- SAP Managed Tags
With the release of BI 2025 less than a month away, SAP’s Eric Fenollosa and Gregory Botticchio joined APOS Solution Consulting Manager Alan Golding in a webinar to review the new version of the venerable SAP BusinessObjects platform and demonstrate some of its new Web Intelligence reporting and dashboarding capabilities. Eric provided a high-level overview of the platform and Gregory led us through a demonstration of the much anticipated new Web Intelligence functionality. You can view the webinar on demand here.
The High-Level Overview
Eric gave a concise overview of timeline material most of you are already familiar with. However, there was new drilldown provided on the delivery of patches during the three-year mainstream lifespan of BI 2025: every 6 weeks during the first two years, and every 8 weeks during the third year.
Eric also reviewed the different options available to customers, which differ in the degree to which the platform is managed by the customer or by the service provider.
Eric reviewed the rationalization strategy, which deprecates some elements of the platform to allow a greater focus on core functionality.
Eric reviewed the 3 major themes that guided the development of BI 2025:
- Reach more business users
- Increase power users’ productivity
- Reduce total cost of ownership
But he added a “0th“ theme: “Keep everything working as before.”
Some other topics Eric discussed:
- Simplification of migration projects to make them faster, more reliable and lower cost
- Use of standard authentication protocols to increase compatibility between systems
- Allowing immediate access to important information and reducing display times
Eric then moved on to what is happening with Crystal Reports. Themes guiding the transition from Crystal Reports Enterprise:
- Enable move to strategic stack and provide more connection capabilities
- Reach more casual users with better desktop viewer performance
- Increase power users’ productivity with RESTFUL SDK
Web Intelligence Reporting and Dashboarding
Gregory delivered a detailed demonstration that is hard to summarize in a post such as this, so I recommend you view the presentation on demand for the full impact.
He started with the guiding principles for Web Intelligence development in BI 2025:
- Engage users with dashboards featuring new dynamic visualizations and specialized elements.
- Expand user access with new document formant, delivering data insights offline.
- Enhance efficiency through tailored experiences and simplified report generation.
The great news is that BI 2025 appears to deliver on all of these guiding principles.
It simplifies Web Intelligence report creation, offering better self service for non-technical users.
New dashboard features, such as scrolling lists and microcharts (among other new widgets) make for more engaging dashboards.
A variety of layouts let users design their dashboards for specific targets, such as smartphones and tablets.
Most impressive is the ability to export dashboards to an offline format.
The WIDX format produces a PDF style document, completely separate from SAP BusinessObjects, with all content in a single file that is interactive and can be shared. This feature is included with the BI 2025 license and does not require additional investment.
Reaction
When Eric and Gregory were finished with their part of the presentation, Alan Golding reacted with real enthusiasm:
“Thanks Eric and Gregory. That was a really great presentation. Lots of really good stuff coming in BI 2025. That was the first time I’ve seen a lot of this as well, so I’d like to highlight a few points that caught my interest. It’s great to hear there have been improvements made to make migration easier and as seamless as possible.
“Another point that caught my attention, especially for users of Crystal Reports for Enterprise: it’s great to hear that you’re trying to replicate as much as possible of the core functionality of Crystal Reports for Enterprise in the BI 2025 version.
“On to Web Intelligence: it looks like a lot more interaction, a lot more dynamic capabilities. I love the scrollable table that means you don’t have to click to the next page. It’s very easy and seamless to scroll down through the table. And I love the microchart addition. I think that’s really cool.
“But I especially like the new WIDX functionality. I think that’s a pretty awesome feature. It’s indpendent and interactive, and can be shared outsice of BI 2025. I think a lot of users will get a lot of power and use out of the WIDX feature.”
Alan finished the presenation describing a recommended approach to preparing for BI 2025 in which you:
- Take stock of what you have
- Assess and action unsupported content
- Right-size your system content
- Upgrade to BI 4.3
- Upgraded universes to UNX
- Automate for efficient management
These are all migration objectives that APOS has been helping customers with for many years.
Perhaps the greatest hurdle facing companies moving to BI 2025 is the deprecation of UNV universes. Converting UNV universes to UNX, repointing Web Intelligence reports, and validating content can be labor- and time-intensive, regardless of the size of your deployment. The APOS Web Intelligence Migrator can help.
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