SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook

Overview of this book

Xcelsius 2008 was recently included in SAP’s BusinessObjects 4.0 family, rebranding “Xcelsius Enterprise” as “SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0”. With features like flexible design and what-if scenarios, the powerful dashboarding software allows enterprises to make business decisions at a glance, and this book allows you to go far beyond the basics of these techniques. This cookbook full of practical and applicable recipes will enable you to use the full latest capabilities of Dashboard Design to visually transform your business data. A wide range of recipes will equip you with the knowledge and confidence to perform tasks like configuring charts, creating drill- downs, making component colors dynamic, using alerts in maps, building pop-up screens, setting up What-If scenarios, and many more.The recipes begin by covering best practices for using the Dashboard Design spreadsheet, the data-model, and the connection with the components on the canvas, later moving on to some from-the-trenches tricks for using Excel within Dashboard Design. The book then guides you through the exploration of various data visualization components and dashboard interactivity, as well as offering recipes on using alerts, dashboard connectivity, and making the most of the aesthetics of the dashboard. Finally, the recipes conclude by considering the most important add-ons available for Dashboard Design and enabling you to perform relevant and useful tasks straight away.

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook

Credits

Foreword

About the Authors

Acknowledgement

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Staying in Control

Introduction

Making the spreadsheet more readable with colors

Making the spreadsheet more readable with comments

Making the spreadsheet more readable using borders

Using named ranges

Selecting all worksheet cells with one click

Copying the formatting of one cell to another cell or range

Debugging your spreadsheets

Navigation between worksheets

Grouping the canvas components

Data Visualization

Introduction

Adding a line chart to your dashboard

Using the bullet chart

Using sparklines

Using the combination chart

Using the pie chart

Using the XY chart

Using the bubble chart

Using the radar chart

Using the OHLC chart and candlestick chart

Showing a trend without a chart

Displaying raw data

Illustrating single values

From a Static to an Interactive Dashboard

Introduction

Drilling down from a chart

Selecting your data from a list

Using the Filter Selector component for hierarchies

Alternative hierarchy selection method

Using Filtered Rows

Using maps to select data of an area or country

Adding a MacOSX loading dock to your dashboard

Resetting your data (reset button)

Making selections from a custom image (push button and image component)

Inputting data values

Using Play Selector/Play Control

Opening up a Web Intelligence report using dashboard parameters

Selecting calendar dates

Using sliders to create a what-if scenario

Dynamic Visibility

Introduction

Switching between different charts

Building a pop-up screen

Creating a mouse-over help text pop-up

Password protecting your dashboard

Using Alerts

Introduction

Adding alerts to a column chart

Using alerts in a gauge

Making alert ranges dynamic

Displaying alerts on a map

Displaying alerts of different thresholds on a map

Using bindable colors to control alert coloring from a central location

Using alerts in a scorecard

Advanced Components

Introduction

Printing your dashboard

Grouping and organizing components with the canvas container

Using dashboard scenarios

Using the grid component

Creating a slide show

Using the panel set component

Using the history component

Data insertion with the Source data component

Analyzing trends

Dashboard Look and Feel

Introduction

Changing the look of a chart

Adding a background to your dashboard

Using color schemes

Sharing a color scheme

Working with themes

Making component colors dynamic

Using the panel container

Using the tab set container

Making tables look pretty

Smart use of quadrants

Dashboard Connectivity

Introduction

Creating a news ticker with Excel XML Maps

Using Query as a WebService (QaaWS)

Using Live Office connection

Connecting to SAP BW

Using Universe queries

Passing values from dashboard to dashboard with Flash Variables

Accessing dashboards with live data outside of Infoview using CELogonToken

Exporting and Publishing

Introduction

Exporting to a standard SWF, PPT, PDF, and so on

Exporting to SAP Business Objects Enterprise

Publishing to SAP BW

Housing your dashboard in Dashboard Builder

Creating Adobe Air Applets from Dashboard Design dashboard

Top Third-Party Add-ons

Introduction

Managing add-ons in Dashboard Design

Connecting to CSV-files with the CSV-connector

Integrating Google Maps with the GMaps plugin

Connecting to Salesforce.com with DashConn

Transferring data between dashboards with Data Sharer

Presenting micro charts in a tree grid

Integrating Web Intelligence with Antivia XWIS

Real World Dashboard Case Studies

What-if scenario: mortgage calculator

Sales/profit dashboard example

Additional Resources—Supported Excel Functions and System/Software Requirements

Online resources

Supported Excel functions

System and software requirements

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

About the Reviewers

Charles Davies started his career in accountancy gaining qualifications as a Chartered Management Accountant, but always sat between the Accountancy and IT departments when building systems and reports.

From programming old SuperCalc spreadsheets for product costing purposes, to building statistical packages in MS Excel, to designing, building, and programming SAP Business Objects solutions to meet various reporting needs, Charles has always been challenging the reporting needs of businesses to ensure the reporting and dashboarding solutions meet those needs.

Charles has worked for large corporations in various industry sectors and is currently Director and Consultant of his own company Reportex Ltd., which provides SAP BusinessObjects and Dashboard Design solutions to clients in the United Kingdom and Europe.

Joshua Fletcher has worked with Business Intelligence applications for over 10 years, focusing primarily on the SAP BusinessObjects toolset. He started with Crystal Reports v8 at the beginning of his career, and is now fully certified in SAP BusinessObjects, as a Certified Professional in Enterprise XI 3.x, Data Integrator XI 3.x, Web Intelligence XI 3.x and Crystal Reports 2008, as well as working with the entire suite of SAP BusinessObjects, including many Xcelsius projects. He also has extensive experience in business analysis, dashboard design, data governance, business intelligence strategy and solution architecture, as well as a passion for data warehouse and ETL design and development. Joshua is currently employed as the SAP BusinessObjects Team Lead for CSG, a leading Australian SAP BusinessObjects Solutions Provider. When not working, he loves spending as much time as possible with his wife and son, keeping active at the gym, and playing squash.

Nargisse Skalante is a SAP BusinessObjects consultant in a multi-business group in Dubai, UAE. She combines a Masters' Degree in Information Technology and more than nine years of IT experience, including business intelligence. Throughout her career, Nargisse has had exposure to various business and functional domains namely finance, retail, and real estate. Nargisse has an extensive practice in producing innovative Xcelsius dashboards with WebIntelligence drill down reports. She also has a wide experience in integrating BusinessObjects with SAP.

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook

Overview of this book

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SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook

About the Reviewers