Visit us at Booth 404 at ASUG SAP BO User Conference

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YolandePublished: September 8, 2010Posted in: 360 View, Events, InfoBurst, Roambi, SAP Business Objects, XcelsiusTags:

InfoSol will be a Diamond Sponsor at the 2010 ASUG SAP BusinessObjects User Conference to be held in Orlando. Florida October 5-7.  The conference is expected to draw an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 BusinessObjects users.

InfoSol will be leading two session tracks during the conference : one highlighting Xcelsius Customer Case Studies and the other highlighting the next generation of BI report and dashboard publishing.  We have also been invited to participate as one of the selected Xcelsius Guru companies in an Xcelsius Gurus event at the conference.

InfoSol will be highlighting many of its value add solutions including InfoBurst and 360View. Several InfoSol partners are also sponsoring and exhibiting including Mellmo the developers of Roambi and Antivia the developers of XWIS.

Be sure to stop by the InfoSol booth (#404) to say hello and enter for our raffle to win an iPad.

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T-SQL: Previous and Next Modified Date

Normally queries like this are not really solved in T-SQL; rather a front end UI like WebI is capable of navigating through the records.

However if you intend doing it in T-SQL, then here’s how we can retrieve the Next and Previous Records of a given record:

/* Create Sample Table */
DECLARE @TT table
(
ProductID int,
ModifiedDate datetime,
CategoryGroupName varchar(10)
)

/* Create Sample Data */
INSERT INTO @TT VALUES ( 101, ’2010-10-01', ‘AA’)
INSERT INTO @TT VALUES ( 203, ’2010-10-01', ‘AA’);
INSERT INTO @TT VALUES ( 305, ’2010-10-01', ‘AA’);
INSERT INTO @TT VALUES ( 101, ’2010-10-02', ‘BB’);
INSERT INTO @TT VALUES ( 203, ’2010-10-03', ‘BB’);
INSERT INTO @TT VALUES ( 634, ’2010-10-03', ‘BB’);
INSERT INTO @TT VALUES ( 101, ’2010-10-04', ‘CC’);
INSERT INTO @TT VALUES ( 203, ’2010-10-04', ‘CC’);
INSERT INTO @TT VALUES ( 305, ’2010-10-04', ‘CC’);
INSERT INTO @TT VALUES ( 634, ’2010-10-04', ‘CC’);

SELECT
Prod2.ProductID,
Prod2.ModifiedDate,
(SELECT MAX(ModifiedDate)
FROM @TT Prod1
WHERE     Prod1.ModifiedDate <  Prod2.ModifiedDate and Prod1.ProductID=Prod2.ProductID ) as PreviousModifiedDate,
(SELECT MIN(ModifiedDate)
FROM @TT Prod1
WHERE     Prod1.ModifiedDate >  Prod2.ModifiedDate and Prod1.ProductID=Prod2.ProductID) as NextModifiedDate
FROM @TT  Prod2
GROUP BY Prod2.ProductID, Prod2.ModifiedDate
ORDER BY 1,2

Result looks like:

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How to display KPI’s using an Accordion menu in XCelsius

Posted by Hemanta Banerjee on March 26, 2010

One of the questions that came up in the forums the other day was how to display multiple KPI’s for a set of years using the accordion menu. It was further complicated by the fact that some of the KPI’s were absolute figures such as sales and the other KPI’s were percentages such as growth rate.

Seemed like a good problem to solve and I had some free time today, so thought if tackling this. The dashboard looks like follows

What is cool about this is Y axis reflects the nature of the KPI. For sales and Inventory it will show in $’s and for others the axis shows % values. There is a little trick that I used for and I will share it in a later part of this document.

Let us start with the basics. In order to build an accordion style dashboard we need the data in a particular format. The screenshot of the excel file I started out with is below.

For each year I am capturing the trend for the KPI’s. I could have arranged the excel the other way around as well and it would have still worked. Once I have the data I just need to drag and drop the accordion menu and the graph from the pallete and I can be off and running.

For the accordion menu the settings are simple enough. See below

I have set the insertion type as column, which essentially means that when the user selects one of the KPI’s from the menu, the entire column for that year is copied and inserted into the destination (cells C88:C100).

And I also bind each of the years with the category as the source data.

Essentially when the user picks the category, XCelcius knows which data block to go to. Then when the user clicks on the specific KPI, the data for all the months for the KPI is copied to the target.

The chart reads from the target and displays the results. If all the KPI’s had the same scale then that’s all I would need to do.

In my case there is an additional level of complexity. I have KPI’s with very different scales and the chart does not display those correctly (not sure if that’s the way it is supposed to behave). To solve that problem I did a little trick… Instead of

Instead of 1 chart, I have 2 charts… and I set the dynamic visibility of the charts to be driven based on the KPI selected.
I have 2 sections in excel, one to display % values and another to display absolute values and I drive the charts from different sections. Since the accordion can only fill one section, I have used formulas to populate the data in the 2nd region.

Now I define a flag using an excel formula

=IF((C88 = “Sales”), 1,IF((C88 = “Inventory”),1,0)) that controls which chart will be displayed.

Using this approach I am able to hide one chart, and show the correct chart based on the selection. Not sure if there is a better way, but this works J

You can get the XLF file at http://www.box.net/shared/gg9f6lnh90

This entry was posted on March 26, 2010 at 5:37 pm and is filed under XCelsius, BusinessObjects. Tagged: XCelsius, BOE, BusinessObjects, Visualization, Accordion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Life Cycle Manager and Xcelsius Servers

Some of you who love living on the bleeding edge of technology may be bleeding a bit when installing the latest Life Cycle Manager (LCM) and Xcelsius servers. Of course these servers should be installed when you install LCM or BusinessObjects XI 3.1 Service Pack 3. The only problem is that they aren’t.

They aren’t in the CMC, they aren’t in the CCM, and you can’t add them. For some reason you have to go in and run a script that tells Business Objects to go looking for them. From a command prompt you have to run a script that looks something like:

[BOE_install location]\win32_x86\scripts\addnode.bat -name [NODENAME] -siaport [Port Number] -cms [CMS Name] -user [User Name] -password [Password] -authentication [Type] -platform win32_x86 -update

EXAMPLE:

C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Business Objects Enterprise 12.0\win32_x86\scripts\addnode.bat -name BOXISERV -siaport 6400 -cms BOXISERV -user Administrator -password [Administratorpassword] -authentication secEnterprise -platform win32_x86 -update

For better or worse BOTH the new Xcelsius servers and LCM server seem to be troubled by the same problem, with the same fix.

Please let me know how this works for everyone out there!

Thanks to Dallas Marks and Matt Hawkins at Consultancy by Kingfisher for help with the Xcelsius Server information.

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Report Distribution Options in Crystal Reports

There are various ways you can distribute the reports you designed in Crystal Reports even if you aren’t using Crystal Reports Server or any other Enterprise Servers. Some of the ways are the old standby methods such as PDF and MSWord. These methods work fine, as they definitively meet the needs of the organizations report readers.

Some designers choose to Export the reports to Excel or other applications. There are two methods of exporting to Excel – one has the suffix ‘Data-only’ in the Export box.

This particular Export Format allows the designer to include “Worksheet Functions” to the Export allowing more calculations on the report data. The other Export Format to Excel does not offer that option: it is more like a photograph of the report.

Other Export options include:

HTMLODBCRecord Style (columns with or without spaces)Comma Separated TextTab Separated TextRich Text Format and XML

All of these are accessed through the Export dialog box above under the File Menu.

Aside from the Export, the report designer can assist a user in downloading the Crystal Reports Viewer. This is a free download sent to local machines. When the user wants to view the report, the user opens the Viewer and opens the report in the Viewer. The report is displayed as the designer intended it to be seen. The Viewer can also display any ‘drilldowns’ that were designed into the report, which many other formats cannot.

The last method I will mention here is crystalreports.com. This is a secure report hosting service available at crystalreports.com; for those that simply need to see reports. The user logs into specific URLs to view specific reports within the folders you have created. No need for hard copies or email attachments. This is available with free trial for three named users at above website. It offers several different options, with a monthly structured plan.

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BO XI 3.1: To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade?

As SAP announces the “ramp up” or controlled release for SAP BusinessObjects XI 4.0, some companies who are planning to upgrade to BO XI 3.1 are wondering if they should now wait.

The simple answer is “no” and there are many good reasons to upgrade to XI 3.1 as soon as possible.

Firstly, BusinessObjects XI 3.1 has been the general release for a couple of years now and has proven to be a stable and solid platform. It brings a new version of Web Intelligence with the Rich Client (offline) capability with access to external data providers like Excel. It also has other features, previously only available in Desktop Intelligence, like the fold/unfold feature and stored procedure support through the universe. It adds new functionality also like the ability to track data changes between versions, contextual hyperlinking and use of drop-down selection boxes for prompts.

At the same time, XI 3.1 fully supports Desktop Intelligence reports unchanged which is quite significant when you consider that there will be no support for Desktop Intelligence in XI 4. This means that XI 3.1 will be the last BusinessObjects release to support Desktop Intelligence or the old Full Client reports.

BusinessObjects XI 4.0 will be a major new release with a lot of new functionality some of which will be available in the first 4.0 release and some which will be released later in service pack updates. It will be a 64-bit software application. It will have a new semantic layer that will combine the capabilities of the old BusinessObjects universe and Crystal Business Views and with a slew of new functionality including support of OLAP (MDX) data sources like SAP BW and MS OLAP cubes. The old BusinessObjects Universe Designer will remain supported in XI 4 for compatibility and easier transition.

There are new functionalities and capabilities in Web Intelligence, Xcelsius, Crystal and other content providers including taking advantage of the new semantic layer and universe design tool. There are two versions of Crystal – Crystal Enterprise which is new and uses the new semantic layer and Crystal Reports 2011 which is a continuation of Crystal Reports 2008. There is a new OLAP analysis tool called Advanced Analysis which replaces Voyager and there are significant improvements to Data Services and the BOE infrastructure functionality.

There will also be a new utility to move the contents of your old BusinessObjects content to XI 4. The Import Wizard is effectively replaced by this new tool called the Upgrade Manager Tool. This works for upgrades from XI 3.1 and the plan is to also be able to upgrade from XI R2 with security model changes. There is no upgrade available from earlier releases meaning you would need to move to XI R2 or XI 3.1 before moving to XI 4.

The ramp up will probably last 3 to 6 months so the general availability of XI 4.0 is expected sometime between February 2011 and May 2011. It is unlikely that the first service pack will be available until late in the year and most existing BO customers will probably not look at moving to XI 4 until 2012 or 2013 (based on previous trends).

For these BO customers still using Desktop Intelligence, there will be the added consideration and work of converting or replacing their old reports with Web Intelligence which for some may be a considerable effort and cost.

According to information disseminated at the ASUG BO annual conference in October, in addition to Desktop Intelligence, the following other existing BO XI products will be end of  life :  Voyager, Encyclopedia/Discussions and Performance Manager.

Historically, the current and immediately prior software releases tend to be actively supported for all software issues which would suggest that at some point in 2011 only XI 4.0 and XI 3.1 will be considered the actively supported releases.

Taking all of this information into consideration, it does make sense to upgrade to BusinessObjects XI 3.1 in the coming months if you have not done so already.

Paul Grill started his career in Information Technology in the U.K. in 1978, as an Executive Data Processing Trainee for Honeywell. More than thirty years later, he still has a voracious appetite for learning as Information Technology continues to advance at an ever accelerating pace. He was first introduced to the world of Business Intelligence in 1991, in France, when he saw a demonstration of an early version of BusinessObjects on Windows 2.1. He returned to the U.S. to rave about this phenomenal product, but it was many years before BusinessObjects made it into the mainstream. Paul founded InfoSol in 1997, and made Business Intelligence one of the key solutions offered by the company. Today, InfoSol is a leading SAP BusinessObjects solutions partner, known for its expert consulting, education and innovative add-on solutions. Paul is well known within the SAP BusinessObjects community for his extensive knowledge of Business Intelligence, and he has lectured and written many articles on the subject. Paul enjoys writing, running and coaching kids soccer, and is passionate about Ancient Egyptology.

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Difference OpenDocument Crystal Reports and WebI

Posted on 14 April 2010 9:53 am.Femke

I experienced some frustations when trying to open 2 different reports (Crystal Reports and WebI), however both were built on same universe and used same objects, from the same URL button in Xcelsius.

The OpenDocument statement for the WebI report was quickly set up, however the Crystal Reports took some time. Even after consulting chapter 3 Crystal Reports in the PDF Viewing Reports and Documents using URLs (for BOXI 3.1) I could not get it to work.

Finally I figured it out by reading several forum topics, in the end the URL was built as follows:

../../../OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.jsp?

Identifies Crystal Reports reportH stands for HTML, unfortunately in 3.1 pdf is not supported anymoreforces reports to open in new windowKeeps Xcelsius dashboard “alive”CustomerCode is name of prompt, 0019 is customer code value, note “” to identify stringfoldername in Infoview, don’t forget []identification type, preferred in OTAP streetsforces reports to open in new windowKeeps Xcelsius dashboard “alive”CustomerCode is name of prompt, 0019 is customer code valueYou can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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