InfoBurst build 125 was released June 6, 2014. The build contains a number of enhancements, including:

• BusinessObjects: Support added for XI 3.1 SP7, BI 4.0 SP9 and BI 4.1 SP3

• Content Grouping: Group by multiple variables, omit documents from grouping and add page numbers to grouped PDF files

• Local File Upload: Upload Excel files from your local computer for use in XDCs and File Lists

• System Management: Shiny, new system management user interface

Complete build release notes available in the InfoBurst Support Wiki.

On a recent visit to a metal manufacturing company in Oman, the I.T. Manager was discussing how he wants to use their InfoBurst and BusinessObjects applications for more operational reporting because of the huge success they have been seeing in this area recently.

A few years ago they had built some very successful Xcelsius dashboards for key performance metrics reporting that literally brought about a culture change within the company. These metrics, which were for all areas of the business to show how they were doing against their annual goals, had been previously gathered manually, put into a spreadsheet, further manipulated and then printed and pinned up on the wall in corridors around the plant. They were only produced monthly and not many people paid attention to them. When they developed an interactive dashboard in Xcelsius and used the XML Data Cache (XDC) from InfoBurst for both handling the large amount of data with optimal performance and automating the refresh through Web Intelligence reports daily, everything changed.   The information was now available and visible to everyone in the company in an intuitive interactive interface and both management and staff started to see the direct effects of their efforts daily and made positive changes to the way they worked.

Mobile Alerts

When faced with the issue of shift leaders not reporting their metrics at the end of each shift, they used an Xcelsius dashboard with the InfoBurst Write Back capability to make it easy for the information to be entered  through the dashboard itself and devised an automatic  mobile alert  through InfoBurst to send an alert to the phone of the shift leader if they failed to enter the information within an hour of their shift ending.

This, in turn, got them thinking about other ways they could improve operations using this powerful combination of BusinessObjects and InfoBurst.  So they created an operational dashboard to monitor the external temperature and wind speed (the plant is in the middle of the Omani desert which makes it susceptible to both high temperatures and winds). The dashboard was again built in Xcelsius and used InfoBurst to automatically send a mobile alert to supervisors with a graphical message to their phones should the temperature and wind speed thresholds be exceeded  so they could shut down parts of the operations.

They went on to start looking at different metrics they measure in the metal manufacturing process itself.  One such recent initiative was looking at the amount of liquid metal contained in the huge crucibles used.  Over  time, layers deposit in the crucible thereby reducing its capacity. Also, the crucibles are not always filled to capacity which reduces their overall daily output.  By cleverly devising a simple calculation to subtract the weight of a new empty crucible from the weight of each filled after it receives the molten metal,  they could see if there were problems where crucibles needed to be cleaned due to excessive deposits or shift workers had to be called to check they were filling them to capacity. A simple report could be produced at any time using Web Intelligence. The Supervisors and managers found this report to be so useful  they kept requesting it all the time (they run a 7 x 24 operation) so the BI team came up with a mobile alert method using InfoBurst that would automatically notify the supervisors on their phones when anomalies beyond a certain threshold occurred.

One supervisor who was ecstatic with the new operational reporting and alerting system told the I.T. Manager “This solution is like having my eyes in the plant even when I am not there”.

Based on these successes, the company now wants to turn its attention to operational reporting and processes in their SAP ECC system using the InfoBurst/BusinessObjects “all seeing” solution.

Background

InfoBurst 2.6 has been servicing our customers’ report scheduling and bursting needs for 10 years. While it has served that purpose well, it was designed to service what are now legacy reporting environments like BusinessObjects XIR2. Current reporting platforms like SAP Business Intelligence 4.1 are not supported. It also supports legacy server platforms like Windows Server 2003. It relies on Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 which Microsoft no longer supports.

InfoBurst has evolved to support the latest business intelligence reporting and server platforms. The newest version of InfoBurst, InfoBurst Enterprise, supports the latest SAP Business Intelligence and Microsoft BI versions as well as the latest Microsoft and Oracle platforms. It also offers a wealth of new features not available in InfoBurst 2.6.

Development

As of January 1, 2016, InfoSol will end development of InfoBurst 2.6 and XDM. This date aligns with development end of life for SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1. After this date, no new updates or patches will be issued.

Between the date of this announcement and January 1, 2016, only emergency patches will be issued.

Support

As of January 1, 2018, InfoSol will end support of InfoBurst 2.6, 2.5, 2.1, and XDM. This date aligns with the support end of life for SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1.

Options After End of Life

Users may continue to use InfoBurst 2.6, 2.5, 2.1, and XDM indefinitely.

InfoBurst Enterprise is available to users as an upgrade. It supports XIR2, XI 3.1 and BI 4.x and the latest Windows Server and database versions. It features a redesigned user interface and a variety of new features not contained in InfoBurst 2.6. Users upgrading to InfoBurst Enterprise have the option to either rebuild their existing bursts and schedules in InfoBurst Enterprise or migrate their bursts and schedules from InfoBurst 2.x.

Please contact your InfoSol account manager about upgrade options and pricing. For questions regarding InfoBurst 2.6 end of life, please contact ibsupport@infosol.com.

InfoBurst build 127 was released March 23, 2015. The build contains a number of enhancements and fixes, including:

• Support for BI 4.1 SP5

• ADSync Group User Roles

• Command Line License Management

• AnuBIs HTML 5 Dashboard Designer PREVIEW

Complete build release notes available in the InfoBurst Support Wiki.

On July 15, 2015, Microsoft will end support and development of Windows Server 2003.

Build 129 of the InfoBurst Platform (available Q4 2015) will move from Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 to .NET Framework 4.5. The newer framework will enable our developers to provide more features and better platform performance.

Windows Server 2003 will not support .NET Framework 4.5. InfoBurst users that wish to update to builds 129 and later should consider upgrading their InfoBurst server(s) to Windows Server 2008 or later. Please contact the InfoBurst support team if you require assistance with upgrading your InfoBurst server from Server 2003.

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Although I am originally from London, UK, it has been a long time since I checked out the Christmas window displays at the major retail stores. The world famous department stores like Harrods, Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason go all out as do the elite fashion stores on Bond Street and you could spend hours (as I did) just staring in wonder and amazement.

This year, I would give the top award to Selfridges with their amazing signs of the horoscope displays but I also loved the Christmas trampoline video at Burberry which kept me mesmerized for at least 10 minutes.

Of course the whole purpose of a store window display is to attract people into the store and to hopefully purchase items. I did actually go into Burberry but decided against buying a $900 scarf which seemed to be the cheapest item in the store!

As I stared at all these really cool Christmas window displays, it occurred to me that In the world of business intelligence, the portal for viewing and accessing your BI applications is very much like these store windows. If you want to get people to use the Bi applications, you need to make it attractive, compelling and interesting so they will become engaged.

When building BI applications, we know that is the reason to use interactive dashboards but what about the portal itself for accessing  and controlling access to these applications. Typically, this has been a custom web application development or a commodity portal like Microsoft’s SharePoint. These both have merit but are usually quite corporate and bland in their look and feel and lack the dynamic visualization of the BI applications themselves. It’s like have really cool stuff inside your store but just static signs in your store window.

So what about the idea of making the portal itself an animated  BI dashboard and really sprucing up your window display?

This idea is starting to gather momentum as more organizations realize that the key to successful BI is user adoption through application engagement and this starts with the portal.

Using an SAP BusinessObjects dashboard as your BI portal allows you to create engaging visualizations with integrated infographics, geo maps, videos, playback and “what if”  scenarios and get the user into your BI applications quickly and effectively.

Integrating add-on solutions like InfoBurst, you can also provide write back functionality so that you can save user preferences, collaborate with other users and capture constant user feedback through surveys and polls.

The dashboard can call or link to other dashboards , reports or actions (alerts, starting other activities etc.).

The possibilities are as vast and exciting as the London store Christmas window displays and I’m looking forward to seeing a lot more BI Portal Dashboards in the coming year.

This was a typical call/scenario we saw for some Xcelsius developers today:

Hello, I decided to open up a dashboard that I was recently working on and the canvas will not open up today.  The Excel spreadsheet opens fine with all the data but the canvas will not.  I decided to try and open up other dashboards that have worked just fine in the past and again the canvas will not open up.
Any ideas on what the problem may be and how I can get the canvas to open?

It looks like the new release of Flash (v20) causes issues with Xcelsius.

The good news first: Existing SWF generated files were able to still be viewed without any issues.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is one where you are unable to create a new dashboard, or preview an existing dashboard, because you are unable to open up the dashboard canvas within the Xcelsius designer and so you find yourself staring at this type of screen:

Turns out that Flash Player 20 had been automatically installed on the machines. The actual version of Flash was 20.0.0.267 which was automatically installed on 12/29/15.

Here’s what to do about it:

You can uninstall version 20.0.0.267 of Flash and download a working archived version from the following link: https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html and then install it.

At the end of the install, make sure you uncheck the automated updates box and check the one where you will be prompted for any future Flash updates.

To turn off automatic Flash Player updates:

Open a .swf file and right click anywhere in the canvas or white area surrounding the dashboard.  Click on the “Global Settings” option:

Select the Updates tab and click on the Change Update Settings button:

You may get prompted for a User Account Control message that asks “Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?”  Click Yes.

There are three options:  allow, notify me, and never check for updates.  Below you can see that we are doing something not recommended but that’s because we want to have control of our environment.  You be the judge and choose for yourself between “Notify me” and “Never check” for updates option.

And that’s it! If you choose “Never”, you can always go to the Adobe site to update to the latest version at a future date if the need arises.

At the end of last year I did a quick improvised survey of our active BusinessObjects customers and was surprise to find that about 35% of them were also using Tableau. Most just had a few copies of Tableau desktop, but some had Tableau server too. In all cases they had no plans to replace BusinessObjects; they were just using Tableau for different functions alongside. These functions were mainly self-service data discovery for power users and data visualization/dashboards.  The one thing they all agreed on was that Tableau was not a good BI reporting solution. However, most expressed they were planning to add more Tableau users.

None of the BusinessObjects Tableau customers I spoke with had implemented any real integration between the two product sets but several were running Web Intelligence queries and exporting to Excel that was then used as an input source to Tableau either by importing or cut and pasting. Most expressed a desire for better integration so they could leverage their BusinessObjects universes and reports in Tableau.

A few had tried using some third party ODBC connector products that allow Tableau to connect to a BusinessObjects universe and one had tried using an Odata connector but these customers expressed that these connectors were sometimes limited.

Based on all this feedback, InfoSol decided to see if we could provide a solution that would allow for an automated and seamless integration between Tableau and BusinessObjects. The InfoBurst platform already provides a reliable and proven way to automatically schedule, burst and distribute BusinessObjects reports to a wide range of destinations in a variety of formats, so it was a natural choice to use to push BO content into Tableau. It was also decided to push refined report content rather than just provide access through a universe since many users add both business and report logic that would be even more useful as a source to Tableau. And so, InfoBurst Tab was conceived.

InfoSol worked with several large organizations using both BusinessObjects and Tableau to understand their main use cases for integration and to help both guide and pilot the solution.

InfoBurst Tab allows a BusinessObjects user to leverage the investment they have already made in both their universes and Web Intelligence reports to automatically schedule and push content direct into a Tableau Data Extract (TDE). The scheduling can do both time and/or event based and the Webi report can be intelligently burst or split allowing filtered content to be pushed into multiple TDE’s. The resulting TDE can be automatically delivered to a variety of destinations including Network share folders, Tableau server (on premised or in the cloud), SharePoint, FTP and email.

InfoBurst Tab can also automatically schedule and burst BO content to TDE’s to both publish and refresh them direct to Tableau Server, while also dynamically naming the name files. InfoBurst has a powerful macro builder that can use original file name, filters, date, time to dynamically name TDE’s something meaningful and easy for the user to know the content. The Tableau user just goes to the appropriate folder on the Tableau server to use TDE’s with content being automatically refreshed from BusinessObjects without ever touching BusinessObjects.

The other really cool thing you can do with InfoBurst Tab is to single pass burst Tableau content out to as well. As mentioned earlier, you can take a Webi report and split the output to produce multiple TDE files each with distinct content. For example if you have a budget report, you can burst the report by Regional Manager and have InfoBurst and IB Tab produce separate TDE files, one for each region, and then deliver each region’s budget as a TDE  to each Regional Manager. InfoBurst has a rich array of distribution options and can provide an automated way for Tableau desktop users to distribute their dashboards with or without Tableau server.

All in all InfoBurst Tab provides a great way to leverage your BusinessObjects investment while controlling the consistency and accuracy data feeding into your Tableau dashboards. If you are a BusinessObjects user using Tableau or looking to use Tableau, you should definitely check it out.

We live in a world where we do not just have easy access to more information than ever before, but where we are also bombarded with more information than we can possibly absorb. The combination of social media, the internet and smart mobile devices have provided the means for us to both become information junkies and to consume vast hours of our waking lives.

We have the choice to decide which sources we use, but in our jobs we mostly use particular applications and delivery channels that have been determined for us. Nevertheless, the same applies in terms of not having time to digest all the information either available or pushed to us.

So most people have adapted to only reading or looking at part of a report, email or article or skimming through key information. We avoid long emails and articles, reports of more than 5 or 6 pages and even blogs like this one if it went over 600 words!

In the world of Business Intelligence, most consumers of BI reports and dashboards want to be able to get the key information they need right away, digest it in less than a minute and then move on. Developing and delivering comprehensive BI applications with access to millions of rows of data only works from a user adoption standpoint if you provide a simple and succinct way to summarize and view that information.

A Director of BI from a Global Electronics Distribution company once told me that their most successful BI application consisted of a summary sales analysis report that was sent as an in-line email to the mobile phone of the CEO at 5 am every morning. The CEO opened up the email, spent less than a minute looking at it and knew what he would be focusing on that day.

By contrast, another Global services company developed a comprehensive visual BI application that enabled their thousands of clients to explore and look at every aspect of the services they were providing to each client. The clients were really impressed and initially it helped the company to win business, but after a year they discovered that almost nobody was using it. When they asked the clients why, they were told it was simply too much information and too easy to get lost and all they really wanted was a one page summary!

It is important to remember that most consumers of information and reports want simple summaries and guided analysis. Too many options and capabilities will often lead to confusion and poor adoption. The BI application should be modeled on the way the user works so it matches and enhances their work flow.

Most organizations still rely on Excel and PDF reports being pushed out and this will not change for a while, but if you build BI applications using InfoBurst with SAP BO Dashboards and Web Intelligence you can embed the capability for providing those reports from within the application while adding the value of true BI guided analysis as well. You can also deliver exactly what the user wants in the right format to the right destination.

Yes, there are a small number of people in every organization whose job it is to analyze data and look for trends and patterns and those people will use powerful data discovery or predictive tools, but for everyone else they just want succinct BI because life is just too short to struggle.

I wanted to share a solution that a BusinessObjects customer recently implemented. This solution won the praise of some of the toughest critics in the business and instant gratification, leaving them wanting for more. It is a great example of leveraging the existing investment in a BI system to achieve an innovative solution to a business problem. It also showcases the flexibility and power when using InfoBurst with Business Objects.

The problem was that senior management (VP to CEO) were losing visibility of new sales opportunities that had large revenue potential. Once the opportunity was entered, senior management would not find out about it until it was too late in the sales cycle. Either the opportunity was closed won or closed lost, the latter being of most concern to senior management.

The business requested an IT solution to provide near instant notification when a large value opportunity was created in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system which was Salesforce. An early notification would provide enough time for senior management to ensure the right team and support was in place to win the deal. There was only one caveat: the notification needed to support a dynamic recipient list. Given that the customer operates globally and has a complicated organizational hierarchy, this was no small task! And on top of this, the recipient list needed to be configurable!!!

After some back and forth between the business and IT, the BI team was elected to deliver the solution. Since the current BI environment had the technology and know-how, it made perfect sense rather than developing a totally custom solution.

InfoBurst was able to handle the automated scheduling and bursting of the notification by email, supporting a configurable and dynamic recipient list and handle the complex organizational hierarchy.

Below, is an example of what the key executive recipients would receive (modified to respect the privacy of the client):

Below is the process flow for the solution from start to finish:

1. At the start of the burst, a SQL query is run to retrieve the Opportunity Ids that is the input parameters for the burst.
2. The SQL query also checks against a Burst Log table. This table keeps a record of which opportunities have been sent and the date time it was delivered.
3. Once the burst has input the Opportunity ID and generated the HTML burst, it then runs a SQL stored procedure to determine the list of recipient email addresses.
4. The Recipient Table is the list of email addresses and criteria for sending the opportunity. The SQL Stored Procedure will look up these values of the Opportunity and cross reference against this table to determine the recipients. Below is an example of the table:
   
5. The SQL Stored Procedure then updates the Burst Log table.
6. The HTML burst is then sent to the email addresses returned.
7. The Recipient Excel is an excel stored on a network share that the business administrators have access to. They can add/remove recipients. This excel file is loaded into the Data Warehouse via an ETL job. This ensures the BI team is not responsible for the maintenance of the recipients, this is handled by the business.

I hope this provides some inspiration for others when dealing with a similar challenge.

This solution may look simple on the surface when in fact, it is quite intricate.

So please comment below.  I welcome a conversation.  I would love to hear your feedback.  Also, if you need any clarification on this solution or want to know more about the technical pieces don’t be shy.

The story of Romeo and Juliet, as portrayed by William Shakespeare, is the beautiful and tragic love story between two “star crossed lovers” from feuding families who fall madly in love. When Juliet feigns death in a desperate effort to be with Romeo, he thinks she is really dead and kills himself and then Juliet kills herself when she wakes to find Romeo dead. Their tragic deaths end up bringing the two families together to end their feud.

So, as I look at the current state of BusinessObjects and Tableau, I can’t but help think of Romeo and Juliet. The two products are a match made in heaven – BusinessObjects (obviously, Romeo) with its robust BI reporting, querying and analysis and Tableau (Juliet) with its beautiful data visualizations and mysterious data explorations. With my current conservative estimate of more than 40% of existing BusinessObjects customers using Tableau, I am not the only one who sees they were meant for each other.

Tableau lacks a strong BI reporting capability and most Tableau users produce their end reports in Excel so it makes perfect sense that they would be attracted by the handsome and versatile BusinessObjects Web Intelligence Romeo. Hence the cry from the balcony from Tableau Juliets’ everywhere “Webi, Webi, wherefore art thou Webi?”

SAP pushes the lackluster Lumira to compliment Web Intelligence but it does not match the creativity and vitality of the stunningly gorgeous Tableau Juliet.

Learn More About InfoBurst Tab

In Shakespeare’s play, there is a kindly character called Friar Laurence who thinks he can reconcile the two feuding families through a union of Romeo and Juliet and secretly marries them. Today there is a product called InfoBurst Tab that integrates BusinessObjects and Tableau and is very much playing the role of Friar Laurence.

InfoBurst Tab allows BusinessObjects users to schedule, burst, push and dynamically refresh Web Intelligence report data directly into Tableau Data Extracts (TDE’s) on desktop, Tableau server, network share, SharePoint or via Email. It can also schedule, burst and publish Tableau Workbooks derived from BO content. In the latest release, it now provides a dynamically refreshed high speed data cache populated from BO content or Free Hand SQL statements for Tableau access. Basically, good old Friar InfoBurst Tab is doing everything possible to let the BusinessObjects Tableau romance grow and thrive.

I believe we can avoid a tragic ending to this story and that the SAP and Tableau families will see the mutual benefit and wisdom of letting this romance continue. I see positive signs from the Tableau family who are happy to see so many BusinessObjects customers using their product. I also see an encouraging resignation to the reality of the situation from SAP as so many of SAP’s largest ERP clients have embraced Tableau. Next step for SAP is to seize the opportunity of selling Webi to Tableau customers.

Maybe it’s time to rewrite the ending of Romeo and Juliet to “and they lived happily ever after”.

This was a typical call/scenario we saw for some Xcelsius developers today:

Hello, I decided to open up a dashboard that I was recently working on and the canvas will not open up today.  The Excel spreadsheet opens fine with all the data but the canvas will not.  I decided to try and open up other dashboards that have worked just fine in the past and again the canvas will not open up.
Any ideas on what the problem may be and how I can get the canvas to open?

It looks like the new release of Flash (v20) causes issues with Xcelsius.

The good news first: Existing SWF generated files were able to still be viewed without any issues.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is one where you are unable to create a new dashboard, or preview an existing dashboard, because you are unable to open up the dashboard canvas within the Xcelsius designer and so you find yourself staring at this type of screen:

Turns out that Flash Player 20 had been automatically installed on the machines. The actual version of Flash was 20.0.0.267 which was automatically installed on 12/29/15.

Here’s what to do about it:

You can uninstall version 20.0.0.267 of Flash and download a working archived version from the following link: https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html and then install it.

At the end of the install, make sure you uncheck the automated updates box and check the one where you will be prompted for any future Flash updates.

To turn off automatic Flash Player updates:

Open a .swf file and right click anywhere in the canvas or white area surrounding the dashboard.  Click on the “Global Settings” option:

Select the Updates tab and click on the Change Update Settings button:

You may get prompted for a User Account Control message that asks “Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?”  Click Yes.

There are three options:  allow, notify me, and never check for updates.  Below you can see that we are doing something not recommended but that’s because we want to have control of our environment.  You be the judge and choose for yourself between “Notify me” and “Never check” for updates option.

And that’s it! If you choose “Never”, you can always go to the Adobe site to update to the latest version at a future date if the need arises.

At the end of last year I did a quick improvised survey of our active BusinessObjects customers and was surprise to find that about 35% of them were also using Tableau. Most just had a few copies of Tableau desktop, but some had Tableau server too. In all cases they had no plans to replace BusinessObjects; they were just using Tableau for different functions alongside. These functions were mainly self-service data discovery for power users and data visualization/dashboards.  The one thing they all agreed on was that Tableau was not a good BI reporting solution. However, most expressed they were planning to add more Tableau users.

None of the BusinessObjects Tableau customers I spoke with had implemented any real integration between the two product sets but several were running Web Intelligence queries and exporting to Excel that was then used as an input source to Tableau either by importing or cut and pasting. Most expressed a desire for better integration so they could leverage their BusinessObjects universes and reports in Tableau.

A few had tried using some third party ODBC connector products that allow Tableau to connect to a BusinessObjects universe and one had tried using an Odata connector but these customers expressed that these connectors were sometimes limited.

Based on all this feedback, InfoSol decided to see if we could provide a solution that would allow for an automated and seamless integration between Tableau and BusinessObjects. The InfoBurst platform already provides a reliable and proven way to automatically schedule, burst and distribute BusinessObjects reports to a wide range of destinations in a variety of formats, so it was a natural choice to use to push BO content into Tableau. It was also decided to push refined report content rather than just provide access through a universe since many users add both business and report logic that would be even more useful as a source to Tableau. And so, InfoBurst Tab was conceived.

InfoSol worked with several large organizations using both BusinessObjects and Tableau to understand their main use cases for integration and to help both guide and pilot the solution.

InfoBurst Tab allows a BusinessObjects user to leverage the investment they have already made in both their universes and Web Intelligence reports to automatically schedule and push content direct into a Tableau Data Extract (TDE). The scheduling can do both time and/or event based and the Webi report can be intelligently burst or split allowing filtered content to be pushed into multiple TDE’s. The resulting TDE can be automatically delivered to a variety of destinations including Network share folders, Tableau server (on premised or in the cloud), SharePoint, FTP and email.

InfoBurst Tab can also automatically schedule and burst BO content to TDE’s to both publish and refresh them direct to Tableau Server, while also dynamically naming the name files. InfoBurst has a powerful macro builder that can use original file name, filters, date, time to dynamically name TDE’s something meaningful and easy for the user to know the content. The Tableau user just goes to the appropriate folder on the Tableau server to use TDE’s with content being automatically refreshed from BusinessObjects without ever touching BusinessObjects.

The other really cool thing you can do with InfoBurst Tab is to single pass burst Tableau content out to as well. As mentioned earlier, you can take a Webi report and split the output to produce multiple TDE files each with distinct content. For example if you have a budget report, you can burst the report by Regional Manager and have InfoBurst and IB Tab produce separate TDE files, one for each region, and then deliver each region’s budget as a TDE  to each Regional Manager. InfoBurst has a rich array of distribution options and can provide an automated way for Tableau desktop users to distribute their dashboards with or without Tableau server.

All in all InfoBurst Tab provides a great way to leverage your BusinessObjects investment while controlling the consistency and accuracy data feeding into your Tableau dashboards. If you are a BusinessObjects user using Tableau or looking to use Tableau, you should definitely check it out.

We live in a world where we do not just have easy access to more information than ever before, but where we are also bombarded with more information than we can possibly absorb. The combination of social media, the internet and smart mobile devices have provided the means for us to both become information junkies and to consume vast hours of our waking lives.

We have the choice to decide which sources we use, but in our jobs we mostly use particular applications and delivery channels that have been determined for us. Nevertheless, the same applies in terms of not having time to digest all the information either available or pushed to us.

So most people have adapted to only reading or looking at part of a report, email or article or skimming through key information. We avoid long emails and articles, reports of more than 5 or 6 pages and even blogs like this one if it went over 600 words!

In the world of Business Intelligence, most consumers of BI reports and dashboards want to be able to get the key information they need right away, digest it in less than a minute and then move on. Developing and delivering comprehensive BI applications with access to millions of rows of data only works from a user adoption standpoint if you provide a simple and succinct way to summarize and view that information.

A Director of BI from a Global Electronics Distribution company once told me that their most successful BI application consisted of a summary sales analysis report that was sent as an in-line email to the mobile phone of the CEO at 5 am every morning. The CEO opened up the email, spent less than a minute looking at it and knew what he would be focusing on that day.

By contrast, another Global services company developed a comprehensive visual BI application that enabled their thousands of clients to explore and look at every aspect of the services they were providing to each client. The clients were really impressed and initially it helped the company to win business, but after a year they discovered that almost nobody was using it. When they asked the clients why, they were told it was simply too much information and too easy to get lost and all they really wanted was a one page summary!

It is important to remember that most consumers of information and reports want simple summaries and guided analysis. Too many options and capabilities will often lead to confusion and poor adoption. The BI application should be modeled on the way the user works so it matches and enhances their work flow.

Most organizations still rely on Excel and PDF reports being pushed out and this will not change for a while, but if you build BI applications using InfoBurst with SAP BO Dashboards and Web Intelligence you can embed the capability for providing those reports from within the application while adding the value of true BI guided analysis as well. You can also deliver exactly what the user wants in the right format to the right destination.

Yes, there are a small number of people in every organization whose job it is to analyze data and look for trends and patterns and those people will use powerful data discovery or predictive tools, but for everyone else they just want succinct BI because life is just too short to struggle.

I wanted to share a solution that a BusinessObjects customer recently implemented. This solution won the praise of some of the toughest critics in the business and instant gratification, leaving them wanting for more. It is a great example of leveraging the existing investment in a BI system to achieve an innovative solution to a business problem. It also showcases the flexibility and power when using InfoBurst with Business Objects.

The problem was that senior management (VP to CEO) were losing visibility of new sales opportunities that had large revenue potential. Once the opportunity was entered, senior management would not find out about it until it was too late in the sales cycle. Either the opportunity was closed won or closed lost, the latter being of most concern to senior management.

The business requested an IT solution to provide near instant notification when a large value opportunity was created in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system which was Salesforce. An early notification would provide enough time for senior management to ensure the right team and support was in place to win the deal. There was only one caveat: the notification needed to support a dynamic recipient list. Given that the customer operates globally and has a complicated organizational hierarchy, this was no small task! And on top of this, the recipient list needed to be configurable!!!

After some back and forth between the business and IT, the BI team was elected to deliver the solution. Since the current BI environment had the technology and know-how, it made perfect sense rather than developing a totally custom solution.

InfoBurst was able to handle the automated scheduling and bursting of the notification by email, supporting a configurable and dynamic recipient list and handle the complex organizational hierarchy.

Below, is an example of what the key executive recipients would receive (modified to respect the privacy of the client):

Below is the process flow for the solution from start to finish:

1. At the start of the burst, a SQL query is run to retrieve the Opportunity Ids that is the input parameters for the burst.
2. The SQL query also checks against a Burst Log table. This table keeps a record of which opportunities have been sent and the date time it was delivered.
3. Once the burst has input the Opportunity ID and generated the HTML burst, it then runs a SQL stored procedure to determine the list of recipient email addresses.
4. The Recipient Table is the list of email addresses and criteria for sending the opportunity. The SQL Stored Procedure will look up these values of the Opportunity and cross reference against this table to determine the recipients. Below is an example of the table:
   
5. The SQL Stored Procedure then updates the Burst Log table.
6. The HTML burst is then sent to the email addresses returned.
7. The Recipient Excel is an excel stored on a network share that the business administrators have access to. They can add/remove recipients. This excel file is loaded into the Data Warehouse via an ETL job. This ensures the BI team is not responsible for the maintenance of the recipients, this is handled by the business.

I hope this provides some inspiration for others when dealing with a similar challenge.

This solution may look simple on the surface when in fact, it is quite intricate.

So please comment below.  I welcome a conversation.  I would love to hear your feedback.  Also, if you need any clarification on this solution or want to know more about the technical pieces don’t be shy.

The story of Romeo and Juliet, as portrayed by William Shakespeare, is the beautiful and tragic love story between two “star crossed lovers” from feuding families who fall madly in love. When Juliet feigns death in a desperate effort to be with Romeo, he thinks she is really dead and kills himself and then Juliet kills herself when she wakes to find Romeo dead. Their tragic deaths end up bringing the two families together to end their feud.

So, as I look at the current state of BusinessObjects and Tableau, I can’t but help think of Romeo and Juliet. The two products are a match made in heaven – BusinessObjects (obviously, Romeo) with its robust BI reporting, querying and analysis and Tableau (Juliet) with its beautiful data visualizations and mysterious data explorations. With my current conservative estimate of more than 40% of existing BusinessObjects customers using Tableau, I am not the only one who sees they were meant for each other.

Tableau lacks a strong BI reporting capability and most Tableau users produce their end reports in Excel so it makes perfect sense that they would be attracted by the handsome and versatile BusinessObjects Web Intelligence Romeo. Hence the cry from the balcony from Tableau Juliets’ everywhere “Webi, Webi, wherefore art thou Webi?”

SAP pushes the lackluster Lumira to compliment Web Intelligence but it does not match the creativity and vitality of the stunningly gorgeous Tableau Juliet.

Learn More About InfoBurst Tab

In Shakespeare’s play, there is a kindly character called Friar Laurence who thinks he can reconcile the two feuding families through a union of Romeo and Juliet and secretly marries them. Today there is a product called InfoBurst Tab that integrates BusinessObjects and Tableau and is very much playing the role of Friar Laurence.

InfoBurst Tab allows BusinessObjects users to schedule, burst, push and dynamically refresh Web Intelligence report data directly into Tableau Data Extracts (TDE’s) on desktop, Tableau server, network share, SharePoint or via Email. It can also schedule, burst and publish Tableau Workbooks derived from BO content. In the latest release, it now provides a dynamically refreshed high speed data cache populated from BO content or Free Hand SQL statements for Tableau access. Basically, good old Friar InfoBurst Tab is doing everything possible to let the BusinessObjects Tableau romance grow and thrive.

I believe we can avoid a tragic ending to this story and that the SAP and Tableau families will see the mutual benefit and wisdom of letting this romance continue. I see positive signs from the Tableau family who are happy to see so many BusinessObjects customers using their product. I also see an encouraging resignation to the reality of the situation from SAP as so many of SAP’s largest ERP clients have embraced Tableau. Next step for SAP is to seize the opportunity of selling Webi to Tableau customers.

Maybe it’s time to rewrite the ending of Romeo and Juliet to “and they lived happily ever after”.

I have learned many valuable life lessons coaching kids’ soccer. Like the time my team of 10-year-old boys lost a game 12-0 and I tried to give one of my inspirational after-game pep talks. The players felt down, I felt down and as I tried to tell them the score was not a reflection of the effort they put in, one of the players piped up and said, “Coach, you know only the losing team learns from the game”.

I was dumbfounded. Such profound wisdom from one so young. I echoed his thoughtful words to the rest of the team and sent them on their way but not before pulling him aside and asking him where he had learned this great philosophy. “Oh, it comes up on my soccer computer game at home whenever I lose”, he said.

At a recent BusinessObjects Regional User Group meeting, I was asked to give a presentation on “How to Convince Upper Management to Keep BusinessObjects”. My part was the second part of a 2-part series to discuss the strategy with the first part highlighting the BusinessObjects tools themselves with some cool customer examples.

The key to BusinessObjects huge global success over the last 25 years is the semantic layer with its unique ability to present simple business terms to users that they can drag and drop and apply conditions and formulas to without writing any SQL or needing to know the underlying data. When I look at the new shiny BI tools in the market today, they have great visualization capabilities but all of them simply provide a piece of what the BusinessObjects suite provides and I have not found one that can do it all as well as BusinessObjects. Some are certainly evolving in that direction but none are there yet.

So, in my presentation, I spoke about three case studies of customers who tried to move off of BusinessObjects to another BI solution only to come back to it at the end.

I pointed out that there are no magic conversion tools that I am aware of that can miraculously convert BusinessObjects into another BI tool. This would be like turning water into wine. However, that’s not to say that some may not be invented in the future.

The first was a health insurance company who decided to move from BusinessObjects to Microsoft’s BI suite. For almost 8 years they tried to convert and re-engineer their BO reports and finally abandoned the effort and decided to keep BusinessObjects and run it together with Microsoft BI.

The second was a national retail chain with over 3,500 stores who first attempted to re-write and replace their Crystal Reports with Microstrategies and then later with OBIEE. After 7 years they made a smart and strategic decision to keep the Crystal Reports and upgraded their publishing capabilities and are now actually considering moving some OBIEE reports to Crystal.

The third case study was an insurance company that looked to replaced BusinessObjects first with Tableau then with PowerBI but quickly realized there would be no return on investment so wisely decided to keep BusinessObjects for reporting.

What all three of these case studies have in common is that they all tried to move off BusinessObjects but the time and cost was too great and made a better decision by going back to it. They were the losing team that learned from its mistakes. I hope that other organizations will not have to lose like this and can, instead, learn from these examples.

However, if your organization does decide to replace BusinessObjects (and you find yourself in a predicament where you can’t do anything about it), here are four tips that can help you ease the pain:

• Do NOT attempt to replace like for like
• Bring in the new BI solution alongside and build new
• If the new BI solution catches on with good adoption and functionality matches or exceeds BO, then phase out old BO reports/dashboards over time as new enhancement requests come up
• Co-existence may continue for many years but this will have the least disruption and lowest cost to the organization

On this last point, co-existence is a good strategy and there will be several case studies discussing this at IBIS 2018 with the most popular co-existence being BusinessObjects with Tableau followed by BusinessObjects with PowerBI.

So I am at the British Airways Executive lounge at London Heathrow waiting for my flight and watching England play Sweden in the World Cup quarter finals. England are leading 1-0 going into the second half and then Dele Alli scores a second goal for England. I jump out of my seat and yell out “Yes, Dele Alli”.

Everyone turns round to look at me as if I was from another planet.  There are a few people nodding their heads in approval at the goal and muttering comments like “Jolly good show” and “Well done England” but nobody in full rapturous celebration mode like me!

Now Dele Alli happens to be one of my favorite players who plays for my favorite club team (Tottenham Hotspur) so this made the goal particularly special to me but as I watch the celebrations on the TV , I realized most were not Dele Alli or Spurs fans (although they might be now!).

The England team, like the other national teams in the World Cup , are made up of the best players from that country. For the most part, they do not usually play together except when they play for their country. They are, of course, supposed to be the best players for their positions so it is like a dream team.

In the world of Business Intelligence there are many good players out there too and historically they have just played on one team. So if you used SAP BusinessObjects, all your players were SAP BusinessObjects tools and if you used Oracle BI (OBIEE) all your players were Oracle BI tools. In the last few years that has changed dramatically.

After SAP, Oracle and IBM bought out the 3 largest BI companies (BusinessObjects, Hyperion and Cognos), they focused more on integrating them as part of their other software offerings and lost their BI innovation and leadership position. This made room for new BI companies like Qliktech, Tableau and Domo to become the new BI innovators. These new BI companies focused on self-service data discovery and visualization and left the legacy BI companies trying to copy them and play catch up.

But Business Intelligence is more than just self-service data discovery and visualizations and the BI legacy companies remain dominant in other areas of BI like BI reporting, ad-hoc query and analysis, BI applications and data preparation.

As a result, organizations have been adopting the new BI tools while retaining their existing BI platforms. This is very prevalent in the BusinessObjects world where  large numbers of customers have adopted Tableau and, more recently PowerBI, for self-service BI data exploration and visualization while keeping Web Intelligence and Crystal Reports for BI reporting and ad-hoc query analysis.

This BI co-existence makes perfect sense and gives these organizations a great advantage over those remaining with just one vendor’s BI suite. They are using the best BI tools for both the job and the people who need to use them. Yes, Web Intelligence is the best BI reporting and ad-hoc query analysis tool on the market but for Power Users who want to do self-service BI discovery and quickly visualize those results, Tableau is the better player.

These organizations have effectively picked the best BI players for their different roles and are creating their own BI dream team.

The next step is to help that BI dream team play better together and integrate their skills and advantages. This is why InfoBurst Tab, which provides integration between  BusinessObjects  and Tableau, was created.

InfoBurst Tab leverages  the versatility and power of Web Intelligence and it’s underlying universe. It  is  able to schedule and  push Web Intelligence data into Tableau along with  allowing Tableau users to  pull data from its high speed data cache which can be populated from a variety of sources, including BusinessObjects.

That same high-speed data cache in InfoBurst XDC can also be used by PowerBI bringing some very interesting BI integration possibilities to organizations using both BusinessObjects and Microsoft’s PowerBI.

BusinessObjects co-existence is here to stay for a while and if you haven’t built your BI dream team, you might want to start thinking about it soon and not wait till the next World Cup.

The love for BusinessObjects was in the air at this year’s InfoSol Business Intelligence Seminar (IBIS). With attendees sharing their love for BusinessObjects, networking with others who share the same passion, and attending many hands-on training and seminar sessions to expand their knowledge. One of the highlights of IBIS was the InfoSol 2018 Best BI Dashboards Awards.

Dashboards continue to be the primary interface of most business intelligence solutions. Every year, the creativity and ingenuity just keeps getting better.

Best Business Dashboard Award

The InfoSol 2018 Best Business Dashboard Award went to The Waldinger Corporation for their Technician Dashboard.

The dashboard was developed using Xcelsius on the front end and InfoBurst cache and cache queries on the back end. It was then published as an HTML5 app using dCode.

This dashboard is a mobile dashboard that is set to deliver requested information to technicians via their iPad. It also allows them to easily set call availability preference via a database write-back. It also allows managers to view technician dashboards from their desktops, providing a focal point for regular mentoring and coaching sessions.

Limitless Business Intelligence Dashboard Award

The InfoSol 2018 Limitless Business Intelligence Dashboard Award went to the Ministry of Health and Prevention, UAE for their PaCE Command Center.

Last year, the same team walked away with the Limitless Business Intelligence Dashboard Award and the year before with the Most Valuable Dashboard Award. This year, they came back and stunned us all again with their PaCE solution taken to a whole new level. The team incorporated a Command Center in a dedicated crisis center with 8 dashboards which are mainly to manage the resources and streamline the patient flow. These dashboards highlight patient level detailed information which can help the command center team to take appropriate action.

Most Valuable Dashboard Award

The InfoSol 2018 Most Valuable Dashboard Award went to the International Humanitarian City for The Humanitarian Logistics Databank.

The Humanitarian Logistics Databank provides the humanitarian community with an information-sharing platform on prepositioned humanitarian aid stocks and flow to enhance emergency preparedness and response. It was developed under the coordination of the International Humanitarian City (IHC) and launched in Dubai in 2018. It will be replicated in 10 other international humanitarian hubs around the world in subsequent years.

The main impact of the platform resides in its information sharing approach with a focus on the humanitarian community working together. Data on prepositioned stocks, their location and availability will enhance preparedness and response capacity to emergencies. Progressively, the Humanitarian Logistics Databank will be linked to multiple webs thus granting a transparent sharing information approach through a multi-window access. It will lead to efficient and cost effective relief efforts and support to the humanitarian supply chain.

The attendees at IBIS were fascinated by seeing these dashboards in action and the screenshots barely do them justice. They certainly inspired many people at IBIS to start new dashboard projects and we look forward to seeing these new dashboards and more at IBIS 2019.

Want to Submit a Dashboard for the 2019 Dashboard Awards?

If you would like to submit your dashboard, you can do so by clicking here !

On a recent vacation in Mexico, I attended a class to learn how to dance salsa. Now, I have two left feet when it comes to learning any structured dances. I can do the count in my head and I can do the steps with my feet, but I can never get them synchronized which usually results in either stepping on my partner’s feet or freezing in fear of stepping on my partner’s feet!

The instructor taught the basic salsa steps. I started just fine, but as he added more steps and increased the speed of the music I became more confused and started to act like a bull in a china shop. When he showed one last step, the “Suzie Q” , I was doomed.

It would not have been so bad had the instructor not made us change partners every two minutes, which meant I had to embarrass myself with at least a dozen women who all politely pretended not to notice my out of control feet.

Now I have no trouble dancing freeform and I actually won prizes when I was younger for dancing to 70’s pop music.  You can certainly improvise with salsa too once you have those basic steps down but unless you learn and follow those steps, it’s not salsa.

The truth is that sometimes you just want to move to the music and not worry about following the rules of structured dances.

The same can be said when creating Business Intelligence dashboards. While we have some great dashboard tools we can use, like SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, Tableau, PowerBI and even Web Intelligence now, they are all structured and, along with the basics, you need to learn quite a few “Suzie Q” moves to build the fancy visualizations you want.

Four of the biggest challenges when building BI dashboards are:

1. Scalability
2. Performance
3. Working well on both desktop and mobile devices
4. Looking good while being functional and easy to use

These also happened to be the four major challenges facing a frustrated client I recently encountered. They had tried building a comprehensive BI dashboard first using Microstrategy, then Tableau and then PowerBI but all had design, mobile, scalability and performance challenges. So, I suggested a freeform approach where they can build a custom dashboard to meet their exact needs rather than try to fit their needs within the limitations of a BI dashboard development tool.

Because they are now building a custom dashboard, there were no limitations on the design.  They could make the dashboard look and behave exactly as they wanted with some pretty cool animations and simplified work flows.

They didn’t just stop with custom design.  They were also able to include collaboration features built into the dashboard requiring write-back capability which most structured BI dashboard tools do not support.

And they were able to accommodate their users.  Since there would be many different types of users wanting to do and see different things in the dashboard, they built a selection option, so each user could select their own defaults for display.

They addressed most of the mobile issues with responsive design and they solved performance issues using in-memory data caching.

Of course, there are pros and cons to building custom BI dashboards as opposed to using a commodity BI dashboard tool. Custom dashboards take longer to develop, require skilled programming and cost more to develop and maintain. However, there are usually little, or no software license fees associated with their deployment.

There is definitely a need and desire for structured BI dashboard tools just like there is for structured dances like the salsa but we should also be open to a freeform approach when we just know how we want to move to the music.