Knowledge sharing
Custom Scrollbars in SAP Design Studio
As we have seen in an earlier post we can enhance the looks of our SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio applications with the use of some CSS coding. In this post I will show you how to add scrollbars to Design Studio components and how to change the looks of them. The result of an adjusted Text component will look like this:
Some components, like the Crosstab or the Filter Panel component will activate horizontal and/or vertical scrollbars themselves when there is not enough room to display all the data. The Text component doesn’t do this and just simply expands vertically. The height setting in the component’s layout properties has no effect on this anymore.
Design Studio accepted ideas for next release(s)
SAP has this Idea Place website set up where users can submit ideas for new features or actually any change to an SAP product. Very few people know this but this site is actually quite useful. Users can vote and comment on each other’s ideas and the top ideas will be taken into consideration by the project team.
There is also a place for Design Studio ideas. At the moment the submission for new ideas is closed. As you can see in the schedule below they are now in the Development phase of the current cycle, so I assume the ideas that now have the Accepted status will appear in the upcoming 1.3 release.
Design Studio Idea phases and schedule (source):
Submission: June 1st – September 30th
- Customers can begin submitting ideas
- Idea Status is ‘Submitted’
- Can vote on ideas now
Voting: October 1st – October 6th
- Final idea submissions must be in for consideration in next release.
- Customers vote on top ideas
- Idea Status is ‘Submitted’
Review: October 7th – November 4th
- SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio Team reviews top voted ideas for next release
- Ideas can continue to be submitted, however these will be considered for a later release.
- Idea Status changed to ‘Under Review’
Development: November 4th
- Development begins (estimated < 8 months)
- Selected ideas will receive ‘Accepted’ status, others will be identified as ‘Not Planned by SAP’ or moved back to ‘Submitted’ for consideration in a later release.
Use: Q2 2014
- Release deployed with select ideas
- Ideas in new release status changed to ‘Delivered’
So I checked the list of Accepted ideas and there are some pretty interesting ones in it:
- Toggle Button component
- Drag & Drop dimensions (already in roadmap)
- Browser based multi-languages
- Personalization/Bookmarks (already in roadmap)
- Turn on/off display attributes
- Totals Display (show/hide)
- Open Scripting Editor with double-click on component
- Upload filter values via clipboard
- Set Sort Order for Data in Tables and Charts via Scripting
- Add/remove members to .getMemberlist() result
- Set display and text type via scripting
- Timer based screen change
- Enable HTML components in Design Studio
Design Studio add-ons: Graphomate Charts 2.0
2014 is going to be a big year for SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, especially since the recent 1.2 version of Design Studio offers an SDK to create custom components. I expect to see a lot of cool new add-ons in the coming year.
One of the first companies that created such an add-on is Graphomate from Germany. For SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards they already created the Visualization Add-on in the past, and now they made the same add-on available for Design Studio, called Graphomate Charts 2.0.
So what does this add-on offer? The Graphomate Charts lets you visualize data quickly according to the SUCCESS concept of Prof. Hichert. This SUCCESS concept is a set of rules for designing reports and presentations. More info can be found here and on Hichert.com.
The charts look very minimalistic and the emphasize is clearly on presenting differences and trends as clearly as possible. In fact, you can edit the looks of each element of a chart (color, filling, shape, width) independently. With the option to activate Deviation Axes you can add extra mini-charts above/besides the chart that display the deviation between two data series (percentage or absolute).
SAP BI books, books & books!
It’s a great era for those of us who like to learn about SAP BI topics by themselves, at your own pace and at a moment that is the most suitable. We have the openSAP online courses on HANA and BI4, there is Twitter, the blogs, podcasts and of course the good old books. Lots of SAP BI books I must say. In this post I made an overview of the books that just have been released and the ones that are coming in the near future.
Implementing SAP HANA, by Don Loden, Jonathan Haun, Chris Hickman, and Roy Wells, ISBN 978-1-59229-856-3, 838 pages.
Currently the #1 selling book at SAP Press about the more than epic HANA platform; the #1 topic at SAP TechEd this year. This book offers the practical details about implementing SAP HANA, plus the integration of SAP Data Services and the SAP BusinessObjects BI tools with SAP HANA.
100 Things You Should Know about SAP NetWeaver BW, by Andrew Joo and Buntic Georgian, ISBN 978-1-59229-447-3, 369 pages.
100 tips and tricks to make your work as a SAP BI consultant more efficient. Real-world examples/problems, short chapters, practical step-by-step instructions and a lot of screenshots. Cookbook style, so I like!
Getting Started with SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, by Xavier Hacking and Jeroen van der A, ISBN 978-1-59229-895-2, 504 pages.
Yeah of course the book I worked on myself needs to be in this list. A brand new book on this brand new tool, covering everything you need to know to get started with Design Studio! More info and a nice discount coupon code here.
Universe Design with SAP BusinessObjects BI: The Comprehensive Guide, by Christian Ah-Soon, Pierpaolo Vezzosi, and Didier Mazoué, ISBN 978-1-59229-901-0, ±650 pages, expected release December 2013.
I think this book will be the first in-depth guide to the Information Design Tool, which can be used to create those BI4 UNX universes.
Predictive Analysis with SAP: The Comprehensive Guide, by John MacGregor, ISBN 978-1-59229-915-7, ±500 pages, expected release December 2013.
I joined the hands-on session at TechEd to play around with Predictive Analysis for the first time. I expect this book to bring me a bit further than the basics and do some real analysis and modeling.
Integrating SAP BusinessObjects BI with SAP NetWeaver (3rd Edition), by Info Hilgefort, ISBN 978-1-59229-923-2, ±550 pages, expected release December 2013.
I love the first two editions of this book. They were really helpful in setting up the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform on top of SAP BW. This version will be up to date for BI4.1.
SAP NetWeaver BW: Administration and Performance Optimization, by Jesper Christensen and Joe Darlak, ISBN 978-1-59229-853-2, ±750 pages, expected release June 2014.
BW is not dead (yet), so this one is for the back-end guys to keep BW running smoothly. I expect this book to cover a lot of the contents of the 2010 release SAP NetWeaver BW: Administration and Monitoring, but we’ll see.
So, which one(s) will be under your Christmas tree next month?
Posted in: Books, Knowledge sharingSAP Design Studio and Conditions
I got an email this week from a SAP BI developer about an issue with SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio. He is trying to filter a set of data in Top N categories, for example to get the 10 regions with the highest sales numbers (Top 10).
Unfortunately, in Design Studio we can only create filters on characteristics/dimensions (Vendor, Customer, Region) and not on key figures/measures (Sales numbers). In BEx Analyzer and SAP BusinessObjects Analysis the Conditions options does in fact provide this exact functionality, see the screenshot below.
These Conditions can be defined in BEx Analyzer and Analysis, but can also be pre-defined in the BEx Query Designer. Luckily there is a way to use these pre-defined conditions in Design Studio and even change their condition value!
First we’ll have to go to BEx Query Designer and create a Condition in the query. Choose a key figure and an operator.
