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Advanced BusinessObjects Mobile Reporting Tactics: Embedding Images

Thursday, April 12, 2012

With Mobile BI being the latest craze and most likely being the new norm, we will need to work to make sure that we continue to innovate and be creative in our report creation to keep end users happy. One quick tactic is to spice up your report by adding images into blank cells above or below your charts and tables or directly into table cells on your report.

RangeFinder in the Workplace: Sales and Marketing Edition

Friday, March 23, 2012

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RangeFinder in the Workplace: Sales and Marketing Edition

Business Intelligence provides sales and marketing teams with information and insights they need on customers, prospects, markets and competitors. With powerful dashboards, analytical and reporting solutions sales and marketing teams are able to better and more accurately track, monitor and analyze every aspect of a sales cycle. BI makes it easier to identify cross-selling opportunities, locate profitable customers, tracking competitors, and to create strategies to successfully reach sales quotas and revenue goals. With the addition of RangeFinder, you can make it even easier to visualize how your company is doing compared to historical data as well as your competitors to make educated and informed decisions that may enhance your companies future.

Formatting Data for Xcelsius

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

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BusinessObjects Xcelsius is a great tool for creating dashboards and data visualizations, but sometimes it can take some thinking to get it to do what you want it to do. Your data may not always be formatted the way that Xcelsius needs it to be formatted, and that means working some Excel magic. For example, [...]

RangeFinder in the Workplace: Manufacturing Edition

Friday, March 16, 2012

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RangeFinder in the Workplace: Manufacturing Edition

Manufacturing includes all of the processes needed to convert raw materials or components into finished goods, especially with the use of industrial machines and on a larger scale. Manufacturing KPIs can reflect process efficiency, resources consumption and quality of the outputs. RangeFinder can be utilized in manufacturing just like it is utilized the Insurance Industry from episode 1 of this multi-part series.

RangeFinder in the Workplace: Insurance Edition

Friday, March 9, 2012

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RangeFinder in the Workplace: Insurance Edition

With the release of our first Xcelsius/Dashboard Design Add-on component, we decided to put together a multiple part series of blog posts that could showcase how RangeFinder can be utilized within specific business sectors. The first edition of the series is taking aim at the insurance industry and which KPI’s can be visualized by RangeFinder to provide exceptional value to end users.

Importing Content in BusinessObjects 4.0

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

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Importing Content in BusinessObjects 4.0

SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 introduces a new tool for importing content called the Upgrade Management Tool. This replaces the old Import Wizard from previous versions and takes a huge step forward in usability. Using this tool, you can do a Complete Upgrade to import all of the content from an existing BusinessObjects system, or an Incremental [...]

Tips for Configuring Active Directory and SSO in BusinessObjects 4.0

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

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Tips for Configuring Active Directory and SSO in BusinessObjects 4.0

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 [...]

Backing Up BusinessObjects MySQL Databases

Friday, April 29, 2011

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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.

Globally Managing Infoview Preferences

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

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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.

Silently Installing the BusinessObjects Client Tools

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

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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.