The new service pack for Xcelsius has been out for some time now (since 12/15/2009 to be exact) and many people had dubbed it “SAP’s Early Christmas Present” to Xcelsius developers. Like everyone else, I was excited to get some new functionality as well as some fixes to existing problems that the tool had. While we did get some nice enhancements as part of SP3, we also got a nice long list of “known issues”.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that SAP BusinessObjects knows that there are issues and puts them in the release notes. What scares me is that there are still issues. I understand that there are priorities and not every fix will get in right away, but I’d love to see the priority of the known issues as well as an ETA on when they might get fixed. The timeline doesn’t have to be exact, but they could give a target date along with a disclaimer. (We know SAP loves disclaimers! The Roadmap sessions at the SAP Partner Summit in Las Vegas told us!)
In any case, this post is a quick review of what I’ve found most useful from Xcelsius 2008 Service Pack 3 now that I’ve had time to use it in real-world scenarios with some of our clients. Enjoy!
Download
To download SP3, go to the Support Portal under SAP’s Service Marketplace and navigate to the download via the following path:
Downloads > Business Objects Downloads > Support Software and Corrections > SBOP Xcelsius Enterprise > BOBJ Xcelsius Enterprise 2008
Documentation
The documentation for Xcelsius SP3 is available out on SAP’s help website but to make it easier here are direct links to the pdfs that are available via SAP:
Top Picks!
There are a quite a few items that have been added or fixed in this service pack, so I am only going to hit on the ones that I believe are worth mentioning. If you want the full gamut, check out the links above.
Optimization
This piece of functionality is great. At one particular client, we have 11 custom metric dashboards that are pretty beefy. After running them through SP3 and enabling this option, we had significant increases in performance. This is by far the best thing they have given us in this release.
Optimization of Spreadsheets
Sparkline Chart, Bullet Charts and the Scorecard
We already had these from our friend Donald MacCormick in his free XComponents download, and actually used them in POC’s and demos. SAP did right by putting these directly in Xcelsius.
Spark/Bullet Chart and Scorecard
Enable Sorting
Prior to this release you had to sort either in your Excel model using complex and far from full proof functions/logic, or sort them in your QaaWS. Now you have the ability to sort directly in the chart. This is going to be very useful and will help prevent some headaches. The following charts have this functionality: Line, Pie, Column, Stacked column, Bar, Stacked bar, Combination, Area, Stacked area, Radar, Filled radar.
Enable Sorting
Dynamically Set Color
Ever get frustrated with having to type in the RGB code of a color for every single series? Well from now on you don’t have to do that. Set up your colors in your XLS using the correct format, and you can bind those colors to specific things in your component!
Bind Colors
New Chart Features!
For my last pick, I am going to group together 3 new features that have been added to the majority of the charts that are available. We have Chart Data Labels, Chart Range Slider and finally the ability to Show/Hide Series at runtime.
The Data Labels is pretty straight forward. We now can show the data directly on the chart series. I do not use this all that much but guaranteed at some point you will have a client come in and say they want the numbers. Instead of having to use some duct tape and labels, we can enable them in the properties of the component.
Data Labels
The other features I’d like to mention give the user the ability to change the way they are viewing their data directly in a chart. This powerful Dynamic Charting functionality allows your end users to pick the range and series they want to see in the chart with just a few clicks. Previously it wasn’t possible to change the range without having to refresh your data, though you could hide a series using a check-box and some vlookup logic.
Dynamic Charting
Taking this further, you can also build in some “edit” functionality using dynamic visibility and some transparent/colored backgrounds, and more than likely have your users drooling over your product and abilities.
(The Product Manager for Xcelsius ran a breakout session at the SAP Partner Summit February about Xcelsius Tips and Tricks. The “tip” was that you could hide the series using what I mentioned above, the “trick” was that these new features were available 2 months prior to that session. I didn’t have the heart to raise my hand and mention it.)
Question: Which new features of Xcelsius 2008 Service Pack 3 are you finding most beneficial? Any nagging issues that you’ve found? Anything you’d like to see in next round?
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 5:09 am
Hi Folks,
I am having a problem with the Dynamic Binding. I am getting data dynamically,used vlookup condition to look for a particular name and displays a color based on the name on a graph.it is working fine with the static data. But whenever i am getting data from the database that colors are not showing and showing the graph with Black Colors. Is this Dynamic biding cannot applicable for Pie,Stacked Bar Charts? Could You please help on this?
Regards,
Sagar Reddy