2817466 - How does the 'Last Successful Run Date' filter in Advanced Reporting Canvas reports work?

This article explains how the Custom Dynamic date filter called 'Last Successful Run Date' available in Advanced Reporting reports works.

Image/data in this KBA is from SAP internal systems, sample data, or demo systems. Any resemblance to real data is purely coincidental.

Environment

• Analytics and Reporting
  • Report Centre > Report - Canvas > Advanced Reporting

  Reproducing the Issue

  1. Create a new Canvas Report
  2. Add a report component and use Advanced Reporting as the data source
  3. Add the desired columns and rest of the filters to the report
  4. Choose filters
  5. Select a date field and the desired operator
  6. Under Custom Filter, check the 'Use Dynamic Date Variable' option
  7. Select 'Last Successful Run Date' from the dropdown

  Resolution

  The most important fact to consider is that this filter kicks in only for recurring scheduled runs.
  Adding this filter to a report and then running the report manually or with one time run schedules will have no impact on the output.
  In such circumstances, data output while running the report with and without this filter will be the same.

  To make use of the filter once it has been applied to the desired filed in the desired report, please add the report component or the report itself to a new Report bundle (Legacy Report Distributor) and setup a recurring schedule.

  The filter helps fetch incremental (delta) data for the desired report. i.e. Data that has been changed since a set dynamic time.
  The major difference between this filter and just a 'yesterday' or 'Today' filter is that this filter would be reliable even if there were unforeseen failures in the scheduled runs.

  The below example explains how the report's output would be
  Note: This is for illustration purposes only and does not in imply / indicate realtime behaviour of report schedules

  For this example we will assume:

  • The 'Last Successful Run Date' filter has been applied to the 'Last Modified Date' field in the Employment table, with the Operator 'Greater than or equal to'
  • No other filters have been added to the report
  • The report has been scheduled to run at midnight (00:00) everyday, per the corresponding server's (data center) time
  • The schedule has been set to start at 00:00 1st of January 2019 and then run daily

  Date	Scheduled Run status	Nature of data
  1st of January 2019	Successful	Full dump - First run will always be a full dump
  2nd of January 2019	Successful	Incremental data - Records modified after the 1st of January
  3rd of January 2019	Successful	Incremental data - Records modified after the 2nd of January
  4th of January 2019	Successful	Incremental data - Records modified after the 3rd of January
  5th of January 2019	Successful	Incremental data - Records modified after the 4th of January
  6th of January 2019	Failed	N/A
  7th of January 2019	Successful	Incremental data - Records modified after the 5th of January
  8th of January 2019	Successful	Incremental data - Records modified after the 7th of January
  9th of January 2019	Successful	Incremental data - Records modified after the 8th of January
  10th of January 2019	Successful	Incremental data - Records modified after the 9th of January
  11th of January 2019	Failed	N/A
  12th of January 2019	Failed	N/A
  13th of January 2019	Successful	Incremental data - Records modified after the 10th of January
  14th of January 2019	Successful	Incremental data - Records modified after the 13th of January
  15th of January 2019	Successful	Incremental data - Records modified after the 14th of January
  16th of January 2019	Successful	Incremental data - Records modified after the 15th of January