Altek Solutions Business Intelligence Blog

Service Pack 2 for our beloved dashboard generator Xcelsius 2008 has been released today! The download is available out on SAP’s Service Marketplace and can be found under the Business Objects Download page through the following path: SAP BusinessObjects Support Software and Corrections > SBOP Xcelsius Enterprise > BOBJ Xcelsius Enterprise 2008. The download is a lot smaller then BOE 3.1 SP2 so you won’t need to wait all day to get your hands on this. It should be 30 minutes to about a hour depending on your internet connection.

What we have to look forward to in this release is a combination of new features, fixed issues, and known issues that are still lingering in the SP2 release.  The full documentation is available out on the SAP Help Portal at the following links:

• New Features
• Fixed Issues
• Known Issues

What’s New

The new features that are in SP2 revolve around SAP interaction and connectivity.

• SAP NetWeaver BI Connection
  • Allows you to connect to an SAP system and use live data from an SAP query
• SAP Menu
  • Visualizations can be integrated with an SAP system using commands on the menu which includes: Open, Publish, Publish As, Launch, Disconnect, and Translation Settings

What’s Fixed

Looking through the documentation there are 32 issues that have been addressed in Xcelsius 2008 SP2 and I would love to put together a top 10 but unfortunately I think a top 5 would be pushing it! Let’s try a top 5 anyway:

1. ADAPT01151383 – Dynamic Visibility – Removing linked Status
   • If you would remove the value in the status box of a component, the key box would still control the visibility of the component and either always show it or never show it depending on the cell it was looking at for a value.
2. ADAPT01211339 – Log File Not Created
   • If other BusinessObjects products were not installed on your machine, the Xcelsius log file would be put in a temp folder instead of the correct BusinessObjects Logging folder.
3. ADAPT01172841 – Label-Based Menus and Tab Set Components
   • Label-based menus did not work correctly when a tab set was placed just below it.
4. ADAPT01223478 – Query Refresh
   • When two queries were set to refresh every 2 minutes, the first query’s refresh time was affected if the second query was triggered.
5. ADAPT01178257 – Ignore blank cells in List Builder
   • The ignore blank cells option was not available on the behavior tab for the list builder component.

Known Issues

Along with the What’s New and Fixed Issues, SAP gave us a little section in the Release Notes that lists out all of the known issues that are still out there in Xcelsius after the SP2 release. I find this to be a double edge sword but that’s just me. The list of known issues consists of the following categories:

• Export Issues
• Components
• Connectivity
• BusinessObjects Enterprise 2008
• Microsoft Excel

The known issues section also consists of some items that could fall into a general category. One of the issues that is in there is one that has plagued me for a little while and has become quite a pain when trying to develop dashboards. Sometimes when exiting Xcelsius or having Excel and Xcelsius open at the same time, a rogue process of Excel just hangs out in your Task Manager. So when closing out of Xcelsius and then trying to go back in, the launch will fail and you will have to go in and clear out all the EXCEL.EXE in your task manager before you can move forward with building your dashboard. I am hoping this one gets fixed in the next release!

Related Posts:

1. Xcelsius … Crystal Dashboard Design … Xcelsius 2008 Fix Pack 3.2 Now Available!
2. Xcelsius 2008 Service Pack 3 Test Drive
3. Xcelsius 2008 Fix Pack 3.1 Released/What’s Fixed in Xcelsius 2008 FP3.1
4. BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1 Service Pack 2 Now Available!
5. Xcelsius 2008 Fix Pack Version 1.x Guide