Altek Solutions Business Intelligence Blog

Big changes to the BusinessObjects platform in the 4.0 release mean big changes to the way we configure things, too. I spent some time last week setting up Active Directory authentication and Single Sign On for a client and found some key differences in the process compared to BusinessObjects 3.1. In the past I always [...]

Over the past 6 Months, analysts and developers here at Altek Solutions have been vigorously working on putting together specifications for a new component add-on that could be utilized by dashboard designers to provide a new data visualization for end users. It has been a long and hard road but we have finally have a product that can do exactly that. RangeFinder is the first component in a new line of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboard plugins that Altek Solutions will be creating and constantly updating moving forward.

Both the Edge and Enterprise versions of SAP BusinessObjects come prepackaged with MySQL as a database option, which is a great choice if you don’t have your own existing database to use. This allows BusinessObjects to be quickly installed, without the need to involve the IT staff. However, many clients that choose the MySQL option don’t have experience with the software. Even though MySQL is a full-fledged database solution, out of the box the user is provided with little more than a command line for an administration tool. This can present a big problem, especially when it comes to backing up your BusinessObjects repository and audit databases.

A question we get frequently is “How can a BusinessObjects administrator manage the InfoView preferences for all users?” For example, the admin might want to change the user’s start page to a specific folder, or change the default Webi editor from the Java Panel to DHTML or Rich Client. Unfortunately, there is no way to do this through any of the web applications — not InfoView or the Central Management Console. Luckily though, BusinessObjects includes a handy little script called PrefsCopyUtil that will copy the InfoView preferences from a given user to all the members of a given group.

One of our clients recently had the need to do a customized silent installation of the BusinessObjects XI 3.1 client tools. They use a desktop management suite within the organization to push software to the individual workstations. Previously they had used a VBScript along with a lengthy command to do the install, but there is an easier way. Since BusinessObjects uses the Windows Installer, you can tell the installer to generate something called a response file. This file will capture all of the choices you make during the installation, allowing you to silently repeat the installation on other machines.

SAP BusinessObjects has put out another fix pack for Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius 2008). I was able to access the documentation on fixed issues and the release notes and have attached them to the bottom of the page. For all the fixes check out the list below and the associated documentation.

The new and improved version of InfoView will be available with the SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 release and will now be known as BI Launchpad. The learning curve for XI R2 and XI 3.x users will be a small one and the new features and updates will be guaranteed to outweigh any training needs that may come up. Here are some of the key additions and changes to the newly named BI Launchpad.

One of the major additions to SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 is the new Monitoring tool. This application, which is integrated into the updated Central Management Console, provides the ability to capture the runtime and historical metrics of your BusinessObjects servers and applications. This information is then presented in a variety of ways via a new Flash application. System administrators can use this new tool to ensure that their reporting environment is functioning normally. Administrators can also use this tool to help them identify potential problems before they occur. Let’s take a closer look at what the Monitoring tool has to offer.

The latest update to our SAP BusinessObjects scheduling plug-in, better known as Casting Director, has been released. This update includes support for optional prompts in scheduled Web Intelligence documents and the ability to use Excel 2010 (XLSX) files as a schedule source. This release is available for both BusinessObjects XI R2 and 3.x. We are [...]

The Information Design Tool is the brand new metadata modeling application used for creating universes in SAP BusinessObjects 4.0. The universe layer has been completely reworked for the 4.0 release and the Information Design Tool (IDT) is the front-end for those changes. The new model takes the traditional universe and breaks it down into three components: the Connection, the Data Foundation, and the Business Layer. These components all existed in some form in previous versions, but now they each get their own editor and a host of new features and options. Let’s review these in a bit more detail.