Monthly Archives: January 2011

Designing BusinessObjects reports for mobile devices

Mobile devices are moving very quickly to replace computers and laptops as the new productivity tools for execs and employees. We all use our iPhones and BlackBerrys constantly. We check email, play with apps, chat and talk, whether we’re in … Continue reading

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Xcelsius Step Chart – Combine charts to create a new kind of chart

While BusinessObjects Xcelsius has many chart components that provide very robust variety “out-of-the-box”, more often than you like, users ask for a chart that does not exist as a preconfigured component. One of the ways to answer such needs is … Continue reading

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Documentation – the difference between a great consultant, and a great consultant who cares…

A great consultant comes in, completes an impossible task with flying colors, wins the day for their sponsor, and leaves. A great consultant, who cares, also leaves behind documentation. Documentation is most definitely the step child of any IT project. … Continue reading

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Control the size of your Xcelsius dashboard in InfoView

If you ever tried to publish an SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius dashboard to InfoView by using the “Export” option to “Enterprise”, you surely ran into a sizing problem when viewing the dashboard. As the dashboard designer, you pay great attention to … Continue reading

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Some keys for a successful BI project

As you set to start working on a new BI project, you will need to address many technical issues sooner or later. Picking technologies and vendors, assembling teams, and working across the corporate silos to bring together information that does … Continue reading

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Google Charts – the elephant has entered the room..

As a developer I always had a knack for open source. So, when I started working with Business Intelligence I naturally began looking for opportunities to leverage open source software. Of course, MySQL was a great RDBMS choice (i used … Continue reading

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Handle semi aggregate measures in universes

While relatively simple data marts can be designed as true simple stars, more often than we like, our reporting data models contains snowflakes. Whatever you want to call these entities, they represent one basic problem for your reporting tools: Cartesian products. … Continue reading

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Localize your global Xcelsius dashboard

If your dashboard is intended for a global audience, you may need to be able to localize it. By localization, most people refer to the ability to translate at minimum the labels and headers of the dashboard, based on the … Continue reading

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QaaWS vs LiveOffice

One of the first major decisions you will face when starting to design your SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius dashboard is which connectivity option to choose. Xcelsius supports a myriad of connectivity options, and two of the most popular connections for BusinessObjects … Continue reading

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Google style search on your Xcelsius dashboard

Dashboard designers have long been concerned with design and usability, concepts typically foreign to IT development. Leveraging all types of selectors in the forms of combo boxes, list selectors, radio buttons and check boxes, they try to make information finding … Continue reading

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