In case you missed it, the straight-forward upgrade between Service Packs has a little wrinkle that you need to be aware of.

Upgrading to XI 3.1 SP5

If it’s been a while since your last upgrade and you are still running BOE XI 3.1 SP2, you may be surprised to find out that you cannot go from SP2 to SP5 in a single upgrade.  I don’t have the details as to why other than the fact that SAP Note:  1664385 tells us it’s not supported.

Only the following upgrades paths are supported:

• BOE XI 3.1 + SP3 + SP5
• BOE XI 3.1 + SP2 + SP3+ SP5
• BOE XI 3.1 + SP2 + SP4+ SP5
• BOE XI 3.1 + SP3 + SP4+ SP5

I read through the note and there wasn’t any additional explanation as to why, but you can see for yourself:
https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1664385

Remember:  Always read the release notes.

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There’s nothing stopping you!

No, not even the fact that iOS doesn’t support flash.

Antivia’s new XWIS Anywhere bring a new product to their already popular suite of BusinessObjects extensions.

Antivia XWIS Anywhere

Antivia’s XWIS Anywhere is going to overcome a technology hurdle that SAP has been unable or unwilling to clear — Xcelsius (aka SAP Dashboards) on the iPad.

Antivia provided an in depth 55 minute presentation about Antivia XWIS Anywhere.  They are committed to:

• Mobilizing Any Xcelsius Dashboard
• Providing a Native iPad Experience
• Full Catalog and Management inside SAP BusinessObjects
• Additional iPad Security (for locally cached content)
• Quick Deployment (hours instead of days or weeks)
• Allow Offline Slideshows  (Screenshots of Xcelsius dashboards)
• Access to WebIntelligence and Crystal Reports

Notables

It is important to note that because XWIS Anywhere is leveraging the SAP BusinessObjects repository, if the dashboard does not exist in the repository then it will not be available for the iPad.  A perfect example of this is the Xcelsius BICS connectivity for Netweaver.  These dashboards must be published to SAP BW and run from within the context of the Netweaver application server.  However, this is only a short term limitation.  SAP does plan to support BICS  connectivity for Dashboards saved into the SAP BusinessObjects repository with the next release, SAP BusinessObjects v4.0 SP3.

One glaring feature that seemed to be missing over the similar solution from Exxova is the zoom in/zoom out capability.  With Exxova, it works very much like the native iPad browser.  Users can use two fingers to zoom in and zoom out of their Dashboards.  This is great when viewing dashboards which might be hard to read – or helpful for executives who have difficulty with small print.

Here is a sample dashboard view:

Hospice Dashboard - Standard View

By placing two fingers on the screen and pulling them apart, Exxova allows you to zoom into a specific area of the dashboard and at the same time a small thumbnail (indicated by the red arrow) shows you a small red box indicating where you are on within the context of the dashboard:

Same Hospice Dashboard - Zoomed In

Future of SAP Dashboards

Donald MacCormick indicated during the webinar that Xcelsius/SAP Dashboards will be move to HTML5 in 2012.  That means he expects some subset of functionality available by the end of 2012.  What does that mean for you?   It means you can invest in Antivia today, move your dashboards to the iPad today, and when SAP eventually provides full Xcelsius HTML5 functionality (that could be some time), you can move ahead at your own convenience.

You will be prepared for change before it happens.  Because the XWIS Anywhere application is a native iPad application with a “screen emulation” technology in the middle, when HTML5 becomes available, Antivia will simply replace the existing “screen emulation” technology with the HTML5 SAP Dashboards output.

Keep your users happy.  Make dashboards available on the iPad today.

You won’t regret it…

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That said, there is ONE change I make every time I do an installation.

History of the Embedded Database

On Windows, it’s gone from SQL Server Embedded (CE10) to MySQL (for support of Unix and Linux) and back to SQL Server.  Now that SAP has acquired it’s own database technology, don’t be too surprised if it comes bundled with Sybase in the future.

Personally I’ve never liked uses the embedded database and I wouldn’t recommend you use it either.  In fact, I recently has a situation with a client who due to any overly restrictive server/firewall configuration was unable to get the embedded database working and we wasted hours trying to troubleshoot the problem.

Installation Best Practice

I always choose “Custom Install” so that I can:

• Modify the installation location
• Uncheck the default embedded database (for the CMS)

I really don’t like to include the embedded database because I want to give BusinessObjects as much on-server resources as possible – especially with v4.0.

Always create space in an existing database environment to support BusinessObjects.  There are many supported CMS databases including:  SQL Server, MySQL, IBM DB2, Oracle, MaxDB and Sybase.

NOTE:  Always test connectivity to the database from the server on
which you will be installing BusinessObjects to make sure the connectivity
is working.

During the installation you will want to NOT include the embedded database.  That means doing a CUSTOM install and deselecting Integrated Database.

De-Select the Integrated Database

What I love about the installer is that it will check the database connectivity before the installation begins.  If there is an issue with the database client configuration, permissions, etc., the installation will warn me of the situation and not continue.  This gives me the confidence to know that assuming I have enough hard drive space, when I select “Begin Installation”,  it will complete successfully.

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Back in September, Steve Lucas, Global Senior Executive for Business Analytics, stole the show with a hugely entertaining and well articulated discussion of innovation for Utilities.

REWIND

From beginning to end, Steve Lucas entertains as he communicates why better information is the key to creating real change.

If you are interested in:

• Seeing Why BI is a Strategic Enabler for Utilities
• Moving from a System of Record to a System of Engagement
• Following a path to flawless information execution

This is a great 30 minute keynote for helping communicate what SAP is doing in the Utilities industry.

SAP helps utilities run better.

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With the latest development of SAP Business Suite Enhancement Pak 5, SAP users can now enjoy the rich, flexible formatting functionality right from within the application.

ALVs Get An Upgrade

For many years, users have been limited in their ability to provide formatted reporting from an SAP ALV (ABAP List Viewer).  Users could do basic sorting, grouping and filter, but that was about it.  Now the output from an ALV can be pushed directly into a Crystal Report using the new Crystal Reports ALV Adapter.

This solution is currently available for ALV Grid (SAP GUI ALV) and for Web Dynpro ABAP ALV.  ALV List and ALV Classic are not supported.  In my case, I will be running an SAP GUI ALV.

Using the Crystal Reports ALV Adapter

Before installing the adapter you need to be running Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or above.  In addition, because I will be running ALVs run directly within the SAP GUI, I must have also installed SAP GUI 7.10 or above.

Downloading the Adapter

One of the hardest things about installing the adapter is finding in the Service Marketplace. Here is a screenshot of the location

Personally, I recommend searching for it.  Here is how I found it:

From the search screen, search for CR ADD-ON

Software Search Screen

Search for CR ADD-ON

You should see CR ADD-ON FOR BS APPS 1.0 come back in the search results.  This is what you want.

Search Results

Once you select CR ADD-ON FOR BS APPS 1.0, you will be able to download the ZIP archive file.

Service Marketplace Software Download

After extracting the application you will see the xSAPCRVAdpt.exe, which is what we will be installing.

Installing the Adapter

Begin the installation by double-clicking on the install file, xSAPCRVAdpt.exe.

Here we will see the Crystal Reports ALV Adapter ready to be installed.

After choosing Next, the installation will begin:

After a few minutes you should see the following message, which indicates the installation was successful.

Configuring the Adapter

The final step after installing the adapter is telling Business Suite to allow Crystal Reports to be used with ALVs.

We need to use tcode, SALV_GUI_CUST

Here we want to make sure we Allow Crystal Reports to be an option.

Next we need to use tcode, SALV_WD_CUST to go into the Web Dynpro Settings

Here we want to make sure we Allow Crystal Reports to be an option.

Testing the Adapter

You can use any ALV Grid (SAP GUI ALV) or Web Dynpro ABAP ALV for testing.  In my case, I’m going to use the t-code KSB1, Display Actual Cost Line Items for Cost Centers.

Note that at the end of the input screen, I select the layout for this report.  This is important because with Enhancement Pak 5, you can save Layouts that leverage Crystal Reports.

Here are the default results in an ALV Grid:

Pretty boring, eh?

Choose the Change Layout Icon

Under the View tab you can change the Preferred View to Crystal Reports.  This will cause the data to be sent to a Crystal Report using the SAP_GenericTemplate.rpt.

Now you can see the output in a Crystal Report.

Modifying the Crystal Report

We first need to get a copy of the report, so we will chose the option “Export Report”.

By selecting this option, I will be presented with a dialog box which will allow me to Save the Report to my hard drive.  At first, I found this button confusing because I expected it to work like it does in standard Crystal Reports and ask me if I wanted to export the report in PDF.  It left me wondering how I would go about exporting the results to PDF if I wanted to.  Hmm.

NOTE:  Once the report is exported, you can make changes to it using
Crystal Reports 2011, since at the time of this writing Crystal Reports
for Enterprise does not support direct data connectivity.  Also this template
was created in the pre-Crystal Reports 9 format; therefore you could modify
these reports with older versions of Crystal Reports.

When you open the report to modify it, you will see that the data is being pushed into the report via an ADO.NET (XML) database connector.  This means that this report cannot be refreshed from within Crystal Reports during the report modification process.

Rather than showing you the details about how to modify a Crystal Report, I will simply assume that after exporting the report, you have been able to make a number of changes to suit your needs and are ready to load those changes into the SAP List Viewer.

Select your update report from the dialog box:

After after being imported successfully:

… the new report layout will appear on the screen

Saving the Layout for Future Use

Now that we’ve got the new report loaded, we would like choose this view or layout.  SAP accommodates this.  All you need to do is save the layout under a new name by following the prompts in the Save Layout dialog:

In my case I named my new report layout /ZCRKSB1

After the layout has been saved, users can reference it from the Setting section of the original SAP List Viewer prompt screen.  Under the last section, Settings the user can change the default layout by selecting the layout of their choice.

Summary

For many years now, we’ve been talking to customers and partners about the value of embedded analytics.  Now we are finally beginning to see they rolled out in earnest.  Not only is Crystal Reports now embedded directly into SAP Business Suite, but SAP Dashboards (aka Xcelsius) are being provided out of the box for HR, Finance and other key areas.

The only drawback of embedded analytics today is the lack of built-in intelligence about how to navigate the data.  In the SAP List Viewer today, if you click on a column, the List Viewer is intelligent enough to drill to the associated supporting document.  But even with this limitation, there is still real value in better reporting from SAP Business Suite.

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If you can deliver a solution that gives a leader of company a business outcome,  they can reach their customers better, they can automated their demand-driven supply chain, they can take better care of their people, they can do things better, they will invest.

Absolutely.  I’ve seen this over and over again.  If you can show value, efficiency gains, cost savings and return on investment, companies will invest.

Here is the whole interview:

It was cool to see SAP HANA discussed.  The speed increases we are seeing have been amazing.  Here’s an extensive, non-technical article about SAP HANA by Bob Evans that appears on the Forbes website:

SAP HANA and the Game Changing Power of Speed

As the year winds down, it’s exciting the see what’s ahead for SAP.  In particular I’m interested to see what will develop with the acquisition of the Sybase IQ database.  It was the first columnar data store and long time member of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems.

Sybase IQ is a very mature product which provides excellent price performance, yet with the emergence of  SAP HANA, which  not only contains a columnar data store, but also runs 100% in-memory.  What does the future hold?

One thing is for sure, the momentum of HANA continues to build and the future of trusted Business Intelligence looks bright.

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First of all I’d like to thank so many of you for following my blog over these last 4+ years.  I’ve seen a lot of changes in the Business Intelligence space and we’ve continue to see BusinessObjects grow up… yet for me, at it’s core, Business Intelligence continues to be all about TRUST.

When selecting a domain name, I thought about what I’ve learned over my 10+ years of helping organizations develop a Business Intelligence strategy.  Successful organizations need to:

1. Leverage a data governance strategy to guarantee a trusted data foundation.
2. Provide a Business Intelligence semantic layer to deliver trusted information to the business.
3. Establish a Center of Excellence to provide a partnership of trust between the IT organization and the business.

Therefore I selected trustedbi.com.

Data Governance Strategy

When starting a business intelligence initiative, the underlying data architecture is absolutely crucial.  This will be the foundation upon which everything else is built.  Your data sources must be flexible with consistent, up-to-date, quality data.  You must continuously monitor your data foundation via Data Assessment, Data Cleansing, Data Enhancement and Matching & Consolidation.

The old adage remains true, Garbage In = Garbage Out.  It doesn’t matter how beautiful the charts and graphs are if the underlying data can’t be trusted.

Semantic Layer

The semantic layer is a business representation of yoru data warehouse or transaction database.  A few years ago a wrote an extensive article called:  Why Use a Semantic Layer.  The three key values points I made then still exist today.  The semantic layer will:

• Guarantee trusted results
• Provide trusted performance
• Allow IT to trust users to build their own reports.

Center of Excellence

In order to maximize your use of Business Intelligence within an organization, you must establish a BI Center of Excellence.  A Center of Excellence can:

• Help executives understand the critical role of BI in managing the business better.
• Communicate to the IS organization the important role of BI applications as part of a BI strategy, encouraging users to work closely with IS to deliver trusted results.
• Build communication across lines of business to prevent the creation of new BI application silos.
• Help users understand the benefits of a robust, trusted BI architecture as the foundation for successful delivery of a BI strategy.
• Help the IS organization realize that users will need multiple BI technologies to meet their varied analytical needs, while getting users to support the IS organization’s need to provide a platform that will support changing user needs.

Note that departments business intelligence might be quicker in the short term to start, but longer term, a trusted enterprise approach allows for sustainable long term success.

Most importantly, the Center of Excellence is Executive Sponsorship, preferably someone within the business, CFO, CEO, etc.  Without Executive Sponsorship, in the worse case your Center of Excellence will fail and in the best case your Center of Excellence will never reach it’s full potential.

For more information about creating a Center of Excellence, check out this post by Timo Elliott:
http://timoelliott.com/blog/2009/05/bi-competency-centers-australia.html

Summary

Successful Business Intelligence isn’t magic, but it does require understanding that every successful Business Intelligence implementation must have trusted data at it’s core.

If you want to understand how Business Intelligence can truly transform and organization, I strongly recommend Cindi Howson’s book, Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App.  Check it out.  It’s on-sale just in time for Christmas!

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In going through the new charting in BusinessObjects v4.0, I noticed that there was no histogram available.  After doing a Google search I found a great article by Alastair Gulland.

Alastair uses  a combination of straight-forward formulas and out-of-the-box thinking.  A brilliant combination.  He also introduces a way of making the histogram dynamic by using a Input Control.  Very nice.  It’s definitely worth checking out.

You will find the full blog post here:
http://www.gulland.com/wp/?p=662

Click on the image to see the finished report with Histogram and Input Control

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Want to find out what all the buzz is about?

Want to take your education about HANA to the next level?

SAP has put together an aggregated site which brings together all the current content available on HANA.  The website is called:  Experience SAP HANA

http://www.experiencesaphana.com/

It does require you to register but I found there really was a lot of content to look through and it is well worth it.  There are still lots of videos and customer presentations, but it’s the best one-stop shop to go and learn everything there is about HANA.

I especially liked the »Implement« section, where you can learn about technical details like SQL Script, HANA Backup & Recovery, HANA Modeller, Security, SLT Configuration, etc.  If you want to know it, it’s probably here.

Enjoy!

«Good BI»

Rolling Back Flash

Flash is a funny animal.  Not only does Adobe install the flash player on your computer but it also installs flash within your IE browser.  Therefore the first challenge is uninstalling flash and here’s how to do it.

Uninstall Flash

This isn’t as easy as you might think.  A simple Windows Uninstall will not work.

1. Download the Adobe Flash Player uninstaller: uninstall_flash_player.exe (229 KB).
   (Alternatively you may download it from my local site here)
2. Save the uninstaller file, choosing a location where you can find it–your Windows Desktop, for example.
3. Exit all applications. Check the taskbar and the system tray to make sure that no user applications are running. NO MS OFFICE APPS.  For example, if you see icons for browsers or instant messaging (IM) clients such as AOL Instant Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger, right-click the icon and select either Close or Exit. The following image shows how to close the Yahoo! Messenger client after right-clicking its icon in the Windows system tray:

4. Run the uninstaller. If you see the message ”Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?,” click Yes.
5. Go into the control panel and make sure “Flash Player” is not available.

After The Uninstall

Check your version:  http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

It should indicate to you that flash is NOT installed.

Installing a Legacy Flash Verison

All the old versions are located here:  http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/142/tn_14266.html

I downloaded and tested the following procedures using Flashplayer10_1r102_64_winax.zip

1. Make sure all applications are still closed.
2. Unzip Flashplayer10_1r102_64_winax.zip (This is an “active” version of Flash for Internet Explorer which you will need)
3. Run it the installer.
4. Go to:  http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/  and verify it’s working…

Finito

Now’s there’s just one final tip to consider.

Turning off Auto Updates

You might want to turn off automatic updates of your flash player.  This article explains how:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/713/a7138026.html

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