Archive for the ‘Business Intelligence’ Category

Apr
23

Recording and Book Giveaway: Most Important Xcelsius Webinar of 2012

by Mico Yuk 2 Comments »

Hi Everyone,

We first want to say thanks for attending the Most Important Xcelsius Webinar of 2012! Consider  this to be one of three upcoming blog posts discussing the details of the webinar. Please be sure to read it all the way through before previewing the video to view some great outcomes from the webinar.  Enjoy!

10 Amazing Webinar Facts

  1. Registration soared to a record 1086! (30+ countries)
  2. 64% show up rate with over 700+ attendees
  3. 400+ Questions received
  4. 96% Attendee approval rate from feedback survey!
  5. 500+ tweets on our twitter hashtags #AllAccessSAP and #XcelsiusSOD reflected the traffic of a mini conference (and still going BTW)!
  6. 48% of the customers on the call had both SAP BW and Business Objects when polled
  7. 82% of the attendees had no idea what SAP Zen was (though Zen reflected 30% of the questions asked and is the next most requested AllAccessSAP Webinar)
  8. #SAPZen twitter hashtag has been bred into life!
  9. SAP BI Commnity Response was historical and overwhelming! To date we have 7 blog posts, 1 podcast and 1 semantic analysis and counting…
  10. 6 Amazing SAP BI panelist, namely Mani Gill, Ty Miller, Jason Rose, Ian Mayor, Scott Leaver and Mani Srinivasan did an AMAZING job answering questions!  Big thanks to them for participating and making this a success. :-)

Anticipated Xcelsius Book Giveaways!

You couldn’t possibly think that we forgot the BOOK GIVEAWAY from our friends at SAP Press?!  CONGRATS to our winners (check your emails for more details).

  • Winner #1 – Marc Teixido Ibarz (SP)
  • Winner #2 – Ruby Norley (US)
  • Winner #3 – Bala Seetharaman (IN)

I wrote the foreword for this book and can personally recommend that you buy it now, especially if BI4 is on your plate.  Electronic versions available for non US folks too!

AllAccess SAP Xcelsius Webinar Recording (60 mins of No BS)

Sit back and turn up the volume…

If you are having trouble viewing the video, please click the direct link: http://youtu.be/vMVnBnr0PHY

Useful Links & SAP BI Community Webinar Responses

Additional Responses from the Community post this blog:

Our Fav Tweets – Share the Community Passion!

What’s Next?

I will follow up with 2 more blog posts in the next week. One that seeks to get even deeper answers from SAP on the most pressing questions not covered in the webinar. My 2nd blog post will focus on my thoughts on the Xcelsius SOD and what it means for SAP customers and their existing and future dashboards.

Your Feedback is Required

We want to hear from you! Do post your comments below or on twitter using our hashtags #AllAccessSAP and #XcelsiusSOD to keep the conversation going. Remember big brother is reading. :)

Mico Yuk is a SAP Mentor and SAP BI Influencer, co-founder of Benchmarkers Business Intelligence and founder of the Xcelsius Gurus Network, the Everything Xcelsius blog. To learn more about her, please visit her about page.

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Apr
17

Alert: Most Important Xcelsius Webinar of 2012

by Mico Yuk 3 Comments »

Hi Our Loyal Followers,

If you have used, invested or are curious about the Xcelsius software, this may the be most important email you will read in 2012!  It’s been a LOOONGG, SLOW year in the Xcelsius world, but I’m sure most of you have seen or heard the buzz about the upcoming “All Access Xcelsius” Webinar tomorrow (4/18/12) at 10am PST/ 1p EST that I will be hosting along with the SAP BI Team.

If you recall, SAP promised to give us the long awaited ‘Xcelsius Statement of Direction’ back in Jan of 2012. To date we have seen NULL.  This call is to follow up on that request and get your future of Xcelsius questions answered.

Besides the NO BS or Marketing theme (had to make SAP promise), there are a number of reasons why you need to attend:

  1. UPDATE: The Xcelsius Statement of Direction (SOD) has been delivered! Read it here: http://bit.ly/HUkPqW / or if behind a firewall, try here: http://bit.ly/HUmfli
  2. NEW Call Format - Unlike traditional webinars, where SAP typically whips out a PPT for 45 mins, tells you all the good things they hope to come and then leave 10 mins for questions, we will have 15 mins of PPT and 40 mins of questions. Expect most of the questions entered in the registration form to be answered at this time. We will also be taking questions via Twitter and monitoring the Hashtags #AllAccessSAP or #XcelsiusSOD.
  3. Panel.. the whole  SAP BI team! - This usually exists at conferences, and to be honest as the registration numbers started increasing to alarming heights SAP just kept adding team members. GO COMMUNITY. Let’s keep them on their toes!  Guess no one wants to be the naked emperor.
  4. Live Polls – During the call we want to give SAP as much feedback as possible, so we will be hosting a few live polls on the call and showing the results in real time.
  5. Post Surveys – It is also critical that you fill out the post webinar survey that will feature some questions that SAP needs to gain feedback on to ensure that we continue to gain updates. Snuck into there, we will also ask what you would like to see happen with EverythingXcelsius.com in 2012. :-)
  6. Continuity.. Lets do it again! - Now note, because of the overwhelming response SAP is already considering doing this same kind of No BS webinar for other areas and tools such as WebI etc. Please be sure again to fill out the post survey if you want this repeated.
  7. Three Xcelsius Book Giveaways – As a thank you for your support our friends at SAP Press provided 3 of the NEW Creating Dashboards with SAP BusinessObjects (2nd ed.) books to raffle on the call.  You Must be present to WIN. I personally wrote the foreword for this book and it is the only book that will give you clear guidance on how to use Xcelsius in an Enterprise environment. Don’t miss out!

Registration Link: You can register using this link: http://bit.ly/XcelsiusSOD. Even if you can’t make the actual webinar, we encourage you to sign up to receive the recording afterwards.

Now to the NO BS Clang… Joining us from SAP will be:

  • Mani Gill – VP, Business Intelligence Solution Management, SAP
  • Ty Miller – Senior Director, Solution Management, SAP
  • Jason Rose – VP, BI Solution Marketing (but he is hanging up his marketing hat for this webinar)
  • Ian Mayor – Director, BI Solution Management, SAP
  • Scott Leaver – Director, BI Solution Management, SAP
  • Mani Srinivasan – Solution Manager, BI Solution Management, SAP (Explorer)

We asked the community to come out and support us, and the response is overwhelming! At 100 registrants per day globally, we have over 750+ registrants and counting.  As the global evangelist for this product, I  just want to say your response makes my 2nd (unpaid) job worth the while. THANK YOU! Don’t forget, even if you can’t make the webinar, still sign up to receive the recording afterwards: http://bit.ly/XcelsiusSOD.

PS – Sorry that I have not been blogging as much. It’s very challenging working a day job, dealing with SAP on the back end to keep things moving, being on twitter trying to gain real time responses, and blogging.  I do have lots to say and will work on getting this going soon.  Meanwhile I would appreciate if you could let me know what you want to see on EverythingXcelsius.com in 2012. Thanks!

Mico Yuk is a SAP Mentor and Influencer, founder of the Xcelsius Gurus Network, the Everything Xcelsius blog, and co-founder of Benchmarkers Business Intelligence. To learn more about her, please visit her about page.

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Jan
10

Intro to Guest Blogger, Leonid Koyfman & what he has planned for Us!

by Soo Tang Yuk 2 Comments »

Welcome to my first post on Everything Xcelsius. I’m Leonid Koyfman, a Database Architect at AKQA in San Francisco. Although my primary responsibilities are in a database domain, data visualization and dashboard design in particular have always been in the area of my interests. In my career I completed many reporting projects using Crystal Reports, Actuate and various Microsoft products.

Creating reports and dashboards in Excel prepared me well for transition to Xcelsius. Its mashup of art and technology impressed me from the moment I opened a trial version and I enthusiastically promoted Xcelsius in the company I worked for then.

Starting with Xcelsius 4.0 we developed a line of web analytics dashboards for financial institutions. Our clients loved them. Instead of hundreds static slides in PowerPoint decks, they received interactive dashboards with intuitive navigation and the level of detail not supported in the legacy reports.  While the data preparation on the database side and in Excel was the bulk of the work, using Xcelsius for the presentation delivered the knockout punch. The resounding success of the project made me even stronger proponent of Xcelsius. It also inspired me to be creative and look for workarounds when Xcelsius doesn’t support needed functionality out of the box.

While getting better with every new release, Xcelsius still needs more popularization. Everything Xcelsius is one of the major players in that field. I’ve been a big fan of the website for many years, regularly visiting the site, learning new techniques and developing new skills. I’m glad to have a chance to share some of my ideas, tips and tricks here.

In the next several posts I’m going to examine various applications of customized Push Button controls in Xcelsius. Stay tuned!!

Leonid Koyfman is a BI professional with over 10 years of experience in a database design and development and in delivering reporting solutions using enterprise reporting technologies. He is a big Xcelsius enthusiast passionate about dashboard design and other kinds of data visualization. In his leisure time Leonid enjoys solving mental puzzles and hiking in the Bay Area with his family.

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Oct
25

Operational Reporting: Leveraging Crystal Reports as a Model for Embedded BI

by Coy Yonce 4 Comments »

As I attempt to describe in the below figure, there are a few types of BI that are currently available from BI vendors. Historically, most BI deployments began with pure reporting that delivered information to those who needed it for making decisions. Those reports were either printed or delivered electronically via email or a portal. From that basic reporting arose a requirement to either see more high-level, graphical information (e.g., dashboards) or a requirement to have more interactive reporting. Over time, the deployment eventually builds up to where the implementation and the users are mature enough to need analysis capabilities. Of course, today, users are more mature with regards to locating information, manipulating that information, and telling a story with it. As such, more and more BI deployments are starting with analysis.

All of these different types of BI can either be accessed in a standalone mode or embedded. With SAP BusinessObjects, standalone can mean either via a desktop application, BI LaunchPad, or one of the various mobile applications that exist. From an embedded standpoint, you could imagine information being delivered via an internal portal (e.g., SharePoint) or within another vendor’s application (e.g., Sage CRM). For SAP Crystal Reports, and other reporting tools, this has been a cornerstone for engaging partners and proliferating BI content.

Operational Reports

When you think of reporting, you would typically envision something like operational reports. These are reports that contain specific details about an entity and are directly responsible for supporting business processes. For example, if you were a support representative and were helping a customer on the phone, you might want to see a list of all orders that the customer has placed over the past 12 months. An operational report, such as the one below, would be one way to display this information.

In addition, operational reports are usually embedded directly within other applications. In the above example, the reports for support representatives could be embedded directly within a CRM application. This would allow the individual on the phone with the customer to click a button or a link and quickly bring up the information that they need to reference. In this scenario, the data is either contained within a database behind the CRM application or is generated by the application. In either case, the data is then pushed into the embedded report while the application is running so that the support representative can get what they need in real time.

The figure below shows an example of an application, Sage SalesLogix, which currently embeds Crystal Reports content.

In this workflow, a user has searched or browsed a list of available reports in order to find the one that is relevant for them.

In any case, the important bit is that Sage did not need to develop a report component on their own. They were able to take something, Crystal Reports, which was already built and embed it. The benefit to their customers is that they have a well known reporting solution built in, they can create their own reports using Crystal Reports, and can more easily upgrade their reporting solution by leveraging the SAP BusinessObjects suite to deliver other types of BI content.

Leveraging Embedded Reporting as a Model for Embedded BI

The widespread embedding of Crystal Reports, and other reporting solutions, into other software begs the question of how we (as a general BI ecosystem) can leverage all of this experience of embedding reporting so that we can make it easier to embed BI as a whole. There are examples out there today where interactive BI content and analytics are being embedded; however, this is an area of growth for BI.

What examples do you know of where this is being done today? How can BI software vendors make this easier?

Coy Yonce is a Principal Technical Architect at EV Technologies and has worked in Business Intelligence for over 10 years. Before joining EV Technologies, Coy was a Crystal Reports Product Owner at SAP for many years. His main focus is leading conversations and being active in the BI community. Connect with him directly via:

Twitter – SDN – Zerply – Scribd – Slideshare – LinkedIn – Google+

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Oct
18

Enterprise Reporting: How does Crystal Reports fit in and where is it going?

by Coy Yonce 2 Comments »

Crystal Reports began in 1988 under the name of Quik Reports DOS. It was created out of necessity, as the original developers needed a better tool for generating views of the data contained within their accounting application.  Through the years, the product has been integrated into many applications and development environments, but has remained a product focused on creating and distributing quality formatted reports that can be created on top of almost any data source.  With the latest mainstream version of SAP Crystal Reports 2008, this remains true.

SAP Crystal Reports Timeline

The product itself is commonly identified as a Business Intelligence tool; however, it is also referred to as a product for Enterprise Reporting, Operational Reporting, or Business Intelligence Reporting. Regardless of the classification, many market analysts consider reporting to be a key component of any Business Intelligence product suite. At SAP, it is classified under the Business Analytics suite of products.

SAP High Level Product Portfolio

Who are some of the key competitors for Crystal Reports?

  • Microsoft SQL Reporting Services
  • IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Reporting
  • Information Builders
  • Telerik Reporting
  • JasperReports
  • Pentaho Report Designer
  • Microsoft Office Suite
  • Oracle Reports
  • ActiveReports
  • Stonefield Query
  • QlikTech
  • Tableau

With all of these competitors, plus many others that I have not mentioned, the struggle is to differentiate while maintaining true to the vision of creating strongly typed, interactive reports on top of any data source and allowing those reports to be distributed to users in their own environment.  We don’t want to create an analysis tool. We don’t want to create a tool for the average user to start creating reports. SAP BusinessObjects provides other tools for that purpose. We want to be the tool used to create beautiful reports on top of the amalgamation of any data sources you can throw at it.

Through the years, we have found ways to create interest around the product. We’ve been an embedded report designer in many development environments: Visual Basic, Visual Studio, Eclipse, Borland, and Rational. We’ve created features that allow for accessing newer data sources like XML and web services. We’ve provided ways to embed more engaging visualizations via the embedding of Flash objects. We’ve also provided more interactive features for the report consumer – without stepping too far into the realm of creating a pure analysis tool.

We have our fans and we have our haters. Most people like our ability to create strongly typed reports, the fact that we connect to many different types of data, and the interactive features that we provide for report consumers. Some people struggle with using an outdated report design UI and with embedding reports into their own applications via our APIs. We have a plan for addressing those concerns and delighting our already ecstatic users.

Starting with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0, we introduced a new report design tool that is currently called SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise. Over the next few years, you will see this become the primary report design tool that customers use; however, this will take some time. Not only do we need to close gaps between the mainstream version of crystal and the new version, but we also need to get customers onto the BI 4.0 platform before they can start using the product.

While closing gaps is a definitely a priority for creating interest in the new designer, we also want to introduce new features that will delight users when they find them. Some examples are our new REST and JavaScript APIs, new visualizations capabilities, a focus on best practices in information design, enhanced viewer workflows, and an online library of report templates. I will write posts about those topics later on both Everything Xcelsius and the SAP Community Network.

For now, I’d like to share with you a quick summary of the posts you will see over the next few weeks.

Types of Reports

I plan to write a four part series that will focus on the types of reports that typically created with products like SAP Crystal Reports and how you can go about creating them. The four types of reports that will be covered are: Operational Reports, Short-Term Strategic Reports, Long-Term Strategic Reports, and Forms. Each of these has their place and purpose in a Business Intelligence deployment.

Coy Yonce is a Principal Technical Architect at EV Technologies and has worked in Business Intelligence for over 10 years. Before joining EV Technologies, Coy was a Crystal Reports Product Owner at SAP for many years. His main focus is leading conversations and being active in the BI community. Connect with him directly via:

Twitter – SDN – Zerply – Scribd – Slideshare – LinkedIn – Google+

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Sep
27

ASUG SBOUC BI4 Release Party OFFICIAL RSVP!

by Mico Yuk 2 Comments »
Steve Lucas and Adam Binnie

Steve Lucas and Adam Binnie of SAP

Hi Folks,

The most anticipated event of the ASUG SAP BusinessObjects conference is finally here and its BIGGER and BETTER!

We are excited to formally announce the Official SAP BI4 Release Party (aka the 3rd Annual Xcelsius Gurus Reception), hosted by none other than myself Mico Yuk (founder of Benchmarkers.com and EverythingXcelsius.com) and the infamous Steve Lucas, Global GM & Senior Executive of the SAP Business Analytics & Technology Portfolio!

If you attended our event in previous years, you probably know that it looks more like a Vegas nightclub on Friday night than a regular ‘boring’ corporate event.  We plan to keep it that way (just don’t tell our sponsors at SAP :) ).

Now for the long awaited details:

  • Location: ASUG SAP BusinessObjects User Conference (Orlando, FL)
  • Hosts: Steve Lucas & Mico Yuk
  • Date/Time: Tuesday, October 11, from 6:30-9:30pm EST
  • Room – (Final details will be sent in confirmation email on 9/29)
  • Attendee Count: 250 (space is limited)
  • Special Guests – Bridgette Chambers (ASUG CEO) and much more!
  • Prizes – 3 door prizes (just drop your business card in at the door to enter), BI4 Video Confession prizes!
  • BI4 Video Contest - Submit your videos now, or take them at the event to gain a chance to win an iPad2.  More details by clicking here!
  • Features – 2 Open Bars, Open Buffet, networking tables..
  • How to RSVP: Please send an email with ‘RSVP’ in the subject to events@everythingxcelsius.com by Wednesday, October 5, 2011.
  • IMPORTANT! –  You MUST be REGISTERED for the ASUG SAP BusinessObjects conference to attend this event. Space is limited and we are always booked to capacity within 48 hours of this notice, so please send in your RSVP as soon as possible. Confirmation details will be sent out via email prior to the event with instructions on where to pickup your wrist band. All registered guests will be required to show a wristband upon entrance without exception.

Sponsored in part by SAP, the event promises to provide a host of surprise guest, as well as a BI4 video confession booth where customers can tell their story to win exciting prizes, a chance to network with fellow SAP BusinessObjects community members and the SAP BI team, door prizes, 2 open bars and an open buffet! Let’s also not forget it’s ASUG’s 20th Anniversary celebration!

We would also like put in a call for volunteers, if interested please send an email to gurus@everythingxcelsius.com. We can’t wait to see you! Thanks!

A SPECIAL THANK YOU to Kurt Bilafer, Jason Rose, Sanjay Poonen and of course my wonderful co-host Steve Lucas of the SAP BI Team, and Bridgette Chambers and her right-hand man Richard Zepeda of the ASUG team for making this event possible! Thanks for supporting our community!

Mico Yuk is a 2010 SAP Mentor and the founder of the Xcelsius Guru Network, the Everything Xcelsius blog, and co-founder of Benchmarkers Business Intelligence. To learn more about her, please visit her about page.

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Sep
20

Interested in Reporting? New SAP Crystal Reports Content Coming Soon

by Coy Yonce 12 Comments »

Welcome to the first of many posts on Everything Xcelsius that will cover Crystal Reports. The goal for this post is to introduce myself and explain the series of posts that you will be seeing over the coming months. So let’s get straight to the first of these topics.

My name is Coy Yonce and I’m one of the Product Owners who work on the Crystal Reports product. If you are not familiar with the agile approach to product development, then you may not be familiar with the role of a Product Owner. In essence, I’m a Product Manager and I help create the backlog of features that the development will be building from one release to the next. My role as  Product Owner is a bit different from the role of the other Product Owners on the Crystal Reports team. In all, there are seven of us. The other six work directly with a team of developers and guide those developers during the building of features. My role is that of an outbound Product Owner. I focus on leading conversations with customers and partners so that we have an understanding of what they want to see us include in upcoming versions of the product. As such, I am fairly active on Twitter, blog every so often, conduct surveys, co-host influence council meetings, write articles, interact on forum posts, and monitor ideas on SAP IdeaPlace. I’m sure that there are a few other things as well, but that’s most of it.

Over the next few months, you will see several posts from me. They will be organized into a series of posts on somewhat tactical topics. I have provided an brief overview of the series below. I have listed them in the order that I plan to write; however, I may get a bit sidetracked as I encounter an interesting topic or discussion.

Introduction to SAP Crystal Reports and Enterprise Reporting
This will likely be a single post and will provide an overview of Enterprise Reporting, the market, and how Crystal Reports fits in.

Types of Reports
More than likely, this will be delivered over four posts with each covering a major category of report types that are typically created using Crystal Reports.

Major Features
Again, probably a series of numerous posts with each discussing a category of features that are used together for creating reports in Crystal Reports.

Design Considerations
This series will focus on designing effective reports. Specifically, it will demonstrate how to create reports that follow information design best practices.

Connecting to Data
Crystal Reports currently has over 50 available connections available. This series will focus on not only the types of data available for creating reports, but specific considerations for building reports against some of those data sources.

Sharing Reports
Once you’ve created your reports, you need to distribute them. This series will focus on the methods available for delivering your reports.

Embedding Reports
Crystal Reports has a very large ecosystem of developers from OEM partners and ISVs. Much of what they do is embed pre-built reports into their applications or generate reports at runtime based on data from their applications. This series will focus on how to embed Crystal Reports and leverage your application data.

As you can see the topics are quite broad and will encompass a significant number of posts. As mentioned above, I will attempt to cover these topics in order; however, I may need to skip around a bit to cover a set of related topics properly. In any case, I look forward to blogging on Everything Xcelsius and would like to thank Mico and Soo for the opportunity to interact with such a diverse audience.

Thanks for reading.

Coy Yonce is a Crystal Reports Product Owner at SAP and has worked in Business Intelligence for over 10 years. His  main focus is leading conversations with customers and partners and is very active in the BI community. You may reach out to him directly via email at coy.yonce@sap.com or follow him on twitter: @coyyonce.

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Aug
11

Understanding BI4 Dashboards and XWIS

by Ryan Goodman 6 Comments »

If you’re using Xcelsius (now SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards) for your enterprise dashboard projects, by not looking beyond what comes “in the box,” you may well miss out on capabilities which could make a critical difference to your project; even with the advent of BI4.

What you get with SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards is one of the best dashboard design platforms because of its free-form design paradigm for rapid dashboard development. Another great thing about SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards is the community of experts and third party providers who fuel adoption, education, and innovation.

A great example of this is XWIS from Antivia. The folks at Antivia say “every connected Xcelsius project could deliver better, faster and at lower cost using XWIS” and I have to say there is good reason for this, having created many connected dashboards over the years. I have taken a stronger stance in the last year endorsing XWIS 2.5 and would agree that XWIS can deliver between 10 and 20 times productivity improvement to Xcelsius projects. “Production dashboards in days not weeks or months” can actually be achieved, which is why XWIS has become a tool of my dashboard design trade!

Having said that, over the last few months I have been asked a number of times if the value of XWIS diminishes now that BI 4 is about to go to GA. My short answer is “no” for XWIS 2.5 and “absolutely not” for the recently announced XWIS 3.0. To elaborate, I wanted to share both XWIS and BI4 capabilities so you can determine for yourself.

What do I get in the box with BI 4?

BI4 is a significant upgrade to the SAP BusinessObjects product suite, perhaps the largest in its history, and has customers eagerly awaiting the GA (some details of the new capabilities of BI 4 can be found at SCN in Pierre Leroux’s blog: “Innovations SAP BusinessObjects 4.0“).

Included in the upgrade are a number of enhancements specific to SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0, the most significant being:

Embedded Query Designer

The embedded query designer is a great new way of streamlining the existing Query as a Web Service (QaaWS) process. Now it is possible to design your queries using a standard BOBJ query panel inside the Xcelsius environment. No more needing to reach for the stand-alone QaaWS front end. It currently only works on the new “unx” universes but expect that to change in the future. So, for people who are using QaaWS today this represents a great step forward in terms of developer workflow and productivity.

Direct binding

For queries which are created with the new embedded query designer, it is now possible to bind the results directly to chart and selector components, without having to go through the spreadsheet. This is yet another important step forward for the maturity of this dashboard development platform, alleviating traditional workflow and performance implications of spreadsheet binding.

Parameter Selector Component

Working in tandem with the previous two features the parameter selector component makes it simpler to add query parameterization capabilities to your dashboard so that the end-user can see different slices of data by selecting a new parameter for the underlying query.

What are you missing by staying inside of the box?

There are many compelling reasons to use XWIS with both XI 3 and BI 4, including long standing XWIS features, such as:

Content re-use:

One of the strengths of XWIS is that is lets you reuse existing BI content (WebI reports, Crystal reports (on a universe or not), JBDC queries …). It is almost certain that you already have the data you need for your dashboard in an existing, managed price of content already governed under SLAs. XWIS allows you to re-use this content rather than having to create new queries.

Hierarchies and auto-drill:

XWIS natively supports hierarchies from your universe, but even better, it also provides an interface to edit and persist new hierarchy definitions, so you can re-use them on other dashboard projects. Furthermore, through its hierarchical data support, XWIS also supports auto- drill both within its own components and also in native Xcelsius components using its innovative Autowire feature (see below).

Cached Data Sources:

Because XWIS can leverage Crystal or WebI as a data source (in addition to JDBC), you can leverage BOE scheduling to offload complex number crunching, and then push scheduled data to your dashboard that you can drill and filter through.

Dynamic Measures and Dimensions:

One of the really powerful features of XWIS is the possibility to change the dimensions and measures (and even the underlying report) dynamically at run-time depending on end-user actions. This is a game changing feature for developers; with a flick of a switch you can increase the sophistication of your dashboards to answer more end-user requirements more easily.

Design-Time Variables

If you require a custom variable in a dashboard, you don’t have to go back to the universe designer or bind your data to the spreadsheet, in XWIS, you can create custom variables right inside of the property sheet while maintaining its hierarchical relevance and drill path.

Autowire:

Bypasses the spreadsheet for charting components and allows XWIS components to directly connect to Xcelsius charts complete with support for hierarchies and auto-drill.

And now in XWIS 3.0, there is even more capability, including:

Live preview

The latest version of XWIS allows you to see your data immediately at design time, in tables, charts, and even GMaps Plugin. This is a huge timesaver and changes the whole dynamic of creating a dashboard by eliminating the need to continually go to preview mode to see how the dashboard will look to end users. This feature really does have to be seen to get a full appreciation of how radically it alters the design experience.

Data Sync:

Keeping a number of components in sync whilst navigating around a dashboard, is often a key requirement (and one that some niche dashboard providers have done a good job at), the new data component in XWIS 3.0 brings this capability to Xcelsius.

Data Merge:

With many organizations needing to combine BusinessObjects data with other sources (e.g.  SQL, OLAP, spreadsheet), XWIS allows you to merge data from multiple sources, within your dashboard, and then take advantage of all the XWIS capabilities (auto-drill, slice and dice, etc) using the combined dataset.

Where do you go from here?

When the rubber meets the road and stakeholders are accountable for delivering dashboards back to the business, developers need confidence to deliver a wide range of capabilities. This is where tools from partners within the SAP eco-system can make the difference to your XI3 and your BI4 projects.

When it comes to a complete dashboard lifecycle, I have always believed that Antivia approaches BusinessObjects connectivity and integration the way that it should have been done in the first place with Xcelsius. New BI4 enhancements illustrate that SAP is committed to improving enterprise integration and connectivity. If your company is already building dashboards with success using QaaWS for your enterprise initiative, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 will certainly be a breath of fresh air. However, if you really want to get the most from your dashboard development investment, I suggest that you give XWIS a serious look.

Feel free to post questions and comments here, as I would love to get the community’s feedback on this topic.

Ryan Goodman is the Founder of Centigon Solutions, an SAP® software solution partner, that is strategically focused on developing add-on products for use with Xcelsius®. To learn more about him, please visit our Gurus page

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Jul
12

Xcelsius and Business Intelligence Web Services (BIWS)- Part 2

by Scott Strool 9 Comments »

As a follow up to my blog on BIWS, I created two videos to show you the concepts of creating and consuming BI Web Services. The demonstrations were done using BI 4.0.

In this first video, I create a web service and demonstrate how to validate it from an already developed Web Intelligence report.



In this second video, I create a simple dashboard using SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 that connects, consumes, and filters the data via the web service connection.



The demos were built using the efashion universe, so if you have that around, you can follow along.

Scott Strool is a Senior BI Consultant for Benchmarkers Business Intelligence, where he helps customers obtain their BI visions. He presented at the 2010 SAP BusinessObjects User Conference in Orlando, FL, and has led many dashboard initiatives. You may follow him on twitter at @scott_strool.

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Jun
15

The Five “Unorthodox Principles for Dashboard Success”

by Donald MacCormick 5 Comments »

Over the past several years, in my time at SAP BusinessObjects and more recently with Antivia, I’ve been privileged to witness many dashboard projects at many different organizations around the world. Looking back on these, I realized that aside from the mainstream Business Intelligence principles which most people talk about (e.g. involve the business users, make sure you have a high level sponsor, data quality matters, etc., etc.), there are also some rather less orthodox principles which help to deliver business benefit through dashboards.

These five “unorthodox principles for dashboard success” are :

  1. Definitions don’t always help
  2. Visuals matter
  3. Users always want more
  4. Beware of end-users and large data sets
  5. Knowing is nothing, doing is everything

And, they are explained in detail in a new Antivia eBook (registration required).

Together, the 5 principles provide a bit of a sideways look at the world of dashboards, and although they might seem a little tongue in cheek at times, each principle contains advice that I believe will genuinely help you to deliver dashboards more successfully and more valuably across your organization.

Donald MacCormick is the Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Antivia, an SAP® software solution partner, and creator of XWIS the Xcelsius-to-SAP BusinessObjects connectivity solution. In past years, he was a long term member of BusinessObjects and Crystal, and part of the team that brought Xcelsius into the BusinessObjects portfolio.

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