. Navigate to Files → Intelligent Applications → SAP Human Capital Management. Each installed application has its own subfolder:

SAC Files — Intelligent Applications folder with one subfolder per installed People Intelligence application

Open the SAC story for Workforce Composition. If data appears correctly — the installation is complete and verified!

Workforce Composition SAC story showing live People Intelligence data — installation verified

Next Steps

Customization: All SAP-managed spaces in Datasphere are read-only, and the same applies to pre-built SAC stories. To customize, you need to copy the relevant preparation space and application space models, please keep in mind ingestion space could not be copied. The same applies to SAC stories — copy first, then modify. This is an important topic that deserves its own dedicated blog post and is not covered here.

Data Validation in Datasphere or SAC: There are three common ways to validate your People Intelligence data:

1. Build your own views in your copied spaces to verify specific data records and calculations. This approach gives the most flexibility but requires Datasphere modeling expertise.

2. Use the Analytic Model preview function in Datasphere — add filters, dimensions, and measures interactively to spot-check the data without writing any code. Recommended for most users.

3. Use Data Analyzer in SAC — open a story, launch the Data Analyzer, and explore the underlying data directly to verify what is being displayed in the charts and tables.

Glossary and Links

Glossary

PI (People Intelligence) — SAP's native workforce analytics solution delivered within BDC.

Formation — A logical grouping of SAP tenants (SuccessFactors, BDC, Datasphere, SAC) managed in SAP4ME or BTP.

Foundation Service — The BDC component that hosts data products and mediates data flow between LoB system (SuccessFactors, S/4) and downstream systems.

Data Package — A pre-built set of data products for a specific analytics domain; activates data replication from LoB (S/4, SuccessFactors and so on) into Foundation Service.

Intelligent Application — A full analytical deployment including data packages, Datasphere models, views, DAC, and SAC stories.

Derived Data Product — Golden Layer data products, ready to be ingested. Calculated based on primary data products.

DAC (Data Access Control) — Governs which users can see which rows of data in Datasphere analytic models.

SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud) — The BI front-end for consuming People Intelligence stories.

Links

I would like to extend my special thanks to my colleagues Zhou, Hong, and Siebeking, Ingo for reviewing this blog.

Source link