2013 – What you May have Missed Under the Radar

[TammyPowlas]

I take a look back and see things in the past year didn’t get all the “press” or “play” deserved in my opinion.

User Groups – Customer Connection:

For me, this was the first year of being exposed to SAP’s Customer Connection Program.  It is a quick way to get enhancements into the system without waiting for a big release.  You can go to Improvement Finder  for more information.

This year SAP opened and closed a Customer Connection for Web Intelligence Customer Connection – Closing the Loop with User Groups for Web Intelligence

I give some background as well here on the ongoing BI Platform Customer Connection for the BI BusinessObjects Platform - See how you can influence SAP and Final Call - Customer Connect for BusinessObjects BI Platform – Don’t let an idea languish because o...

ASUG Influence Councils – A Unique Opportunity

Analysis Office and OLAP

These are great opportunities for customers and partners to influence SAP.  This year we saw the impact of some of the councils in scheduling for Analysis for Office ASUG Analysis Influence Council Updates at TechEd - Some News To Share

I wrote about other ways the ASUG Influence Councils influenced SAP here See how ASUG Members Influence SAP – Featuring BusinessObjects Analysis Influence Council  and How the ASUG BusinessObjects Analysis Influence Council Influenced SAP - Feedback Report

Also you may view the ASUG presentation here ASUG Analysis Influence Council Update and I provide a recap ASUG Annual Conference - ASUG Influence and BEx Quo Vadis

I want to give special thanks to SAP's alexander.peter and ian.mcalpine and ASUG Volunteer joyce.butler3

ASUG Mobile BI Influence Council

SAP’s pam.ireland tweeted this statistic this past week about SAP BusinessObjects Mobile:

Mobile BI from SAP downloads exceed 1,000,000! Yup, a million!

— Pam Ireland (@pjireland) December 30, 2013

That is amazing and kudos to srikanthr.raok and karsten.ruf and team.  This is an amazing accomplishment.

Srikanth is very active with the ASUG Mobile BI Influence Council.  He gave an update at last year's ASUG Annual Conference and you can view the presentation here. I wrote about this council ASUG Mobile BI BusinessObjects Influence Council – How ASUG Members Influenced SAP - Closing the Loo...

MOOCs

I completed two this year from Courses – one for Thomas Jung’s HANA course and the other for BI4 Platform Tips for Taking the Open SAP BI Platform Course.  Will Massive Open Online Courses replace traditional learning?  I say no, it is a good supplement however.

I treated it like listening to a series of webcasts, taking notes, taking quizzes and doing the exercises.  They were valuable experiences and I am grateful to SAP and the instructors for the opportunity.  If you haven't taken one, what are you waiting for?  They are free.

I still see value in SAP’s Education courses (mostly virtual for me now).  I wrote about this here:  Do you still need a live SAP Education Course?

See this article for another view on MOOCs.

Free E-Learning Tutorials

Don’t forget to bookmark sap.com/LearnBI or go to Official Product Tutorials – SAP BO BI Suite I plan on writing more today on this.  This has been such a big help over the past year.

Data Services – heroic tool you’re not using

We are finishing up a complex data migration involving three different groups – can you imagine how diverse the data is?  Data Services helped ease the pain of this complex data migrations Initial Data Migration Over, The Fun Has Just Begun

It also does some great text analysis as shown here with Lumira

Using Lumira with Text Analysis to see What is Coming to Reporting 2013 Conference

A Closer Look at SAP TechEd Las Vegas Sessions using Data Services and Lumira

BI4 & BW on HANA Trial on Amazon

Kudos to vijay.vijayasankar  and team for this: BW on Hana in 2013, Are you ready for the "new normal"?

Your own SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA with SAP BusinessObjects BI4 system....just in a few minutes

This is a nice story about it from david.throux-bnoni working at MolsonCoors: Thinking about BI in the Cloud no longer means you’re dreaming…

I haven't had time to take advantage of it thanks to Initial Data Migration Over, The Fun Has Just Begun but I hope to this year..

Roadmaps

Did you know there is an SAP Product and Solution Road Maps space here on SCN?  This was an effort by SAP influenced by user groups such as ASUG and DSAG.

Follow this How to Get the “Skinny” on SAP Product Roadmaps and Updates to subscribe for key updates on SAP Roadmaps.