A company recently approached us with an interesting requirement concerning how to more efficiently distribute information about mobile phone usage to each of their hundreds of customers. The method they were currently using was manual and labor intensive as they were pulling information into Excel spreadsheets, creating graphs and then cutting and pasting into PowerPoint presentations that were emailed to their Account Managers who would present them to the various customers.

They had seen Xcelsius dashboards and were impressed by the dynamic visualization and felt this could make both an attractive and appealing way to present the information to their clients. However, they were faced with several challenges regarding automatically populating the dashboards initially and then automatically distributing them as standalone offline entities that could be used by both their Account Managers and clients without being connected back to the originating system.

They did not want to run separate jobs for each client to populate each dashboard. They wanted to run one job that would provide all the statistics for all customers and then split or burst that data by customer to feed each customer’s unique data into the same dashboard template. The amount of data that would be initially retrieved was large (many tens of thousands of rows) and even some of the individual customer dashboards had a fair amount of data (several thousand rows). Once the data had been burst for each customer it would need to be populated into the dashboard template, published as a shockwave file (SWF) and attached to an email that would need to be sent to the right group of people for each dashboard.

While this may seem like a tall order, the new InfoBurst solution was able to achieve all this relatively simply and quickly. InfoBurst is a scheduling, bursting and publishing solution for both Business Intelligence reports and dashboards . It has a built-in scheduler that can be either time or event based triggered. The event can be the result of a SQL statement which makes it very versatile for starting a job only when data has changed or other dependent events have occurred. InfoBurst can accept data from SQL, a Stored Procedure or a Business Intelligence query or report (Web Intelligence, Crystal, Desktop Intelligence, Microsoft Reporting Services etc.).

When handling Xcelsius dashboards, InfoBurst uses unique mechanisms for both ‘OFFLINE’ and ‘CONNECTED’ distribution requirements.

For a ‘CONNECTED’ scenario, the Cache can be accessed from the Xcelsius dashboard in a variety of ways so that only the data required for a particular component of the dashboard is retrieved when required. We provide a number of components that we collectively call ‘INTELLIGENT CACHE’. The CACHE QUERY mechanism in InfoBurst allows you to use the full power and capability of SQL to selectively retrieve, aggregate and sort the data required for your Xcelsius dashboard from the Cache. The CROSSTAB mechanism allows you to generate crosstab tables in advance or on-demand. The FLIP mechanism allows you to PIVOT an existing Crosstab, switching the X and Y axis data. These features save an enormous amount of time and effort over other methods of pulling data into an Xcelsius dashboard and it’s fast! For ultimate flexibility, it is possible to have multiple caches and to populate a cache with data from multiple data sources.

For an ‘OFFLINE’ scenario, InfoBurst is able to create and manage separate ranges within the Cache, and Burst these ranges to a common Dashboard, embedding the data inside of the SWF file and delivering the same Xcelsius dashboard with different data for each individual client.

InfoBurst also has intelligent distribution capabilities where it can read from an LDAP compliant address book, a database table or an Excel spreadsheet to select the relevant email addresses or target destinations for the dashboard or report. Since this customer required the offline dashboards to be sent via email , the information was read from a database table containing all the individual’s information and is able to determine the customer name and criteria and select just the email address for the relevant recipients.

This company is now using InfoBurst to distribute offline Xcelsius dashboards automatically , intelligently and swiftly to its customers and is saving a lot of time and money in the process.

For more information or a free demonstration and trial on InfoBurst visit www.infosol.com/infoburst

Hands-on immersion training can be tough but when your classroom looks out on to the Pacific Ocean of Southern California and during the breaks you can walk out on to the balcony and watch surfers riding the waves, it’s not so bad.

IBIS 2010 Beach view

This year’s InfoSol Business Intelligence Seminar (IBIS) was just packed with high quality and in-depth boot camps and seminars covering Xcelsius, Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, Data Services, BO XI 3.1 Administration and lots more. It was also located at the beautiful Ritz Carlton, Dana Point on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean which was the perfect remedy after a day of absorbing tons of knowledge.

The Welcome reception on Sunday night, entitled “Seeing Beyond Business Intelligence” was set in the Solutions Showcase area where sponsors demonstrated and discussed some of their latest business intelligence solutions.  I delivered the keynote the following morning on the same “Seeing Beyond” theme and highlighted some interesting business intelligence customer case studies.  The keynote on the Tuesday from Santiago Becerra, CEO of Mellmo, was quite fascinating as he took the audience through “the Evolution of Think” and cleverly demonstrated how putting fun into regular tasks can change people’s habits as well as their adoption of solutions. Showing Roambi, the latest business intelligence solution for the iPad, really brought the point home well.

The 2010 Best Xcelsius Awards demonstrated how far many companies have come in applying Xcelsius in very complex and powerful applications and inspired many others to go even further so I would watch out for next year’s awards.

I had the opportunity to meet with many people during the event and dive into some great discussions on both existing challenges in various BI implementations as well as future directions. In general, it appeared that most companies lag about 3 to 5 years behind the latest releases of SAP BusinessObjects and other BI solutions. Occasionally there is some critical new functionality that will compel a company to adopt a new release sooner but that tends to be the exception to the rule.  Many customers expressed that having reliability, stability and consistent performance are more important than most new functionality. Some of the newer solutions like Xcelsius dashboards and Roambi mobile business intelligence appear to circumnavigate this pattern since they can often be deployed and highly effective outside of the main business intelligence and production applications. A further big factor here is cost as many companies are more hesitant, due in part to the recent global recession, to spend large amounts of time and money on new software until they have conclusively proven a solid return on investment. For this reason incremental software purchases and pilot projects have become very popular in the BI space.

This was evident at IBIS as customers expressed a lot of interest in Xcelsius, XDM, Roambi, XWIS, GMaps, 360View, Version Manager and SAP BO EDGE solutions for very specific business issues and needs.

All in all, IBIS 2010 was a great BI gathering and information exchange and continues to grow in popularity. A couple of lucky attendees won iPads and a couple of not-so-lucky attendees dropped their phones in the ocean, but judging by the feedback everyone can’t wait to do it again.

Here are a few of the comments received back on IBIS 2010 :

“The IBIS conference was terrific this year.  I can’t wait to incorporate write-backs into our dashboards, and InfoBurst 2009 with dashboard bursting opens new doors for delivering customer information.  I also really enjoyed Aluchemie’s customer demo with all of their challenges they had to overcome!”

Kim Marshall, Waldinger Corporation

“I wanted to commend you and your team on the wonderful seminar.  My colleagues are very enthusiastic about their boot camp and the knowledgeable instructors they have met. You and your team have been wonderful throughout the past few days and everyone’s terrific attitudes have made the seminar a great success”

Melinda Dennis, Aluchemie

When asked, “What was the best part of the seminar for you?”, here are some of the responses :

“User Panel – excellent recognition of organizations with creative solutions”

“The class time. The first time I have ever been to a seminar where I was asked right from the beginning to reverse engineer an example”

“ The chance to talk and network with pros, find out what SAP doesn’t tell you about the product and get the best practices from people who have been in the trenches”

“…invaluable talking with other companies and knowledge sharing”

“… the workshops were excellent and very exercise intense so there was no boredom factor”

“Meeting with other users of the tools – It is a great way to get new ideas”

“The tips on real life best practices were extremely valuable – something that you cannot always get from other conferences”

“Size of the event led to good instruction and interaction”

“The training far surpasses any other training in the BI field. InfoSol has created a habitat for intensive training efforts at an economical price”

“The fact that I am learning things that are actually going to help me solve current problems – which also helps me sleep better at night”

InfoSol will be a Diamond Sponsor at the 2010 ASUG SAP BusinessObjects User Conference to be held in Orlando. Florida October 5-7.  The conference is expected to draw an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 BusinessObjects users.

InfoSol will be leading two session tracks during the conference : one highlighting Xcelsius Customer Case Studies and the other highlighting the next generation of BI report and dashboard publishing.  We have also been invited to participate as one of the selected Xcelsius Guru companies in an Xcelsius Gurus event at the conference.

InfoSol will be highlighting many of its value add solutions including InfoBurst and 360View. Several InfoSol partners are also sponsoring and exhibiting including Mellmo the developers of Roambi and Antivia the developers of XWIS.

Be sure to stop by the InfoSol booth (#404) to say hello and enter for our raffle to win an iPad.

2012-05-21 – Post Updated – will redirect to new InfoBurst Landing Page

A few weeks ago I was participating in a career event at a State University where undergraduate students from both Business and I.T. schools were looking for internships with local businesses.  As they stopped by the InfoSol table, the number one question was “What do we do?”  This gave me the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite topics – Business Intelligence.  While most of them had heard of, or even studied, Business Intelligence as part of their courses, few appeared to understand its significance.

The table next to us was a major airline company and I used them as an example, citing that in the recent economic downturn, airlines had to make some tough choices in terms of reducing costs.  They needed to know which aircraft cost the most to maintain and which routes were the least profitable.   That information allowed them to make informed decisions about reducing aircraft and routes with minimal impact to their business and their customers.

I could see the lights go on in their young faces which encouraged me to tell my current favorite Business Intelligence story.

At last year’s InfoSol Business Intelligence Seminar (IBIS 2010), one of the winners of the prestigious Xcelsius Dashboard Awards was a manufacturing company from the Netherlands.  They explained that they were deploying a new manufacturing execution system and wanted to provide some engaging and compelling business intelligence from this system to both encourage usage and provide useful information that was previously unavailable across the company.  They decided to create a business intelligence user interface using Xcelsius.  It would provide in excess of 120 different metrics, deployed graphically and dynamically, about the different production line processes broken down to individual shift level.  The dashboard was dynamically refreshed through the unique intelligent caching mechanism from InfoSol and the impact of this application exceeded the expectations of this company.  For the first time, production, and issues encountered on the production line, was viewed by the entire company and the results were quite revealing.  The dashboard showed that one particular shift was measurably behind all the other shifts.  Since this was visible throughout the company, the workers on this particular shift felt they needed to do something about this and took it upon themselves to correct the issues and improve productivity so that they were on pace to do better than the other shifts. 

What a totally amazing side effect, but one that truly exemplifies not just the power, but the inspiration that can be derived from Business Intelligence.  It was with this example in mind that the theme of this year’s IBIS event “Inspiring Business Intelligence” was born.  There are so many fascinating and inspiring business intelligence stories like this and IBIS 2011 will be based on sharing some of these stories as well as offering an incredible line up of immersion boot camps, executive seminars, training workshops and specialized certification programs. 

IBIS is unique in so many ways as it goes beyond the regular SAP BusinessObjects training to teach best practices that go beyond the conventional ways of designing, developing and applying business intelligence.  The individuals leading these boot camps, seminars and workshops are not just teachers; they are highly experienced consultants, mentors and gurus in their field.

The knowledge transfer that occurs at IBIS is intense and the opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences unparalleled.

IBIS 2011 features hands-on immersion boot camps in Xcelsius, Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports and Xcelsius Data Caching.  The executive seminars cover best practices for success in business Intelligence projects, what’s new on BusinessObjects XI 4.0, and emerging business intelligence tools and technologies.  The main seminar is three full days and the registration is fully inclusive of four nights accommodations at the jaw dropping Ritz Carlton Laguna Niguel on the southern California coast (inspirational in itself!).

New to IBIS this year are some very special certified boot camps which will be held on the Thursday and Friday directly after the main event.  These include the renowned FleXcelsius course from Centigon Solutions, teaching you how to create your own Flex components for Xcelsius.  The Roambi Black Belt certification and the InfoBurst Certified Expert (ICE) boot camps will also be offered. 

Most importantly, there will be the coveted Best Xcelsius Dashboard Awards, which are quickly becoming legendary.  The awards are open to everyone and the deadline for submitting your inspirational dashboard entry is April 15^th.  You can enter your dashboard in one of the following four categories:

-          Best Business Dashboard

-          Most Innovative Dashboard

-          Most Valuable Dashboard

-          Most Xcellent Dashboard

To submit your dashboard entry, click here.

I know that some of the students who stopped by our table left inspired by what they heard about business intelligence just based on the slew of follow-up enquiries.  In fact we have invited two interns to join us starting today. 

I also know that anyone attending IBIS 2011 will undoubtedly leave more inspired about business intelligence than before they came – don’t miss out!

Register today – Early registration discount expires March 31^st.

I love those commercials for “Fresh and Easy” supermarkets where they use actual customers to talk about their products and explain they do this to save money on expensive actors and actresses and pass on those savings to help keep their products at such great prices.

Now, this may or may not be true but what I love is the concept of real customers talking about and promoting your products. I always enjoy attending sessions at conferences where customers present and talk about how they are using a product because they tend to tell it as it is – both the good and the bad.

So I was really excited when I recently heard about a webinar on Xcelsius and what’s new in the BOE 4.0 release. While the new features were being presented by representatives from the SAP Product group responsible for Xcelsius, there was also a lot of dialog going on in the Chat Window between the two hundred or so participants.

Someone asked the question about being able to burst and publish with Xcelsius. Within literally seconds, a customer by the name of Mike responded with:

“InfoBurst can burst Xcelsius already and is working with XI 3.1”.

A few seconds later, another customer, Gabe, chimed in:

“Yes and it can also imbed a xlf in an in-line html email”

Mike then added more:

“We had a need to burst to 3,000 sales reps their commissions, so we use InfoBurst”

Yet another customer, Jeanine, now entered the conversation:

“We use the InfoBurst and utilize the xml features – schedule Webi report to run at 3am, creates xml files, use the data connector in Xcelsius to pull the xml and publish the dashboard to InfoView.  Info on demand!”

Another user, Mark, was interested by Jeanine’s comment and asked:

“How many manual steps do you have in that process vs. automated…?”

Jeanine responded:

“Just the setup is intense but haven’t touched it in over 6 months – runs daily for a 300 user base.”

The neat thing about this entire dialog was that it was open, honest and no vendor was involved in any of the exchanges yet it is more valuable in promoting and marketing InfoBurst with its Xcelsius Data Caching and dashboard bursting capabilities than any conventional sales or marketing promotion.

There have been a lot of enquiries since this webinar regarding how InfoBurst and Xcelsius Data Caching can improve connected dashboard performance, manage large amounts of data in Xcelsius applications and burst offline dashboards so, we figure the customer driven marketing really works.  Fresh and Easy must know that too because those commercials keep coming!

Special thanks to Mike, Gabe, Jeanine and Mark for your great input – this blog is dedicated to you!

Disclaimer: fresh & easy Neighborhood Markets is a copyrighted trademark and the use of the name in this blog is purely to give credit that this blog post was inspired by the concept of their radio commercials.  Some of our employees shop there and that is the extent of our relationship.

From the cobblestone streets of The Netherlands, to the beaches of Australia, to the exotic sands of Oman, Xcelsius knows no borders, has no hidden political agenda, but offers innovative business solutions for a diverse range of customers around the world.  Little did I know when I started using Xcelsius 5 years ago that I would have the opportunity to travel around the world providing exciting dashboard solutions in such interesting locations. 

My most recent opportunity was spending a month in the exciting country of Oman, which, despite the recent unrest in the Middle East, proved to be a welcoming, progressive and abundantly interesting country.  Apart from the opportunity to explore this part of the world, it also proved to be an exciting work project, as the dashboards I developed for my customer there included several innovative solutions. 

Upon arrival, I found that the customer had 52 KPIs that were being tracked weekly & monthly in over 60 different Excel spreadsheets, maintained by dozens of people in various locations.  The solution we put together for the customer allowed them to begin maintaining all the KPIs in a database (as it should be), by using InfoBurst to write back values to a database table.  Using Xcelsius as a data entry tool, we created two different dashboards for entering metric values which, with the push of a button, ran update queries back to our database table, which immediately refreshed and presented the data in the main dashboard for the General Managers to view.  This solution provided a new precedence for accountability and consistency across the board.

 There were two additional innovations to this solution which I am excited about.  Both of these involved automatically emailing a mini dashboard as an Event based Alert.  The first mini dashboard was emailed to the project team if a user modified one of the KPI targets.  Key users were allowed to change a target, but the team wanted to be aware when this happened.  Using InfoBurst, we created a query based event that checked every 30 minutes for a condition to be true (a target change).  Whenever that condition is true, InfoBurst initiates a burst of a mini dashboard (.swf file) to the project team, with the following information:

·         Which KPI target was changed

·         What is the new KPI target value

·         Who changed the target

·         What time did this change occur

The second innovative Alert notification mini dashboard involved the time sensitive nature of getting all the KPIs entered by given dates.  Schedules were created in InfoBurst to query for any KPI’s that had not been entered by noon on the first day of the week.  This initiated an email Alert burst of a mini dashboard to the appropriate person responsible for updating the missing KPIs.  A second schedule ran 4 hrs later and emailed the Alert mini dashboard to BOTH the responsible party AND their manager!  This process ensured accountability for getting these Key Performance Indicators entered in a timely fashion for all the General Managers to be able to review in their meetings the following days.

I foresee exciting possibilities that this solution opens up for other customers as well.  Imagine being able to automatically email a dashboard to the VP of Finance when Sales Revenue  falls below a certain level, or ….  Think of the possibilities!

It’s not just that Xcelsius is going places globally but wherever it goes, it is creating new Business Intelligence applications that are slowly but surely changing the world.  

I was recently asked this question on how best to handle a 13 month dataset when in the dashboard the goal is to only display monthly detail and summary data.  This is a good question and in my opinion worth sharing here because it is dealing with boosting Xcelsius backend performance.

Question:  Working with a data set consisting of 13months of data with one row for each day (so max 380 rows) and needing to show only monthly detail/summary data in the dashboard, which of the following would you consider to be the better approach to yield the best performance?

1.  Pull 380 rows in cache with date in one column -> pass STARTDATE and ENDDATE from the dashboard and pull every month’s data by writing a cache query.   When the user selects a month for display in the dashboard, Excel will calculate the start and end date of the month and pass those to the cache query with a WHERE clause specifying BETWEEN ‘@STARTDATE’ and ‘@ENDDATE’

Or,

2.  Load 380 rows in the dashboard Excel backend -> calculate the month from the date column within Excel then use a hidden filter to filter the month’s row based on the calculated month in the previous step and calculate the sum and average within excel?

Answer:  As a general rule, if the data set is 200 rows or less, I would say to go with Option 2.  If it is more than 200 rows, I would say you will get better performance with the cache query.  Of course, this also depends on the cumulative total # of rows being loaded into the dashboard.  For example, if you are planning on adding 10+ additional 200 row data sets, then I would definitely go with Option #1.

With too much data in the backend, Xcelsius performance suffers.    InfoBurst allows us to cache a large set of data, and then use a Cache Query to extract just the portion we need to view on the dashboard, as the user makes selections.  This is a tremendous help to the developer who wants to boost Xcelsius dashboard performance.

UK based SAP BO partner, Blueprint Management Systems, will host a test drive of the latest InfoBurst Enterprise solution at its London HQ on April 19.

InfoBurst enables Xcelsius dashboards to handle large amounts of data with fast performance using its powerful XML data caching capability and to deliver those dashboards both connected and off-line to a variety of destinations including mobile devices like iPads and Androids. Some of the InfoBurst Xcelsius features include :

• An XML data cache able to support millions of rows of data for fast access from Xcelsius dashboards
• A write back connector for Xcelsius allowing write back from the dashboard to any database
• A “Save as Excel” function enabling the dashboard contents to be saved in Excel
• Creation , customized bursting and intelligent delivery of offline dashboards

http://www.bpms.co.uk/events/infoburst-test-drive—19th-april.aspx

Excerpt: Infoburst Test Drive – 19th April
blueprint uk performance management, financial planning & budgeting, business intelligence and data warehousing services allow clients to visualise and control the processes that directly affect success with professional…

Here is a sneak-peak of the InfoBurst® API to be presented in the Report Bursting, Scheduling, Delivery & Administration track in InfoBurst User Conference – IBIS 2013.

Over 5 years ago we started to think about a new InfoBurst.  One that would take the years of experience that we’ve gathered since InfoBurst launched, and re-think the core architecture for speed, scalability, and flexibility.  Many of our customers wanted to be able to fire off bursts and control XDMs from other applications and processes.  At the time, we did have limited ability in InfoBurst, but never anything granular.  So from Day 1, we architected InfoBurst Enterprise with the mindset to really unlock InfoBurst’s potential.  That was when the application programming interface for InfoBurst was born.  For the first time at the InfoBurst User Conference, we are excited to be giving an overview of the application programming interface (API).  Then you too can imagine what can be done by unlocking the power of InfoBurst Enterprise.

So what can be done with the InfoBurst Enterprise API exactly?  Everything!  The entire product feature suite is exposed over the API.  The current flash based user interface makes SOAP calls to the server to perform all of the interactions.  Also we have IBShell console application that also leverages the same SOAP calls.  This means customers can integrate InfoBurst Enterprise into their existing internal software to take their InfoBurst Enterprise implementation to the next level.

How easy is it?  Well, it’s actually fairly simple.  Majority of the calls will require an authentication token.  To get one, simply use the GetLogonToken soap command with a valid username and password for InfoBurst Enterprise.  Then you can execute various other commands under the security context of the token.  So we’ve logged into the system, but what do we do if we wanted to execute a burst?  All you’ll need is the burst ID to execute the Burst_Execute command.  You can get an ID number for a burst in various ways.  You can “browse” through the folder structures until you come upon the burst.  But most commonly for quick integration you can leverage our GetObjectInfoByTypeAndPath to translate the path of the burst to it’s ID number.

During the presentation we will be diving in much deeper, going over the “ins and outs” of the API.  We’ll be going over the basic security model, Client/Server programming considerations, storing user specific settings, as well as considerations when working with the complex objects of InfoBurst, bursts and xml data caches and much more!

That’s it for now on this sneak-peak.  I hope to put something up later on about the IBShell presentation as well along with the other talks I’ll be hosting.  I’m very excited for our first ever InfoBurst User Conference.  Not only will this topic be discussed, but many more in a very open format.  Check it our on our InfoBurst User Conference webpage.  I’ll be looking forward to seeing you there!  You can register for the InfoBurst User Conference online just by clicking on the “Register” button at limitlessbi.com.

Here is a sneak-peek of the InfoBurst® Shell to be presented in the Report Bursting, Scheduling, Delivery & Administration track in InfoBurst User Conference – IBIS 2013.

Welcome back to the second part of my sneak peak for the my InfoBurst API and Shell talk.  We last talked a little about the InfoBust API and how it’s leveraged in our product user interface.  Well, there’s another interface that was build for more administrative, debugging, and management purposes.  This is the IBShell, or sometimes referred to as just “the Shell”.  This utility was actually born with the function of simply testing each new API function as they came out.  But then it became apparent that we needed to blow away and rebuild our name times over during our initial alpha phase.  It was then that IBShell scripting was born.  We build scripts that enabled us to quickly reset our repository.  And actually, I still use those same scripts regularly.  So, What can be done with InfoBurst Enterprise‘s IBShell utility?  I’ll go over some of the things that you can do in this sneak-peak.

Commonly the shell is used for debugging purposes and adjusting InfoBurst settings.  But you can do other things too like modify objects in InfoBurst, adjust processing queues to increase the simultaneous workload InfoBurst can perform, and even manage users’ logon sessions.  To start IBShell you’ll need to open a command prompt in the InfoBurst Enterprise program files directory.  Then, just  type “ibshell” and it will start up. Now that we have that running, how about we get into some examples?

First thing you’ll always need to do is connect to the InfoBurst Enterprise Server.  This is done with the “connect” command.  Executing just the “connect” command will use it’s default values.  So it will connect using the local machine name and use the default soap port.  You can adjust the port by using the “port” parameter.

> connect port=8080

You can also target other InfoBurst Enterprise environments, say a development or production environment, by using the “server” parameter.

> connect server=full.server.name"

Once you’ve connected then you’ll need to get a token.  As you may have remembered from the InfoBurst API sneak peek an authentication token is always needed so the commands you execute fall into a security context.  To do this we will need to use the “get token” command.  The shell does support some interactivity when required parameters are not provided.  Here’s an example of what it could look like for the get token command.

> get token
Enter Value for 'user' : admin
Enter Value for 'password' : *****
* OK
>

Now that we have a token we can do a whole lot of different things.  Commonly a support technician might as for your configuration options, to get those simply type “list config” (example output has been truncated).

> list config
  # Items = 80
  AccessTokenTimeout             : 20
  AddEmailDisclaimer             : False
  AdminPassword                  : *****
  AdminServicePort               : 8552
  ADSyncEvery                    : 15
  ADSyncGroup                    :
  AllowRepoSwitchWhileRunning    : False
  AndroidPackagePrefix           : com.mycompany
  AuthMode                       : AuthIB
  ...

You can list other things as well using the “list” command, like folders, users, groups, etc.  Now that you see the options you can set the configuration options by using the “set config” command.

> set config MaxBursts=22
* maxbursts = '22' OK

Next up, you will probably be asked to get around in the system and display the details of a burst object.  You’ll have to use two different commands “dir” and “cd”.  The “dir” command is used to list the contents of a directory.  Since upon logon you are placed in your home folder, the “dir” command will display the objects inside your home folder.

> dir
  2 Item(s) sorted by Name
  ID      Rdy Name      Type              Created    Changed    #CH
  -----------------------------------------------------------------
  2076    Y   AdminNote Text              4/11/2012  5/15/2013  1
  9626    Y   MyFolder  Folder            5/15/2013             0
>

If you have directories you’d use the “cd” command to change directory.  Just type “cd” and the name of the folder.

> cd MyFolder
*OK

And now you can use the “disp” command to display the details of an object.  In this example we are going to display a simple text object.

> disp "A Little Note"
                Object: Text
                    ID: 9627
                  Name: A Little Note
                  Path: \users\ADMIN\MyFolder\A Little Note
                  Text: Here is my little note.

At this point you should be able to look around in your environment and see what’s there.  Like I mentioned earlier there’s even more that you can do.  Like create users and group.  Modify bursts, XDCs, schedules and other objects.  You can even get into scripting to automate your environment a little and potentially control it from another process running on the server.

Well, that’s it for now on this sneak-peek.  Obviously, I’ll be going into much more detail during my talk and I’d hope to see you there.  I’m very excited for our first ever InfoBurst User Conference.  Not only will this topic be discussed, but many more in a very open format.  Check it our on our InfoBurst User Conference webpage.  I’ll be looking forward to seeing you there!  You can register for the InfoBurst User Conference online just by clicking on the “Register” button at limitlessbi.com.

Here is a sneak-peek of the InfoBurst® Dashboard Connectors In-Depth talk  to be presented in the Dashboard Data Management, Dashboard Delivery & HTML5 Apps with InfoBurst talk at the InfoBurst User Conference – IBIS 2013.

Back when we were taking another look at InfoBurst, we also wanted to take another look at how InfoBurst communicated with the then BusinessObjects Xcelsius 4.5.  At that time we used the built in XML connector to bring data from InfoBurst into our users’ dashboards.  This would require users to know the ID numbers of the Xml Data Source (XDS) objects in InfoBurst along with the name of the range that you wanted to pull into your dashboard.  This would cause many “silly” errors of either having the wrong ID number, or a slight misspelling of the range name.

When we started to look a fresh on how to do this, we decided to leverage the new Xcelsius SDK.  This meant that we were able to write our own connectors that will communicate with the InfoBurst Enterprise server and take away the “guess work” of referencing the data caches.  Thus the InfoBurst Connectors were born.  With these connectors we were now able to browse the InfoBurst Enterprise system for the object you want to reference in the connector, which eliminates the need to remember object ID numbers.  Next we also enabled the ability to browse for which “data source” you want to reference in your Cache Connector, and even which query you want to get values from in the Database Connector.

In addition to making it easier to setup the connectors, we’ve also added the ability to migrate a dashboard between say a development and production environment.  We built a component called the InfoBurst Connection Manager.  This will allow users to setup multiple connection profiles, say in our case “Development” and “Production”.  As long as the referenced objects are in the same folder locations in both platforms and have the same queries and data sources, then the dashboard will migrate on over to the new environment.  This means a dashboard can be built and tested in a development environment, and then moved over to the production environment when it’s ready without the need for the dashboard developer to “remap” all of the connectors.

By leveraging the Xcelsius SDK we were able to add new connectors which have gone beyond just data retrieval and writeback.  We’ve created three “utility connectors” which came about by requests directly from our dashboard developers.  First, we created a connector called the CrossTab Builder which will allow users to create a crosstab on the fly from a data table that has been built up in the dashboard.  Second, when users have a crosstab in their dashboard, either from the CrossTab Builder or the built in crosstab options for database queries, XDC data sources, and cache queries, they can use the CrossTab Flip connector which will flip the X and Y axis values.  And finally, we have another connector which will allow users to save excel ranges from their dashboard into different sheets of an excel file for analysis.  I will be going into more detail on these connectors during the talk; after all, this is a sneak peek.

At the end of my talk, I’ll get a chance to show something that I’m personally excited about.  I’ll get to show you some advanced debugging.  Debugging which will help you not only find potential data issues going to and from the InfoBurst server, but also detect potential performance issues with how and when the connectors are being fired.  Also, you can use the same tool to replay requests which can simplify reproducing an issue greatly.  I’d suggest taking a look at the tool first to get yourself familiarized with it.  It’s a web debugging tool that Telerik recently took over from Microsoft called Fiddler2.  I suggest downloading the release build for .NET 2.0 as that is currently the only stable release right now.  Telerik is currently working on a .NET 4.0 version.

That’s it for this sneak peek.  And this is my last one for this conference.  I hope you’ve enjoyed reading through them, and I hope it gave you a pretty good idea of what to expect during my talks.  And, of course, I hope to see you there at the InfoBurst User Conference.  Being able to see our customers face to face and to talk in real time about their needs and ideas is what makes our conferences great.  And great not only for us, but for our customers as well.  I’m very excited for our first ever InfoBurst User Conference.  This topic here will be discussed, and many more in a very open format.  Check it out on our InfoBurst User Conference webpage.  I’ll be looking forward to seeing you there!  You can register for the InfoBurst User Conference online just by clicking on the “Register” button at limitlessbi.com.

On behalf of the InfoBurst team I want to thank the attendees of this year’s InfoBurst User Conference in San Diego. Over six days iB users participated in certification courses, hands-on workshops and a variety of topical seminars. Users came together during the user influence meeting and shared their ideas with the development team about how to improve the InfoBurst experience and suggested enhancements to the iB platform.

We will have another post up soon detailing the meeting and the enhancements that will result.

The highlight of the conference (besides the beautiful venue) was the user interaction and collaboration. Many of the seminar sessions effortlessly evolved into round table discussions of business challenges and fascinating use cases.

iB users are an inspiring bunch and we will certainly look for more opportunities to gather together. With that, we are keenly interested in getting feedback from IBUC 2013 attendees. What did you like? What can we improve upon? What would you like to see at IBUC 2014?

If you’re not yet part of our InfoBurst User Group on LinkedIn, consider joining us.

InfoBurst (Enterprise and Dash) build 122 was released September 18, 2013. The build contains a number of new features and enhancements. Enhancements include:

• BusinessObjects Platform Support: BI4.0 SP6 and XI3 SP6 platforms are now supported.

• Database Connection Summary: Create a database connection summary. The summary (PDF) contains detail information about the connection and associated queries.

• InfoBurst LaunchPad: Gain quick access to a variety of InfoBurst platform features from the InfoBurst LaunchPad user interface. The LaunchPad is available at http://[IBSERVER]:8551.

• Excel Content Grouping: Content Grouping makes it possible to group pieces of content from multiple reports in a burst into a single PDF or Excel file. Excel content grouping has been enhanced to support custom worksheet (tab) naming. See the build release webinar below for typical usage examples.

• Deliveries: SharePoint 2013 is now a supported delivery destination. Delivery Templates now support use of XI categories.

• Cache Query & Crosstabs: Crosstab tables used in the XDC (XML Data Cache) may contain multiple header rows. You can now define which header row to use with cache queries.

• Start Schedule Action: A new Action has been added. You can now start a schedule based on the status (start, completion or failure) of another burst, XDC or schedule.

The build release webinar contains additional details about enhancements to build 122 and a preview of build 123 and the 2014 InfoBurst User Conference.

Detailed release notes and download details can be found at the InfoBurst Support Wiki. Please contact ibsupport@infosol.com if you require wiki credentials.

Many exciting things came from our first annual InfoBurst® User Conference.  Getting to interact with our customers, seeing how they use the product, and hearing about the real world issues they face really help mold what InfoBurst Enterprise can become.  This year we held a User Influence Meeting where we got to hear ideas from our users, and even still ideas from our own InfoBurst team based on discussions that organically grew during the meeting.  The feedback we received was invaluable and we are excited to report many, if not all, of the ideas will be implemented in a future version of the product.  Here’s a break down of things to come:

As many of you know, we released Build 122 in September.  But what many of you might not know, is that two features in build 122 came directly from the User Influence Meeting.

Start Schedule Action

New action type has been added: users are now able to start a schedule from an action.  This will give users the ability to cascade the running of schedules and event setup some intelligence to their bursting.

Custom names for Burst Documents

Users can now setup custom names for their burst documents in a burst.  This is very useful for certain workflows where users wanted to add multiple burst documents from the same document to improve performance.

So, those enhancements are available right now in InfoBurst Enterprise and Dash, build 122.  Next up are enhancements that will be included in a future build.  No timelines for these have been established yet, but we are looking forward to getting these into the product.

• Cache Query Interface: Currently when adding a cache query to an XDC, you will have an “intermediate step” were the user is in the process of adding a cache query after selecting the data source to query.  We’d like to improve this so it’s a single step and a “default query” is created which simply selects all of the data from the data source.  Also we are looking at re-organizing bits of the interface to make the things users edit the most more up front.  As an example, moving the SQL text into the first tab that the user will see when they select a cache query.  Also to aid the users in testing their cache queries, we will remember the parameter values that were recently used so they do not have to be re-entered for each test.

• Database Connection Interface: Overall we are going to make the SQL input box bigger.  Just like for cache query we will remember previously used parameters when testing a query.  And finally we will add in the ability to clone a query.  That way users can quickly backup a query before making major changes.

• Platform Credentials Interface: We will be revisiting the platform credentials interface in the user’s profile screen.  Currently users have to select each platform from the dropdown to know if they have configured credentials for a given platform.  We’d like to make that easier to identify at a glance which platforms are missing credentials.

• Warn if unsaved changes are present: Currently if changes are made on a tab of a UI element and the user navigates away without saving, the changes are reset.  For example, if a user is editing a cache query, and navigates to another cache query before saving their changes, their changes are lost.  We hope to be able to warn a user if there are unsaved changes in situations where the changes could be lost, much like we do when a user closes a window but minus the confirmation dialog.

• Restarting failed Bursts or XDCs while looking at Today’s Schedule: We would like to add in the ability for users to restart failed Bursts, XDCs, or even whole schedules from the Today’s schedule screen.  This would enable users to quickly re-issue their work in the event of an identified outage that caused Bursts or XDCs to abort.

And that’s it.  We’d like to give a big thank you to everyone who participated in the meeting, your feedback was very helpful in identifying areas of improvement for both functionality and workflow.  We are looking forward to seeing everyone again at the next InfoBurst User Conference in 2014.

Desktop Intelligence (DeskI) reports get a new lease on life in SAP’s Business Intelligence Platform 4.1. The Desktop Intelligence Compatibility Pack (DCP) enables DeskI users to connect their XI3 DeskI client to BI 4.1 to view and refresh DeskI reports. DCP is intended to accommodate DeskI users as they transition their reports to the BI 4 WebI format. DCP adds no new DeskI functionality and SAP support for DeskI will end in 2015.

What DCP does not provide is the ability to schedule, burst and deliver DeskI reports from the BI 4.1 platform. That’s where InfoBurst comes in. InfoBurst provides advanced report bursting and scheduling capabilities for a variety of Business Intelligence report types, including DeskI. Use InfoBust with BI 4.1 and the DCP to schedule, burst and deliver your XI 3 DeskI reports.

Schedule

Leverage InfoBurst’s robust scheduler to manage your DeskI report delivery schedules. Use advanced scheduling rules, custom calendars, date macros and events to schedule report deliveries.

Burst

Dynamically control DeskI report bursting using multi-pass and single-pass bursting methods. Intelligently manage bursting values using various data sources, including database queries, Excel and report LOVs.

Publish

Publish DeskI in a variety of customizable formats, including PDF, Excel and CSV. Deliver DeskI inline via email alongside WebI, Crystal and other report content.

Publish DeskI, WebI and Crystal report content into a single PDF or Excel file using Content Grouping. Publish DeskI in PNG Image format for tailored viewing on mobile devices.

Deliver

Deliver DeskI content to a variety of destinations, including email, network shares, and SharePoint. Send DeskI content to the BI 4 Launch Pad, including public folders and user inboxes. Use Intelligent Email Delivery to deliver personalized report content. Send report content based on report data conditions using Conditional Delivery.

Contact InfoSol for additional information about InfoBurst and the Desktop Intelligence Compatibility Pack in BI 4.1.

InfoBurst build 123 was released November 14, 2013. The build contains a number of enhancements, including:

• BusinessObjects: BI 4.0 SP7 and BI 4.1 SP1 platforms are now supported.

• InfoBurst Dashboard Connectors: Dashboards 4 connectors now support BI Mobile conversion to HTML5

• DCP: Schedule and burst DeskI in BI 4.1 using the Desktop Intelligence Compatibility Pack (DCP).

• Network Documents: Bursting of network DeskI documents (.rep) is now support for XI 3.1 and BI 4.1+.

• Schedules Report: Generate a detailed Excel report for one or more schedule in the system. Report includes schedule configuration and details about all schedule sub-objects (bursts, XDCs, etc.).

The build release webinar video includes additional details about build 123 and a preview of the 2014 InfoBurst User Conference. Complete build release notes available in the InfoBurst Support Wiki.

Recently we had a client approach us with a difficult requirement for distributing a webi report.  They have a single report which contains details for up to 60 customers.  They wanted to schedule the report to produce an excel spreadsheet, however, with the report split into a tab for each of the customers.

This is achievable with Business Objects; they could take the webi report and create a new report tab for each customer.  However this would be a lengthy process for the customer and they still had need for the original (un-split) report too.

Luckily these requirements are easily achieved with InfoBurst, so I thought it was a good idea to share the process with everyone.

In my example I am using a single webi report which returns sales data for customers in one big block of data.  We want to split the report on the Company dimension:

Within InfoBurst create a new burst for the report, in my example I am only running it for 4 customers, but this process will work with more:

Add a Filter on the Company Dimension:

There is no need to add any delivery details, as we will be using Content Grouping to control the delivery.  Click on the Burst Properties button, and then select Content Grouping > Excel:

I am merging all the tabs in the burst together, so select ‘Burst’ from the ‘Grouping By’ drop-down.  I want to deliver the report out to a network location, so I selected a Network path for delivery.  It is also possible to deliver by FTP.

In addition to the delivery details, the only other field I completed is the ‘Tab Name’ field.  The client wanted the tabs in the excel file to be labelled with the customer name.  To achieve this you can use Macros.  As I am filtering on Company, I used [=Company] in the Tab Name field.  This will then rename all the tabs based on the filter criteria.

Once burst, the webi report is split into separate customers. It is then spliced together using Content Grouping into a single excel workbook with a spreadsheet for each customer and labelled with the customer name in the tab:

You can see a video of this demonstration here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZkdJYyutjM

This is a great example of how, seemingly complex reporting requirements can be achieved quickly and efficiently with InfoBurst Enterprise.

Modern Business Intelligence (BI) platforms like SAP BusinessObjects, SQL Server Reporting Services and Yellowfin BI give organizations a wealth of reporting tools. Tools like Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports and SSRS make it easy to create attractive and valuable BI reports. Getting those reports into the hands of consumers and decision makers is not so easy.

These BI platforms offer basic report delivery tools. A user can schedule a report to be published in a particular format and delivered to a particular destination. Such tools, while functional, can be difficult to use. Organizations I work with have hundreds and sometimes thousands of BI reports. Creating and maintaining publications and schedules for so many reports can be extremely time and resource intensive.

InfoBurst has long been a viable alternative for organizations that have more demanding report scheduling and delivery requirements. Users take advantage of features like Content Grouping to deliver highly customized BI report content. They use features like Document Source and Parallel Processing to control and burst tens of thousands of BI reports daily. However, such features do not address the basic challenge of building and maintaining report publications and schedules.

Enter the ‘Quick Burst’. With InfoBurst, you can quickly and easily build ‘Bursts’ using the drag-and-drop method. Drag and drop BI reports, data sources and delivery templates to build bursts. The Data Source allows you to dynamically control report bursting inputs (i.e., prompts and filters). The Delivery Template allows you to pre-define a myriad of publication formats and delivery destinations. Then drag and drop bursts to build schedules. Use the Quick Burst to build an entire report delivery package in under a minute.

See more about building a Quick Burst and my 47-second Quick Burst in action.

Stopwatch image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

InfoBurst build 124 was released March 26, 2014. The build contains a number of enhancements, including:

• BusinessObjects: BI 4.0 SP8 and BI 4.1 SP2 service packs are now supported.

• System Macros: Custom file and folder names can now be created via drag-and-drop using the new Macro Builder user interface.

• Content Grouping: Use Delivery Templates to deliver grouped content to all standard destinations, including intelligent email delivery.

• Users Report: Produce a PDF report detailing objects owned by a user.

Complete build release notes available in the InfoBurst Support Wiki.