Symptom
- With the 1H 2023 release, users are now able to export the list of rules and its assignment information inside of Configure Business Rules page.
- After downloading the file and double clicking to open with Excel app, user is noticing strange characters in the file and is not able to understand the content of it.
Image/data in this KBA is from SAP internal systems, sample data, or demo systems. Any resemblance to real data is purely coincidental.
Environment
SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite
Reproducing the Issue
- Go to Configure Business Rules;
- Click in the 'Export rules including assignment information as CSV file' button in the top-right of the screen;
- In the pop-up window, read the instructions and click on 'Export';
- Scheduled Job Manager > Job Monitor page will be opened, wait the job to finish and download the file;
- Open the file double-clicking on it and opening it with Excel;
- Notice the strange characters on it:
Cause
Unfortunately, Excel does not recognize special characters as Unicode (UTF-8) when the CSV file will be opened via double click. This will affect the look & feel of the list in case the file was downloaded in a language, such as Chinese, Russian, Korean, but also if e.g. the assignment information provided by the applications contain special characters.
Resolution
If you need to open the file using Excel, our recommendation would be:
- In Excel, open the file via Data > From Text/CSV > Excel will detect the file origin as Unicode.
Notes:
- As a best practice if you want to have more meaningful headers, in the pop-up select Transform Data > 'Use First Row as Headers' (twice) > The second row of the file (that contains the header) will be used as header;
- In other file editors the issue might not even appear.
See Also
- 2651822 - How to Export Business Rules
- Exporting List of Business Rules Including Assignment Information
Keywords
export, rules, rule assignments, strange characters, wrong characters, unknown characters, weird characters, export rule, business rules export , KBA , LOD-SF-MDF-RUL , Custom Oject based Business Rules , LOD-SF-EC-ADM , Admin Tools (EC Core only) , Problem