This step by step document describes how to consume Sharepoint content - like lists, in Web Intelligence.

Currently there is no universe or Web Intelligence connector that enables users to expose Sharepoint content as a data source. It is however possible to leverage MS Access support of Sharepoint through a universe to solve this restriction.

A.     MS Access database

In this example, we are going to expose and consume in WebIntelligence a couple of Sharepoint lists.

1. In Microsoft Access, create a new Access Database  or open an existing database to reuse with Sharepoint

2. Insert a SharePoint object using the menu External Data:

     External Data->Sharepoint List

3. Enter the Sharepoint site with the port number (2845 in this example)

4. Make sure you select option “Link to the data source by creating a linked table” is selected. This insures that the universe and the dependent WebI reports will be dynamic and will be able to retrieve new data from Sharepoint on Refresh.

5. All available Sharepoint lists and items on the selected site are displayed; select the lists and items you need to expose in Web Intelligence:

6. The selected lists are inserted in Access database as tables with appropriate data

7. Save the database

B.     Universe

1. On the client machine where Information Design Tool will be used, open ODBC Data Source Administrator and create a new DSN pointing to the Access database

2. If you plan to use Web Intelligence in server mode from BI Launchpad, you need to create the same DSN described in previous step, on that server.

3. Open Information Design Tool and create a new relational connection:

4. Publish the connection to the CMS, and create a connection shortcut (.cns).

5. Create a Data Foundation on that connection shortcut

6. Insert the tables representing the Sharepoint lists, lists that you want to expose in the universe and Web Intelligence:

In this example we expose two Lists in the same universe without joins. It is however possible to join multiple tables representing various Sharepoint lists if that is necessary.

7. Create a Business layer on that Data Foundation then publish the universe to the CMS.

C.     Web Intelligence document

1. Start Web Intelligence in BI Launchpad or Web Intelligence Rich Client, and then create a new document based on universe. Select the previously published universe.

2. Add the objects representing the fields you want to expose in Web Intelligence document to the Query and Run the query

3. The result report exposes the data retrieved from SharePoint:

4. Changing the date in SharePoint, then refreshing Web Intelligence document reflects the changes instantly

Adding a new line in SharePoint:

Refreshing Web Intelligence document, the new line is added to the report:

Hide dimention option is not working properly when we hide the break applied column using "hide dimension" option in webi 4.0

Problem Statement:

In webi 4.0, hiding a dimension of break applied column using the hide dimension option, impacts the break properties (Implicit sort gets applied even if disabled)

Break properties before hiding

Break properties after hiding using hide dimension option

Workaround:

Hide the dimension manually using masking options of white background, white text color and no border. 

Select the column --> Right Clik --> Click on Format cell --> Click on Font tab --> Select the font color as white.

                                                                                                   --> Click on Border tab --> remove the border                                                                                               

Hope this would be helpful.

Regards,

Amala.S

Challenge             : It has to take care to display the difference value between the dates which comes under leap and non leap year

Thump rule          : Its basic mathematical principle that we learned in our school.

                        a) Convert all the units of measurement (Time) into single unit of measurement

                        b) Which unit we should use: Year or Month or Week or Day or Hour or Min or Sec. We should choose the lowest unit of measurement of         time  i.e Second because difference between two date also involve difference between date of present year and next tear

Example :  31/12/2014 1:59:48 and 01/01/2015 00:00:20 format (DD/MM/YYYY)

Formula:

Below are the list of formula to convert the date value to the lowest unit of measurement i.e seconds:

Scenario : Lets assume to calculate the difference of two date value Dimension of Date data type that is "Current day and time" and "Contract End Time"

Logic :  Convert all time unit to Seconds as given in below and add up all the seconds value. We are not converting month to seconds directly, there is explanation given below * in Month->Days->Sec formula

             Seconds->Sec=> S*1

             Minutes - > Sec  =>M * 60

             Hours - > Sec =>H*3600

             Year->Sec=> Y*365*24*3600

             Month->Days->Sec :

             We should not take month unit directly instead we take it as days as each month has different number of Days

               a) First we need to find the "Current day and time" and "Contract End Time" is leap year or non leap year

                    Formula : If Mod([Year];4)=0 Then 29 Else 28

Current Date time to Seconds

Converting the Current day and time into seconds

1. v_Curr Year No   =Year([Current day and time])
2. v_Curr Year in Sec==[v_Curr Year No]*365*24*3600
3. v_Curr Mon No =MonthNumberOfYear([Current day and time])
4. v_Curr Day of Mon= DayNumberOfMonth([Current day and time])
5. v_Curr Feb Month=If Mod([v_Curr Year No];4)=0 Then 29 Else 28
6. v_Curr Days = =If [v_Curr Mon No]=1 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon] Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=2 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+31 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=3 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+31 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=4 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+62 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=5 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+92   Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=6 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+123 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=7 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+153 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=8 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+184 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=9 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+215 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=10 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+245 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=11 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+276 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=12 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+306
7. v_Curr Days in Sec=[v_Curr Days]*24*3600
8. v_Current Hour =FormatDate([Current day and time];"HH")
9. v_Curr Hr in Sec=ToNumber([v_Current Hour])*3600
10. v_Current Minute =FormatDate([Current day and time];"mm")
11. v_Curr Min in Sec=ToNumber([v_Current Minute])*60
12. v_Current Second =FormatDate([Current day and time];"ss")
13. v_Curr Sec=ToNumber([v_Current Second])
14. v_Curr Total Secs =[v_Curr Year in Sec]+[v_Curr Days in Sec]+[v_Curr Hr in Sec]+[v_Curr Min in Sec]+[v_Curr Sec]

Contract Date time to Seconds

Converting the "Contract End Time" and time into seconds

1. v_ContEnd Year No=Year([Contract End Time])
2. v_ContEnd Year in Sec=[v_ContEnd Year No]*365*24*3600
3. v_ContEnd Mon No=MonthNumberOfYear([Contract End Time])
4. v_ContEnd Day of Mon= DayNumberOfMonth([Contract End Time])
5. v_ContEnd Feb Month=If Mod([v_ContEnd Year No];4)=0 Then 29 Else 28
6. v_ContEnd Days=If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=1 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon] Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=2 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+31 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=3 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+31 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=4 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+62 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=5 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+92 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=6 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+123 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=7 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+153 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=8 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+184 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=9 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+215 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=10 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+245 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=11 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+276 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=12 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+306
7. v_ContEnd Days in Sec=[v_ContEnd Days]*24*3600
8. v_ContEnd Hour=FormatDate([Contract End Time];"HH")
9. v_ContEnd Hr in Sec =ToNumber([v_ContEnd Hour])*3600
10. v_ContEnd Minute=FormatDate([Contract End Time];"mm")
11. v_ContEnd Min in Sec=ToNumber([v_ContEnd Minute])*60
12. v_ContEnd Second=FormatDate([Contract End Time];"ss")
13. v_ContEnd Sec=ToNumber([v_ContEnd Second])
14. v_ContEnd Total Secs =[v_ContEnd Year in Sec]+[v_ContEnd Days in Sec]+[v_ContEnd Hr in Sec]+[v_ContEnd Min in Sec]+[v_ContEnd Sec]60

Time difference between two date values = [v_ContEnd Total Secs]-[v_Curr Total Secs]

Where v_ContEnd Total Secs  greater than or equal to v_Curr Total Secs

The result value is in the unit of second

this document will collect scripts that performs actions (click an icon, disable elements and so on) in a WEBI doc, through Javascript.

In order any of the scripts to work, we´ll need to set the Webi preference (under BI Launch Pad view/modify to HTML.

Instructions

1 - Drop a blank cell onto the report,]

2 - Set the cell property Read As to HTML

3 - Copy and paste the text of the script (from <script> to </script>, included ) to the cells formula

The first two will be :

1 - Collapse the Left Panel

     <script>

     self.top.window[2].window[0]._widgets[77].clickCB();

   </script>

2 - Disable the Save button

     <script>

     self.top.window[2].window[0]._widgets[282].setDisabled(true)

   </script>

3 - Reseting ALL Input Controls in a Report

   <script>

     self.top.window[2].window[0].window[5].iFormResetAllCB()

   </script>

Comments and suggestions about actions to be performed will be highly appreciated.

Regards,

Rogerio

Earlier today I responded to the following discussion question...

Does anyone know how to create a webi prompts where the user must choose one or the other?

I have wanted to do this before, but I had never really dug into it. However, I had some time today so I decided to give it a try.

It is moderately complex and certainly not without its drawbacks which I will discuss at the end.

There are five basic steps...

1. Remove the criteria which involves the optional prompts from the primary query.
2. Create a secondary query with "dummy prompts".
3. Use custom query script on the secondary query.
4. Create variables in the report to capture the responses to the dummy prompts.
5. Create a variable related to those dummy prompt responses and filter on it.

In my example I am going to use a universe of mine that has Accounts and look at the Account Open Date and Account Closed Date dimensions against which I will in effect create optional parameters. The attached document has related screen shots.

1. Remove the criteria which involves the optional prompts from the primary query. I need to keep those dimension as Result Objects because I will need to filter on them in the report.
   
   
   
   
2. Next create a secondary query with "dummy prompts". It doesn't really matter what universe I use because I don't want to return any data anyway; we are just going to use the responses to the prompts. I actually just duplicated primary query and then added some criteria to ensure that I get no data. In my case that is Branch Number Less than 0. I then added two fields to prompt on. One could be either my Account Open Date or Account Closed Date. The other can be any dimension that is a string. I chose "Equal to" as the operator for both of them and make them prompts.
   
   
   
3. Now switch to "Use custom query script" just for this secondary query with the dummy prompts. I have to keep in mind that if I am using custom query script and I edit my query in any way my custom query script will be thrown away without warning and replaced by newly regenerated query script. I can always go make my changes again, but I need to remember to do that.
   
   To switch to use custom query script click on the "View Script" icon at the top of the Query Panel and choose the "Use custom query script" radio button. For the first prompt that corresponds to whatever date field you chose change the prompt text in first parameter of the @prompt function to make it generic. I made mine 'Enter Date:'...
   
   @prompt('Enter Date:','D','Account Attributes\Account Open Date',Mono,Free,Not_Persistent,,User:0)
   
   The parameters of the prompt function corresponding to the string field requires a little bit more modification. I need to change the prompt text again; I made mine 'Enter Date Dimension:'. The key here is to put the date dimension choices in the list of available values parameter. So instead of pulling the possible values from the underlying data I made mine {'Open Date','Closed Date'}.
   
   @prompt('Enter Date Dimension:','A',{'Open Date','Closed Date'},Mono,Constrained,Not_Persistent,,User:1)
   
   
   
   So I have created a secondary query that will return no data, but will prompt for a date value and to which date that value should apply.
   
   
   
   I hit "Run Queries". The query with the dummy prompts returns no data as expected.
   
   
4. Then create two variables to capture the response to the dummy prompts. Remember the UserResponse function always returns a string. My Date Prompt Response variable formula to capture the date looks like this...
   
   =ToDate(UserResponse("Enter Date:"); "M/d/yyyy hh:mm:ss a")
   
   
   
   And my Date Dimension Prompt Response variable formula to capture to which dimension that date should be applied looks like this...
   
   =UserResponse("Enter Date Dimension:")
   
   
   
   
5. Finally, create a variable based on those two variables which determines which date to filter on and whether the date entered matches. Here is my Date Comparison Flag variable formula...
   
   =If([Date Dimension Prompt Response]="Open Date"; If([Date Prompt Response]=[Account Open Date];1; 0); If([Date Prompt Response]=[Account Closed Date];1;0))
   
   
   
   Add a filter where Date Comparison Flag Equal to 1.
   
   

That's it!

I fully acknowledge there are a number of concerns about this approach. Here are a few of mine, you may have more...

1. The data is filtered in the report rather than the query resulting in potentially returning a lot more data than necessary and negatively impacting the performance of the report.
2. Using custom query script may be disabled in your organization. Also, if the query is edited in any way the query script gets regenerated and the customization is abandoned.
3. Although in effect this solution forces you to pick one and only one of two optional value they are not optional parameters making this potentially logically misleading.
   
4. I have not tried this approach with choose one value among a set of optional parameters where the values are not of the same data type. I think it could still be made to work, but I am not sure.
   

I know this is not a perfect solution, but I hope you can make it work for your situation or it give you an idea of something else to try.

Noel

Yesterday a built a fairly basic WebI report with two queries. In one of the queries I forced it to return no data (e.g. where 1 = 0) and used custom query script to create what I refer to as dummy prompts whose values I would use to specify one of three possible sort orders among other things. Everything worked great within WebI, but when I tried to schedule it I ran into problems.

When I tried to change the default parameter values I was allowed to do so, but when I clicked "Apply" the parameter dialog box would just pop right up again with the same default parameter values rather than what I just entered. It would do this again and again. The only way out was to click "Cancel". I tried purging the data in the report along with all parameter values. It still didn't work, same result.

About this time I realized I could probably run the report in WebI with whatever parameter values I wanted, save it and schedule it. And again. I actually need to schedule this report with 7 different sets of parameter values. While I am pretty sure that would have worked, I shouldn't have to. I should also mentioned that occasionally when attempting to schedule this report some of the current parameters would not be presented for values and an older parameter (from a previously saved iteration) that I had since deleted from the report would be presented for a value. One more thing, a coworker of mine at a different location was able to schedule this report just fine. I wanted to SCREAM!!!

We are running 4.1 SP01 Patch 2 in a multi-tiered load balanced environment. So we have two web servers and two application servers. So we suspected that he was getting a different server than I was and that was why it was working for him and not me. We decided to reboot the entire system (all four servers) last night after hours in the hopes that would fix it. No luck.

I decided to deconstruct and rebuild my report. I completely deleted the query with the custom query script and dummy prompts, saved the report and rebuilt that query and saved it again. It worked perfectly in WebI. However, now when I tried to schedule and update the parameter values I got an error...

Not on correct event type; expected START_ELEMENT, but was END_ELEMENT. (Error: INF )

I did some Googling and found nothing conclusive.

Up to this point I had been using the Java applet version of WebI (with Java 7.40) within Chrome. I tried loading the report and saving it from the HTML and Rich Desktop Client versions of WebI and continued to get the same error when trying to set the parameter values in the schedule.

My coworker suggested the report must have become corrupted somehow. Using the Rich Desktop Client I started over and rebuilt the report from scratch making it identical to the original including the query with the custom query script and dummy prompts. Now I am able to set the parameter values in the schedule as expected. I wish I knew what was wrong with the original, but I really don't. Thanks to my colleague's advice I have a working report and I am moving on.

Noel

Hi Developer,

This is Praveen kumar.I am having one question

Please provide the answer about create variable for current month in year

and current month in last year ....................

The following tutorials have been developed to help you get started using the Business Intelligence Suite products. New content is added as soon as it becomes available, so check back on a regular basis.

You can submit and vote on ideas for enhancements to this product.

Looking for eLearning for the rest of the Business Intelligence Suite? Go to sap.com/LearnBI.

The video versions of these tutorials on YouTube include optional text captions that can be translated into a number of languages. Watch here to learn how.

Key Concepts

• NEW for 4.1 SP6 What's new in Web Intelligence 4.1 SP6 (5:49)     interactive/ video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.1 SP5 (1:40)     interactive / video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.1 SP4 (1:10)     interactive / video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.1 SP3 (1:37)     interactive / video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.1 SP2 (3:02)     interactive / video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.1 (5:27)     interactive / video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.0 SP5 (2:04)     interactive / video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.0 Feature Pack 3 (4:20)     interactive/ video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.0 (6:25)     interactive /video
• Navigate the interface (6:24)     interactive /video
• Concept: Describe how the semantic layer works (1:35)     video

Getting Started

• NEW for 4.1 SP5  Scenario: Creating reports with tables, charts and images* (9:35)     video
• Create a query (1:24)     interactive /video
• Run and save a query (1:30)     interactive /video
• Edit a query (0:59)     interactive /video
• View or change the properties for a query (1:06)     interactive /video
• View the SQL or MDX script for a query (1:00)     interactive /video
• Set up preferences for the Web Intelligence Rich Client interface (1:01)     interactive /video
• View the properties of a document (1:20)     interactive /video
• Drag and drop objects to create a report (1:33)     interactive /video
• Duplicate a report object (1:19)     interactive /video
• Add a report to a document (0:40)     interactive /video
• Add a row or column in a table (0:56)     interactive /video
• View the metadata for objects (0:32)     interactive /video
• Publish a document to the repository (1:22)     interactive /video
• Save a document as other formats (1:51)     interactive /video
• Copy and paste content in Web Intelligence and other documents (2:01)     interactive /video

Connecting to Data Sources

• Add another query to a document (1:22)     interactive /video
• Change the data source on which a query is based (1:27)     interactive /video
• Create a query based on an Excel file (0:58)     interactive /video
• Combine multiple queries (2:20)     interactive /video
• Create a query within a query (1:48)     interactive /video
• Merge dimensions from different universes (1:47)     interactive /video
• Connect to a web service (2:15)     interactive/video
• Create a query based on an OLAP universe (1:45)     interactive /video
• Connect to a BEx query with hierarchical data (1:32)     interactive /video
• Connect to an Analysis view (1:11)     interactive /video
• 4.0 FP3  Work with scaled values in BEx queries (1:59)     interactive /video
• 4.0 FP3  Perform level or prompt member selection on hierarchical data (2:30)     interactive/ video
• 4.1  Work with hierarchy and hierarchy node variables in BEx queries (3:11)     interactive / video
• 4.1  Set up query stripping for an SAP HANA data source (2:40)     interactive / video

Working with Tables and Crosstabs

• Create a table (2:07)     interactive /video
• Change the layout of a table (1:24)     interactive /video
• Delete columns and rows from a table (1:05)     interactive /video

Working with Charts

• Create a chart (1:51)     interactive /video
• Turn a table into a chart (1:12)     interactive /video
• Create a chart for hierarchical data (1:22)     interactive /video
• 4.0 FP3  Create charts with hierarchical dimensions (1:31)    interactive / video
• 4.1  Set default chart series colors (1:34)     interactive / video
• 4.1 SP2  Format a data series in a chart (1:03)     interactive / video

Setting up Interactive Elements

• Add a hyperlink to a document (1:03)     interactive /video
• Create a link between documents (DHTML client) (1:33)     interactive /video
• Drill down into a table (2:48)     interactive /video
• Drill down into a chart (2:11)     interactive /video
• Fold and unfold sections in a document (1:09)     interactive /video
• Create an input control for a document (1:46)     interactive /video
• 4.0 FP3  Create an input control on a hierarchy (1:58)   interactive/ video

Selecting, Sorting, Grouping, and Summarizing Data

• Select a subset of data based on a predefined filter (1:00)     interactive /video
• Select a subset of data based on a custom filter (1:16)     interactive /video
• Remove a filter from a document (0:45)     interactive /video
• Create a prompt to select a subset of data (1:31)     interactive /video
• Select a subset of data based on multiple filters (2:17)     interactive /video
• Define the order in which multiple filters are applied (2:07)     interactive /video
• Create breaks between groups of data (0:55)     interactive /video
• Calculate totals and subtotals for data (1:10)     interactive /video
• Sort the data in a document (2:05)     interactive /video
• Change the order and format of breaks between groups of data (1:53)     interactive /video
• Select a subset of data in a report (0:59)     interactive /video
• Add a ranking to data (1:01)     interactive /video
• Divide a report into sections (1:22)     interactive /video
• Calculate totals and subtotals for sections in a report (1:08)     interactive /video
• Navigate a document using the Report Map pane (0:51)     interactive /video
• Set a filter on a section or a block in a document (1:53)     interactive /video
• Sort the sections in a document (0:56)     interactive /video
• Create a prompt for hierarchical data (1:24)     interactive /video
• Divide a report with hierarchical data into sections (1:01)     interactive /video
• 4.0 FP3   Apply simple and complex sorting (1:44)    interactive/ video
• 4.1 SP2  Group the values of a dimension (1:43)     interactive / video

Working with Formulas

• Create a formula to display a filter selection (1:48)     interactive /video
• Create a formula to calculate a value (1:22)     interactive /video
• Create a variable based on a formula (0:59)     interactive /video

Applying Formatting

• Add text to a document (0:59)     interactive /video
• Change the format of text or numbers in a document (0:54)     interactive /video
• Track changes to data (1:28)     interactive /video
• Conditionally format data based on defined thresholds (1:37)     interactive /video
• Add a background to a document (1:22)     interactive /video
• Add page numbers to a document (0:50)     interactive /video
• Change the formatting for a table (1:50)     interactive /video
• Change the formatting for a cell (2:21)     interactive /video
• Change the formatting for sections (1:59)     interactive /video
• Change the formatting for a chart  (5:04)     interactive /video
• 4.0 FP3  Modify the default style sheet (2:30)     interactive/video
• 4.0 FP3  Format charts (2:11)     interactive / video
• 4.1  Freeze header rows or columns (0:56)     interactive / video
• 4.1  Create a custom color palette (1:27)     interactive/video
  
• 4.1  Change the locale settings for right-to-left document or interface layout (2:25)     interactive / video

Creating Documents for SAP BusinessObjects Mobile

• Save documents for access in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (2:09)     interactive / video
• Format sparkline charts to display in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (2:05)     interactive / video
• Format trend or status icons to display in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (3:48)     interactive / video
• Format blank cells and images for SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (3:50)     interactive / video
• 4.0 SP4  Select charts for display in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (3:09)     interactive / video
• 4.0 SP4  Link report elements using input controls (1:58)     interactive / video
• 4.0 SP4  Format microcharts to display in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (2:23)     interactive / video
• 4.0 SP4  Format bullet charts to display in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (3:05)     interactive / video
• 4.0 SP4  Format geomaps to display in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (3:15)     interactive / video
• 4.1 SP3  Format geomap documents to display measure colors or conditional formatting in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (2:43)     interactive / video
• 4.1 SP3  Set a default view for a geomap document in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (1:41)     interactive / video

* This tutorial follows the scenarios available in the "Getting Started with Web Intelligence" guide, available on the SAP Help Portal at help.sap.com/bowebi41/

To view the full Web Intelligence 4.0 playlist on Youtube, click here.

To report a technical issue with a tutorial, send an email to: BI_Suite_eLearning@sap.com.

Hi everyone,

I am pleased to share with you some tips on the advanced use of Web Intelligence. These few tutorials allow you to give more value to your existing documents or to come or just to give you ideas for your future designs.

All my tricks are just a focus on some capabilities of the application, if you want more details about what you're able to do with it, share your thought with me I'll be happy to talk about it.

All entries are ranked by difficulty and by authors because I spend a lot (lot, lot, lot) of time searching on SCN great tips on Web Intelligence and some good entries are unfortunaltely hidden...so it's time to raise your hands guys (and girls ).

Summary

Legend

Picture	Level	Description
	Level 1	Difficulty is very low. Easy to set up and you can turn easily your existing document into value-added report effortless
	Level 2	Difficulty is low. Use analysis tools to interact with your report and give extra value to your operational reporting.
	Level 3	Difficulty is medium. Some of features used are advanced features and you've to be familiar with Web Intelligence.
	Level 4	Difficulty is high. Damn, your Webi document is so interactive and so cool. Restless to show and share it with others !
	Level 5	Difficulty is extreme. How did he do that ? I've read 8 times the document and I still understand nothing.

Tricks

Difficulty	Author	Link to document
	Abhijit Ingale	WEBI 4.0 Trick - Creating Progress Bar
	Rakesh Pattani	BOBJ Trick To Display Table Data In Hierarchy Format
	Durgamadhab Mishra	Webi tricks : Selecting Top N customers by Sales Percentage using a Slider
	WILLIAM MARCY	Webi tricks : Interactive selecting and viewing TOPn data
	Abhijit Ingale	WEBI - Dynamic Line Chart driven by Input Control
	Harsha Ganapathy	Creating a Sparkline chart for IPad
	Neha Kumari	How to use formulae to change date and time formats in WebIntelligence
	Andreas Kaufmann	alternate row colors in a break
	Tauseef Ali Mir	Dynamic Variables using Input Control
	Nagavaibhav Elluru	Custom message to replace 'No Data in the query'
	Victor Gabriel Saiz Castillo	All you need to know about #TOREFRESH
	Michael Thompson	Webi tricks: How to build a butterfly chart
	Huu Nguyen	Linear & Polynomial Trend Lines in Webi
	Michael Thompson	Webi tricks: Bars embedded into rows
	Huu Nguyen	WebI Trick: Line chart to show running average for each year
	Harshil Joshi	Date Variables in Web Intelligence
	Huu Nguyen	WebI Trick: Top N data for any integer N using Entry field Input controls
	Tanav Gupta	How to Add Document links (Interlink WEBI reports) in SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence 4.0
	Sateesh Kumar	Show Trend Icon/Arrows in webi as per conditions
	Huu Nguyen	Conditional formatting based on User input
	Koen Hesters	Dynamic Visibility within a Webi Report
	David G	WebI trick: Create a SEARCH Input Control for your WebI report part!
	Sateesh Kumar	Dynamic Ageing Buckets in Webi
	Sujitha Grandhi	Dynamic Visibility - Input Controls with Ranking
	Jonathan Brown	Creating a Webi doc off of an unmanaged Excel data source on a network share
	Rakesh Pattani	Merging Charts in WebI
	Rogerio Plank	How to insert a Gauge chart inside a WEBI Document
	Selvarasan Subramanian	Dense Ranking in SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence
	Jordan Bishop	How to create a Speedometer inside of a Web Intelligence document
	Mahboob Mohammed	Secret Custom Format (for Date) in Webi
	swapnil bhootwala	String aggregation on WEBI report level.
	Rogerio Plank	How to set a WEBI document to autorefresh each n seconds
	Kwaja Noorullah Khateef	How to grant filtering functionality for viewers/end-users on 'Input Control' enabled report blocks(Chart & Table) in web Intelligence reports without enabling the design mode'*NEW*
	SANDEEP SINHA	Dimensions as Input Control- Dynamic Control | SCN*NEW*

Designing

This section will help you designing the structure of your Web Intelligence document. You will be able to highlight your data into a Webi document well-designed with some best practices from experts.

Performance

Challenge accepted ! Once your document is complete and functionnal, think about performance. A well designed document is nothing for user if it opens in 10 minutes. So performance is the key to help users to understand the power of Web Intelligence. Jonathan Brown made a full document containing all tips for Optimizing the Performance of Web Intelligence Documents.Others related documents can be added to this table to find easily how to optimize performance.

One of the big challenge with SAP BusinessObjects on SAP landscape is to get best performances with Web Intelligence based on SAP BW using BICS (Business Intelligence Consumer Service) connection. @kurt.holst gave us a complete overview of best practices using Webi against SAP BW.

Sizing

Auditing

Following

The Web Intelligence Bulletin (this page) is a timely and regularly-updated information source providing links to hot issues, new documentation and upcoming events of interest to Web Intelligence Users and Administrators (extract from the Web Intelligence Bulletin - source : see below).

Additional ressources

You can see more things about Web Intelligence on space dedicated :

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence

Creating Extensions to SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-54507

And more official documentation on Help Portal at :

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.1 – SAP Help Portal Page

One more thing, if you want to index your entry with a "Webi trick", leave a comment and I'll add your link ASAP. I'll update this document frequently with new entries I'll find out on SCN.

Have fun !

Objective: Create column line chart using chart ‘Combined column Line chart with two Y-Axis’.

Introduction: To make different types of information in a chart, we need to combine two or more chart types in a chart like combine a column chart with a line chart to make the chart easier to understand.In SAP WEBI, ‘combined column Line chart with two Y-Axis’ is used to create columns and lines in a single chart. Many times business users want to display different types of data in single chart, For Example total Sales Vs Collection and their achievement.

Business Scenario: to understand and create column line chart we consider product wise Sales Target, Actual Sales and sales Ach% as raw data in excel sheet. Below is the data.

Now we have to create column line chart on above data, product wise Target and Actual Sales should be display in columns and Sales Ach% in line in a chart.

Step By Step Solution:

1) Open webi and create new document from excel, select excel file(contain above mentioned data)

2) Now we get query panel screen, refer below screen to design query and run query.

    3) Select ‘Insert chart’ and then more column charts.

4) Select ‘Combined column Line chart with two Y-Axis’ chart then OK.

5) Now we can drag and drop data object from available Object panel to chart directly or right click on chart and select ‘Assign Data’

6) In Assign Data screen, select product as ‘Category Axis’, Sales target and Sales Actual as Value Axis-1 and Sales Ach% as Value Axix-2 then OK

7) By default, it consider first value as column and further as line in chart, we can set columns and lines as per requirement by right click on chart and ‘format Chart’.

8) Select Measure properties under Global, and select region type as Bars for Sales Target and Sales Actual and then region type as Lines for Sales Ach%. Refer below screen shot.

9) Now we get report in desired format. We can change other chart setting like chart color, Legend color, Category Color and their fonts and position as per requirement via Format chart option.

Thanks,

Kashif Ali Khan

Tips for Optimizing the Performance of Web Intelligence Documents

Document History

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Introduction

Chapter 1 - Client Side Performance

TIP 1.1 - Use HTML Interface for Faster viewing/refreshing of Reports

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Below is a link to our Web Intelligence documentation page on our Support Portal.  Go to the End User Guides section to find the latest Webi User Guide documentation.

TIP 1.2 - Upgrade to BI 4.1 SP03+ for single JAR file Applet Interface

TIP 1.3 - Ensure Online Certificate Revocation Checks aren't slowing down your Applet Interface

TIP 1.4 - Make sure JRE Client Side Caching is working

TIP 1.5 - Ensure you are not running into these known JRE Security Change issues

TIP 1.6 - Choose the right client - Webi Rich Client vs HTML vs Applet Interfaces

• Best interface for report designers and power users who will be creating, modifying and doing advanced analysis of documents and data.
• This interface takes advantage of 64-bit backend servers and can generally handle larger amounts of data/calculations as it utilizes backend servers to do the heavy lifting.
• Since this is a Web Application, timeouts can occur when leaving the session idle or when carrying out long running actions.

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Webi Rich Client Interface

• This stateless interface has almost all of the features and functionality that the Applet interface does plus a few additional features of its own.  This should be used by advanced designers and power users that wish to have a stable design environment for larger documents
• Can be used with local data sources and some desktop type data sources such as Excel and Access
• Also can be used in 3-tier mode which takes advantage of backend servers for data retrieval

** TIP 1.7 - Hide the Left Panel to gain some time when opening documents

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Documents will open faster if hide the left panel for a document by default.  This is because it does not need to spend the extra time to render the different components that make up that left panel until they are needed.  This will give the end user a faster initial load time and will postpone the delay to the point they need to see that left panel.  If they never need to open the left panel, then that time is saved for the entire workflow!

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Note:  This does require the users to know how to find that panel again.  So some user training might be necessary.  This option is set Per User / Per Client as well so once a user minimizes this in a particular viewer, it should persist until they expand it again.

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As an added benefit, the users will see more of the report on initial view and will have to do less scrolling to see the whole width of the page.

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Here is where the option is:

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Be sure to save your document with it minimized to benefit from this tip

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Recommendation: Save your documents with the left panel minimized to help reduce the load time of a document.  Especially helpful for report consumers who will not be doing any modification of the documents.

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Chapter 2 - Process Best Practices

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TIP 2.1 - Schedule reports to save time and resources

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• Provides lower user wait times when implemented correctly
• Allows us to offload processing to non-peak times
• Can help reduce sizing requirements for concurrent users
• Reduces impact on Database during Peak times
• Can combine Instances with Report Linking to produce smaller, faster documents

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1. UserA logins to BI Launchpad and navigates to the "Monster Finance Report" document
2. UserA Views this document and clicks the refresh button to get the latest data
3. After about 2 minutes, UserA is not sure what is going on.  The report appears to be refreshing still, but given the fact that UserA is impatient, he suspects that the refresh has "hung" and closes the viewer.
4. UserA decides to test his luck and submit the request again.  This essentially creates a new request for the same data and potentially works against BOTH requests as they compete for resources on the BI servers and the database side.
5. After a few more minutes, UserA gives up and moves on.  Meanwhile he has no idea the amount of resources and time he's wasted in the background.

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• UserA Never got his report and had a bad experience
• Backend resources were wasted without any usable results

1. Educate your users to schedule anything that takes over 5 minutes to run
2. Encourage users to Schedule reports that they know they will need throughout the day to non-peak hours before their day begins
3. Schedule Documents to formats that you know your end users will want such as Excel, Text, or PDF.  This can save time and resources during the day
4. Utilize Publications when multiple users have different requirements for the same documents

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For more information on Scheduling Objects and Publications, see the below links

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DOC - BI 4.1 SP4 BI Launchpad User Guide - Chapter 7 - Scheduling Objects

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DOC - BI 4.1 SP4 BI Launchpad User Guide - Chapter 10-11 - Publications

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TIP 2.2 - Use the Retry options when Scheduling to Automate Retries

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Although this isn't really a true performance tip, I do find that it is a best practice that goes hand in hand with scheduling.  It often amazes me how many people are not aware of the Retry functionality within the Schedule (CMC Only) Dialog.  This feature allows you to configure your scheduled instances to retry X number of times and after X number of seconds if a failure occurs.

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Here is a screenshot of this option in BI 4.1

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TIP 2.3 - Use Instance Limits to help reduce the # of Instances in your environment

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This is another little known feature that you can use to help improve the performance of your system.  The feature is called Instance Limits and you can set it on a Folder or Object Level.

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The basic concept is that you can set limits on the # of instances a folder or object will keep.  If the limit is exceeded, the CMS will clean up the oldest instances to help reduce the amount of metadata and resources that is stored in the CMS database and on the Filestore disk.

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Here are the basic instructions on how to enable and set limits, as found in the CMC Help guide:

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Setting limits enables you to automatically delete report instances in the BI platform. The limits you set on a folder affect all objects in the folder.

At the folder level, you can set limits for:

• The number of instances for each object, user, or user group
• The number of days that instances are retained for a user or a group

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Steps to enable Instance Limits in the CMC

1. Go to the Folders management area of the CMC.
2. Locate and select the folder for which to set limits, and select Actions/Limits.
3. In the Limits dialog box, select the Delete excess instances when there are more than N instances of an object check box, and enter the maximum number of instances per object the folder can contain before instances are deleted in the box. The default value is 100.
4. Click Update.
5. To limit the number of instances per user or group, Click the Add button beside Delete excess instances for the following users/groups option.
6. Select a user or a group, click> to add the user or group to the Selected users/groups list, and click OK.
7. For each user or group you added in step 6, in the Maximum instance count per object per user box, type the maximum number of instances you want to appear in the BI platform. The default value is 100.
8. To limit the age of instances per user or group, click Add beside the Delete instances after N days for the following users/groups option.
9. Select a user or a group, click> to add the user or group to the Selected users/groups list, and click OK.
10. For each user or group you added in step 9, in the Maximum instance age in days box, type the maximum age for instances before they are removed from the BI platform. The default value is 100.
11. Click Update.

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Below is a screenshot of the dialog for your reference

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Once you have enabled Instance Limits, you will have better control over the size of your CMS and Input/Output FRS.  A bloated CMS database and Filestore can definitely contribute to a slower running BI system in general so having a handle on this can definitely help keep your system running at top speed.

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TIP 2.4 - Platform Search Tweaking for Performance

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Have you ever seen a bunch of resources (CPU/RAM) being used on your BI Platform server without any user activity?  If you have, this is most likely the Continuous Crawl feature of Platform Search doing a whole lot of indexing.

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What is Platform Search?

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Platform Search enables you to search content within the BI platform repository. It refines the search results by grouping them into categories and ranking them in order of their relevance.

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There is no doubt that Platform Search is a great feature!  It is just a factor that needs to be taken into consideration when sizing an environment for Performance.

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The below Administrators guide talks about this feature and how to configure it:

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DOC - BI Platform Administrators Guide (BI 4.1 SP4) - Chapter 22 - Platform Search

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When BI 4.0 first came out, support saw a lot of instances where customers were seeing performance degradation and resource issues on their system AFTER migrating the bulk of their content over to the new BI 4.0 system.

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After an extensive investigation, we discovered that in most of these cases, the issue was the Indexing of this "new" content that was added to the server.

So how does this affect performance?  How can adding new content to a BI 4.x system cause Processing Servers and other resources to spike up?

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Behind the scenes, the Platform Search application detects that there is new content that needs to be indexed and cataloged.  This means that for every new object (Webi Doc, Universe, Crystal Report, etc...) needs to be analyzed, cataloged and indexed by the Search Service.  To do this, The Platform Search Service, found on an Adaptive Processing Server, will utilize Processing Servers (Webi, Crystal, Etc...) to read the Report contents and generate an index that it can use to map search terms to the content.  Really cool functionality, but with large documents with lots of data, objects, keywords, etc... this can add a lot of overhead to the system.  Especially if a lot of new objects are added at once.

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By default the indexer is configured to Continuously Crawl the system and index the Metadata of the objects.  If you find this is taking up a lot of resources on your system then you may want to use the Schedule option to control when it runs.  Running indexing outside of regular business hours or peak times would provide you with the best performance

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Luckily we can configure the frequency and verbosity level used by the Indexer.  These options are discussed in Chapter 22 of the Administrators guide above.

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In short, be sure to keep Platform Search on your radar in case you have unexplained resource consumption on your server.

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More Info:

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KBA - 1640934 - How to safely use Platform Search Service in BI 4.0 without overloading the server?

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BLOG - What is the optimal configuration for Platform Search in BI 4.x? - By Simone Caneparo

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Chapter 3 - Report Design Best Practices

This chapter will discuss some Report Design Best Practices that can help you optimize your report for Performance.  These tips should be considered whenever a new report is being designed.  A lot of these can also be applied to existing reports with little effort.

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A compilation of Report Design Tips & Tricks, not necessarily related to performance, can also be found in the below document by William Marcy.  This is a great document and is a must see for anyone striving to design better reports.
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DOC - Webi 4.x Tricks - By William Marcy & various other contributors on SCN.

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TIP 3.1 - Steer Clear of Monster Webi Documents

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A "Monster Document" is a document that contains many large reports within in.  A Web Intelligence document can contain multiple Reports.  When we are referring to Reports, we mean the tabs at the bottom of a Webi document.  We often use the term Report to mean a Webi Document, but it is important to differentiate between the two.  A document can contain multiple reports.

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When creating a Document, we need to start with the actual Business Need for that document.  We can do this by asking the stakeholder questions like:

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1. What is the primary purpose of this document?
2. What question(s) does this document have to answer?
3. How many different consumers will be utilizing this document?
4. Can this document be split into multiple documents that service smaller, more specific needs?

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By asking questions like the above, we are drilling in on what the actual needs are and can use the answers to these questions to help eliminate waste.  If we build a Monster Document that accounts for every possible scenario that a consumer may want to look at, then we are potentially wasting a lot of time for both the document designer and the consumer.  For example, if only 10-20% of a large document is actually utilized by the consumer on a regular basis, then that means 80-90% of the document is waste.

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Once we know the Business Needs of the consumer, we can design a focused document that eliminates much of the waste.

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Below are a few recommended best practices to keep in mind when building a document:

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1. Avoid using a large number of Reports (tabs) within a Document
   1. 10 or less Reports is a reasonable number
   2. Exceeding 20 reports in a single document should be avoided
2. Creating smaller documents for specific business needs allows for faster runtime and analysis
   1. Utilize Report linking to join smaller documents together.  This is discussed more in TIP 3.2
   2. Aim to satisfy only 1-2 business needs per document.
3. Provide only the data required for the business need(s) of the Document
   1. 50.000 rows of data per document is a reasonable number
   2. Do not exceed 500.000 rows of data per document
4. Do not add additional Data Providers if not needed or beyond document needs
   1. 5 data providers is a reasonable number
   2. Do not Exceed 15 data providers per document

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There of course will be exceptions to the above recommendations but I urge you to investigate other ways of designing your documents if you find your document is growing too large.

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You will see the following benefits by creating smaller, reusable documents based only on the business needs of the consumers.

• Reduce the time it takes to load the document initially in the viewer/interface
  • Smaller documents will load quicker in the viewers.  This is because the resources needed to transfer the document and process it initially will be much less with smaller documents.
• Reduce the refresh time of the document.
  • The larger the document, the more time it will take to process the document during a refresh.  Once the report engine receives the data from the data providers, it has to render the report and perform complex calculations based on the document design.  Larger documents with many variables and large amounts of data can take much longer to render during a refresh.
• Reduce the system resources needed on the both the client side and the server side.
  • The resources needed to work with a large document are going to be much greater than those needed for smaller documents.  By reducing the size of your documents, you are potentially reducing the overall system resources, such as CPU, RAM, Disk space, that your system will consume on average.  This can equate to better throughput on your existing hardware.
• Improve performance while modifying the document
  • When modifying a large document, the client and server has to load the document structure and data into memory.  As you add/change/move objects in the reports, this causes client/server communication to occur.  This can slow down the designer as updates require reprocessing on any objects involved.  The more objects in a document, the longer each operation during a modify action can take.
• Improve performance for the consumer during adhoc query and analysis.
  • Slicing, dicing, filtering and drilling actions will perform quicker on smaller documents as well.  This will equate to faster response times to the consumers as they navigate and do detailed analysis on the documents

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TIP 3.2 - Utilize Report Linking Whenever Possible

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Report Linking is a great way to relate two documents together.  This can be an alternative to drilling down and allows the report designer better control over the size and performance of their documents.  Report Linking can be used to help reduce the size of single documents by allowing the designer to break out documents into smaller chunks while still allowing them to be related to each other.  This compliments the recommendation to steer clear of Monster Documents very nicely

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The concept of Report Linking is simple.  You basically embed a hyperlink into a document that calls another document.  This hyperlink can use data from the source report to provide prompt values to the destination report.  Below is an example that explains the concept

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• Sales_Summary is a summary report that summarizes the sales for all 100 sites of Company XYZ Inc.
• Sales_Summary has a hyperlink that allows a user to "drill into" a 2nd Report (Sales_Details) to get the sales details on any of the 100 sites.
• Sales_Summary is scheduled to run each night and take ~20 minutes to complete.
• Users can view the latest instance of Sales_Summary which takes only a few seconds to load.
• Users can drill down into Site Sales data for each of the 100 sites which launches Sales_Details report using Report Linking and a prompt value
• The prompt value filters the Sales_Details report using a Query Filter so that it only displays the sales details for the 1 site that the user drilled into.

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In the above scenario, we see many benefits

1. The Sales_Summary report only contains the Summary details.  Therefore it runs faster than if it contained both summary and detailed data
2. The Sales_Summary report is smaller and will load/navigate much quicker on its own
3. The User can drill down and get a much faster response time because the details report only contains the specific data that they are interested in

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The Web Intelligence User Guide covers this in more details in Section 5.1.3 - Linking to another document in the CMS

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DOC - Web Intelligence User Guide - BI 4.1 SP04 Direct Link  - Chapter 5 - Section 5.1.3

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The easiest way to generate these Hyperlinks is using the Hyperlink Wizard.  This Wizard is currently only available in the HTML Interface.  For manual creation of the hyperlinks, you will want to follow the OpenDocument guidelines available in the below link:

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DOC - Viewing Documents Using OpenDocument

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Here is a screenshot of the Wizard and where the button is on the toolbar.  It can be a little tricky to find if you haven't used it before:

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It is important to note that this can add a little more time to the planning and design phases of your Document creation process.  Properly implemented though, this can save your consumer a lot of waiting and will reduce the backend resources needed to fulfill requests

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When configuring a hyperlink using OpenDocument or the HTML Hyperlink Wizard, you can choose whether or not you want the report to refresh on open, or to open the latest instance.  Our recommendation is to use Latest Instance whenever possible.  This allows you to schedule the load on your database and backend processing server and will reduce the time it takes for the consumer to get their reports.

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TIP 3.3 - Avoid Autofit When not Required

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The Autofit functionality allows you to set a cell, table, cross-tab or chart to be resized automatically based on the data.  A cell for example, has the option to Autofit the Height and Width of the cell based on the data size.  The below screenshot shows this feature in the Applet Interface for a cell.

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This is a great feature for the presentation of the report but it can cause some performance delays when navigating through pages or generating a complete document.

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NOTE:  The default setting for a cell is to enable the Autofit height option.  This could impact the performance of your reports so it is important to no how this can affect performance.

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How does this affect performance of the report?
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When autofit is enabled for objects on a report, the Processing Server has to evaluate the data used in every instance of that object in order to determine the size of the object.  This means that in order to skip to a particular page of the report, the processing server would need to calculate the size for every object that comes before that page.  For example, if I have 100,000 rows of data in my report and I navigate to page 1000, then the processing server has to generate all of the pages leading up to page 1000 before it can display that page.  This is because the size of the objects on each page is dynamically linked to the rows of data so it is impossible to determine what rows will be on page 1000 without first calculating the size of the objects for each page preceding it.

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In short, this option adds a lot more work to the page generation piece of the report rendering process.  A fixed size for height and width allows the processing server to determine how many objects fit on each page and allows it to skip the generation process for pages that are not requested.

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For another example:  if I have 100,000 rows and have set my objects to fixed width/height, then the processing server knows that 50 rows will fit on each and every page.  If I request page 1000, it will know that the rows on that page will be rows 50,000 to 50,050.  It can then display that page with just those rows in it.  Way quicker than having to generate 999 pages first!

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As you can imagine, this mostly just affects reports that have many rows of data and have many pages.  If you have a report with only a few pages, it probably isn't worth looking at this option.  For larger, longer reports, it might be worth investigating.

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TIP 3.4 - Utilize Query Filters instead of Report Filters whenever possible

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A Query Filter is a filter that is added to the SQL Statement for a report.  Query Filters limit the data that is returned by the Database server itself by adding to the WHERE clause of the SQL Statement.

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A Report Filter is a filter that is applied at the Report Level and is only used to limit the data displayed on the report itself.  All of the data fetched from the Database is still available behind the scenes, but the report itself is only showing what is not filtered out.

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There is a time and a place for both Query Filters and Report Filters but understanding the differences between them is a good way to ensure that you are not causing unnecessary delays in your report rendering and refreshing.  It is best to predesign Query Filters in your Semantic Layer design but you can also add them manually using the Query Panel within Web Intelligence itself.

Chapter 4 - Semantic Layer Best Practices

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Most of the below Best Practices involve the Semantic Layer, or SL as we sometimes refer to it as.  These Best Practices can help you design faster running queries which can result in faster running Webi Docs.

TIP 4.1 - Only Merge Dimensions that are needed

TIP 4.2 - Build Universes & Queries for the Business Needs of the Document

TIP 4.3 - Array Fetch Size Optimizations

TIP 4.4 - Ensure Query Stripping is Enabled

1.  Enable "Allow query stripping" option at the Business Layer level in the Universe (UNX)

2.  In the Document Properties of the Webi Document

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3.  In the Query Properties

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It is best to double-check those 3 places when implementing Query Stripping.  If it is unchecked at any level, you may not be benefiting from the Query Stripping feature.

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There is also a way to tell if it is working.  With Query Stripping enabled, refresh your query and then go back in to the Query Panel and click the View SQL button.  You should see that only objects used in a block within the report are used.  In this example, I am only using 3 of the 6 objects in my report, so the query only selects those objects.

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You can see above that the SQL has been stripped of any unused objects and should run quicker as a result.

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For BICS based documents, Query Stripping is enabled by default.

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In summary, you will want to ensure your documents are utilizing Query Stripping to get better performance when refreshing queries.

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TIP 4.5 - Follow these Best Practices for  Performance Optimizing SAP BW (BICS) Reports

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There is a lot of great information contained in the below document.  It outlines many best practices for reporting off of SAP BW using the BICS connectivity.  Please review the below guide for more details on optimizing the performance of BICS based Reports.

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DOC - How to Performance Optimize SAP BusinessObjects Reports Based Upon SAP BW using BICS Connectivity

TIP 4.6 - Using Index-Awareness for Better Performance

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Index-Awareness is described in the Information Design Tool User guide in section 12.7 as:

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"Index awareness is the ability to take advantage of the indexes on key columns to improve query performance.

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The objects in the business layer are based on database columns that are meaningful for querying data. For example, a Customer object retrieves the value in the customer name column of the customer table. In many databases, the customer table has a primary key (for example an integer) to uniquely identify each customer. The key value is not meaningful for reporting, but it is important for database performance.

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When you set up index awareness, you define which database columns are primary and foreign keys for the dimensions and attributes in the business layer. The benefits of defining index awareness include the following:

• Joining and filtering on key columns are faster than on non-key columns.
• Fewer joins are needed in a query, therefore fewer tables are requested. For example, in a star schema database, if you build a query that involves filtering on a value in a dimension table, the query can apply the filter directly on the fact table by using the dimension table foreign key.
• Uniqueness in filters and lists of values is taken into account. For example, if two customers have the same name, the application retrieves only one customer unless it is aware that each customer has a separate primary key."

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Utilizing Index Awareness can help improve performance as key columns will be utilized behind the scenese in the queries to do faster lookups and linking on the database side.

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The Information Design Tool User Guide covers Index Awareness in the following chapters:

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DOC - Information Design Tool User Guide (BI 4.1 SP4) - Chapter 12

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TIP 4.7 - Using Aggregate Awareness for Performance

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Aggregate Awareness is described as the following in the IDT User Guide:

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"Aggregate awareness is the ability of a relational universe to take advantage of database tables that contain pre-aggregated data (aggregate tables). Setting up aggregate awareness accelerates queries by processing fewer facts and aggregating fewer rows.

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If an aggregate aware object is included in a query, at run time the query generator retrieves the data from the table with the highest aggregation level that matches the level of detail in the query.

For example, in a data foundation there is a fact table for sales with detail on the transaction level, and an aggregate table with sales summed by day. If a query asks for sales details, then the transaction table is used. If a query asks for sales per day, then the aggregate table is used. Which table is used is transparent to the user.

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Setting up aggregate awareness in the universe has several steps. See the related topic for more information"

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Utilizing the database to pre-aggregate data can help speed up the performance of your Webi documents.  This is because the Webi Processing Server will not have to do the aggregations locally and will only have to work with the aggregated data that is returned from the database side.

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Use Aggregate Awareness whenever it makes sense.

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TIP 4.8 - Utilizing JOIN_BY_SQL to avoid multiple queries

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The JOIN_BY_SQL parameter determines how the SQL Generation handles multiple SQL statements.  By default, SQL Statements are not combined and in some scenarios, performance gains can be realized by allowing the SQL Generation to combine multiple statements.

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The JOIN_BY_SQL parameter is found in the Information Design Tool in the Business Layer and/or Data Foundation.  Below is a screenshot of the parameter in its default state.

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By changing this Value to "Yes", you are instructing the SQL Generation process to use combined statements whenever possible.  This can result in faster query execution so it may be worth testing this option out on your universes/documents.

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TIP 4.9 - Security Considerations for the Semantic Layer

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There is no doubt that security is a necessity when dealing with sensitive data.  The purpose of this tip is to prompt you to review your security model and implementation to ensure it is as lean as it can be.  Performance can definitely be impacted, sometimes quite severely, by the complexity of the security model at both your Semantic Layer, and your BI Platform (Users and Groups) levels.

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As an example, I have worked on an incident recently where we were seeing roughly a 10-40% performance difference when opening a Webi document with the built in Administrator account vs another User Account.  On closer examination, the user was a member of over 70 groups and a good portion of the load time was spent on rights aggregation and look-ups.

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We also found that there were some inefficiencies in our code that could be optimized in future Support Packages/Minor Releases.  These should help improve performance for customers who may be unaware of the performance impacts their complex security model may be having.

.

So, some actions you may want to consider for this tip are:

.

1. Review your business requirements and reduce/remove any unnecessary Data/Business Layer Security profiles at the Universe level.
2. Consider using the Change State / "Hidden" option in the Business Layer for fields that you do not want any users to see.
3. Consider using Access Levels in the Business Layer to control which users have access to objects
4. Reduce the # of User Groups/Roles that your Users are apart of
5. Test performance with an Administrator User and compare it to a Restricted User to gauge the impact on Performance

.

TIP 4.10 - Try Using The UTF8 Charset For NLS_LANG Environment Variable (Oracle Specific)

.

In our internal testing, it was found that using the UTF8 charset was faster than using other charsets along with the NLS_LANG environment variable.  This affects only Oracle based connections and universes but there was about a 10-15% performance gain when the charset UTF8 was used vs others.

.

For example, you can try setting the Environment variable:

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NLS_LANG = AMERICAN_AMERICA.UTF8

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On the Web Intelligence Processing Server and Connection Server machines.  Ensure that you do this either as a System Environment Variable or for the User that is running the Server Intelligence Agent (SIA) on that node.

.

.

Chapter 5 - Formula & Calculation Engine Tips

TIP 5.1 -  Use Nested Sections with Conditions with caution

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A Nested section, or subsection as they are sometimes referred to, is a section within a section.  For example, you might have a Country Section and a Region section within it.  This would be considered a "Nested" section.  Nested sections can add overhead into the report rendering/processing time.  This is especially true when you add conditions to the section such as "Hide section when...".  This doesn't mean that you should not use Nested Sections, they are certainly useful for making a report look and feel the way you want it to but you should consider the performance impact before you heavily utilize nested sections within your documents.

.

Here is a example of 4 levels of nested sections from an eFashion based report

.

.

Here are the Format Section options that can affect performance when overused:

.

.

When using the conditions within Nested sections, the calculation engine needs to figure out which sections are displayed.  The more nested sections you have, the more overhead there is to figure out which levels of sections are actually visible.  Again, very useful in most cases but for reports with thousands of dimensions in the sections and conditions associated to them, this can impact the performance.

.

TIP 5.2 -  Use IN instead of ForEach and ForAll when possible

.

This tip came directly from our developers that work with the calculation engine.  Behind the scenes, the code is much more efficient when processing the IN context vs the ForEach or ForAll contexts.

.

The following Document is available on our help portal.  It covers using functions, formulas, calculations and contexts within a Webi document in more detail:

.

DOC - Using functions, formulas, and calculations in Web Intelligence (BI 4.1 SP3)

.

Section 4.3.1.1 covers the "IN" context operator with examples of how it works.  In short, the IN context operator specifies dimensions explicitly in a context.

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Section 4.3.1.2 and 4.3.1.3 cover the ForEach and ForAll context operators.  In short, these two functions allow you to modify the default context by including or excluding dimensions from the calculation context.

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In a lot of cases, IN can be used to achieve similar results to the ForEach and ForAll operators so if you suspect these are contributing to performance issues, try changing your formulas to use IN instead.

.

.

TIP 5.3 - Use IF...THEN...ELSE instead of Where operator when possible

.

In most cases, the IF/THEN/ELSE operators can be used instead of a Where Operator.  This is more efficient from a calculation engine perspective according to our developers.  If you ever suspect that the Where operator is causing performance degradation issues in your report, try swapping it for a IF statement if you can.

.

The following document discusses these operators in more details:

..

DOC - Using functions, formulas, and calculations in Web Intelligence (BI 4.1 SP3)

.

Section 6.2.4.14 covers the usage of the Where Operator and provides examples.

.

Section 6.1.10.11 covers the IF...Then...Else functionality

..

TIP 5.4 - Factorize (Reuse) Variables

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Factorizing variables essentially means to reuse them within other variables.  By doing this, you are reducing the number of calculations that the engine needs to do to calculate the results.

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Here is an example of what we mean when we say Factorizing variables:

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v_H1_Sales = Sum([Sales Revenue]) Where ([Quarter] InList("Q1";"Q2"))

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v_H2_Sales = Sum([Sales Revenue]) Where ([Quarter] InList("Q3";"Q4"))

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Now we reuse these two to get the Years sales (H1+H2 revenue combined)

.

v_Year_Sales = v_H1_Sales +v_H2_Sales

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By reusing variables, you are saving the time needed to recalculate values that have already been calculated.  The above is a simple example but applying the same logic to more complex calculations can save you some real time on the calculation side.

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** TIP 5.5 - Use BIG numbers sparingly

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SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform version 4.2 will include a new feature that allows the precision of numerical objects to be about 40 digits.  In BI 4.0/4.1, the precision was 15.  This is great if you are using very large numbers and will ensure more accurate rounding of these large numbers.  It does however have an impact on performance and memory.

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When using big numbers, it is important to remember that there will be a slight decrease in performance within the Web Intelligence Calculator and a slight increase in the memory required for each measure that is defined as a big number

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To check the type of a measure, you can right click it in the Available Objects panel and choose the "Change Type" option.  Number is the standard (15 digit) precision and Decimal is the new "Big Number" 40 digit precision.

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Recommendation:  Use this feature only when the precision of a number needs to be greater than 15 digits.  This will ensure your performance is not penalized for measures that do not benefit from this feature.

Chapter 6 - Sizing for Performance

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One of the keys to a faster performing report is proper sizing on the back-end components.  More often than not, we see systems that were originally sized correctly for "Day One" usage but have since outgrown the original sizing and are now experiencing performance issues due to resource and concurrency limits.  It is important to size your system for Today's usage as well as the usage for the near future.  It is equally important to have checkpoints a few times a year to ensure you are not outgrowing your original sizing estimates.

.

UPDATE: Ted Ueda has written a great blog that goes over some of these recommendations in greater detail.  Link below:
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BLOG - Revisit the Sizing for your deployment of BI 4.x Web Intelligence Processing Servers!

.

.The following tips will help you size your system for performance and may help you avoid some common mistakes we have seen in support.

..

Chapter 7 - Architectural Differences between XI 3.1 & BI 4.x

Chapter 8 - Performance Based Improvements / Enhancements

• Parallel Data Refresh coming in BI 4.2!
  

Hide dimention option is not working properly when we hide the break applied column using "hide dimension" option in webi 4.0

Problem Statement:

In webi 4.0, hiding a dimension of break applied column using the hide dimension option, impacts the break properties (Implicit sort gets applied even if disabled)

Break properties before hiding

Break properties after hiding using hide dimension option

Workaround:

Hide the dimension manually using masking options of white background, white text color and no border. 

Select the column --> Right Clik --> Click on Format cell --> Click on Font tab --> Select the font color as white.

                                                                                                   --> Click on Border tab --> remove the border                                                                                               

Hope this would be helpful.

Regards,

Amala.S

Challenge             : It has to take care to display the difference value between the dates which comes under leap and non leap year

Thump rule          : Its basic mathematical principle that we learned in our school.

                        a) Convert all the units of measurement (Time) into single unit of measurement

                        b) Which unit we should use: Year or Month or Week or Day or Hour or Min or Sec. We should choose the lowest unit of measurement of         time  i.e Second because difference between two date also involve difference between date of present year and next tear

Example :  31/12/2014 1:59:48 and 01/01/2015 00:00:20 format (DD/MM/YYYY)

Formula:

Below are the list of formula to convert the date value to the lowest unit of measurement i.e seconds:

Scenario : Lets assume to calculate the difference of two date value Dimension of Date data type that is "Current day and time" and "Contract End Time"

Logic :  Convert all time unit to Seconds as given in below and add up all the seconds value. We are not converting month to seconds directly, there is explanation given below * in Month->Days->Sec formula

             Seconds->Sec=> S*1

             Minutes - > Sec  =>M * 60

             Hours - > Sec =>H*3600

             Year->Sec=> Y*365*24*3600

             Month->Days->Sec :

             We should not take month unit directly instead we take it as days as each month has different number of Days

               a) First we need to find the "Current day and time" and "Contract End Time" is leap year or non leap year

                    Formula : If Mod([Year];4)=0 Then 29 Else 28

Current Date time to Seconds

Converting the Current day and time into seconds

1. v_Curr Year No   =Year([Current day and time])
2. v_Curr Year in Sec==[v_Curr Year No]*365*24*3600
3. v_Curr Mon No =MonthNumberOfYear([Current day and time])
4. v_Curr Day of Mon= DayNumberOfMonth([Current day and time])
5. v_Curr Feb Month=If Mod([v_Curr Year No];4)=0 Then 29 Else 28
6. v_Curr Days = =If [v_Curr Mon No]=1 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon] Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=2 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+31 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=3 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+31 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=4 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+62 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=5 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+92   Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=6 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+123 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=7 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+153 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=8 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+184 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=9 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+215 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=10 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+245 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=11 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+276 Else If [v_Curr Mon No]=12 Then [v_Curr Day of Mon]+[v_Feb Month]+306
7. v_Curr Days in Sec=[v_Curr Days]*24*3600
8. v_Current Hour =FormatDate([Current day and time];"HH")
9. v_Curr Hr in Sec=ToNumber([v_Current Hour])*3600
10. v_Current Minute =FormatDate([Current day and time];"mm")
11. v_Curr Min in Sec=ToNumber([v_Current Minute])*60
12. v_Current Second =FormatDate([Current day and time];"ss")
13. v_Curr Sec=ToNumber([v_Current Second])
14. v_Curr Total Secs =[v_Curr Year in Sec]+[v_Curr Days in Sec]+[v_Curr Hr in Sec]+[v_Curr Min in Sec]+[v_Curr Sec]

Contract Date time to Seconds

Converting the "Contract End Time" and time into seconds

1. v_ContEnd Year No=Year([Contract End Time])
2. v_ContEnd Year in Sec=[v_ContEnd Year No]*365*24*3600
3. v_ContEnd Mon No=MonthNumberOfYear([Contract End Time])
4. v_ContEnd Day of Mon= DayNumberOfMonth([Contract End Time])
5. v_ContEnd Feb Month=If Mod([v_ContEnd Year No];4)=0 Then 29 Else 28
6. v_ContEnd Days=If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=1 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon] Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=2 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+31 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=3 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+31 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=4 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+62 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=5 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+92 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=6 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+123 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=7 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+153 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=8 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+184 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=9 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+215 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=10 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+245 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=11 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+276 Else If [v_ContEnd Mon No]=12 Then [v_ContEnd Day of Mon]+[v_ContEnd Feb Month]+306
7. v_ContEnd Days in Sec=[v_ContEnd Days]*24*3600
8. v_ContEnd Hour=FormatDate([Contract End Time];"HH")
9. v_ContEnd Hr in Sec =ToNumber([v_ContEnd Hour])*3600
10. v_ContEnd Minute=FormatDate([Contract End Time];"mm")
11. v_ContEnd Min in Sec=ToNumber([v_ContEnd Minute])*60
12. v_ContEnd Second=FormatDate([Contract End Time];"ss")
13. v_ContEnd Sec=ToNumber([v_ContEnd Second])
14. v_ContEnd Total Secs =[v_ContEnd Year in Sec]+[v_ContEnd Days in Sec]+[v_ContEnd Hr in Sec]+[v_ContEnd Min in Sec]+[v_ContEnd Sec]60

Time difference between two date values = [v_ContEnd Total Secs]-[v_Curr Total Secs]

Where v_ContEnd Total Secs  greater than or equal to v_Curr Total Secs

The result value is in the unit of second

this document will collect scripts that performs actions (click an icon, disable elements and so on) in a WEBI doc, through Javascript.

In order any of the scripts to work, we´ll need to set the Webi preference (under BI Launch Pad view/modify to HTML.

Instructions

1 - Drop a blank cell onto the report,]

2 - Set the cell property Read As to HTML

3 - Copy and paste the text of the script (from <script> to </script>, included ) to the cells formula

The first two will be :

1 - Collapse the Left Panel

     <script>

     self.top.window[2].window[0]._widgets[77].clickCB();

   </script>

2 - Disable the Save button

     <script>

     self.top.window[2].window[0]._widgets[282].setDisabled(true)

   </script>

3 - Reseting ALL Input Controls in a Report

   <script>

     self.top.window[2].window[0].window[5].iFormResetAllCB()

   </script>

Comments and suggestions about actions to be performed will be highly appreciated.

Regards,

Rogerio

Earlier today I responded to the following discussion question...

Does anyone know how to create a webi prompts where the user must choose one or the other?

I have wanted to do this before, but I had never really dug into it. However, I had some time today so I decided to give it a try.

It is moderately complex and certainly not without its drawbacks which I will discuss at the end.

There are five basic steps...

1. Remove the criteria which involves the optional prompts from the primary query.
2. Create a secondary query with "dummy prompts".
3. Use custom query script on the secondary query.
4. Create variables in the report to capture the responses to the dummy prompts.
5. Create a variable related to those dummy prompt responses and filter on it.

In my example I am going to use a universe of mine that has Accounts and look at the Account Open Date and Account Closed Date dimensions against which I will in effect create optional parameters. The attached document has related screen shots.

1. Remove the criteria which involves the optional prompts from the primary query. I need to keep those dimension as Result Objects because I will need to filter on them in the report.
   
   
   
   
2. Next create a secondary query with "dummy prompts". It doesn't really matter what universe I use because I don't want to return any data anyway; we are just going to use the responses to the prompts. I actually just duplicated primary query and then added some criteria to ensure that I get no data. In my case that is Branch Number Less than 0. I then added two fields to prompt on. One could be either my Account Open Date or Account Closed Date. The other can be any dimension that is a string. I chose "Equal to" as the operator for both of them and make them prompts.
   
   
   
3. Now switch to "Use custom query script" just for this secondary query with the dummy prompts. I have to keep in mind that if I am using custom query script and I edit my query in any way my custom query script will be thrown away without warning and replaced by newly regenerated query script. I can always go make my changes again, but I need to remember to do that.
   
   To switch to use custom query script click on the "View Script" icon at the top of the Query Panel and choose the "Use custom query script" radio button. For the first prompt that corresponds to whatever date field you chose change the prompt text in first parameter of the @prompt function to make it generic. I made mine 'Enter Date:'...
   
   @prompt('Enter Date:','D','Account Attributes\Account Open Date',Mono,Free,Not_Persistent,,User:0)
   
   The parameters of the prompt function corresponding to the string field requires a little bit more modification. I need to change the prompt text again; I made mine 'Enter Date Dimension:'. The key here is to put the date dimension choices in the list of available values parameter. So instead of pulling the possible values from the underlying data I made mine {'Open Date','Closed Date'}.
   
   @prompt('Enter Date Dimension:','A',{'Open Date','Closed Date'},Mono,Constrained,Not_Persistent,,User:1)
   
   
   
   So I have created a secondary query that will return no data, but will prompt for a date value and to which date that value should apply.
   
   
   
   I hit "Run Queries". The query with the dummy prompts returns no data as expected.
   
   
4. Then create two variables to capture the response to the dummy prompts. Remember the UserResponse function always returns a string. My Date Prompt Response variable formula to capture the date looks like this...
   
   =ToDate(UserResponse("Enter Date:"); "M/d/yyyy hh:mm:ss a")
   
   
   
   And my Date Dimension Prompt Response variable formula to capture to which dimension that date should be applied looks like this...
   
   =UserResponse("Enter Date Dimension:")
   
   
   
   
5. Finally, create a variable based on those two variables which determines which date to filter on and whether the date entered matches. Here is my Date Comparison Flag variable formula...
   
   =If([Date Dimension Prompt Response]="Open Date"; If([Date Prompt Response]=[Account Open Date];1; 0); If([Date Prompt Response]=[Account Closed Date];1;0))
   
   
   
   Add a filter where Date Comparison Flag Equal to 1.
   
   

That's it!

I fully acknowledge there are a number of concerns about this approach. Here are a few of mine, you may have more...

1. The data is filtered in the report rather than the query resulting in potentially returning a lot more data than necessary and negatively impacting the performance of the report.
2. Using custom query script may be disabled in your organization. Also, if the query is edited in any way the query script gets regenerated and the customization is abandoned.
3. Although in effect this solution forces you to pick one and only one of two optional value they are not optional parameters making this potentially logically misleading.
   
4. I have not tried this approach with choose one value among a set of optional parameters where the values are not of the same data type. I think it could still be made to work, but I am not sure.
   

I know this is not a perfect solution, but I hope you can make it work for your situation or it give you an idea of something else to try.

Noel

Yesterday a built a fairly basic WebI report with two queries. In one of the queries I forced it to return no data (e.g. where 1 = 0) and used custom query script to create what I refer to as dummy prompts whose values I would use to specify one of three possible sort orders among other things. Everything worked great within WebI, but when I tried to schedule it I ran into problems.

When I tried to change the default parameter values I was allowed to do so, but when I clicked "Apply" the parameter dialog box would just pop right up again with the same default parameter values rather than what I just entered. It would do this again and again. The only way out was to click "Cancel". I tried purging the data in the report along with all parameter values. It still didn't work, same result.

About this time I realized I could probably run the report in WebI with whatever parameter values I wanted, save it and schedule it. And again. I actually need to schedule this report with 7 different sets of parameter values. While I am pretty sure that would have worked, I shouldn't have to. I should also mentioned that occasionally when attempting to schedule this report some of the current parameters would not be presented for values and an older parameter (from a previously saved iteration) that I had since deleted from the report would be presented for a value. One more thing, a coworker of mine at a different location was able to schedule this report just fine. I wanted to SCREAM!!!

We are running 4.1 SP01 Patch 2 in a multi-tiered load balanced environment. So we have two web servers and two application servers. So we suspected that he was getting a different server than I was and that was why it was working for him and not me. We decided to reboot the entire system (all four servers) last night after hours in the hopes that would fix it. No luck.

I decided to deconstruct and rebuild my report. I completely deleted the query with the custom query script and dummy prompts, saved the report and rebuilt that query and saved it again. It worked perfectly in WebI. However, now when I tried to schedule and update the parameter values I got an error...

Not on correct event type; expected START_ELEMENT, but was END_ELEMENT. (Error: INF )

I did some Googling and found nothing conclusive.

Up to this point I had been using the Java applet version of WebI (with Java 7.40) within Chrome. I tried loading the report and saving it from the HTML and Rich Desktop Client versions of WebI and continued to get the same error when trying to set the parameter values in the schedule.

My coworker suggested the report must have become corrupted somehow. Using the Rich Desktop Client I started over and rebuilt the report from scratch making it identical to the original including the query with the custom query script and dummy prompts. Now I am able to set the parameter values in the schedule as expected. I wish I knew what was wrong with the original, but I really don't. Thanks to my colleague's advice I have a working report and I am moving on.

Noel

Hi Developer,

This is Praveen kumar.I am having one question

Please provide the answer about create variable for current month in year

and current month in last year ....................

The following tutorials have been developed to help you get started using the Business Intelligence Suite products. New content is added as soon as it becomes available, so check back on a regular basis.

You can submit and vote on ideas for enhancements to this product.

Looking for eLearning for the rest of the Business Intelligence Suite? Go to sap.com/LearnBI.

The video versions of these tutorials on YouTube include optional text captions that can be translated into a number of languages. Watch here to learn how.

Key Concepts

• NEW for 4.1 SP6 What's new in Web Intelligence 4.1 SP6 (5:49)     interactive/ video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.1 SP5 (1:40)     interactive / video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.1 SP4 (1:10)     interactive / video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.1 SP3 (1:37)     interactive / video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.1 SP2 (3:02)     interactive / video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.1 (5:27)     interactive / video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.0 SP5 (2:04)     interactive / video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.0 Feature Pack 3 (4:20)     interactive/ video
• What's new in Web Intelligence 4.0 (6:25)     interactive /video
• Navigate the interface (6:24)     interactive /video
• Concept: Describe how the semantic layer works (1:35)     video

Getting Started

• NEW for 4.1 SP5  Scenario: Creating reports with tables, charts and images* (9:35)     video
• Create a query (1:24)     interactive /video
• Run and save a query (1:30)     interactive /video
• Edit a query (0:59)     interactive /video
• View or change the properties for a query (1:06)     interactive /video
• View the SQL or MDX script for a query (1:00)     interactive /video
• Set up preferences for the Web Intelligence Rich Client interface (1:01)     interactive /video
• View the properties of a document (1:20)     interactive /video
• Drag and drop objects to create a report (1:33)     interactive /video
• Duplicate a report object (1:19)     interactive /video
• Add a report to a document (0:40)     interactive /video
• Add a row or column in a table (0:56)     interactive /video
• View the metadata for objects (0:32)     interactive /video
• Publish a document to the repository (1:22)     interactive /video
• Save a document as other formats (1:51)     interactive /video
• Copy and paste content in Web Intelligence and other documents (2:01)     interactive /video

Connecting to Data Sources

• Add another query to a document (1:22)     interactive /video
• Change the data source on which a query is based (1:27)     interactive /video
• Create a query based on an Excel file (0:58)     interactive /video
• Combine multiple queries (2:20)     interactive /video
• Create a query within a query (1:48)     interactive /video
• Merge dimensions from different universes (1:47)     interactive /video
• Connect to a web service (2:15)     interactive/video
• Create a query based on an OLAP universe (1:45)     interactive /video
• Connect to a BEx query with hierarchical data (1:32)     interactive /video
• Connect to an Analysis view (1:11)     interactive /video
• 4.0 FP3  Work with scaled values in BEx queries (1:59)     interactive /video
• 4.0 FP3  Perform level or prompt member selection on hierarchical data (2:30)     interactive/ video
• 4.1  Work with hierarchy and hierarchy node variables in BEx queries (3:11)     interactive / video
• 4.1  Set up query stripping for an SAP HANA data source (2:40)     interactive / video

Working with Tables and Crosstabs

• Create a table (2:07)     interactive /video
• Change the layout of a table (1:24)     interactive /video
• Delete columns and rows from a table (1:05)     interactive /video

Working with Charts

• Create a chart (1:51)     interactive /video
• Turn a table into a chart (1:12)     interactive /video
• Create a chart for hierarchical data (1:22)     interactive /video
• 4.0 FP3  Create charts with hierarchical dimensions (1:31)    interactive / video
• 4.1  Set default chart series colors (1:34)     interactive / video
• 4.1 SP2  Format a data series in a chart (1:03)     interactive / video

Setting up Interactive Elements

• Add a hyperlink to a document (1:03)     interactive /video
• Create a link between documents (DHTML client) (1:33)     interactive /video
• Drill down into a table (2:48)     interactive /video
• Drill down into a chart (2:11)     interactive /video
• Fold and unfold sections in a document (1:09)     interactive /video
• Create an input control for a document (1:46)     interactive /video
• 4.0 FP3  Create an input control on a hierarchy (1:58)   interactive/ video

Selecting, Sorting, Grouping, and Summarizing Data

• Select a subset of data based on a predefined filter (1:00)     interactive /video
• Select a subset of data based on a custom filter (1:16)     interactive /video
• Remove a filter from a document (0:45)     interactive /video
• Create a prompt to select a subset of data (1:31)     interactive /video
• Select a subset of data based on multiple filters (2:17)     interactive /video
• Define the order in which multiple filters are applied (2:07)     interactive /video
• Create breaks between groups of data (0:55)     interactive /video
• Calculate totals and subtotals for data (1:10)     interactive /video
• Sort the data in a document (2:05)     interactive /video
• Change the order and format of breaks between groups of data (1:53)     interactive /video
• Select a subset of data in a report (0:59)     interactive /video
• Add a ranking to data (1:01)     interactive /video
• Divide a report into sections (1:22)     interactive /video
• Calculate totals and subtotals for sections in a report (1:08)     interactive /video
• Navigate a document using the Report Map pane (0:51)     interactive /video
• Set a filter on a section or a block in a document (1:53)     interactive /video
• Sort the sections in a document (0:56)     interactive /video
• Create a prompt for hierarchical data (1:24)     interactive /video
• Divide a report with hierarchical data into sections (1:01)     interactive /video
• 4.0 FP3   Apply simple and complex sorting (1:44)    interactive/ video
• 4.1 SP2  Group the values of a dimension (1:43)     interactive / video

Working with Formulas

• Create a formula to display a filter selection (1:48)     interactive /video
• Create a formula to calculate a value (1:22)     interactive /video
• Create a variable based on a formula (0:59)     interactive /video

Applying Formatting

• Add text to a document (0:59)     interactive /video
• Change the format of text or numbers in a document (0:54)     interactive /video
• Track changes to data (1:28)     interactive /video
• Conditionally format data based on defined thresholds (1:37)     interactive /video
• Add a background to a document (1:22)     interactive /video
• Add page numbers to a document (0:50)     interactive /video
• Change the formatting for a table (1:50)     interactive /video
• Change the formatting for a cell (2:21)     interactive /video
• Change the formatting for sections (1:59)     interactive /video
• Change the formatting for a chart  (5:04)     interactive /video
• 4.0 FP3  Modify the default style sheet (2:30)     interactive/video
• 4.0 FP3  Format charts (2:11)     interactive / video
• 4.1  Freeze header rows or columns (0:56)     interactive / video
• 4.1  Create a custom color palette (1:27)     interactive/video
  
• 4.1  Change the locale settings for right-to-left document or interface layout (2:25)     interactive / video

Creating Documents for SAP BusinessObjects Mobile

• Save documents for access in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (2:09)     interactive / video
• Format sparkline charts to display in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (2:05)     interactive / video
• Format trend or status icons to display in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (3:48)     interactive / video
• Format blank cells and images for SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (3:50)     interactive / video
• 4.0 SP4  Select charts for display in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (3:09)     interactive / video
• 4.0 SP4  Link report elements using input controls (1:58)     interactive / video
• 4.0 SP4  Format microcharts to display in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (2:23)     interactive / video
• 4.0 SP4  Format bullet charts to display in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (3:05)     interactive / video
• 4.0 SP4  Format geomaps to display in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (3:15)     interactive / video
• 4.1 SP3  Format geomap documents to display measure colors or conditional formatting in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (2:43)     interactive / video
• 4.1 SP3  Set a default view for a geomap document in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile (1:41)     interactive / video

* This tutorial follows the scenarios available in the "Getting Started with Web Intelligence" guide, available on the SAP Help Portal at help.sap.com/bowebi41/

To view the full Web Intelligence 4.0 playlist on Youtube, click here.

To report a technical issue with a tutorial, send an email to: BI_Suite_eLearning@sap.com.

Hi everyone,

I am pleased to share with you some tips on the advanced use of Web Intelligence. These few tutorials allow you to give more value to your existing documents or to come or just to give you ideas for your future designs.

All my tricks are just a focus on some capabilities of the application, if you want more details about what you're able to do with it, share your thought with me I'll be happy to talk about it.

All entries are ranked by difficulty and by authors because I spend a lot (lot, lot, lot) of time searching on SCN great tips on Web Intelligence and some good entries are unfortunaltely hidden...so it's time to raise your hands guys (and girls ).

Summary

Legend

Picture	Level	Description
	Level 1	Difficulty is very low. Easy to set up and you can turn easily your existing document into value-added report effortless
	Level 2	Difficulty is low. Use analysis tools to interact with your report and give extra value to your operational reporting.
	Level 3	Difficulty is medium. Some of features used are advanced features and you've to be familiar with Web Intelligence.
	Level 4	Difficulty is high. Damn, your Webi document is so interactive and so cool. Restless to show and share it with others !
	Level 5	Difficulty is extreme. How did he do that ? I've read 8 times the document and I still understand nothing.

Tricks

Difficulty	Author	Link to document
	Abhijit Ingale	WEBI 4.0 Trick - Creating Progress Bar
	Rakesh Pattani	BOBJ Trick To Display Table Data In Hierarchy Format
	Durgamadhab Mishra	Webi tricks : Selecting Top N customers by Sales Percentage using a Slider
	WILLIAM MARCY	Webi tricks : Interactive selecting and viewing TOPn data
	Abhijit Ingale	WEBI - Dynamic Line Chart driven by Input Control
	Harsha Ganapathy	Creating a Sparkline chart for IPad
	Neha Kumari	How to use formulae to change date and time formats in WebIntelligence
	Andreas Kaufmann	alternate row colors in a break
	Tauseef Ali Mir	Dynamic Variables using Input Control
	Nagavaibhav Elluru	Custom message to replace 'No Data in the query'
	Victor Gabriel Saiz Castillo	All you need to know about #TOREFRESH
	Michael Thompson	Webi tricks: How to build a butterfly chart
	Huu Nguyen	Linear & Polynomial Trend Lines in Webi
	Michael Thompson	Webi tricks: Bars embedded into rows
	Huu Nguyen	WebI Trick: Line chart to show running average for each year
	Harshil Joshi	Date Variables in Web Intelligence
	Huu Nguyen	WebI Trick: Top N data for any integer N using Entry field Input controls
	Tanav Gupta	How to Add Document links (Interlink WEBI reports) in SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence 4.0
	Sateesh Kumar	Show Trend Icon/Arrows in webi as per conditions
	Huu Nguyen	Conditional formatting based on User input
	Koen Hesters	Dynamic Visibility within a Webi Report
	David G	WebI trick: Create a SEARCH Input Control for your WebI report part!
	Sateesh Kumar	Dynamic Ageing Buckets in Webi
	Sujitha Grandhi	Dynamic Visibility - Input Controls with Ranking
	Jonathan Brown	Creating a Webi doc off of an unmanaged Excel data source on a network share
	Rakesh Pattani	Merging Charts in WebI
	Rogerio Plank	How to insert a Gauge chart inside a WEBI Document
	Selvarasan Subramanian	Dense Ranking in SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence
	Jordan Bishop	How to create a Speedometer inside of a Web Intelligence document
	Mahboob Mohammed	Secret Custom Format (for Date) in Webi
	swapnil bhootwala	String aggregation on WEBI report level.
	Rogerio Plank	How to set a WEBI document to autorefresh each n seconds
	Kwaja Noorullah Khateef	How to grant filtering functionality for viewers/end-users on 'Input Control' enabled report blocks(Chart & Table) in web Intelligence reports without enabling the design mode'*NEW*
	SANDEEP SINHA	Dimensions as Input Control- Dynamic Control | SCN*NEW*

Designing

This section will help you designing the structure of your Web Intelligence document. You will be able to highlight your data into a Webi document well-designed with some best practices from experts.

Performance

Challenge accepted ! Once your document is complete and functionnal, think about performance. A well designed document is nothing for user if it opens in 10 minutes. So performance is the key to help users to understand the power of Web Intelligence. Jonathan Brown made a full document containing all tips for Optimizing the Performance of Web Intelligence Documents.Others related documents can be added to this table to find easily how to optimize performance.

One of the big challenge with SAP BusinessObjects on SAP landscape is to get best performances with Web Intelligence based on SAP BW using BICS (Business Intelligence Consumer Service) connection. @kurt.holst gave us a complete overview of best practices using Webi against SAP BW.

Sizing

Auditing

Following

The Web Intelligence Bulletin (this page) is a timely and regularly-updated information source providing links to hot issues, new documentation and upcoming events of interest to Web Intelligence Users and Administrators (extract from the Web Intelligence Bulletin - source : see below).

Additional ressources

You can see more things about Web Intelligence on space dedicated :

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence

Creating Extensions to SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-54507

And more official documentation on Help Portal at :

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.1 – SAP Help Portal Page

One more thing, if you want to index your entry with a "Webi trick", leave a comment and I'll add your link ASAP. I'll update this document frequently with new entries I'll find out on SCN.

Have fun !

Objective: Create column line chart using chart ‘Combined column Line chart with two Y-Axis’.

Introduction: To make different types of information in a chart, we need to combine two or more chart types in a chart like combine a column chart with a line chart to make the chart easier to understand.In SAP WEBI, ‘combined column Line chart with two Y-Axis’ is used to create columns and lines in a single chart. Many times business users want to display different types of data in single chart, For Example total Sales Vs Collection and their achievement.

Business Scenario: to understand and create column line chart we consider product wise Sales Target, Actual Sales and sales Ach% as raw data in excel sheet. Below is the data.

Now we have to create column line chart on above data, product wise Target and Actual Sales should be display in columns and Sales Ach% in line in a chart.

Step By Step Solution:

1) Open webi and create new document from excel, select excel file(contain above mentioned data)

2) Now we get query panel screen, refer below screen to design query and run query.

    3) Select ‘Insert chart’ and then more column charts.

4) Select ‘Combined column Line chart with two Y-Axis’ chart then OK.

5) Now we can drag and drop data object from available Object panel to chart directly or right click on chart and select ‘Assign Data’

6) In Assign Data screen, select product as ‘Category Axis’, Sales target and Sales Actual as Value Axis-1 and Sales Ach% as Value Axix-2 then OK

7) By default, it consider first value as column and further as line in chart, we can set columns and lines as per requirement by right click on chart and ‘format Chart’.

8) Select Measure properties under Global, and select region type as Bars for Sales Target and Sales Actual and then region type as Lines for Sales Ach%. Refer below screen shot.

9) Now we get report in desired format. We can change other chart setting like chart color, Legend color, Category Color and their fonts and position as per requirement via Format chart option.

Thanks,

Kashif Ali Khan