Last year as I stood in the middle of the Exhibitor hall, I wondered how could improve my own SAPPHIRE experience as an attendee. Given that my team at Centigon Solutions specializes in geographic visualization and our road map leads to indoor mapping, it only seemed like a natural fit to approach re-creating the SAPPHIRE NOW mapping experience. Rather than building a better wheel, I wanted to put our own spin on it and integrate something that other attendees would find fun and interesting... PrizeFinder was born!. 2 weeks ago we engaged all of our fellow exhibitors to participate in our free app called PrizeFinder.

Here are just a few of the many the cool prizes that exhibitors have uploaded to PrizeFinder right out of the gates. The list of exhibitors is growing daily so bookmark EventPrizeFinder.com today and check back in when you get to Orlando.

50" Plasma TV from Pros2Plan

Ipad Mini from Innovaptive

GiftCards and HANA Books from DecisionFirst Technologies

Vuvue Champaig from KingFisher

KNOWLEDGE MORE VALUABLE THAN PRIZES
While the prizes are great, there lies even better opportunities to network with some of the top experts in Analytics, HANA, BW and other SAP technologies and related subjects. The opportunity to connect with these experts is far more valuable than the free stuff you can win. Stop by and say hi at the Centigon Solutions Booth and we can talk BI, enterprise mobility, location intelligence, and of course indoor maps!

"Geo" is on the tip of many IT managers’ tongues these days as business users from ranging from CEOs down to frontline employees are becoming increasingly comfortable with using location aware applications. On the weekends, consumers use Google Maps and Apple maps to find restaurants, search for directions, and check-in via Facebook and Foursquare on their smartphones. Monday through Friday while at work, these same "business consumers" are demanding similar location intelligence capabilities for making business decisions and increasing productivity.

WHAT BUSINESS USERS WANT TODAY FROM LOCATION INTELLIGNECE

Business users want that same consumer mapping experience for navigating and assimilating location based data, but with more power to drill, filter, and analyze. The ability to combine information from multiple sources within a map is a powerful proposition to drive new insights not visible in charts and tables. This "mashup" concept combined with real-time analytics is a great opportunity for any business information consumer to digest a large volume of information quickly.

For example, following the earthquake in Japan, the dashboard in Figure 1 was used to demonstrate to one manufacturing company not only the immediate business impact, but also how water supply and post nuclear radiation bands that could impact production. These kinds of geo-spatial analytics can provide profound impact to the decision making process that otherwise would be impossible. Speed and simplicity for creating these analytics are just as important for emergency scenarios like natural disasters.

Figure 1- GMaps Plugin displaying post Japan earthquake BI Mashup for manufacturing

WHAT KIND OF TECHNOLOGY IS AVAILABILE TODAY?

There are a handful of map vendors now battling for supremacy in consumer and enterprise space, like Google, Apple, Microsoft, ESRI, Nokia, and other niche vendors. This competition will only increase the availability and power of location based services for browser and mobile consumption.

The map visualization is just one small piece of a big puzzle for increasing the value of location intelligence in the enterprise. The most obvious BI tools for presenting interactive maps for business consumers are dashboards and mobile apps. Until recent years, most dashboard technologies relied on libraries of static map imagery, which fell short of customer demands. In the SAP BusinessObjects ecosystem, leading SAP Software Solution Partners like APOS (using ESRI Maps) and Centigon Solutions (using Google Maps) have propelled the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio ahead of competing BI suites through powerful integrations that extend the value of location intelligence to BI consumers.

Figure 2- GMaps Mobile presenting BI fire insurance claims

SAP has recently stepped up its own geo-visualization approach, using data from NavTech in SAP Visual Intelligence and Google Maps in SAP BusinessObjects Mobile. Now customers have rich, interactive experiences for visualizing geo data right within the native SAP BusinessObjects tools.

Figure 3- SAP BusinessObjects enterprise integrates geo visualization.

WHAT GEO TOOLS WILL WE USE IN THE NEAR FUTURE?

Increased adoption of location services in our daily lives

Consumerization of IT is a huge contributor to the acceleration of location intelligence for enterprise because of location-aware services like Facebook, Foursquare and Google Maps on smartphones and tablets. These tools are a prequel to how you will soon interface with location aware apps and how marketers will influence your purchasing behavior as you move about.

Anything that can be geo-tagged will be

A generally accepted statistic is that 80% of all data collected has a location attribute. That number could actually increase as the availability and accuracy of GPS and other location tracking techniques mature and data volumes exponentialy increase year over year.

Extreme data creates new opportunities for analytics

The availability of predictive analytics and in-memory technology provide a powerful new platform to process large amounts of geo-spatial data to deliver insights that traditionally required specialized software.

Powerful geo-spatial delivery mechanisms

The traditional birds-eye maps like Google Maps are the de-facto method for visualizing geospatial data. However, at the street level there is a host of new technologies that you will become familiar with including augmented reality (Figure 4), 3D maps, and even indoor mapping of 2D and 3D space.

Figure 4- Augmented reality : IMAGE SOURCE: http://timoelliott.com/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ryan Goodman is Centigon Solutions CEO, author, global speaker, and BI Apps expert. Ryan applies over 10 years of experience designing business software solutions to his leadership role shaping Centigon Solutions' strategy and location intelligence product roadmap.

On March 30th, I delivered a webinar titled "SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 2011 Jumpstart." In this webinar, I re-introduce dashboard design from a dashboard developer, administrator and business perspective wrapped into a 40 minute presentation focused on the 4.0 release of SAP BusinessObjects.

You can click below and view the recording, and if you have any comments, questions, or feedback, feel free to share in the comments section.

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Q&A

With a large number of viewers, we collected the following questions from the question panel during the live webinar: If you have more questions, I will continue to answer them here:

Is there a way to connect a dashboards to a query built in ECC 6.O.  How that could be accomplished?

I had to do a little research myself on this question and apparently from this board discussion this is something that may work in 4.1 but today requires data federator in between ECC 6.0 and the universe that you construct. Once you have a universe, you can build dashboard content using the simple process I illustrated on my blog.

Can someone upgrade to xcelsius 4.0 without performing a BOE upgrade?
You can absolutely use the 4.0 version of Xcelsius IDE without upgrading BOE.

Elena: We are using SAP BW BEx queries as our main source. These queries contain prompts and hierachies which we would like to use in the dashboard. Is it possible to use hierachies from BEx query designer in the dashboard?
Unfortunately not at this time, because there is no hierarchical control available in Xcelsius. My team is currently investigating the possibilities of filling this gap through the SDK until SAP delivers a proper hierarchy component.

Is this version of xcelsius available to use with XI3.1?
I believe that the latest version should still work with 3.1 when it comes to Query as a Web Service and Live Office. I will do some testing and provide further comments once I confirm.

How large of a query can you use?
Though the direct binding does provide increased performance, the same general guidelines for data volume apply where you only want to return the data that is displayed to end users. So for instance, if you return 2000 rows of data to the dashboard, you need to decide how you will present that to an end user where it makes sense. For parsing and filtering data, you can always use the query browser filtering, but there is still not intermediate client side filtering and data modeling without using the spreadsheet binding.

Can I connect directly to an SQL database using the query browser?
The query browser is designed to leverage the metadata to abstract and simplify the connectivity process so unfortunately you will need to rely on web services to connect directly to SQL

 Do you get better performance when you bind directly to the query?
Absolutely. The reason is this direct binding alleviates some extra overhead and mapping between connections and the spreadsheet.

Behind the scenes, is the wsdl architecture and performance the same as QaaWS?
From my understanding, they have overhauled the previous Axis web service architecture to something much more efficient. At the end of the day, you are always using some kind of web service capabilities to communicate with SAP Dashboard Design. I know there was quite a bit of work done there and will be adding to this answer once I have the exact answer from product management.

Can you refer me BO book which I can refer
I am not aware of anything good from personal experience but I know that the SAP Press site has collected some pretty good authors to write for them: http://www.sap-press.com/

Can you customize the SQL when building your query?
Unfortunately the SQL behind the query is not exposed nor customizable.

Is this product currently available for use?
(as of April 1 2011) This product is currently in SAP’s roll-out to customers so it is not generally available quite yet.

Will custom component that use data have access to new data binding features or will they need to me modified in new SDK for access to these features.
The SDK was not upgraded to take advantage of direct binding provided through the query browser.

Can I upgrade from the latest version of Xcelsius I have to this Dashboard Design for free?
Unfortunately I can’t speak to licensing, upgrades, and pricing on the behalf of SAP. As someone who works for an SAP partner, we do not have any pricing or upgrade info quite yet.

Will I be able to connect directly to an SQL Server Database without using the BO Universe?
You are able to connect to SQL Server without a BO universe, but you will require a web service to transact data between SQL and the dashboard. One solution that some of our customers have used is Flynet http://www.flynetviewer.com/public/pages/default.aspx

What databases are compatible with this program???
Through the SAP BusinessObjects semantic layer you should be able to connect to just about any database vendor under the sun.

Can dashboards be scheduled in BI4.0?
Dashboard scheduling is not available in 4.0 though I have seen this in a roadmap for 4.1. For scheduled dashboard distribution you have very good options with solutions delivered by Antivia (http://www.antivia.com/index.html) and Infosol (http://infosol.com/)

Mel Paras: Is this available in the next version of BusinessObjects Edge?
Absolutely.

Are these Geographic visualization only available in 4.0 or are there other 3rd party maps for Xcelsius map in earlier versions?
The geographic visualization shown in the demonstration is available for earlier versions of Xcelsius. In the presentation, you  with Google Maps is GMaps Plugin: http://gmapsplugin.com

What’s the cost of 4.0 personal copy?
(as of April 1, 2011) Unfortunately this pricing information is not available quite yet that I have seen.

Where can I buy and SAP licence?
You will want to talk to your local sales rep for pricing and licensing

Is this version available with sourcing on demand suite?
I am not aware of availability for 4.0 functionality for on-demand. I am still looking into this one.

 (g) Anne Richter: is there a platform where I can post question about formatting dashboards?
The best platform for dashboard discussion is through SCN forums or the Xcelsius Linked-In group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1847619

Is there any way to export the dashboard to be viewd on mobiles iPad/iPhone
iPad and iPhone are not Flash compatible at this time so there is no export option for iOS at this time? I have been recently spending a lot of time writing on this subject on my personal blog: http://ryangoodman.net/blog and will soon be posting these articles to my SCN blog. I try to keep my skewed opinions to my personal blog so you know what you are getting on my blog vs. SCNJ.

When migrating the dashboard... What  are the aspects that i need to look into
If you are referring to migrating from development to production, as long as the universe is migrated, all you need to migrate for the dashboard is the DashboardDesign object saved to the repository. If you are talking about migrating from 3.0 / 3.1 to 4.0 I have not had a chance to migrate full blown production dashboards yet so the verdict is still out, but I do note that QaaWS does not port into the query browser that I demonstrate.

When is dashboard designer available?
Not quite yet. It is currently in a managed SAP roll out to customers.

Are there any instruction details on how to do this AIR packager to use the dashboard on iPad...?
I have not seen anything yet. The limited testing I have done with Ipad has had mixed success because Xcelsius controls are limited for use on the iPad.

Should we expect significantly improved query performance with dashboard bldr 4.0, similar to performance levels currently available with XWIS?
You will absolutely notice a performance boost with 4.0 compared to QaaWS. The net gain experienced with XWIS is their ability to dynamically filter and dill through data in its entirety without making round trips to the cache or database.

Isn’t ipad support coming in relase 4.1/2??
I have not seen anything yet publically released by SAP and don’t have any information on this so I am speculating like everyone else. My rule of thumb is to not make plans or decisions along these lines based on what a sales rep tells you, and instead wait for the beta.

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards is the technology of choice for thousands of organizations that desire an approachable entry point into business intelligence. A dashboard can provide a wide range of capabilities, all wrapped up in a simple and intuitive user experience. Most companies have adopted dashboards because of their ease of use, allowing any business users to quickly assimilate business performance.  So what happens when we take the same techniques for business analytics, and apply them to America’s favorite pastime?

The results are showcased on Experience SAP Baseball micro-site where baseball fans can master  statistical analysis. This article will draw some interesting comparisons for dashboards for business vs baseball. View more examples at Experience SAP Baseball site

The content displayed within dashboard can differ based on industry or line of business. Most dashboard implementations require the most recent information available, presented as visual performance indicators and metrics. The goal is to quickly paint a picture for an end user (business information consumer) to understand how a company, division, or even product is performing.

Baseball has its own set of performance indicators across multiple “operational units” known as offense, pitching, and defense. Each team performs independent of each other and is measured against consistent performance indicators, which also roll up to division and league.

Regardless of the content, developing dashboards with SAP BusinessObjects dashboards is just as easy. First we collect key  indicators and prioritize them into a list. Then using paper or a whiteboard, you should sketch your dashboard to include all of the visuals required to communicate the key indicators and supporting analytics. Last, you can develop and connect your dashboard using SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards’ point and click development environment.

If you want to see real examples of this process executed into real dashboards, check out Experience SAP Baseball micro-site. There you can view stats about your favorite team and envision how you can inherit the same kind of experience for monitoring your business data.

VISIT EXPERIENCE SAP BASEBALL

Check back next week where I will cover in detail how these dashboards were constructed!

Last year, I was fortunate to join the DashConn beta program . Now generally available, IdeaCrop's DashConn solution provides an extremely powerful salesforce.com integration for Xcelsius and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
DashConn is a true plug and play solution allowing you to quickly integrate data directly from salesforce.com. Leveraging Salesforce CRM reports to do the heavy lifting and data mapping, DashConn provides the easiest possible process for building salesforce.com dashboards within Xcelsius, using skills you already have. If you can create a Salesforce CRM report, DashConn will automatically consume the metadata and expose it through a data connection or DataGrid component.

REAL WORLD USE
The first production ready dashboard I built with DashConn was for software support. Because we use Salesfoce.com for customer portal and software support, I had found the standard Salesforce CRM web page cumbersome. A few basic Xcelsius components with DashConn connectivity now provides my entire support chain with an at-glance view of all cases. The resulting dashboard took me 4 hours from start to finish and is illustrated below:

SCRATCHING THE SURFACE OF WHAT'S POSSIBLE
I am often asked why I don't use out-of-the box Salesforce CRM dashboards. In many cases these dashboards show only one slice of the entire story that I'm trying to study. For example, when we capture trial download leads and closed/won opportunities, there is no way within Salesforce CRM to visualize the various conversion rates. With DashConn and Xcelsius I can create a dashboard that allows us to view and quickly analyze these conversion rates in aggregate or one-by-one.

If you use SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards or Xcelsius and Salesforce CRM and are looking to provide your organization with deeper analysis and insights of your sales data, DashConn is exactly what you have been looking for.

WHERE TO GET MORE INFORMATION
More information about DashConn is available on the IdeaCrop website. If you have any questions about my experience feel free to post them here.

When Jason Cao asked me to participate as a guest panelist in the Dear aBI program on SCN, I jumped at this opportunity to get more involved and share my knowledge of Dashboarding and Xcelsius with the SAP community. I look forward to adressing more questions that come in publically with the goal to educate and spread good practices and ensure you are succesful.

Newbie asked:

I am an Xcelsius user, and we are currently developing some dashboards. We are experimenting with XML connectivity option instead of QAAWS as we notice a performance issue with latter, since QAAWS retrieves data on a real-time basis.

We were planning to use the XML Excel maps connectivity option, and will have the XML files stored on a shared drive. The dashboard users will still be accessing the dashboards from Infoview.

I would to like to ask, if it will be better to store the XML files in our shared drive, or in the BO server? If we choose BO server, will it also have an impact on performance, especially if there may be other users running Crystal Reports or WebI reports at the same time?

Answer:

Thank you for your inquiry Newbie,

In your case, it sounds like using QaaWS caused performance issues which could be attributed to multiple factors which we wont dive into for this particular inquiry. If QaaWS did not provide satisfactory results, there are other options available to you:

Live Office: Live Office does provide access to scheduled instances of reports but the development process is painful and convoluted; I only recommend Live Office as a last resort.

Xcelsius XML Connectivity: With XML Data and XML Maps connections, you can connect directly to XML files or streams.

Third Party Connectivity:  There are a variety of third party solutions available for integrating live data into Xcelsius. Certified software solutions from vendors including Antivia, InfoSol, Centigon Solutions, and Flynet all provide their own connecting options to your Xcelsius dashboard.

In your evaluation of using XML maps, based on your specific business requirements, you may have found this as the best fit. To outline the advantages and disadvantages I have listed some key criteria that you need to consider while choosing an alternative connectivity method:

Performance- As you have found, XML maps performs extremely well because the Xcelsius dashboard connects and downloads XML file(s) with no security or middleware in between.

Security- Because the XML files are stored in a web directory, there is no real data security, rendering your end users with “all or nothing” access to your data. You must access your XML files via HTTP, which means your XML files must reside on a web application server. The only way to access XML files on a file share or desktop is if users open the SWF file from their desktop or file share (also requires sandbox security access).

Scalability- When using XML files, scalability is usually not a concern because you are only limited to the bandwidth available on the server for downloading XML files. In this scenario it will not impact any other applications running on the server. I usually compare downloading an XML file to Xcelsius like downloading a JPG file from a web site, since they essentially eat up the same relative bandwidth.

Hopefully that paints a better picture for you how XML Maps connectivity will impact your existing BusienssObjects applications. Feel free to provide any feedback on your exploratory experiences and any additional questions.

Learn how to ask a question to “Dear BI” http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/x/dINnCw

It is football season for us here in the states, and for my network of friends and colleagues this will lock down every Sunday for the next 17 weeks. Though I don’t have the capacity to participate in fantasy football, my friends have long contributed to a football pool where we pick the winners for each week and put some money on the line to make it interesting. Our biggest problem was the manual process for gathering picks, and my unwillingness to pay for such as software solution.

Instead, I rolled up my sleeves built a very simple Xcelsius tool capable of capturing and exporting my weekly picks using the latest CSV Connector component. Like any dashboard, project once the end users gets a taste for what is possible with Xcelsius the real requirements begin to pour in. Somewhere in the middle, I ended up with what I am calling my NFL Personal Football Pool Manager (shown below).

TRY NOW

The idea is simple:

1.     Load and navigate the 17 week schedule one week at a time

2.     Capture the user’s picks for the winner of each game

3.     Save the picks so they can be recalled throughout the entire season

4.     Allow a user to export the picks for any week

5.     Load the scores and compare the results to the picks

6.     Display the results for each week

7.     Don’t allow anyone to cheat!!

If you have your own football pool and want to track your picks, or want to have your entire group use this, I offer it online free of charge. Based on the usage, we may decide to take this several steps further to increase the value. Your feedback and ideas are always appreciated!

View NFL Football Personal Pool Manager

When we built GMaps Plugin, Google Maps Premier powered integration for Xcelsius dashboards, I realized an instant workable solution for Crystal Reports, even though there are already a variety of powerful map solutions available. With GMaps Plugin 2.1 release around the corner, we will be one step closer to producing powerful Google Maps enabled views for use in Crystal Reports.

Though Centigon Solutions has not announced any formal GMaps Plugin support for Crystal Reports, I have been playing around in my free time with GMaps Plugin coupled with the Crystal Reports connector as a simple bridge to Crystal Reports integration. While evaluating some of the business cases for these technologies working together, I have engaged several experts to see how their customers may value this integration.

I am curious from my fellow Xcelsius and Crystal Reports gurus how you would envision a Google Maps enabled Crystal Report to bring real business value. While mashing up technologies is fun, it is practical utility that I am after. I will shortly post how to drag and drop Google Maps into a Crystal Report using GMaps Plugin.