SAP BusinessObjects XI ships with a great feature known as OpenDocument. Simply put, OpenDocument allows you to generate a URL to link directly to any BI content in your BusinessObjects system. Using OpenDocument, you can pass specific parameters to a Crystal Report from your company’s intranet site, link from one WebIntelligence report to another, or jump to a WebIntelligence detail report from an Xcelsius dashboard. This powerful tool allows you to bypass complex webapps like InfoView and get right to the information you and your users need.
Getting Started with OpenDocument
The basic syntax for an OpenDocument URL, assuming you have a Java application server like Tomcat, is:
http://<servername>:<port>/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.jsp?<parameter1>&<parameter2>&…&<parameterN>
That may look pretty complicated, but it’s really pretty simple. Using the parameters, you supply the name or ID of the document you wish to open. You can also supply the format you want to view it in or any prompt values. When a user clicks on this link, they will jump right to the report you specify, assuming they are already authenticated with the BusinessObjects system — either logged in through InfoView or via other means (see the Advanced section below). If they are not authenticated, they will be prompted to log into BusinessObjects before they can view the report. The simplest OpenDocument URL you can create would be:
http://<servername>:<port>/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.jsp?sDocName=World+Sales+Report
The sDocName parameter tells OpenDocument to open the World Sales Report in your system (since this is a URL, the spaces should be replaced by plus signs).
However, there could be multiple copies of “World Sales Report” in your system. One way to ensure that you are viewing the right one is to provide a folder path as well as a document name. For example, if the World Sales Report is located in Sales Reporting folder, then your URL would look like this:
http://<servername>:<port>/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.jsp?sDocName=World+Sales+Report&sPath=[Sales+Reporting]
However, if your report is ever moved from this folder, your OpenDocument link will no longer work. To prevent this, you can use a document ID instead of the document name. The document IDs can be found in InfoView by viewing the document properties. On this page, there are two types of IDs: the InfoObject ID and the CUID. I suggest using the CUID, because this remains the same across different systems — so your link will remain valid when your report gets promoted from Development to Production. Using this, your link would now look something like this:
http://<servername>:<port>/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.jsp?iDocID=Aa6GrrM79cRAmaOSMGoadKI&sIDType=CUID
All that’s left to do at this point is to insert this link into any website, report, or dashboard and you’re all set!
More Information on OpenDocument
SAP provides some documentation on the OpenDocument function on their Help Portal. The PDF entitled Viewing Reports and Documents using URLs covers all the available parameters for OpenDocument in detail.
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Sunday, June 6, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Good luck everybody! – I will come back again. Are you on facebook or twitter? Will like to follow you.
Thanks
Monday, June 7, 2010 at 3:03 pm
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Friday, December 30, 2011 at 6:06 pm
i’ve been trying to use opendocument to link an asp.net application to a report in pdf and it works ok for internal users, but my problem is when i try to make the site available to the public. the webserver will be out in the dmz and the users will not have direct access to the report link.
i tried to get the pdf on a temporary location on the webserver and expose that to the public but it did not work
is there a way to do that?