2009 SAP BusinessObjects User Conference
SAP BusinessObjects Wants Your Input!
The SAP BusinessObjects Product team is looking for your input! In less than two months, SAP BusinessObjects Users from around the world will be decending on Dallas Texas for the annual SAP BusinessObjects User Conference. This year, the SAP BusinessObjects is introducing the concept of a product council, where you can provide feedback into the product. You will get a chance to see how other companies are leveraging SAP BusinessObjects products. Now is your opportunity to tell them what you love and what you hate… knowing that feedback will make it’s way back to the product team.
This is a Start
Personally I think this is a great start, but I wish that SAP would send all the product managers and program managers to the conference so that they can speak face-to-face with customers. Back in the 90’s when I was working with Lotus products, they had a huge annual conference in Orlando and their entire product development team was onsite and had lots of informal one-on-one time with customers. As an end-user, I loved that. Even if they weren’t able to address my problems at least I felt I had been heard.
Influence Sessions
SAP is taking a slightly different tact. They are creating a “council” that will work to gather all the feedback that SAP BusinessObjects users give. They will consolidate and prioritize the issues and work with the SAP BusinessObjects Product Development team to improve future product releases. The Influence sessions will include:
Business Objects Enterprise Council – to discuss administration, security, platform features and versioning/change management within the Business Objects Enterprise solution.
Xcelsius Council – to discuss issues surrounding the new integration with Excel, document areas for improvement, identify issues that are occurring with the system.
WebI Council -was formed last year and will be presenting an update of their work and where their recommendations fit into future SAP BusinessObjects product releases. A portion of the presentation will also include a discussion of migration from Deski to WebI.
Designer Council - with no major changes in Designer since 1999 (yep, that’s 10 years!), the semanic layer is an area of upcoming innovation and redesign. Make sure your voice is heard!
Data Management Council – will provide customers with the means for constructive dialog with SAP BusinessObjects regarding their use and implementation of the Data Services product. The Influence Council will provide SAP BusinessObjects with feedback from its users about proposed changes, integrations, or new features in future Data Services releases.
So Let Your Voice Be Heard
Plato said: Necessity is the mother of invention. I can tell you through my many years of experience that the best product features and innovations come from solving real-world customer problems. Therefore I strongly encourage you to attend the 2009 SAP BusinessObjects user conference and take full advantage of these Influence Council sessions. You may be the reason behind the next major innovation at SAP BusinessObjects!
Click here for more information…
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Sets Integrated into the Semantic Layer
On August 5, 2009, the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center announced a prototype for moving Sets Technology directly into the Semantic Layer.
Potential Future of Sets
Since the EOL announcement of BusinessObjects Performance Manager and two of the three analytic engines, Process Analysis and Predictive Analysis, there has been an ongoing question on the future of Set Analysis. I have long been an advocate of the incredible power and importants of sets to help customers get a better understand of how data is changing under the covers. If you have 100 more customers, that’s great… but how many did you lose and how many did you gain? You may have lost 50 and actually added 150. What about my “Gold” Customers? How many new Gold Customers do I have? Where did they go? Did they become Silver members?
We have many customers who have successfully implemented Set Analysis; however the solution had not had significant R&D investment for some time and was tied to the legacy metrics engine of Performance Manager. How could this technology be integrated into the new XI 3.X platform?
Sets and the Semantic Layer – I’m in Heaven
The Innovation Center has delivered a prototype which show Sets integrated directly into the Semantic Layer. This prototype is a plug-in to the universe that allows you to create these “sets” , static or dynamic – all in the query panel. Semantic layer sets lets customers leverage the complexity of sets natively within that environment. This is a huge step forward.
Check out the 15 minute video on the SDN website
You can see that this implementation can support all the classic calendar sets which will support of joiners, leavers, stayers, which are at the core of Set Analysis. In this labs implementation there is support for both Visual Data and Visual Sets; however I hope this is expanded in the future to support Freehand SQL and an imported list.
I think this is a fantastic new innovation and needs to be added to the core product ASAP. If you think so too, let your voice be heard: http://sets.uservoice.com
I’ll keep you up-to-date with additional innovations around sets and may provide some additional posts on this topic if there’s interest. Let me know.
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Cool Xcelsius Dashboards and Where to Find Them
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
- My absolute favorite site is Inverra. They are constantly updating their site with unique KPI centric examples.
http://www.inverra.com/Dashboards/demos.htm - Analysis Factory. Very professional graphics. Their supply chain example is tops.
http://www.analysisfactory.com/gallery.html - MyXcelsius Showcase.
http://myxcelsius.com/showcase/ - Everything Xcelsius
http://everythingxcelsius.com/showcase - 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
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Business Intelligence Business Requirements and the BI Portfolio
Memorial Day was a great day to reflect on the sacrifices of so many for the freedoms and liberties will all enjoy. Thank you veterans!!
After attending a local Memorial Day Rememberance and Celebration, I spent some time cleaning my office and I came across an excellent article which I wanted to pass along. So often when I talk to organizations about Business Intelligence, I ask them about their business requirements so that I can understand their current business pain. All to often what follows is feature function laundry list of capabilities they are sure they can’t live without. Time after time, the BI requirements given to software vendors are not tied to a specific business problem. This is a recipe for disaster.
The following article is an article from DM Review entitled, Business Requirements for BI and the BI Portfolio: How to Get it Right:
http://www.b-eye-network.com/print/6887
This article does a great job at pointing out the weaknesses of generic BI requirements and why functional requirements are not enough. If you have BI requirements and are evaluating BI tools, I highly recommend you take a few minutes to read this article.
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Some controls on this presentation can’t be activated – Xcelsius! Help!
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.
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