Are you ready to move your Xcelsius (SAP Dashboards) to the iPad yet?

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…

«Good BI»

Although I’ve worked in a number of different industry verticals, I’m currently focused on the Utilities vertical.  I’m always on the look out for great dashboards and I found some!  I want dashboards that combine the best features of Xcelsius together with amazing usability and depth of function.  My latest discovery is from ProMorphics.  ProMorphics is a services organization and they have been a member of the SAP Ecosystem for a number of years.   I recently got a chance to view the results of some of their compelling dashboards  and the results speak for themselves.

When I spoke with ProMorphics they talked about their commitment to listen to the customer and to go the extra mile.  They’ve been extremely successful at using Xcelsius as a prototyping/rapid development tool so that they can get feedback and turn the results around extremely quickly.

Their sample dashboards focus on these three areas:

• Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S)
• Field Operations
• Sales and Financial Performance (Peek Performance)

If you work in a utility related industry, you may want to engage ProMorphics and leverage their expertise.  It’s not surprising that 70% of their business comes from repeat customers.

ProMorphics Operations Dashboard with Custom Xcelsius Controls

Interactive Demos

Although ProMorphics does not allow you to download their .xlf files, you can view the dashboards via the following website:
http://www.promorphics1.us/22/interactivedemos/demos

Here is a 10 minute video walk-through of their Peak Performance dashboard with Kasia Szewczyk
http://www.promorphics1.us/29/audiovideo/recording

Conclusion

It’s always good to see partners who exploit all the features within a solution.  In the screenshot above, you can see how they have built Google Map integration as well as a custom calendar control.  These are examples of custom Xcelsius controls written in Flex.  I saw example after example of custom controls, developed to make sure they gave the customer exactly what they wanted.  If you engage ProMorphics in a project, they will also make these custom Xcelsius controls available to you.  Some partners like Centigon Solutions do allow you to buy their Xcelsius controls separately but ProMorphics currently does not.

«Good BI»

They’ve Got Style

I continue to be amazed by the dashboards being developed by our customers and partners to meet on going business needs.  Across every industry and every organization, regardless of size, companies are able to consolidate information into a single, interactive dashboard view.  Customers constantly ask me for examples of what other organizations have done, so I decided it was time to assemble a list of the best Xcelsius websites with samples.

Some of my Favorites

1. My absolute favorite site is Inverra.  They are constantly updating their site with unique KPI centric examples.
   http://www.inverra.com/Dashboards/demos.htm
2. Analysis Factory.  Very professional graphics.  Their supply chain example is tops.
   http://www.analysisfactory.com/gallery.html
3. MyXcelsius Showcase.
   http://myxcelsius.com/showcase/
4. Everything Xcelsius
   http://everythingxcelsius.com/showcase
5. SAP SDN Xcelsius Samples. These samples are either from SAP or have been uploaded from customers.

   https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/xcelsius-samples

Dashboarding Ideas

Need to keep you finger on the pulse of the dashboarding scene?  Looking for great ideas around dashboards in general?  There is one website above all others that has great information about creating dashboards with both Xcelsius and non-Xcelsius based technologies.  The website is Dashboard Spy and I highly recommend you give it a look.
http://dashboardspy.com/

They also have a great list of dashboard screenshots that’s worth a look:
http://dashboardspy.com/screenshots.html

«Good BI»

At SAP BusinessObjects I work in the role of a Solution Advisor and I have a collection of Xcelsius dashboard examples.  I also receive new Xcelsius models from my colleagues from time to time.  Several months ago I ran across a strange problem with my Xcelsius powerpoints.  When I moved documents from one machine to another I began having problems openning these powerpoints and viewing my Xcelsius models.

Can’t be Activated in Aggravating

When opening powerpoint, I would see the following Windows error:

Some Controls on the Presentation can't be activated. They might not be registered on this computer.

I was left wondering if this was a problem with the new Powerpoint 2007, so an incompatibility between Xcelsius 4.5 and 2008.  After some research and an excellent article from the Xcelsius Journal, I was relieved to find out it was neither.  It was all about the flash viewer within Powerpoint.

Solving This Devilish Problem

Although I had long since upgraded my flash player within my Firefox browser, Powerpoint continued to hold on to the old flash version.  Although I upgraded my flash player within Internet Explorer, Powerpoint didn’t seem to see it.  Instead it was still using an old flash player and therefore I continued to get the message:  Some controls on this presentation can’t be activated.  They might not be registered on this computer.   It was so frustrating.  Eventually I was forced to manually perform a flash uninstall and a fresh reinstall.

Uninstalling Your Flash Player

For additional details about uninstalling your flash player, I recommend you refer to this article: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html

As a shortcut to the files referred to in this article, I have provided references to the Windows Uninstall programs here:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/current/uninstall_flash_player.exe

Next, you will need to launch Internet Explorer and go to the adobe website.
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

In some cases, you may want to manually download the installer for use offline.   Consider going to this site and downloading the flash player installer for manual installations.
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/

Back Flashy Presentations

Now that you’ve upgraded the flash player referenced by Powerpoint, you can get back to viewing those flashy Xcelsius presentations.  In the future I would expect Microsoft and Adobe to fix this problem.  I hope I never have to see this message again:  Some controls on this presentation can’t be activated.  They might not be registered on this computer.

«Good BI»

Are you used to the new Xcelsius 2008 yet?  The release of SP1 has definately been a big improvement.  Like many others, I struggled with the new and improved Xcelsius.  There were a few too many quirks for me and until the release of SP1, I went back to Xcelsius 4.5.

Besides the fact that there are several “little things” that work differently between Xcelsius 2008 and 4.5, I did notice a couple of bigger things.  One in particular was the Refresh on Load feature.  I found that there was a big difference between setting the data connection to refresh on open and setting the Connection Refresh button to refresh on load.

Although I did discover a whitepaper that eventually explained it all to me, I ended up figuring this one out on my own.  I should have asked myself early on why there was a ‘refresh on open’ on both the data connection AND the connection refresh.

Data Connection – Refresh on Load

When the SWF file is launched, data is retrieved from the spreadsheet and any data connections, and then dashboard components are generated.  The Refresh On Load option forces the Data Connection to retrieve data from the source before the components are generated.

What’s the downside? The downside I discovered is that you cannot use values from the controls within the Xcelsius model to drive the prompts in your web services because in reality, the controls haven’t been ‘created’ yet.  I found that even though I had default values of “All” hard-coded in my model, I could NOT get my web services queries to fire.  Instead I would get the message:  All prompts are not filled.

In order to avoid this message, you can NOT refresh the data connection on open.  Instead you much create a connection refresh as an object on your Xcelsius model.

Connection Refresh – Refresh on Load

Connection Refresh works like it did in Xcelsius 4.5.  I wrongly assumed that I would no longer need to use a connection refresh in Xcelsius 2008, but due to the issue of not being able to set values for prompts, I found they were still necessary.

BUG?  I’m not sure if it’s a bug, but I also found that if I evoke the dynamic visibility on a Connection Refresh and the object is hidden, then the refresh on open does not work.

Here is an example (the connection refresh buttons are hidden)

Then the user clicks on the setup icon and they are exposed

From a demonstration perspective, I like to hide my Connection Refresh buttons and only display them once the user clicks in a specific area to view them.  In my case I was unable to get the refresh on open to fire on a Connection Refresh if at the time the model was opened, the object was hidden.

NOTE:  To work around this bug, I added a “transparent” button at the top of my model which was NOT hidden.  It was transparent the user could not see it.   When the model opened, the transparent CR button refreshed my web services.  This allowed me to keep my buttons “hidden” but get past the refresh bug.

Final Alternative

Creating an extra step in the lookup logic will make it possible for you to be able to use the data connection – refresh on load AND have the prompts work correctly.  Instead of having the prompt use the target cell of a selector (e.g. B2) , create a second cell that says:  =IF(ISBLANK(B2), “Default Value”, B2) and have the prompt use it instead.  This way, even if the selector value is blank, because the object has not yet been created, the prompt will always have a valid value.

Click here to download sample. BTW,I did not include the database and web service for this sample.

In Crystal Xcelsius 4.5, I was so accustomed to having my web service query prompts feed from the target cells, that it took me a little while to realized that this formula would fix the problem as well.

Summary

Based upon these findings, here are my thoughts:

• If you want the model to come up faster (before the data has been retrieved), then always use a connection refresh – refresh on open.
• If you want to model to have the latest data at the time it opens, then always use a data connection – refresh on open.

In general, my personal preference is to use the connection refresh because I think it’s better to allow the user to see the model as soon as possible and then wait for the refresh of the data.  I also like it because it means i don’t have to update my old Xcelsius 4.5 models to use the interim calculation I describe above.

Again, here is the whitepaper just in case you want to read the full details.

Hope this helps you as much as it helped me.

«Good BI»

I think I may have found what you are looking for. This is an excellent guide that you can use to bring best practices to all your Xcelsius work. This 16 page guide is an well thought out guide for using standard around colors, data organization, testing, etc. Implementing these best practices will undoubtedly improve your ability to create world-class Xcelsius models that are easy for others to maintain after the fact.

This guide was written by Matt Lloyd with contributing materials from Ryan Goodman and Richard Reynolds.

Download it today!! You’ll be glad you did.

If you need to troubleshoot Xcelsius 2008 runtime messages here is another link you might want to check out. I recently ran across an error message “2170″ but was not able to find it on my original list of error messages, but then I finally found it.

Click Here for the description of the runtime message.

The solution to the 2170 message when using Xcelsius was provided via YOUR posted comments to my blog.  Thank you!!

Most of the time, the issue has to do with the crossdomain.xml file.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE cross-domain-policy SYSTEM "http://www.macromedia.com/xml/dtds/cross-domain-policy.dtd">
<cross-domain-policy>
 <allow-http-request-headers-from domain="*" headers="*" secure="false" />
 <allow-access-from domain="*" secure="false" />
</cross-domain-policy>

For more information about installing the crossdomain.xml file, read my previous article.  If you are STILL having problems check out these two posts.

Check out the answer on the BusinessObjects forums :

https://forums.sdn.sap.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5656068#56560685656068

There is also additional information in the BOB forums:
http://www.forumtopics.com/busobj/viewtopic.php?t=110827

I’ve been spending a lot of time of late getting myself familiar with the new interface of Xcelsius 2008 and I like it so much better than the older Xcelsius 4.5 interface. The embedded Excel spreadsheet is real dream and the new Data Manager, which manages all the external connections make it easy to keep track of where data is coming from.

Xcelsius Error 2170 or 2048

There were a couple of things I learned during the transition that I thought would be good to share. The first is around security. With the release of Xcelsius 2008 we have moved to support for Flash 9. In Flash 9, they have tightened up security a bit more. Here is one of the first messages I got when trying to run a Xcelsius file with LiveOffice or Web Service connected data. My problem is a flash security issue. SWFs running locally (directly from a user’s computer) have additional restrictions imposed on them since version 8 of the Flash Player.

This error is coming from the Adobe Flash Viewer. If you see error messages like this in the future, you can look them up here. This has the complete list of ActionScript runtime errors.

To get around this error I need to tell my application server that it is okay to trust requests from other domains. This means I will need to create a crossdomain.xml file for your application server.

I have created a crossdomain.xml file that you can download here:
http://trustedbi.com/files/crossdomain.xml

Here are the contents of the file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE cross-domain-policy SYSTEM "http://www.macromedia.com/xml/dtds/cross-domain-policy.dtd">
<cross-domain-policy>
 <allow-http-request-headers-from domain="*" headers="*" secure="false" />
 <allow-access-from domain="*" secure="false" />
</cross-domain-policy>

On Tomcat, you need to add this file to the /tomcat/webapps/ROOT directory. Each application server is different, so you may need to check the manual for your specific application server.

For More Information on crossdomain.xml

For more information on crossdomain.xml look here. Even more information about crossdomain.xml and Macromedia is found here.

Hope this help you achieve smooth sailing with Xcelsius 2008!

I recently starting moving my BusinessObjects Enterprise Xcelsius models from XIr2 to XI 3.0. I have found that you may need to modify some of the elements after your model has been upgraded. Namely you will need to:

• Modify the URL of the web services
• Modify the URL of the embedded opendocument calls
• Modify the models

I can’t say that these changes are completely unexpected, but it unfortunately these changes will need to be part of a manual process. I think that part of the problem is that we haven’t integrated Xcelsius into any type of structured lifecycle management.

Modify the URL of the webservices

As I move my Xcelsius model from one physical machine to another, I had to go back into each Web Service and change the name of the machine it was pointing to. I also had an issue with my Universes. It appears that somehow, it lost track of exactly which universe I was pointed to (perhaps I changed the CUID during the migration to XI 3.0) so I had to manually edit each one and make sure it was working. In some cases, once I manually picked the right universe, the query still didn’t work. It would throw an error. So I discovered a special trick.

TIP: I found that when the system lost track of my universe I could click on the Show the option dialog… and it seems to fix everything. I think it realizes that the objects in the query are the same as the old universe and repoints the objects correctly.

I also found that you can no longer just copy the URL from the QaaWS administration panel and paste it into Xcelsius 2008. You need to actually click on the which shows you the definition. From there you can click on the WSDL link and it will reveal the correct WSDL “url”. You can see that the URL below contains the end-notation, ?def. The WSDL will be exactly the same but say ?WSDL.

Modify the URL of the embedded opendocument calls

Ouch – what a pain. In XI 3.0, they changed the location of opendocument.jsp from http://<hostname>:<port>/businessobjects/enterprise115/desktoplaunch/opendoc/openDocument.jsp to http://<hostname>:<port>/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.jsp

This means you need to either create your own redirector logic on the application server, or rebuild all your opendocument URLs. I can’t say I’m too surprised (it changed from CE10 to XI to XIr2). It’s just that we now see customer’s using opendocument.jsp so much more because it’s a great way to integrate Xcelsius dashboards with Crystal Reports and WebIntelligence documents.

Modify the Models

So far I’ve not had too much trouble in moving my dashboards from Xcelsius 4.5 to Xcelsius 2008, however there are clearly differences in the way the product works. For example, I had a dashboard that did some lookups and returned zeros. In Xcelsius 4.5, when I used the option Ignore cells at End-of-Range option, it would ignore a text cell with the value 0 and a numeric value of 0. Now, it will only ignore the values in the column if they are truly blank.

I’m not saying the old way was right or wrong, it’s just that now the interpretation of “blank cells” has changed. It used to include cells with 0′s but now it really means only blanks.

Therefore – fair warning. When moving to Xcelsius 2008 you need to make sure and test each and every model to make sure it is still working in exactly the same way.

Conclusion

Overall, I love the new features of Xcelsius 2008. I love the fact that the worksheet is now integrated into the model and the updates to the model take place in real time, but expect a few bumps along the road. Like the fact that when you switch between Preview mode and the Normal mode, Xcelsius can’t seem to remember the sizes of the properties window on the right and the worksheet on the bottom-middle.

It always been a pet peeve of mine that when software installation programs assumes that you want to install it on the C:Program Files directory. How hard is it to create one more screen to allow the users to change the installation location?

Over that last two days I’ve been installing the new BusinessObjects XI 3.0 onto a test system and really enjoying working with the new software. Since I was involved in the pre-beta process, it was especially satisfying to see some of the changes that have been made since October 2007. Since I was not involved in testing Xcelsius, I’ve been really excited about getting my hands on Xcelsius 2008 and giving it a test run.

Today I installed Xcelsius 2008 and my pet peeve surfaced. Sure enough, I accept the license agreement; I put in my keycode; and the installation begins. What?@!? No chance to specify the installation directory? Well, since it was the last piece of software to be installed, perhaps it saw that I already had OTHER BusinessObjects software installed and so it rightly assumed that I would want to install it there. Nope. It assumed C:Program Files.

So what’s are you supposed to do? How do you get software to install somewhere OTHER than C:Program Files?

The answer is a little trick I learned while installing Crystal Enterprise at Coca-Cola. They too were adamant: No non-Windows OS software on the C Drive! In those days we had a problem with the installer. Even though you told it to install on the E: drive, it would still install 5 or 6 files on the C drive.

Here is the answer:

• We need to modify a registry entry. Now like anyone I need to say, don’t do this if you don’t know what you are doing
• Launch regedit
• Go to the registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersion
• There you should find a subkey call: ProgramFilesDir. It should already be set to C:Program Files
• Modify the String value of this subkey to match your directory. In my case I wanted to install the Xcelsius under E:Business Objects, so I used E:
• Exit the Registry Editor
• Install Xcelsius 2008 (Reboot if necessary)
• Go back into the registry editor and change the value back to “C:Program Files”
• Reboot again (for good measure – gotta love Windows)

I found that Xcelsius 2008 asked me to reboot, so I did. When it came up the first time my system told me that one of my services didn’t start. I then changed the value back to “C:Program Files”, rebooted again and everything was fine. I don’t know if that will happen to you or not but that’s what I had to do.

Good Luck. Hopefully you’ll see the ability to specify your installation directory in a future release.

You gotta love Dilbert.