The BI Panel is one of the latest offerings from the folks at the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center, formerly known as the Business Objects Labs. Prototypes from the Labs often end up as products — examples include Query as a Web Service and Polestar (now known as Explorer). The Labs provide a good way to see the direction the platform is going.
The BI Panel is an add-in for Outlook 2007 that provides another way to access and share your Business Objects content. The key feature of the BI Panel is “context” — the Panel examines the e-mail message you are viewing and shows you related BI content, which you can open with just a click. The Panel also provides the ability to search for reports and view them from within Outlook.
Search
Using the BI Panel, you can search for Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, or Xcelsius documents. You can type any phrase into the Panel and a list of reports will be returned sorted by relevance. From there you can click to view a report right in Outlook. You can have multiple searches active at once, which is a nice feature.
The Panel also scans the subject, sender, and recipients of your active e-mail and makes those items available as “One-Click Searches”. A simple click in the Panel will search Business Objects for relevant content.
Report Viewer
Once you find the document you’re searching for, you can view it easily from within Outlook by clicking the Details button. A report viewer window pops up where you can refresh the report, fill prompts, and then view the results. You can also insert a snapshot of the report into your e-mail by clicking the Insert button. You have the option to view past instances of the report as well.
Contexts
When you view an e-mail, the BI Panel scans the message and then searches your Business Objects system for relevant reports. There are two context panes — Current Context and Related Context. Current Context looks for report snapshots that were inserted into the e-mail from the Panel’s Report Viewer. This allows the user to view the latest data with just a click.
Related Context displays content that BI Panel thinks is relevant to the active e-mail. The user can also flag a report as relevant to the active message by clicking the Flag icon.
My Thoughts
The BI Panel is an interesting demonstration of what is possible using Business Objects Web Services. I would be interested to see how well the Panel is able to pick out related content — it was hard to tell from my quick test drive. I can definitely see how it could be useful, though.
However, there are a couple things missing that I thought would have been pretty obvious. First, this prototype almost screams for Live Office integration. The Panel doesn’t recognize Live Office objects in your e-mail at all. That seems like a no-brainer to me. Also, the ability to insert report parts from the BI Panel Report Viewer as a Live Office object, instead of just a snapshot would be very nice. I guess there are some overlapping features here between the two — it would be great to see it merged into one offering. I think it would be another great selling point for Live Office.
Another thing I thought was missing was the ability to view your own Business Objects Inbox. This is Outlook after all! The minimized Panel should show an Inbox icon with a count of new reports available, and you should be able to click to view that list in the Panel (or at least click and launch into InfoView ).
Overall, the BI Panel looks very promising. I am excited to see where SAP goes with this prototype, and if it actually does become part of Live Office in the future.
Monday, July 20, 2009 at 2:23 am
Hi,
I need BI Panel Guide and the installation steps.
It will be great if u reponse ASAP.
Thanks
naveen.G