For nearly 7 years now InfoSol has been running a webinar series called “Let’s Speak BO.” The goal is to bring together experienced and innovative BusinessObjects users and specialists and share their knowledge and advice on how to get the most value and benefit from your BusinessObjects deployment.
Every month a new BO themed webinar will occur, featuring case studies, tech tips, and everything BusinessObjects. You can find the upcoming lineup below.
Receive Updates on Future Let’s Speak BO Webinars and Register for the New SpeakBO.com Community Site
Upcoming Webinars:
Tuesday, October 3rd – The New Search function in BI 4.3
Numerous user-friendly features have been added to SAP Web Intelligence incrementally. The search function within the application is one of them and what it is now in the current 4.3 version is quite useful. Since it may be hard to keep track of all of that, I will consolidate them in this session for everyone’s benefit. Join me to learn more about all the search abilities to enhance your productivity.
Tuesday, December 5th – Recent Upgrades from BusinessObjects BI 4.2 to BI 4.3
The majority of BusinessObjects customers are upgrading to BI 4.3 this year. Some have already upgraded to SP02 and many are now upgrading to SP03.
This session from the great BusinessObjects Administration Guru, Amy O’Neel, will discuss first-hand experiences as well as the best approach to executing an upgrade to BI 4.3.
Past Webinars:
2015
January 27th – Zero to Hero in Six Months
Presenter: David Behr, USPI
Let’s Speak BO Webinar Series kick off; dedicated interactive and informative webinars on everything BusinessObjects related. This webinar will take a look at how an organization implemented business intelligence capabilities along with a data warehouse from scratch. The case study will also explore how this organization was able to meet the requirements of reporting, dashboards and self-service analytics corporate-wide in under 6 months at a quarter of the expected cost
February 10th – Designing Dazzling Xcelsius Dashboards
Presenter: Roxanne Pittman and Taylor Packwood, InfoSol Inc.
Join us with Roxanne Pittman and Taylor Packwood of InfoSol for a wealth of tips, tricks and ideas on how to develop compelling and effective Xcelsius Dashboards. The session will include how to make the most of existing functionality within Xcelsius and show some of the popular third party add-on components.
February 24th – High 5 for HTML5 with BusinessObjects
Presenter: Rajesh Ponnurangam, InfoSol Inc.
Are you considering BI mobility? This webinar will take you through the latest technologies and methodologies in an informative demonstration of a variety of mobile BI options for deployment. This session will cover building mobile dashboards using SAP Dashboards (aka Xcelsius), SAP Design Studio, Lumira, InfoBurst Apps and AnuBIs. You will get a glimpse of every tool’s mobile capability and will be able to compare and contrast the different deployment options.
March 10th – Getting the Most out of Web Intelligence 4.1 Chart Visualizations
Presenter: Steve Thatcher, InfoSol Inc.
This webinar will cover the many new visualization features available in SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.1. Attendees will learn how to create useful and insightful charts by leveraging the latest functionality available in BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.1.
March 24th – Top 3 Cases for Location Intelligence and BI
Presenter: Ryan Goodman, CEO of Centigon Solutions
Join InfoSol and Ryan Goodman, Founder and CEO of Centigon Solutions, as we take a look at top business cases and tips for injecting maps into your BI implementation. This informative webinar will extract and share the knowledge taken from hundreds of customer stories and share how you can gather and transform requirements into amazing location intelligence solutions.
April 7th – What’s the Scoop on Multi-Source Universes
Presenter: Allan Williams, Manitoba Public Insurance
Business Objects 4 introduced the concept of multi-source universes creating a single universe with connections to different database platforms. This presentation will illustrate creating a basic multi-source universe from scratch. In addition, important considerations for configuring the Adaptive Processing Server to support multi-source universes will be covered.
April 21st – What’s New in Web Intelligence v4.1 SP5?
Presenter: Amy O’Neel, InfoSol Inc.
This session will include a live demonstration, highlighting new features introduced in WebI v4.0 and v4.1 with emphasis on some of the significant new features introduced in v4.1 SP2. Amy will also provide examples of practical use cases utilizing these new features, showcasing both the similarities and the differences in comparison to WebI v3.1.
May 5th – How to Develop an End to End BI Application Using SAP Dashboards?
Presenter: Mel Sheppard, InfoSol Ltd.
Join us and Dashboard Developer expert, Mel Sheppard, as we dive into SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards! Based on the awesome feedback that we received from the Let’s Speak BO: Web Intelligence Chart Visualization webinar in March, we are excited to offer an in-depth and informative session dedicated to SAP Dashboards. This webinar will focus on how to develop end to end Business Intelligence applications within your organization while addressing when to transition your data delivery method from a Web Intelligence report to a Dashboard. This webinar will be jam packed with tips and tricks, discussions on project planning, and dashboard development insight to better visualize and deliver key information.
May 19th – Understanding LCM and the 360 Suite
Presenter: Minith Patel, InfoSol Inc.
Join us and Minith Patel in a fantastic and informative session on LCM and the 360 Suite. This session will take you through an in-depth look at the features of LCM consists and how to best utilize it within your organization.
As a comparison, Minith will also demonstrate the usability of GB & Smith’s 360 Suite: A powerful set of BusinessObjects administration tools for enhanced security management, auditing, backup recovery and impact analysis.
June 2nd – Multiple Data Providers in v4.1: It’s a Whole New World
Presenter: Michael Ward, CTTS
Looking to expand your report? Add more data providers? Learn how it easy it can be. But watch out! If you are a v3.1 user, you are In for a few surprises! You will find this presentation to be very informative!!!
June 16th – Administration Maintenance Planning
Presenter: Amy O’Neel, InfoSol Inc.
Keeping things running smoothly, making sure security is in place, providing support, training the user community, assessing future trends, being everything to everyone at all times. So many hats! And most BusinessObjects administrators don’t even have the luxury of having this as their only role. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it! With a little planning, some tools in place, some automating and some help in your back pocket, you can do this!
Don’t miss out on this fantastic webinar with Amy O’Neel, BusinessObjects expert with over 13 years of Admin experience, who will be diving into Administration Maintenance and Planning for the future with your BusinessObjects deployment
June 30th – Crystal Reporting with InfoBurst
Presenter: Rajesh Ponnurangam
The Let’s Speak BO Webinar series welcomes a fascinating customer case study on the science behind the shine utilizing Crystal Reports with a third party platform for delivering automated and intelligent distributions of reporting content.
Senior Consultant Rajesh Ponnurangam will share how one of America’s largest supermarket chains implemented this third party tool to deliver Crystal Reports to over 1500 stores within the United States. This fantastic case study will also dive into the migration process of Crystal Reports, from Crystal Enterprise 9 to Crystal 2013.
July 14th – Enhancing Call Center BI with Web Intelligence 4.1 Visualization
Presenter: Mike Gurtler
Join the Let’s Speak BO Webinar experience in a fascinating customer case study with Michael Gurtler, Freeport-McMoRan, as he shares how his organization discovered new features that began to rival the interactive capabilities of other BI products in the marketplace.
Mike Gurtler, an FCX BI leader, will demonstrate Call Center Reporting and how his organization put to use input controls, interactive chart elements, and drill through reporting to provide a better BO experience for their end users.
July 28th – Charting Data in Web Intelligence 4.1
Presenter: Adam Lange
Join Adam Lange in a fantastic and informative webinar dedicated the what’s new with Web Intelligence 4.1.
The charts offered in Web Intelligence XI 3.1 were notoriously limited in their functionality and effectiveness. In the latest version, Web Intelligence 4.1, SAP introduced many improvements to the chart engine which allow for better, more attractive, and more robust data visualizations. This session will explore new and expanded visualization features, including heat maps, tree maps, box plots, combo charts, waterfall charts, tag clouds, and dual axis charts. Attendees will also learn about new interactive functions and formatting options.
August 11th – Mobilizing Your Dashboards with Xcelsius HTML5 and dCode
Presenters: Paul Grill and Rich Harvey
Xcelsius Dashboards are everywhere and with the ability to now generate them in HTML5 they will be appearing in even more places and on your mobile devices. In addition to the Xcelsius HTML5 components, there are many third party HTML5 components and add-ons for Xcelsius that provide some really cool functionality like being able to support offline mobile dashboards or embed Xcelsius HTML5 dashboards inside publications. Don’t miss out on a fantastic exploration into the world of Dashboards, Mobility, HTML5 and dCode hosted by Paul Grill, CEO of InfoSol, and Richard Harvey of InfoSol Ltd.
August 25th – Thinking Spatially with Maps and WebI
Presenter: Ryan Goodman
Join Ryan Goodman, CEO of Centigon Solutions, as he explores how to engage your business users with the latest innovation of maps inside of Web Intelligence.
Why use Google Maps in enterprise reporting? That is the million dollar question that will be answered in this session. You will learn not only “why” but also how to engage business users while creating map templates that can be used directly inside of Webi with just a few clicks.
September 8th – Dashboards and Design Studio: The Car You Own and The Car You Dream of Owning
Presenter: Rajesh Ponnurangam
SAP BusinessObjects dashboards (Xcelsius) has been one of the most popular dashboarding tools for over a decade. SAP Design Studio has created a lot of buzz among customers with its advent. Does SAP Design Studio compete with Xcelsius? Who are the target customers for Design Studio? Which tool should I choose for dashboarding in future? What would happen to all the dashboards created using Xcelsius?
September 22nd – Using the SAP RESTful SDK without a Single Line of Code
Presenter: Don Collins
The SAP BI RESTful SDK is the next-generation application programming interface (API) for gaining insight into reporting content on your SAP BusinessObjects Server, especially for Web Intelligence reports.
But the exciting thing — and little-known secret — about the RESTful SDK is that strictly speaking, it does not require you to write a single line of code.
October 6th – Information Design for Dashboards
Presenter: Mel Sheppard
Anyone can build a dashboard. There are plenty of tools on the market that enable you to connect to virtually any data source, and with just a few clicks present information inside one or more data visualizations. However, in order to really effectively communicate information in this way, it pays to understand the important role that design plays in our ability to interpret this information.
Expert Developer and Dashboard Designer, Mel Sheppard will share examples of good and bad information design and discuss how attributes such as color, weight, scale and grouping affect our perception. You will also learn the importance of selecting the right chart and leave equipped the skills/tools you need to pick the right chart/visualization for your dashboard.
October 20th – WebI 4.1 SP06 Free-Hand SQL Queries, New Input Controls, and More
Presenter: Adam Lange
Join us and BO Expert, Adam Lange, as we take an in-depth look at support package 6, the latest upgrade for SAP BI 4.1. Recently released this summer, the new support package includes several exciting features for Web Intelligence, including free-hand SQL data sources, global input controls, multi-column selections, and more. This session will offer an overview of the new features in SP06 and an in-depth discussion on best practices for the latest BusinessOjects support package.
November 3rd – Carroll Community College’s Smart BusinessObjects Migration
Presenter: Daniel Demissie
When faced with a BusinessObjects XI 3.1 to BI 4.1 Migration with few resources and a tight budget, Carroll Community College used their “smarts” and looked for efficient and cost-effective solutions to assist them. Carroll Community College Data Analyst, Daniel Demissie will explain and demonstrate how their organization utilized each of the 360 Tools to rationalize and migrate to BI 4.1.
November 17th – What’s New in Web Intelligence 4.1 SP6
Presenter: Michael Ward
Join us in a fantastic webinar on What’s New with Web Intelligence 4.1 SP6 hosted by Web Intelligence expert, Michael Ward. This session will include a live demonstration of all the latest and greatest features introduced in version 4.1. Some of the topics Michael will discuss includes: Local Excel Data Providers, Grouping, Values button, and the new Free Hand SQL option.
December 1st – Dashboard-lite, Creating Visual and Interactive Reports in Web Intelligence
Presenter: Adam Lange
With limited resources for software, training, and support, it is critical for organizations to seize the full capability of their existing solutions. SAP Web Intelligence is generally used for operational reporting, ad hoc analysis, and casual data exploration. Indeed, Web Intelligence is a wonderful solution for those business needs. But the latest 4.1 version also offers an impressive range of interactive and visual components which users can leverage to create attractive, engaging, dashboard-esque reports. This session will demonstrate several features in Web Intelligence, including charts, input controls, and drill-downs. Most importantly, attendees will see how these features can be combined to build meaningful data presentations in a dashboard format
December 15th – Creating Universes With The New IDT!
Presenter: Michael Ward
Join us as we explore the depths of Information Design Tool with Business Intelligence expert, Michael Ward. Michael Ward will demonstrate the building of universes with the latest version of IDT. This session will also showcase how to define a project, how to set up the initial connections, creating the data foundation layer, building a business layer, and publishing the universe.
December 29th – Data Profiling in Data Services
Presenter: Doug Evans
Join us and data profiling expert, Doug Evans as we take the plunge into Data Services. While SAP Information Steward is the primary tool for data profiling, technical data profiling can actually be done directly in Data Services. In this session you will see through demonstration how you can go beyond simple viewing of the data to actually conducting a thorough analysis of your data. This in turn provides you with great information to building better jobs in Data Services. You will see how the data profiling process will produce a statistical analysis that includes Frequency Distribution, Distinct Values, Null Values, Minimum / Maximum Values, Data Patterns, Comparisons of values between data sets and Drill-down capabilities to view specific records.
2016
January 12th – Advanced Calculation Context
Presenter: Steve Thatcher
In the real world, sometimes Web Intelligence’s default calculation context just isn’t good enough to develop the reports that are truly needed. Join us and Web Intelligence expert, Steve Thatcher, as we will highlight advanced calculation context techniques that extend the capabilities of the Web Intelligence formula editor. These techniques allow for calculations in Webi that may have only seemed possible in other tools such as Microsoft Excel.
January 26th – The Dos and Don’ts of a BusinessObjects 4.1 Upgrade
Presenter: Minith Patel
Join us with Minith Patel, BusinessObjects Consultant and Migrations expert, as he discusses the Pre, During and Post migration dos and don’ts of a BusinessObjects 4.1 upgrade. This session will demonstrate and discuss a successful migration while emphasizing key prerequisites and post installation check lists.
Februrary 9th – Xcelsius vs Lumira & Design Studio
Presenter: Rajesh Ponnurangam
SAP BusinessObjects dashboards (aka Xcelsius) has been one of the most popular dashboarding tools for over a decade. More recently Lumira and Design Studio have been heavily promoted by SAP to BusinessObjects customers. Join us and BusinessObjects expert, Rajesh Ponnurangam, as he addresses insight into the following questions: Do Lumira and Design Studio compete with Xcelsius? Who are the target customers for these new tools? Which tool should I choose for dashboarding? What would happen to all my dashboards created using Xcelsius?
This session will feature live demonstrations of the capabilities of these tools and the pros and cons of using Xcelsius over Design Studio/Lumira.
February 23rd – Mobilizing Dashboards with Xcelsius HTML5 and dCode
Presenters: Paul Grill and Rich Harvey
Xcelsius Dashboards are everywhere and with the ability to now generate them in HTML5 they will be appearing in even more places and on your mobile devices. In addition to the Xcelsius HTML5 components, there are many third party HTML5 components and add-ons for Xcelsius that provide some really cool functionality like being able to support offline mobile dashboards or embed Xcelsius HTML5 dashboards inside publications. Don’t miss out on a fantastic exploration into the world of Dashboards, Mobility, HTML5 and dCode hosted by Paul Grill, CEO of InfoSol, and Richard Harvey of InfoSol Ltd.
Presenter: Don Collins
SAP BI Platform’s Program Objects provide a simple convenient way to execute scripts and java code on a scheduled basis. Not only this, but the scripts you write allow you to “see” folders, reports, users and other objects residing on the BI Platform. This opens up a world of possibility for automating otherwise tedious and time-consuming tasks, and extending your BI Platform’s capabilities. This presentation will walk you through creating and deploying a Report Governance Program Object, intended to ensure reports that users publish are properly documented. Major points include: Creating the Program Object, Deploying the Program Object, and Other Possibilities. Whether you are a developer or BI Administrator, this session will not only provide you the how-to but also the what-is-possible with your current BI investment. Join us and Don Collins, Senior SAP BI Solutions Architect with Connected BI, as we explore The Power of Program Objects.
March 22nd – Innovative Dashboard Navigation Techniques
Presenter: Roxanne Pittman
Navigating around a dashboard must be able to ‘flex’ when it comes to the needs of the data. Sometimes in the development process, logical groupings of the data are more apparent whereas other times we need to get creative in how we navigate to the data with a user-friendly and logical workflow in mind. Join us in a fantastic session with expert Dashboard Developer & Designer, Roxanne Pittman, as we explore dashboard navigation techniques that will guide developers in discovering innovative approaches to navigation in a dashboard project.
April 5th – Queries and Data Providers
Presenter: Steve Thatcher
Depending on your needs, there may be times where simple queries will not yield the results you want in a report. In these cases, more advanced techniques using combined queries or subqueries may be necessary. This webinar explores these advanced querying techniques
April 19th – The Advantages of Using IDT Over UDT
Presenter: Rajesh Ponnurangam
The Information Design Tools or IDT is a new semantic layer modeling tool from SAP. But the Universe Design Tool or UDT is still supported and delivered as part of BI Client tools. Join expert, Rajesh Ponnurangam, as he discusses and demonstrates: The advantages of using IDT versus UDT, new features and benefits in creating an IDT UNX Universe, what to do with old UNV universes, and the steps to creating an IDT universe.
May 3rd – Analysis for OLAP and Explorer
Presenter: Rajesh Ponnurangam
Join us and Senior Consultant, Rajesh Ponnurangam, as he shares fascinating insights into some of the most overlooked tools in the BusinessObjects suite. This session will demonstrate how these self-service BI tools provide users with insight into business data while uncovering trends, Rajesh will also discuss some of the key features providing users with the ability to quickly search and explore vast amounts of data on demand.
May 17th – Business and Data Security Profiles in BusinessObjects 4.1
Presenter: Allan Williams
Join us and BO expert, Allan Williams, as we focus on the improvements introduced in BO 4.1. This session will explore restricting data access when creating queries and displaying data and data filters in a Business Security Profile. Allan will also demonstrate how to restrict connections, controls, SQL, tables and rows using Data Security Profiles in BusinessObjects.
May 31st – Sensitive Data Protection with Data Services Data Masking Transform
Presenter: Doug Evans
In today’s world it is extremely important to protect critical business assets. Join expert Doug Evans to learn how you can build data protection into existing ETL logic as one data movement process. Data Services Data Masking transform provides various data protection techniques to match specific protection requirements. This session will explore how to protect personal identification ID’s such as Social Security Numbers and other personal data such as Email’s, Salaries and randomize sensitive production data for test data management.
June 14th – What’s new in BusinessObjects 4.2 for System Administration
Presenter: Minith Patel
Join us and Business Objects expert and Senior Consultant, Minith Patel, as we explore SAP BI 4.2 System Administration. One of the most awaited feature “Recycle Bin” along with few brand new features are now introduced in the new BusinessObjects BI 4.2 release. This session will provide information on what is new in BI 4.2 for system administration while exploring new features and the current functionality that has been updated in this release.
June 28th – How to Create a Dashboard in Web Intelligence
Presenter: Steve Thatcher
Join InfoSol’s Steve Thatcher as he brings together various functionality and features in Web Intelligence 4.2 to build an interactive dashboard. This live demonstration challenges you to think of Web Intelligence in a whole new way by including such features as Geo Maps, dynamic visibility, HTML ticker/scroll and more.
July 12 – Exploring Built-in Functions & Formulas
Presenter: Steve Thatcher
There are many formula functions built into the Web Intelligence report designer. Many of these functions are similar to functions found in other reporting tools, and many leverage the metadata within Web Intelligence, and the Business Objects platform. This webinar will explore using the formula editor to create customized solutions to challenging report design requirements.
July 26th – Let’s Get Crystal Clear with Crystal Reports
Presenter: Rajesh Ponnurangam
Is Crystal Enterprise the new version of Crystal Reports? How different is Crystal Enterprise compared to Crystal Reports 2016/2013/2011/2008. What are the architectural changes in Crystal Enterprise? What are the different data connectivity options for Crystal Enterprise? Which version of Crystal Reports is best suited for SAP data sources – specifically SAP BW & HANA? Do I need to convert Crystal 2008/2011 reports to CR Enterprise? What’s new in Crystal 2016? This session will include a Demonstration showing the differences between Crystal 2013 and CR Enterprise.
August 9th – Exploring the New Features of Web Intelligence 4.2
Presenter: Adam Lange
Join us for a live tour of the latest features and enhancements offered in SAP Web Intelligence 4.2. This brand new version of Web Intelligence includes several exciting improvements to bolster the quality and efficiency of your reporting operations: geographical maps and charts, report element sharing, parallel query execution, report commentary, custom report elements, and direct queries against SAP HANA. This presentation will include practical applications and examples of the new features, plus caveats and best practices.
August 23rd – Going Mobile – Design and Deployment Using Web Intelligence 4.2
Presenter: Steve Thatcher
Due to the proliferation of mobile devices in business today, report designers are increasingly being asked to provide reporting solutions for distribution on a mobile platform. More often than not, users would like to consume their Web Intelligence content on their mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This hands-on immersion boot camp will explore design considerations to enhance the display of both existing and new documents on mobile devices using the SAP BusinessObjects Mobile Client application.
September 6th – Web Services to and from BusinessObjects
Presenter: Amy O’Neel
Web services are useful for feeding data into and out of BusinessObjects to and from other applications. In 3.1 BusinessObjects introduced the creation of web services to come from Webi report parts for feeding data OUT of BO to other applications. Webi can also CONSUME web services as a data source directly via Webi Rich Client or, new in 4.1, as a connection option for a universe. Public web services are easily available as additional data sources for weather, stocks, monetary conversion rates, consumer stats, etc. and you can use this information to supplement your internal data. In this webinar we’ll walk through examples of bringing web services data into Webi reports both directly and with the new Universe connector type.
September 20th – How Group Healthcare Cooperative Designed a New IDT Universe for Open Enrollment
Presenter: Rajesh Ponnurangam
Find out how Group Health Cooperative, a Washington based nonprofit healthcare organization, designed a BusinessObjects Universe for Healthcare open enrollment using Information Design Tool. Join Senior BO Consultant, Rajesh Ponnurangam, and Subhadra Ghosh, Group Health Care, as they discuss the project life cycle including the business use case, data warehouse design, data foundation and business layer design. The various BusinessObjects tools that consume this new universe and their impact on the universe design will also be discussed.
October 4th – Creative Linking in Web Intelligence
Presenter: Steve Thatcher
There are times when more than one document is needed to tell the whole story. And the story may be received using multiple methods of report distribution, such as online and e-mail. This webinar will explore linking a document to other documents and websites.
October 18th – Document Linking to and From BOE
Presenter: Amy O’Neel
Document linking between documents and from other applications to Business Objects is done with the OpenDocument.jsp. This internal linking mechanism is even easier to create now with wizards in 4.x and easy copy/paste link properties. There are a few new features with the new BILaunchPad in 4.x as well. In this webinar Amy O’Neel, Senior BusinessObjects Consultant, will explore how to create document links and some of the ways they are used to enhance the usability of your BusinessObjects environment.
November 1st – Going Mobile – Design and Deployment using SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.2
More often than not, users would like to consume their SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence content on their mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. This presentation will offer attendees looking to display their SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.2 content on mobile devices the opportunity to explore design considerations to enhance the display of both existing and new documents on mobile devices using the SAP BusinessObjects Mobile Client application.
November 15th – Exploring the New Features of Web Intelligence 4.2
With the latest release of Web Intelligence 4.2 SP3, join expert consultant, Adam Lange, for a live tour of the latest features and enhancements offered in SAP Web Intelligence 4.2. This brand new version of Web Intelligence includes several exciting improvements to bolster the quality and efficiency of your reporting operations: geographical maps and charts, report element sharing, parallel query execution, report commentary, custom report elements, and direct queries against SAP HANA. This presentation will include practical applications and examples of the new features, plus caveats and best practices.
November 29th – The Integration of Tableau into BusinessObjects
Learn how Tableau can connect to Business Objects Webi, Crystal and Deski reports via Infoburst. Deployment and scheduling of BO content to Tableau will be demonstrated. The use cases for Tableau dashboards with BO content will be discussed. And if we have time we may look at bursting out Tableau workbooks as well.
December 13th – Dynamically Displaying Data in Web Intelligence
Sometimes a report developer is presented with challenging requests to display values in unique ways, and with little help at the universe level. This webinar will explore two main techniques available in Web Intelligence 4.1 to assist with such requests. These techniques include grouping data values, and using conditional formatting and display.
December 27th – BusinessObjects Migration Do’s and Don’ts
This session with guide you with the best possible ways to prepare and execute a BusinessObjects upgrade or update. Senior Consultant Minith Patel, InfoSol, will share his experience and list the Do’s and Don’ts in a best practice process that can help with a successful Upgrade/Update.
2017
January 10th – Dashboards and OpenDoc
Join us and expert Dashboard developer, Roxanne Pittman as we explore connecting BusinessObjects Dashboards to BusinessObjects reporting. One great option we have in our BusinessObjects tool belt is the use of the OpenDocument call to open a Webi or Crystal report from a URL link. We can use this tool in Xcelsius/SAP BO Dashboards as well to further expand the usability and drive action by adding a link from the dashboard to a Webi or Crystal report. In this session, Roxanne will demonstrate and discuss how to create a link from Dashboards to reports while also demonstrating the capability to pass parameters from the dashboard as prompts to the report, so that the detail report opens at just the right level of detail needed for complete analysis.
January 24th – SAP BI Mobile – App Store Vs Play Store
Are you considering BI mobility? Join us and BusinessObjects expert, Rajesh Ponnurangam, as he addresses the pros and cons of using Apple and Android versions of SAP BI Mobile app. This webinar will take you through the latest enhancements with SAP BI Mobile app and its deployment options. The rendering of reporting tools such as Web Intelligence, Xcelsius and Crystal reports on iPad and Android tablet will be demonstrated.
February 7th – How Korn Ferry Used BO Dashboards to Create a Tool for Measuring Client Profitability
This customer case study webinar will explore how Korn Ferry solved the measuring of client profitability using SAP BOBJ, SAP Dashboards (Xcelsius), InfoBurst and Inovista’s Xcelsius add-on components to provide solutions to organizations consultants, project managers and regional leaders to provide instant access to data.
This fantastic case study will look at a P&L view with an expendable/collapsible hierarchy at both client/project level. The ability to drill from summarized to detail data that normally had taken hours to download and compile in MS Excel. A look at the developed scorecard with alerts for projects that are considered success or failures. And the ability to export both client and project level data to MS Excel.
February 21st – BI 4.1 to BI 4.2 SP3 upgrade – Lessons Learnt and Success Stories
Freeport MacMoRan Inc, a premier U.S.-based natural resources company with an industry-leading global portfolio of mineral assets, with a large BusinessObjects deployment. They recently upgraded from BusinessObjects BI 4.1 to BI 4.2 and this presentation will talk about the different challenges they faced with the upgrade and how they resolved or worked around the issues.
March 7th – Building a Custom Portal Utilizing BusinessObjects and InfoBurst
Join us in a fascinating customer case study presented by United Surgical Partners own Noe Garcia.
USPI was looking to move away from a “Push” reporting model to building out a custom Enterprise Business Intelligence Portal where all end users can go to in order to see the reports and dashboards they need to make their necessary decisions and run their business. What if you could build an enterprise reporting portal that utilized the power of webi reports and xcelsius dashboards, and single sign on leveraging Active Directory, in order to build a robust EBI Portal that houses reports and interactive dashboards? Come find out how USPI made this vision a reality.
March 21st – Nationwide Transportation Customer Case Study
April 4th – Going Mobile – Design and Deployment using SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.2
More often than not, users would like to consume their SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence content on their mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. This presentation will offer attendees looking to display their SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.2 content on mobile devices the opportunity to explore design considerations to enhance the display of both existing and new documents on mobile devices using the SAP BusinessObjects Mobile Client application. Join BusinessObjects Expert, Rajesh Ponnurangam, as he presents Going Mobile with Design and Deployment considerations for Webi.
April 18th – Creating Interactive Dashboards in Web Intelligence
Join us in a fantastic presentation where you will learn how to use the functionality in Web Intelligence to create dynamic and interactive reports/dashboards. Jared Hansen will demonstrate how the City of Mesa used dashboard developing techniques in Web Intelligence to create a more cohesive and guided analytical solution.
May 2nd – What’s New in BI 4.2 System Administration
Join us and BusinessObjects expert and Senior Consultant, Minith Patel, as we explore SAP BI 4.2 System Administration. One of the most awaited feature “Recycle Bin” along with few brand new features are now introduced in the new BusinessObjects BI 4.2 release. This session will provide information on what is new in BI 4.2 for system administration while exploring new features and the current functionality that has been updated in this release.
May 16th – Understanding Web Intelligence Calculation Contexts
Join us for an in-depth presentation on Web Intelligence Calculation Contexts. Allan Williams will demonstrate the most dynamic and user-friendly features of Web Intelligence, default aggregations, which limits report developers when creating required calculations in reports. This webinar will explore using advanced calculation context to create customized solutions to challenging report calculation requirements.
May 30th – Let’s Speak BO: Validating the Migration of Your BusinessObjects Reports with 360Bind
Join us and BusinessObjects consultant, Doug Evans, where he will demonstrate the power of 360Bind to assist in the migration of your BusinessObjects Reports. 360Bind gives you the ability to create report bind tasks, launch and schedule the tasks, monitor the results of the report processing, export bind tasks to another BusinessObjects environment to be launched and run report comparisons between two BusinessObjects environments for detection of non-matching reports and aid in troubleshooting.
June 13th – Getting Familiar with Promotion Manager
Environment migration isn’t what it used to be. This fantastic presentation, hosted by BusinessObjects Administrator expert Amy O’Neel, will look at Promotion Manager from the basic functionality, to the improvements in instance-migration and security migration in BusinessObjects 4.2. Amy will also demonstrate the features that are still missing, which will allow users to still “get intimate” with Promotion Manager, without putting yourself into a compromised position by working with it. Tips & tricks within Promotion Manager will also be discussed and demonstrated to leverage this fantastic BusinessObjects tool.
June 27th – What’s the Latest with Web Intelligence SP04 (BI 4.2)? – PART 1
Are you planning for BI 4.2 SP04 upgrade? Join us for this immersive session where Rajesh Ponnurangam will cover the new features available in Web Intelligence 4.2 Service Pack 04. This webinar will explore the sensational new features of the FIORI based Launch Pad, Web Intelligence Interactive viewer, new charts and chart properties and Custom elements & formulas. This session is perfect for users and report designers who are familiar with and experienced in Web Intelligence and are excited to learn the new features and functions in 4.2 SP04.
July 11th – No More Query Builder- How to Use the New CMS Data Access Driver
SAP has finally introduced a modern replacement for the Query Builder utility. Starting in BI 4.2 SP3, administrators now have the capability to query BI metadata through a new CMS data access driver. This latest enhancement makes it possible to use standard tools, like IDT and WebI, to extract valuable nuggets of information from the complex CMS data structure. Join us and BusinessObjects expert, Adam Lange with A. Lange Consulting, who will explore the new CMS data access driver and SAP’s delivered CMS universe and sample reports.
July 25th – What’s the Latest Web Intelligence 4.2 SP04 PART 2
Are you planning to convert your UNV’s to UNX? Join us for Part 2 of Rajesh Ponnurangam’s webinar session on What’ s the latest with BI 4.2 SP04 as he showcases the new Web Intelligence Change data source functionality for multiple documents and universes. New Web Intelligence charts & properties, custom elements, calculation extensions and Semantic Layer functionalities will also be discussed during this webinar.
August 8th – Now You See Me, Now You Don’t!
Join us and Creative Technology & Training Solutions’ Michael Ward, as he demonstrates and discusses how to create multiple drill blocks in SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence. This session will explore how to hide drill blocks dynamically based upon drill bar selections. Michael Ward will also share how to use Advance Drilling Functionality in a way you may have never envisioned. Watch as report blocks appear and disappear as you select various values from the drill bar in Web Intelligence.
August 22nd – Make Your Web Intelligence Reports Come Alive
It is often necessary to move beyond static reporting to support the objectives of data-driven decision-marking. Join Steve Thatcher from A. Lange Consulting, LLC as he explores the many options for creating dynamic and engaging reports in Web Intelligence. Attendees will see live demonstrations of interactive Web Intelligence features, including input controls, element linking, creating a what-if scenario, commentary, and more!
September 5th – Stress Test of a New BI 4.2 BusinessObjects Environment – A Case Study
Do you know the performance and capacity of your current BusinessObjects deployment? Do you know if your Current BusinessObjects setup can meet the current and future demand of your organization? This presentation will walk you through a real world use case of a Healthcare company that needs to deliver more than 400 reports an hour. Join us to see a detailed journey of a Stress Test of a BusinessObjects 4.2 cluster environment and how it helped bring about faster turnaround time of Webi and Crystal reports.
September 19th – SAP Dashboards (Xcelsius) BI’s Dark Knight
Join us and BI Dashboard Developer, Noe Garcia from United Surgical Partners International (USPI), as he showcases USPI’s silent guardian. With an expertise in SAP BusinessObjects and InfoBurst, Noe has developed and implemented many different types of BI solutions for the healthcare, retail, and pharmaceutical industry.
This session will explore how USPI continues to rely on Xcelsius (aka SAP Dashboards) to deliver robust, visual tools. With a little help from its sidekick InfoBurst, with it’s utility belt loaded with great apps and tools, Xcelsius continues to be USPI’s watchful protector, a dark knight!
October 3rd – Let’s get Crystal Clear with Crystal Reports
Is Crystal Enterprise the new version of Crystal Reports? How different is Crystal Enterprise compared to Crystal Reports 2016/2013/2011/2008. What are the architectural changes in Crystal Enterprise? What are the different data connectivity options for Crystal Enterprise? Which version of Crystal Reports is best suited for SAP data sources – specifically SAP BW & HANA? Do I need to convert Crystal 2008/2011 reports to CR Enterprise? What’s new in Crystal 2016? In this session Rajesh Ponnurangam, a senior consultant and Crystal guru at InfoSol, will address all of the above questions. A demo showing the differences between Crystal 2016 and CR Enterprise will be discussed.
October 17th – Design and Development Techniques for Mobilizing SAP Dashboards
Join us in a fantastic and informative session with expert developer and Dashboards Consultant, Roxanne Pittman. This dedicated session will demonstrate innovative techniques for designing and deploying SAP Dashboards (formerly known as Xcelsius) for mobile devices. This interactive webinar will also explore tips and tricks for Dashboard development as well as introduce fantastic third party components that will make designing and consuming mobile dashboards even easier!
October 31st – A Guide to Geographic Charts in Web Intelligence
Join Adam Lange for an informative webinar on geographic visualizations in Web Intelligence 4.2. Attendees will learn the step-by-step process to integrate dazzling geo-charts into their Web Intelligence reports. Plus, Adam will cover the best practices associated with geographic reporting, such as data cleaning and geocoding.
November 14th – The Integration of BusinessObjects and Tableau
Join us and Allan Williams as he presents a fascinating webinar of the integration BusinessObjects customers are exploring with Tableau as their data visualization platform. This session will share how BusinessObjects customers can now leverage existing Universes and Reports into both Tableau Desktop and Tableau server while discovering the possibility of taking Web Intelligence report data and funneling it into Tableau Data Extracts (data source) and Tableau Workbooks (data visualization). This end to end toolset provides BusinessObjects customers with both a reporting and data discovery processes that paves a new road ahead for Business Intelligence users.
November 28th – Visualize This! Web Intelligence 4.2 Creative Design Techniques
With nothing more than Web Intelligence 4.2 you can create complex and creative visualizations. This fascinating webinar will host Michael Ward with Creative Technology Training and Solutions who will demonstrate a variety of chart and report blocks using nothing more than Input Controls and the new Linking Functionality. After this webinar you will be able to create very slick and custom-appearing interactive data visualizations utilizing native Web Intelligence
December 12th – Security Lessons From the Trenches
Join Amy O’Neel, BusinessObjects Administrative expert, as she presents security lessons from down in the trenches of BusinessObjects Administration. A webinar that will host a great opportunity to dive into many of the subtleties of BO Security. Amy will take the attendees through topics such as inheritance, explicit settings, setting on object only and not objects within, and more. This administrative webinar will also explore application rights versus folder rights, hiding functionality with customization, auditing security and the Information Design Tool security detail. Down in the trenches we explore a barrage of security issues that arise. This webinar will compile this year’s best!
December 26th – Common Challenges of Developing an HTML5 Dashboard
Developing an SAP Dashboard is never easy as there are a lot of challenges that can arise when developing specifically for HTML5 mobile consumption. These challenges range from design obstacles to security concerns. Join us and expert Dashboard Developer, Taylor Packwood, as he discusses and demonstrates some of the common challenges that arise when designing and converting an SAP Dashboard (Xcelsius) into a mobile-friendly HTML5 application.
2018
January 9th – High Value Opportunity Burst Brings Instant Gratification to Marketing Executives
Join us and Tyler Koita as he presents a fascinating case study on how a simple yet effective BI solution solved a C-suite level problem and won over its toughest critics. This burst solution used Salesforce and SAP data to increase visibility into large potential sales deals for senior management, increasing the chance to close the deal. This webinar will take a detailed look at the business problem and the technical solution, showcasing the true potential of SAP BusinessObjects and InfoBurst. This presentation will hopefully inspire the audience members to push for more from their current BI investments
January 23rd – What’s New in Dashboards 4.2 SP5?
Join us and innovative Dashboard Developer, Mel Sheppard, as we explore the latest and greatest features in SAP Dashboards 4.2 SP5. In this webinar Mel will demonstrate recently added functionality for SAP Dashboards and explore the new HTML export option. This session will also highlight some of the new capabilities alongside existing export options (SWF and mobile with dCode) and compare the outputs to provide insight on the benefits and limitations of each Dashboard output.
February 6th – Fire Up Your Fiori Launchpad
Join us for this immersive session with Rajesh Ponnurangam, who will explore the sensational new features and navigation capabilities of the BI FIORI Launchpad. This webinar will also cover BI 4.2 SP05 FIORI features such as Web Intelligence interactive viewer, new charts and chart properties, custom elements and formulas. This will be a perfect session for end users and report designers who are excited to learn the new features and functions in BI 4.2 SP05.
Despite numerous great features and advantages of native components within SAP Dashboards, developers often face challenges when building complex and large dashboards. The first major challenge is that the work cannot be divided among multiple developers due to its lack of capability to merge and share dashboard projects. The second challenge is faced when the number of components increase causing the loading, previewing and over-all navigation of the dashboard to slow down.
Join us and Expert Dashboard Developer Runali Ghosh, as she demonstrates and discusses examples of Advanced iFrame; an add-on component that enables developing large dashboards with several tabs and pages. A solution that permits multiple developers to work in parallel, improving the performance of the Dashboard as well as the Design
March 6th – Understanding the Audit Database in SAP BI 4.x
Join us and Adam Lange, A. Lange Consulting, as he takes us through SAP’s BI4 Audit Database. This session will explore the actionable insights hidden in your SAP BusinessObjects audit database, such as top users, most accessed reports, logins by month, and more. Attendees will learn how to configure the auditing parameters in the Central Management Console, how to query the audit database, how to understand the audit database model, and how to use the audit universe and audit reports delivered by SAP. This session will be especially helpful for organizations that have migrated from XI 3.1, since the audit database has a brand new structure in BI 4.x.
March 20th – User-Specific Options in BusinessObjects
Join us and BusinessObjects Administrative expert, Amy O’Neel, as she takes us through User-Specific Options in SAP BusinessObjects. Some sites have been using @variable(‘BOUSER’) for years to capture the login name of the user in order to filter reports into user-specific data. In this webinar Amy will review the uses of system variables like BOUSER, introduce a few new ones, and also introduce some of the new options in the Information Design Tool (IDT).
This session will also explore User-Defined Attributes through the CMC and pick up on how owners of 360View can take even greater advantage of them. Amy will also demonstrate publishing by profiles in BusinessObjects along with other push-model examples. Providing user specific reporting is convenient for your clients and will make you look good in the process!
April 3rd – What’s New in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2 SP5?
Join expert consultant, Adam Lange, for a live tour of the latest features and enhancements offered in SAP BusinessObjects 4.2 SP5. This brand new version includes several exciting improvements to bolster the quality and efficiency of your reporting operations, with benefits for administrators and Web Intelligence users! This presentation will include practical applications and examples of the new features, plus caveats and best practices.
April 17th – Cool Features & Tricks in Web Intelligence
Join us for a Speak BO session dedicated to one of our favorite reporting tool’s: Web Intelligence. Senior BusinessObject Consultant, Minith Patel, will present and demonstrate new features and tricks in Web Intelligence; from adding clickable icons to leveraging shared elements and quickly formatting reports, this presentation will show some of the cool, new features of Webi that can be used in a very desirable way.
May 1st – Designing Dashboards Using Infographics
Join us in a visually appealing and exciting presentation on how to develop Dashboards using infographics. This webinar, hosted by Dashboard design and developing expert Mel Sheppard, will demonstrate and discuss ways to utilize infographics in order to create custom-looking, interactive, and visually astounding Dashboards.
May 15th – Ask the Web Intelligence Experts – Live Q&A and Discussion on Everything Webi!
Join us for our first ever Let’s Speak BO webinar where you, the community, get to ask, answer and discuss everything Web Intelligence. This free-form session is your opportunity to get your Webi questions answered (and maybe answer a few yourself) and learn a lot more about all the great things you can do with Webi.
Hosted by Paul Grill and Bree-Anna Mustad with a panel of top Web Intelligence experts, you do not want to miss out on your opportunity to get real answers, real time by participating in this live event. Registrants to this webinar will be contacted in advance in order to submit questions that will be addressed at the start of the live webinar. Real-time questions throughout the webinar will also allow the community to speak directly to the expert panel.
May 29th – Exceling it with SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.2
Join us for a fascinating take on the variety of ways one can still utilize Excel files as a driving data source within Web Intelligence. Presented by Michael Ward, CTTS, this creative webinar will provide the user with a variety of ways Excel files can be used in reporting. Michael Ward will demonstrate and discuss how users of Webi can utilize Excel as a data provider, a bridge file when encountering incompatible format types, and use Excel as a dynamic filer file.
Join us for an in-depth look at how to properly import Excel files, where to store the Excel once its imported, and how to update an Excel file without breaking the Webi Document. Michael Ward will also provide the audience with nice tips and techniques and open your eyes to the real power of an Excel file.
June 12th – Optimizing the Management of BI4 & InfoBurst Platforms at Albertsons/Safeway
Join us in a fascinating customer case study from Alberstons/Safeway as Evan Davies shares with us how this nation-wide organization optimized their BusinessObjects and InfoBurst investments. Being able to have a consolidated view across the activity of your BI4 and InfoBurst platforms can be challenging – however, having insight into both delivery platforms can provide major administration benefits.
This session will discuss how Albertsons/Safeway took a Business Intelligence approach to create an effective management strategy based upon joining the data generated by the BI 4 and InfoBurst applications into single reporting and analysis platform. Evan Davies will also explore all the aspects of the Business Intelligence solution; what it means to review analysis of audit data, Universe Design, the Business Intelligence content and more. This case study will also share with our attendees the best practices for Business Intelligence platform management.
June 26th – A Crystal Migration to Cloud Case Study – The 4 Big Steps
Join us and SAP BusinessObjects Senior Consultant, Rajesh Ponnurangam, as he takes us through a fascinating customer case study focused on a Crystal Reports Migration to the cloud. An Apparel Retailer recently migrated from Crystal Report Server 10 to Crystal Reports Server 4.2 (2016) . This webinar will cover the four major steps involved in a Crystal Server/BI 4.X upgrade process, namely:
1. Preparing for the upgrade
2. Installing the BI Platform on Amazon Cloud (AWS)
3. Using the Upgrade Management Tool (UMT)
4. Configuring and testing the new BI Platform
This session will be of great value for customers who are looking into BusinessObjects hosted in the cloud. Rajesh will showcase and discuss step by step instructions that are involved in migrating Crystal Reports content from Crystal Server 10 to Crystal Server 2016 hosted. AWS, being the cloud hosting provider for this case study, will also be discussed in detail.
July 10th – Self-service BusinessObjects Administration
The future direction of BI is Self Service. To this end, SAP has introduced key features of task management that can be distributed to different areas of the business to help manage and maintain BusinessObjects. Join us and Minith Patel for a great session of customer use cases to learn how BusinessObjects Application’s Administration tasks can be distributed to different areas of business moving in the direction of becoming more self-service. Learn how user account creation can be automated along with group assignment, how promotion of reports can be assigned to a helpdesk or business team without causing issues and more.
July 24th – The 12 Best Practices for using Promotion Manager
Promotion Manager is all grown up. Join us and Administrative Expert, Amy O’Neel, as we will look at the 12 best practices when using Promotion Manager to move content from one environment to another. This session will also explore Version Management, Overrides, and Command Line use as well as the new Promotion Manager GUI in BusinessObjects 4.2 SP5.
August 7th – How Dana is Delivering Executive Dashboards using a Template Solution
From the CEO on down, the need for dashboards is being heard. Each area of the business wants to have its own look, feel, and flow but the delivery team needs to leverage reuse for supportability, speed of delivery, and consistent KPI’s. Dana Holding Corporation has addressed this need by developing a template solution with an extensible configuration based design along with the flexibility and power of Web Intelligence, SAP Dashboards, and InfoSol’s InfoBurst, all together.
Join Lori Wagner as she presents a fantastic case study on how Dana is currently using a template solution to optimize time and efficiency within the SAP BusinessObjects tool set.
August 21st – BI 4.2 – 45 features in 45 Minutes
Get to know the detail level product overview of what is new in BI 4.2 and the reasons to upgrade your current BI systems to version 4.2. Join us and BusinessObjects Senior Consultant, Rajesh Ponnurangam, as he covers 45 of the latest features in BI 4.2 which will be helpful for your entire organization. These features will highlight, but not limited to, features that may assist BusinessObjects Administrators, Universe Designers, Report Developers and Business users. And if we have time, we will aim for 60!
September 4th – SAP Data Services – The Hidden Gem of Data Profiler
Join us and Data Services expert consultant, Tyler Koitka, in an insightful webinar dedicated to a hidden gem within Data Services. Tyler will discuss and demonstrate how to leverage The Data Profiler, a feature few know about that is native within Data Services. This webinar will assist those looking for better insight and resolution into your profiling needs whether it’s for a new ETL project or enhancing an existing work flow.
September 18th – Advanced Formatting in Web Intelligence Part 2
This fantastic webinar dedicated to the SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence community will provide an in-depth look at how to convert reports into other report types with an emphasis on creating Master Detail Reports. Join us and BusinessObjects expert, Michael Ward, as he shares many of the new features in Web Intelligence 4.2 including how to hide columns, blocks and sections. Our attendees will learn how to apply conditional formatting to a Master Detail Blocks at different levels to give reports a more dashboard like look. This session will also explore how to apply the many reporting functions from the Analysis toolbar to Master Detail reports, how to place both a report and a chart in a Master Detail Report, navigation techniques in a Master Detail Report utilizing the map tab and more. Michael will also demonstrate and discuss how to insert stop lights as part of conditional formatting and exporting to Excel and PDF from the Master Detail Report.
October 2nd – BusinessObjects in the Cloud
Cloud is the future we are all being told and there is a trend to adopt new cloud-based applications as well as move more on-premise applications into the cloud. So how do we move BusinessObjects into the cloud?
Join BusinessObjects expert, Minith Patel, as he presents how an organization like InfoSol runs BusinessObjects in the cloud and how you can potentially do the same. He will explain the benefits and what it takes to get you there. This case study approach will detail how an organization can move from in-house, physical servers to a complete cloud environment, how consultants can use and leverage cloud capability for day to day business and how an environment like this can be managed.
October 16th – SAP BusinessObjects with Tableau
Join us and SAP BusinessObjects and Tableau consultant, Allan Williams, as we explore the relationship between an SAP BusinessObjects deployment alongside with Tableau in your organization. This session will explore some of the latest features within Tableau and the source connection options available to leverage SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence Reports and Universes using InfoBurst with Tableau.
October 30th – Administrative Security 101 – Basics and Best Practices
Join us and BusinessObjects Senior Consultant, Amy O’Neel, as she delivers to our community a dedicated session on Administrative Security within BusinessObjects. This webinar will showcase examples through Best Practices and Basic preparations BusinessObjects Administrators can implement in order to manage, better understand, and potentially improve their environment’s security.
November 13th – Visualize this! Web Intelligence 4.2
Join us and the fantastic Michael Ward, Creative Technologies Training & Solutions (CTTS), in another jam-packed and educational session on the variations of creating both simple and complex visualizations in Web Intelligence. Hosted in a demonstration-based format, Michael will showcase how with just charts and report blocks our audience can utilize native features in Webi like input controls and linking in order to create slick, interactive visualizations. This session will also explore how to use intra-document linking in order to jump between report tabs.
November 27th – Everything You Wanted to Know About Multi-Source Universes but Were Afraid to Ask
Join us and Senior Consultant, Allan Williams, for a webinar dedicated to Multi-Source Universes with open platform Q&A as well as live demonstrations on how to construct, maintain and modify a Universe with multiple data source feeds.
December 11th – Let’s Speak BO: What’s New in SAP BI 4.2 SP6?
Join us in a fantastic in-depth look at what new features, enhancements and changes have been released in SAP BI 4.2 SP6. Adam Lange, A. Lange Consulting, will demonstrate and discuss the latest features in the new service pack when it comes to BusinessObjects Administration as well as report development within Web Intelligence. This is a session not to miss!
2019
January 8th – Discovering the Web Intelligence Administrative Management Tool – A Case Study
Take a look at the business problem that inspired the usage of an underrated and unsupported SAP Management Tool for Web Intelligence Administration. Join us and BusinessObjects Administrative Expert, Jean-Francois Cayron with Sagitta BI, as we explore the case study behind how and why this mysterious, yet effective, free administrative tool was discovered. This fantastic case study will not only explore “the why” behind this tool but also demonstrate it’s features and how it was implemented in order to resolve an immediate business need.
January 22nd – All the little things to know about Webi 4.2 SP6
Join us and the fantastic Michael Ward with Creative Technology Training and Solutions who will kick off the New Year with an interactive and detailed look at Web Intelligence 4.2 SP6. This session will demonstrate the latest features, changes and enhancements to the beloved BusinessObjects reporting tool in the latest release of SP6.
February 5th – Migration of Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence
Are you planning to convert your Deski reports to Web Intelligence? Join us for Rajesh Ponnurangam’s webinar session on Migrating Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence as he showcases the project planning and implementation for converting Deski to Webi. This session will be a comprehensive feature comparison between Desktop intelligence and Web Intelligence. The various challenges and workaround solutions in Web Intelligence to convert Deski reports will be discussed.
February 19th – In’s and Out’s of adding HTML content into Webi Reports
This session will cover the new security controls of webi that limit html content and how you can selectively enable certain tags and content type for use in your Webi documents. We will show how to add Marquees (scrolling cell content) and iframes and other features into reports to enhance the experience as well as cover uses of images and colors to enhance the display.
March 5th – Securing your Universes with Business and Data Security Profiles
Join us and BusinessObjects Senior Consultant, Allan Williams, as he takes us through using Data and Business Security Profiles that can be administered with the Information Design Tool. In this live demonstration webinar, we will be creating Data and Business Security profiles on the fly and describe the specific functionality of these two options for securing data and access to data. Allan will demonstrate and discuss how to access specific Folders, Universes and Connections that can be modified in the Central Management Console for administration security application.
March 19th – Customizing the BI Launchpad & Web Intelligence reports for Organization Branding
Join us and BusinessObjects Administration Expert and Senior Consultant, Amy O’Neel, in a fantastic webinar session dedicated to customization options when branding your organizations BusinessObjects environment to meet company standards. This session will demonstrate and discuss how to apply global color schemes, embedded logos and more, in order to customize the look and feel of the BI Launchpad and Web Intelligence reports.
April 2nd – Ask the Experts – Live Q & A on BusinessObjects
Join us in a webinar not to miss with Samuel Polichouk, Product Expert for SAP France, as our audience get’s to ask live questions on anything SAP BusinessObjects, hosted by Paul Grill and Bree-Anna Mustad. This open format webinar will allow the Speak BO Community to gain insight and get answers to questions relevant to their work within the core BusinessObjects toolset.
April 16th – Building Visualizations in Web Intelligence – New and Improved
Join us and Web Intelligence Expert, Michael Ward with Creative Technology Training & Solutions, as he hosts a dedicated session on building fantastic and interactive visualizations in Web Intelligence. This webinar will showcase the latest features and enhancements to data visualizations in Webi and how users can take their reporting deliverable’s to a new and approved level of eye-catching designs. From input-controls to intra-document linking, our Speak BO audience will learn how to utilize native Web Intelligence visualizations to explore new ideas with their report development.
April 30th – Upgrading from XIR2: Plan, Strategy and Execution of a Successful Upgrade
Join us in a very informative webinar of a recent upgrade done by a large company. BI Expert, Minith Patel, will share how this organization upgraded from XIR2 to BI 4.2 SP5. Learn about the process that was undertaken, how a plan was formulated, challenges encountered, and the steps taken to achieve a successful upgrade of BusinessObjects. This session is intended to equip our audience important lessons learned and solutions applied for any upgrades and migrations.
May 14th – Fire up your FIORI for Web Intelligence
Are you interested in the new FIORI features for Web Intelligence? Join us for Rajesh Ponnurangam’s webinar session on “Fire Up your FIORI”. This session will showcase the new features and navigation capabilities of FIORI launchpad released in BI 4.2 SP6 & SP7 including an in-depth coverage of the interactive viewer for Web Intelligence. This is a perfect session for end users and report designers.
May 28th – Using Shared Elements in Web Intelligence Reports
Join us and Web Intelligence Expert, Steve Thatcher with A. Lange Consulting as he hosts a dedicated session exploring implementing Shared Elements in Web Intelligence reports. Shared Elements are part of SAP’s reusability direction and allow users to save time when creating new reports. This webinar will provide a deep dive into Shared Elements and discuss best practices for integrating this useful feature into your report development workflow.
June 11th – What’s New in Web Intelligence 4.2 SP6?
Join Senior BusinessObjects Consultant, Runali Ghosh, as she takes us through a fantastic webinar that will explore the latest features and enhancements with Web Intelligence 4.2 SP6. Runali will also provide a recap of SP5 and some bonus features of SP7.
June 25th – Automating Bulk Tasks Like Repointing Bulk Webi Reports and More
BusinessObjects has added a relatively new tool to the BI Admin Console for administrators. The Automation Framework comes with some standard tasks like repointing Webi documents’ data sources but can also be customized to perform other tasks in bulk. For this presentation we will walk through the setup of the Automation Framework and creating and scheduling a group of tasks to run. This demo will also lead us into a discussion of two recent projects where the Automation Framework was used and some of its current strengths and weaknesses.
July 9th – A Few updates to the Admin Feature in BusinessObjects
Join BI Expert Minith Patel, with InfoSol Inc, as he takes us through a session that will shed light on enhancements made in newer versions of BusinessObjects. With new service packs rolling out frequently, it is hard to keep abreast with what’s new and what is enhanced. Minith will cover topics such as Promotion Manager Wizard – a new desktop based tool, Monitoring in CMC and how to use it, BI Administrators Cockpit and what’s new with it. He will deliver this session with a few practical examples and best practices.
July 23rd – Building a Web Intelligence Dashboard
Join Senior Consultant, Roxanne Pittman, as she shows us how to build a Webi Dashboard! This session will explore different ways to design and develop interactive Dashboards using Web Intelligence features and functionality.
August 6th – How to Create Hierarchies in BusinessObjects Universes
This webinar will cover the power of hierarchies and how they can improve your WebI reports as well as mobile! Major topics will include:
- What are hierarchies in Business Objects? How do they work? Why should I use them?
- How to create a hierarchy in Business Objects via a universe
- How to enhance your WebI reports with hierarchies
August 20th – Format in Webi Like a Pro: All Dressed Up and Ready to Go
First impressions matter – even for reports! This session will be covering how to use formatting shortcuts and templates to make a meaningful report stand out and shine.
September 3rd – Everything You Need to Know About IDT
Join Enterprise Architect, Minith Patel, for an exciting webinar where he will review everything you need to know or did not know about IDT. This will be an overview of the IDT tool and its features with highlights of few important topics and tips about using IDT. This webinar will be useful for not only existing IDT users but also for old universe designer user as the session will walk through important and new concepts of building universe using the Information Design Tool. Be ready to take lots of notes, as this will be a fast and information packed webinar.
September 17th – How to Design Webi Reports that will behave like a Dashboard
Learn how the latest features introduced in Web Intelligence 4.2 allow you to create real and live reports that can behave like dashboards. This session will cover:
- How to solve the layout issue?
- How to position the different blocks for better rendering?
- What kind of interactions can be imagined?
October 1st – BusinessObjects with Next generation Viz Tools: Tableau & PowerBI
Interested in Visualizing BusinessObjects data in Tableau or PowerBI? Are you evaluating Tableau or PowerBI? Find out why more than 50% of BusinessObjects customers in the US are also using Tableau or PowerBI and how to integrate BusinessObjects with these tools. This session will cover creating a visualization in Tableau and PowerBI along with how they can be integrated with BusinessObjects to create optimal BI solutions.
October 15th – Everything You Need to Know About IDT- Part Two
This is Part two of the IDT review Webinar, where Minith will continue to talk about IDT. This time the focus will be on Business Layer, View, Project synchronization and Security. Please join us in this popular part two of IDT review.
October 29th – The New Web Intelligence BI 4.3 and Its New Concepts
This session is for everyone’s favorite reporting tool: Web Intelligence. This session will give you a preview of the new reporting experience in SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence and an overview of the planned innovations:
- What’s coming in the next releases, as well as the timeline and priorities for BI 4.3
- How the user experience will change to facilitate end-user adoption and self-service interaction
- The enhancements to the report authoring to make designers more productive
November 12th – Location! Location! Location!
Web Intelligence comes with some geomapping chart functionality, but what is really interesting is the geomapping engine underneath. We’ve had a couple of requests with mapping lately so we’re going exploring. Let’s take a look at google map linking and displaying as well as some zooming options into existing geomaps and even consider custom elements for geomapping.
November 26th – Xcelsius to Squirrel: A Smooth Transition
Don’t worry if you’ve missed the news on Squirrel—the most intuitive dashboarding tool to hit the market. This webinar will quickly get you up to speed
Delivered by one of Squirrel’s creators from InfoSol UK, you will get an overview of the project so far, the next steps to MVP and beyond (Minimal Viable Product) and a demo of Squirrel. Also learn about:
- Why Squirrel?
- What is Squirrel?
- Project roadmap
- Key features
- Migrating your Xcelsius dashboards.
We will also be sharing details on how you can participate in the beta before it’s formal release.
December 10th – The Analysis Tab, Your Best Friend
In the Report Viewer Window the Analysis Tab is the most widely used tab. Why? It has all the major features that we use all the time to greatly enhance the look of our reports. It will include an in-depth look at each major feature and how to use it more effectively: Filtering, Grouping, Breaking, Sorting, Calculations and other features as well. There will be a comparison to show what they have changed over the last few years there will also be best practices when using the reporting functions. The presentation will be delivered via a live demo.
2020
January 7th – Live Walk Through the New SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.3
In this live demo session you will discover the new Web Intelligence User Interface which brings you high values:
- Less TCO : Only one client versus the previous Java & HTML versions
- Harmonization : The Fiori like interface of WebI 4.3 aligned with other SAP products
- Improved & simplified workflows : Relying on light toolbar, less dialog boxes & more contextual actions
- Touch ready & easier to use on tablets for a better mobile experience
January 21st – Now you see me, now you don’t! Part Two: Input Controls
In this live demo you will learn how to create multiple block reports within a document, then apply multiple drill blocks in a way to layer the blocks to show those blocks conditionally. In Part 1 of the presentation from last year we utilized the drill bar feature to drive the reporting. This year in Part 2 we will be utilizing input controls in a much more advanced way to make our reporting even more flexible. It has been enhanced to include the use of stop lights as part of the layering of the reports and will open your eyes to a whole new way of creating and layering reports in Webi, in ways never done before. It will give your reports more of a visualization like appearance.
February 4th – Alerting Options in BusinessObjects
The ability to keep a screen up and running on automatic refresh, with either the new feature in Fiori Interactive Mode or in Webi itself, allows your BusinessObjects investment in Web Intelligence to become an integral part of your immediate Business Intelligence awareness. You can even alert via email and have an analytical dashboard link ready to go based on the alert! We’ll have a demo of this feature and walk through the basics with examples of how we’ve seen alerting used. Knowledge is more immediate these days and you can be the one in the know.
Februray 18th – No More Data Dumps! Data Analysis in Web Intelligence
Rather than using Webi just to pull relevant data which is dumped into Excel, let this powerful tool aid in your analysis by creating pivot/cross tables, summarizing with breaks, sections and groups and using built in, easy to set up filters for easy-on-the-eyes reports. Join InfoSol’s Amy O’Neel in this webinar!
March 3rd – Special features of IDT
Join Enterprise Architect Minith Patel, as he continues to share his knowledge of IDT. This webinar will provide a closer look at Project Syncronization, Business View, and Security in IDT. Minith with also be providing live demos of these special features.
March 17th – BusinessObjects vs Tableau: Relate with Reporting Requirements
Tableau is one of the most popular tool for visualizations and interactive dashboards. But, how does Tableau handle analytical reporting to meet an organization’s business requirements. Join us and our BusinessObjects and Tableau expert Rajesh Ponnurangam, as he takes us through an interesting demo of comparing report development features, formulas and formatting guidelines of Web Intelligence with Tableau.
March 31st – Fun Formatting With Webi Workarounds
Standard Webi formatting does not always allow for the most dynamic reports, but there are many interesting features that can be leveraged to work around these limitations. In this course you will learn how to embed bars into table rows, automatically rank your table with input controls, dynamically position objects that shrink and grow, and add and remove table breaks with input controls.
April 14th – Everything You Need to Know to Prepare for Your Next BusinessObjects Upgrade
Upgrading BusinessObjects can be challenging especially if you have a comprehensive deployment with many reports, universes and inter application dependencies. This presentation will focus on the important topics you need to consider and include useful tips, tools and checklists that can help to achieve a successful upgrade.
April 28th – BusinessObjects vs Tableau: Relate with Reporting Requirements Part II
Tableau is one of the most popular tools for visualizations and interactive dashboards. But, how does Tableau handle analytical reporting to meet an organization’s business requirements. Join us and our BusinessObjects and Tableau expert Rajesh Ponnurangam, for part 2 of this webinar as he takes us through an interesting demo of comparing report development features, formulas and formatting guidelines of Web Intelligence with Tableau.
May 12th – Backup and Restore in BusinessObjects
Most organizations assume they are doing the right thing for backups. In this session, Enterprise Architect, Minith Patel, will explain the best practices to backup and restore BusinessObjects, how to check if things are going right. Learn and understand more about the objects CUID, FRS etc, which are important to understand as part of restoring BusinessObjects. He will share a few personal experiences where he had to help organizations come back from impossible scenarios.
May 26th – Using Beyond Compare for Regression Testing of BusinessObjects Reports
Leveraging InfoBurst and Beyond compare for regression testing of BusinessObjects reports as Freeport migrates from on-prem Teradata and Hadoop to Azure cloud based Snowflake environment.
June 9th – Version Management Options for BusinessObjects
Join Amy O’Neel to see what’s available in Versioning today with BusinessObjects both through, and separate from, Promotion Manager. She will also cover the WIP solution from EBI Experts as an example of a 3rd party solution.
July 21st – The Dashboard Effect – Influencing Tomorrow’s Change
We have all seen dashboards built with Xcelsius, Custom Code, Webi, and even Tableau. We also have the resources to learn how to construct dashboards with these tools, but why should we build these dashboards? In this session, previous year IBIS Dashboard winners dashboards will be showcased explaining not how the dashboards were made, but how the dashboards actually promote Business Intelligence and make a difference. There will be a strong discussion using these examples to show the impact dashboards make in multiple settings.
August 4th – Predictive Analysis with BusinessObjects
Anyone can do this! No longer the realm of the lone data analyst working on specialty code in the dark corner of the office, predictive analysis has entered the mainstream. In this presentation we will cover what to know about predictive analysis and some of the options to the business analyst from different tools to easy code snippets. We will demo some functionality in SAP Predictive Analysis and some scenarios for taking it further. Seriously….anyone can do this!
August 18th – IDT Special Features Part Two
In this session we will continue to explore IDT feature in depth with more time to cover the mountain of questions that we received in our pervious session. Key feature focus will be creating connection, Multi Source Universe, data federation administration tool and if time permits a bit more about Fata foundation. This session will be delivered by our expert Minith Patel. Be sure to bring your questions as we will be dedicating more time for these special features in this segment
September 1st – Building Custom BI Dashboards
For small to large companies, the BI market offers a great number of tools that are available both as embedded versions and cloud-based (Software-as-a-Service) technologies. Although It’s possible to find solutions that cover nearly any kind of industry-specific data analysis with flexible possibilities, there are great advantages to developing a custom web based dashboard. Based on the requirements, your industry type, the size, and needs of your business, you will be able to understand whether you are ready to or should invest in a custom BI tool.
September 15th – IDT Special Features Part Three
In this session we will continue to explore IDT features in depth with more time to cover the mountain of questions that we received in our previous sessions. Key feature focus will be Creating Filters, Parameters, Prompts, Navigation Paths and if time permits a bit more about HTML or hyperlink objects. This session will be delivered by our expert Minith Patel. Be sure to bring your questions as we will be dedicating more time for these features in this segment.
September 29th – WAAD (Webi as a Dashboard)
While Web Intelligence has been traditionally seen as a BI reporting tool, more and more organizations are using it to create amazing and effective dashboards.
This eye-opening session will take you on a step by step journey on how to take existing Web Intelligence reports and transform them into beautiful, intricate, and interactive dashboards using many of the new features and capabilities available in the latest BI 4.2 release. Including integration of data viz.
October 13th – Creating Webi Dashboards that Blow Your Socks off!
Taking inspiration from the 2020 Most Valuable Dashboard award winning dashboard, we will show some amazing techniques to creating dashboards in Web Intelligence. This session will cover out the box Webi features as well as some third-party add-on components to make stunning visual dashboards.
October 27th – Archiving and Retrieving Scheduled Instances
Without limits on folders, copies of scheduled report results (instances) are saved to the repository forever. Even with limits, many BusinessObjects environments are experiencing instance overload that can reduce performance and index time. When migrating to a new version these instances can take a migration job from simple and quick to complex and slow. In this presentation we will walk through the steps to archive instances that will allow you to still retrieve an instance when needed. If you have a pesky instance problem, or want a way to avoid developing one, join us with your questions, input and shared experience.
November 10th – Embedding Content: BusinessObjects and Tableau
Do you want to know how to embed BusinessObjects reports into Tableau? And how to embed Tableau worksheets into BusinessObjects reports? Join this webinar where Rajesh Ponnurangam from Infosol will walk you through the step by step process for Content embedding with SAP BusinessObjects and Tableau.
November 24th – Anything You Can Do in Webi 4.2, You can Do Better in Webi 4.3
While you may have seen the dramatically different Webi 4.3 User Interface, you may not have seen or realized all the amazing things you can do with it.
This exciting, all-demo session will feature Samuel Polichouk from SAP France creating a really cool Webi report/dashboard in the latest Webi 4.2 and then creating the same report/dashboard in the all new Webi 4.3 so you can not only see how easy in can be done but also see the power of the new Webi 4.3.
December 8th – Moving on from Xcelsius
Learn how to unstuck yourself from Xcelsius and move onto other dashboarding solutions in a BO or non-BO environment. Witness our journey past Xcelsius by exploring conversion of our Xcelsius dashboards to other solutions like Tableau, Microstratergy and Squirrel. We will address each conversion and talk about what drove us to use a specific tool.
December 22nd – More Lessons From the Trenches: Recent Migrations, Upgrades, Conversions from 2020
For the last 3 years at our yearly BI convention at IBIS, we have put together a list of disparate lessons learned. There are always some small things we pick up throughout the year that don’t warrant their own session that make it into our mash up here. This presentation is a sneak peek into some of the items gathered up so far along with some of our favorites from the recent past. We will be highlighting weird bugs, out-of-the-box fixes and interesting applications we find worthy of sharing to make the good better and the better best!
2021
January 5th – Building a Data Warehouse BI Solution in the Cloud in 9 Months from Scratch
This session will cover the challenges and lessons learned of delivering a new modern DW/BI system in just 9 months. We will cover all angles of the project such as methodology, architecture, design, technologies used and the actual deliverables. As well-doing all this during the current work environment of COVID-19.
January 19th – IDT Special Features: Context
You asked and we listened, Join us for our continued IDT educational series delivered by Minith Patel. This session will focus on the concept of “Context” via IDT tool, examples will be provided on how to setup different type of contexts, when to use it, why it can be a good option. This will touch core concept of performing efficient data modeling in the Semantic layer of BusinessObjects….a must attend session for those who are learning about universe design.
February 2nd – Intuitive Report filtering with Element Linking
Setting up Element Linking in Webi Reports is easy and can greatly expand your on-report filtering options. From “dashboard” like menu selectors to chart “drilling”, this often overlooked functionality in Webi is a cool tool for the Webi report developer. This session will show creative ways of using Element Linking to drive decisions and expand insights in Web Intelligence.
February 16th – Coexistence with BusinessObjects – Who does it best? Tableau or PowerBI?
Interested in Visualizing BusinessObjects data in Tableau or PowerBI? Find out why more than 50% of BusinessObjects customers in the US are also using Tableau or PowerBI. This session will cover creating a visualization in Tableau and PowerBI along with how they can be integrated with BusinessObjects to create optimal BI solutions.
Miss the days of free hand SQL where you can just type union and go without having to merge dimensions between queries? With a little involvement from your Universe Design team and basic knowledge of object types you can create seamless unions in your WebI queries. In this presentation I’ll show you which “Dummy” objects to create and how to use them to streamline your query process.
March 16th – Compare and Contrast Charts – WebI Vs Tableau
A chart transforms your data into Actionable insights. Do you want to know how Web Intelligence charts compare against Tableau? Join this webinar where Rajesh Ponnurangam from Infosol will compare the charting engines in Web Intelligence and Tableau.
March 30th – Creating Webi Dashboards that Blow Your Socks Off! Part 2
You ask for it, you got it! In response to requests for more Dashboarding tips, we’ve put together some detail on some of the other methods we often use in creating “Socks-off!” dashboards in Webi. We’ll cover a plethora of details on images and symbols as well as usage and limitations of the new Time Dimension feature. We’ll finish up the presentation with some lesser known chart formatting options in Webi to get to the final look and maximum meaning we want in our dashboards.
Calculating aggregation at different levels to slice and dice data is a frequent requirement in the world of BI. Web Intelligence provides a very efficient method to perform aggregate calculations against not only different levels of granularity but also display them together. A very simple example will be to show the Revenue by City and by Country in the same table side by side in the same row. In this session, we will explore the different scopes and ways this capability can be utilized. This will also offer an alternate way to obtain the same result as “PARTITION BY” – a clause frequently used in SQL to achieve complex calculations related to aggregation. This clause divides a query’s result set into partitions. Although an option, Custom SQL is often not accessible to many WebI users and brings other challenges. Knowing the WebI technique will be a great addition to eliminate those limitations and extend your options for complex analytical calculations.
April 27th – Embedding Content – BusinessObjects and PowerBI
Do you want to know how to embed BusinessObjects reports into PowerBI? And how to embed PowerBI Dashboards into BusinessObjects reports? Join this webinar where Rajesh Ponnurangam from Infosol will walk you through the step-by-step process for Content embedding with SAP BusinessObjects and Power BI.
May 11th – The Magic of Breaks
This presentation provides an in-depth look at applying breaks to report blocks. Topics include:
- Adding Single/Multiple Breaks
- Adding Group Breaks
- Managing Your Breaks
- Removing redundant headers and footers
- Value based breaks
- Automatic subtotals when applying breaks
- Other Break format options
- Tips and tricks to get the most out of the Analysis Toolbar
May 25th – Creating Column Charts with Custom Images in Columns
Column charts are a great way to show data comparisons in a visual way. In this session you will learn how to make your Webi reports and dashboards even more exciting by using a custom image or graphic in place of the standard columns in the chart.
June 8th – The Murky Morass of Merged Dimensions
Frequently in Web Intelligence, we need to bring in data from different sources which necessitates the creation of “merged” dimensions. This session will cover scenarios for when merged dimensions are necessary, when to use extended merged and auto-merged dimensions and what the rules are for successfully working with merged dimensions and how knowing these rules can help us navigate this murky topic.
June 22nd – Achieving Complex Calculation With Webi Custom Context
Calculating aggregation at different levels to slice and dice data is a frequent requirement in the world of BI. Web Intelligence provides a very efficient method to perform aggregate calculations against not only different levels of granularity but also display them together. A very simple example will be to show the Revenue by City and by Country in the same table side by side in the same row. But there are more scenarios in which customizing the calculation context is necessary. As fairly a commonly used feature it is, the advanced use can often be intimidating. In this session, we will cover some of scenarios in details and go beyond showing basic aggregate at the same row. Knowing this feature will also eliminate the need to export the data out of WebI into excel frequently for detail analysis. Understanding the concept will allow you to recreate many day-to-day spreadsheet activities easily within WebI itself and encourage users to stay more within BI system.
July 6th – Writeback with Squirrel Through Webi!
This session will show users how the exciting Squirrel dashboarding tool can be used to create a writeback application while hosted inside a Web Intelligence report. Watch as we take you through the process of setting up this innovative idea which users can use to springboard their own implementation.
July 20th – What’s New in BI 4.3
It may not be an understatement to consider the recent SAP BI 4.3 release as a huge milestone. This comes entirely with the new FIORI-based interface and offers a modern and new experience for ad-hoc and operational reporting as well as designing visually rich dashboards with Web Intelligence. While this is a great foundational step towards future analytics it is also quite a transition from the classic launchpad. This session will summarize the key usability and functionality changes that Webi consumers and developers would potentially come across while transitioning from WebI 4.2 to 4.3.
August 3rd – BusinessObjects as a Tableau Data source – The missing puzzle piece
Tableau, one of the most popular tools for visualizations, connects to various databases and data sources. But how does it connect with BusinessObjects? Can it connect natively to BusinessObjects Universes or reports? Can I combine BusinessObjects data sources with other data sources to build a tableau dashboard?
Join this webinar to learn how InfoSol is helping their BusinessObjects customers solve these problems. Our Product manager, Rajesh Ponnurangam will also be discussing customer case studies on leveraging BusinessObjects data sources in Tableau
August 17th – Webi Formatting like a Pro
First impressions matter – even for reports! This session will be covering how to use formatting shortcuts and templates to make a meaningful report stand out and shine.
August 31st – Flattening Your Data in Web Intelligence
It’s one of the most common problems in Web Intelligence reports. You’ve got rows and rows of data that you want to condense and flatten into a more horizontal format that is easier for your end-users to consume. This session will offer clear and easy-to-understand solutions for how you can pivot, flatten, and simplify the output of your Web Intelligence reports.
September 14th – More Lessons from the Trenches – Part 3
As time goes by, there are some interesting and generally applicable things we learn that we think are important enough to share but aren’t big enough for their own presentation. This presentation will introduce some new things we’ve come up against lately such as relatively new requirements for SSL in Chrome, automated bulk users/groups upload, reporting on which reports use Free-hand SQL, issues found in Free hand SQL reports during migration and more (there’s always more…). Looking forward to seeing you there and exchanging your unusual finds as well.
September 28th – How to bring in website or services data into Webi
In this session, we will discuss possible techniques and overview of options to bring in the data from web service and use them for Web Intelligence reporting. We will also see how Web Service can be used to share data from BI as well.
October 12th – Scheduling and Publishing in BusinessObjects
Scheduling is a large part of every BO environment. In this presentation we will cover basic scheduling, scheduling limits, publications, publication limits, Infoburst as a 3rd party add-on for scheduling and 4.3 improvements.
October 26th – A New Way of Integrating BusinessObjects and PowerBI
Microsoft’s Power BI, one of the popular tools for visualizations, connects to various databases and data sources. But how does it connect with BusinessObjects? Can it connect natively to BusinessObjects Universes or reports? Can I combine BusinessObjects data sources with other data sources to build a Power BI Dashboard? Join this webinar to learn how Infosol is helping their BusinessObjects customers solve these problems. Our Product manager, Rajesh Ponnurangam will also be discussing customer case studies on leveraging BusinessObjects data sources in Power BI.
November 9th – Using Webi as a Data Source in BI 4.3
Many are planning & looking forward to upgrading to the latest SAP BI 4.3 release and the fresh new UI of WebI 4.3. It, not only, comes with brand new look and feel of the launchpad but also some great new functionalities. One of them is the ability to use the data model and data from an existing Web Intelligence document to build more WebI documents. In this session, you will get to see the process and the features of this new capability with demonstration and examples. But more important, we will cover why this new addition is so powerful and how you can leverage it in your environment.
November 23rd – Element Linking in BI 4.3
This session explores the interactive features of Element Linking in the new Webi 4.3 environment. Join us to see how element linking is set up, edited, and applied. Element Linking with Charts is even more intuitive in 4.3 and we think you’re going to love it!
December 7th – Automating bulk user/group upload from spreadsheet
SAP Businessobjects provides some basic scripts as examples for using the SDK and as solutions for common requests. This presentation will cover a few of those scripts and the possibilities behind scheduling the scripts to run regularly through program objects in the BO system, as well as some ways that we modified the bulk user/group update script to meet client needs.
Deember 21st – How do you use the new Webi 4.3 UI
It may not be an understatement to consider the recent SAP BI 4.3 release as a huge milestone. This comes entirely with the new FIORI-based interface for Web Intelligence and offers a modern and new experience for ad-hoc, operational reporting, and visually rich dashboards. While this is a great foundational step towards future analytics it is also quite a transition from the classic launchpad. This session will summarize the main highlights of the new features and functionalities in order to use the new UI and develop WebI Reports.
2022
January 4th – Solving Business Problems with BusinessObjects
Using Business Objects for finance reporting has been around for decades, but have you considered using it for data analytics to look for fraud?
This session we’ll cover common data analytics scripts and how BusinessObjects could be utilized to help mitigate fraud. We will discuss ways to solve seemingly complex business issues with the tools we have while demonstrating technical solutions using Web Intelligence and IDT for being able to show data analytic to resolve specific business. So put on your Fraudster cap and hold on for the ride.
January 18th: Formatting Web Intelligence 4.3 Like a Pro!
First impressions matter – even for reports! This session will be covering how to use formatting shortcuts and templates to make a meaningful report stand out and shine, including new ways to format in 4.3
February 1st – Dynamic Dates in Web Intelligence
A common use case is to run a Web Intelligence report for a date range. That can be easily done with hard-coded date values, but that is not a very user-friendly approach always having to edit the query. Certainly prompts are more user-friendly. However, if you want to schedule a report for a dynamic, named date range such as yesterday, last month, last quarter, etc. you are at a dead-end.
This session will show how I built what I call a “Calendar Universe” a number of years ago that has stood the test of time. We will cover various ways to use dynamic dates talking about the pros and cons of each including the “Calendar Universe”
February 15th – Tips for Transitioning to the New Webi 4.3
WebI 4.3 comes with a FIORI-based, modern, and simplified user interface for designing and developing ad-hoc reports, operational reports, highly analytical reports, visually rich dashboards, and more powerful BI content. While this is a great foundational step towards future analytics and end-user experience it is also quite a transition from the classic launchpad that many are used to.
To assuage the fear and panic generated from this huge transformation, this session will share a few tips that we have found quite useful to adapt to the new features faster and make the transition from WebI 4.2 to 4.3 more enjoyable.
March 1st – BusinessObjects as Part of BI Strategy for the Next Decade
As the world continues to navigate a global pandemic that started well over a year ago, the importance and significance of Business Intelligence has never been more critical.
Yet, at the same time, most organizations find themselves in a situation where time, resources and budget have never been tighter. As a result, making better and more use of the BI applications in place makes a lot of sense. For many, that means leveraging BusinessObjects as it remains the most widely used BI suite in the world today.
In addition, between Web Intelligence and Crystal Reports, it offers the best BI reporting platform available.
While tools like Tableau and PowerBI are gaining larger market share in the BI space, they are used for data discovery and data visualization and not designed for BI reporting.
It is for this reason, that most organizations who have adopted these tools, retain BusinessObjects for BI reporting.
This session will both discuss and show real customer case studies of how existing BusinessObjects are adapting to the new co-existence norm and how companies, new to BI, are adopting BusinessObjects as part of their new BI strategy for the next decade.
March 15th – Tips and Techniques Used to Convert SSRS Report to Webi
When faced with the challenge of creating a new Web Intelligence report based on an existing SSRS report, there are no magic utilities available but we came up with a method that worked well. This included using the SSRS report query to build new BO universe, using Custom Calculation Contexts in the Webi report and using hide and filter techniques to match output from the SSRS report. In addition, we Improved data accuracy in the Webi report compared to the original SSRS report. This case study presentation will show how we achieved this.
March 29th – Folding with Web Intelligence 4.3 SP2 – Webi Origami
Being able to view report Totals and subtotals and then expand and dig into one of the subtotals while keeping the others still collapsed – this is a feature in Web Intelligence that has some very valuable enhancements in Webi 4.3 sp2. It is now easy and intuitive to analyze a report with folds and this session will cover how to set this up in multiple scenarios.
April 12th – Upgrading to BI 4.3 Part 1 with Amy O’Neel, InfoSol
We will be doing a Part I and Part II for this topic of Upgrading to 4.3 since there is so much to cover. We have to start with the basics of planning an upgrade to get us all in the mood, but then we’ll take it a little deeper in to some of the topics specific to 4.3 SP02 upgrading based upon our experiences.
Topics will include:
- Review General Upgrade Planning Considerations
- Considerations from PAM Guide
- Considerations for Browser Updates
- Considerations for AWS or Azure Move
- Considerations for MFA and SAML
- Considerations for User Perspective
April 26th – Live BusinessObjects Q&A
The majority of community members who recently submitted our Speak BO Survey were interested in a quarterly Q&A session, so we are bringing you just that! Join us for a Q&A focused Let’s Speak BO webinar where you, the community, get to ask, answer and discuss everything BusinessObjects! If you have a question about something involving BusinessObjects, our expert panel will try to answer it for you!
Tuesday, May 10th – The Analysis Tab: Where are you hiding?
So where is Breaking, sorting, filtering and grouping? Where is custom sorting, outlining and conditional formatting? We will take you on a guided tour of how to navigate to find these features in v4.3 SP 2. You will also learn some best practices as well!
Tuesday, May 24th – Upgrading to BI 4.3 Part 2 with Amy O’Neel, InfoSol
In Part II we plan to cover new(er) features: Workflow Assistant, BI Admin Studio, Data Source References and some other considerations for moving to Snowflake and other data options.
Tuesday, June 7th: BO 4.3 for Viewers and Light Editors
This session will cover how easy the 4.3 UI will be to use for your “light” users and consumers of Webi reports. With the ability to use Webi as a data source, it’s even easier to give your users a set of data to work with. We will show common workflows and simple options that could turn your general consumers into light editors!
Tuesday, June 21st: IDT Tips and Tricks
Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Till the good is better and the better is best!” True story – My Dad’s eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Kurchigator, was well known in my family for having passed on that bit of wisdom. It was such a big thing in my family that my musical brother wrote a “Good, better, best” song. As with anything we do, we can do it at the basic level or we can try and get the most out of it. This session is “just” a tips and tricks for IDT session, but if we listen close, there might be a few pearls that will make us use IDT better. And that’s the point, isn’t it?
Tuesday, July 5th: Live BusinessObjects Q&A
Join us for a Q&A focused Let’s Speak BO webinar where you, the community, get to ask, answer and discuss everything BusinessObjects!
Registrants to this webinar will be contacted in advance in order to submit questions that will be addressed at the start of the live webinar. Real-time questions throughout the webinar will also allow the community to speak directly to the expert panel.
Tuesday, August 2nd: The New Statement of Directions and Roadmap for BO
In June SAP announced the significate change to SOD and Roadmap for BO Taking both the unprecise and cloud version in to the 2030’s period. They’ve also announced a new version code name BI 2024 to be released at the end of 2024. InfoSol CEO Paul Grill will explain these changes and will take any questions you may have.
Tuesday, September 6th – Tips and Tricks Webi 4.3
In this session Roxanne Pittman will share tips and tricks that she has come across while using Web Intelligence 4.3. If you are a Webi user, you will want to attend this session!
Tuesday, October 4th – What is Coming Next in 4.3
Tuesday, November 1st – Top 10 Features in Webi 4.3
This live demo will introduce you to my top 10 features of Webi v4.3 SP 2. This webinar will provide insight on how to use these features!
More details coming soon on this session where Alan will share the latest features in BO 4.3 to take your Webi reports & Dashboards to the next level.
2023
Tuesday January 3rd – BusinessObjects Q&A
Join us for a Q&A focused Let’s Speak BO webinar where you, the community, get to ask, answer and discuss everything BusinessObjects!
Registrants to this webinar will be contacted in advance in order to submit questions that will be addressed at the start of the live webinar. Real-time questions throughout the webinar will also allow the community to speak directly to the expert panel.
Tuesday February 7th – SAP BusinessObjects BI4.3 SP4 Roadmap with SAP France
Attend this session to explore the roadmap and future directions of SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, including:
- What’s coming in the next releases, as well as the timeline and priorities for 4.3 SP4
- The enhancements to help you adopt the BI4.3
- How the BI4.3 SP4 will prepare the next future release, code name SAP BusinessObjects BI2024.
It is often the “simplest” of the reporting requirements that necessitates the most interesting and creative solutions. In today’s session I will show few such WebI tricks using commonly known functionalities but combining them to address a real-life customer report request that pushes you to think outside the box.
Tuesday, April 4th – Universe Conversion UNV to UNX with Amy O’Neel, InfoSol Inc.
In this webinar Amy O’Neel will show you how to convert UNV to UNX.
Tuesday, May 2nd – Creating Graphs and Charts in Webi 4.3 with Roxanne Pittman
Creating and formatting charts has become much easier in Web Intelligence 4.3. This session will cover turning tables into charts and quickly formatting the charts to have the number formatting desired, the color and spacing desired as well as dynamic titles and legends. We will also explore the new Trellis chart and other fun features of charting in 4.3.
Tuesday, June 6th – BusinessObjects Q&A with the BO Expert Panel
Join us for a Q&A focused Let’s Speak BO webinar where you, the community, get to ask, answer and discuss everything BusinessObjects!
Registrants to this webinar will be contacted in advance in order to submit questions that will be addressed at the start of the live webinar. Real-time questions throughout the webinar will also allow the community to speak directly to the expert panel.
Tuesday, July 11th – Using ChatGPT to Solve Web Intelligence Issues
While there is no shortage of buzz around ChatGPT and how it can do everything (including the dishes), yours truly has dabbled with using it to troubleshoot and solve some issues in BusinessObjects Web Intelligence. And guess what? It wasn’t bad. I will share my experiences and show the Webi issues I was trying to solve and how ChatGPT helped.
Tuesday, August 1st – Upgrading from BI 4.2 to 4.3 – Tales from the Trenches
There are a lot of upgrades from BI 4.2 to 4.3 happening this year as BI 4.2 has moved to priority one support only. Just how difficult or tricky is this upgrade? Amy O’Neel, the BO Administration Guru, has done a lot of these upgrades of all shapes and sizes and will share her experiences, knowledge and wisdom on how to make them as smooth as possible.
Tuesday, September 5th – Joining Data in Webi from Different Data Sources
This session will cover joining Data in Webi from different sources, utilizing both the 4.3sp3 Data Tab as well as the traditional method of merging data. We will demonstrate an alternate way of creating a “Minus” query, but with using different data sources.
[…] I am super excited about this web series that my friends at InfoSol have put on! If you are a BusinessObjects professional, these should be on your radar. Learn More […]