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Looks like someone has been working overtime! We got some news today that BOBJ labs has released a new Xcelsius 2008 Publishing Plugin for BOE Xi 3.0 which will allow users to create snapshots of their dashboards and distribute to other users on the go! For those of you who are not familiar with the BOBJ Labs here is an excerp from how they describe themselves on their website:
“Business Objects labs showcases a few of our favorite ideas that aren’t quite ready for prime time. Your feedback can help us improve them. Please play with these prototypes and send your comments directly to the Labs.”
As you recall they also produced the very popular ‘TAWS’ (Take Action as a Web Service) software which basically does the opposite of ‘QAWS’ (Query as a Web Service). It’s quite a handy tool… look out for more on that in later posts.
Getting back to the new Xcelsius Publishing Plugin. In a nutshell, its a tool that allows organizations to post only the MOST relevant information to their intended recipients. Here is how its use is described on the BOBJ Labs website:
For example, a retail enterprise could create an Xcelsius dashboard that highlights the sales for a retail location. Using the plugin, the dashboard could be populated with the data for a specific retail location and then distributed to each location manager, personalized for that manager. Typically, this would be completed according to a schedule, for example daily, weekly or monthly. Xcelsius dashboards created through this process have the displayed data contained within them; when viewed, the dashboard would not connect to a server to obtain updated. This solution is only intended for less complex dashboards which require less data due to the best practices around static data in the Xcelsius swf file.
Notice that we highlighted the last line. The idea is that the dashboard being distributed will serve as a snapshot in a self-contained model (data resides in static form in Excel). Instead of having to open Xcelsius, generate an Excel snapshot, re-import the snapshot back into the Xcelsius model, export in .swf, .ppt or .pdf format, and then send out to the intended recipients via email, you can now use this NEW Xcelsius 2008 plugin in BOE Xi 3.0 to do this in 4 simple steps!
NOTE: While you will need the necessary licenses for BOE Xi 3.0 and Xcelsius 2008 to run this plugin, the plugin itself is FREE. All the BOBJ labs ask in return is for your feedback…deal!
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Is it possible to provide a couple of simple examples of how this would be used? I saw the update as well yesterday, but don’t yet see a reason to be excited.
This is a great tool for bursting simple dashboards. In essence, you are scheduling the generation of an Excel file from Crystal Reports and WebI. This means that the information presented will be a snapshot of data from a single report. It is nice seeing BOE actively integrating this batch processing into the platform..
This is a good move by BOBJ to address something our customer’s have asked for in the past. To this point the old process required a publisher role to manually do the same thing. Now the dashboard developer can release the solutions and step back and wait for the accolades.