Xcelsius
SAP InsideTrack videos on Xcelsius (SCDD) and BO Explorer
Last month David Lai gave an interesting presentation on SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius) at the SAP InsideTrack Vancouver event which covered lots of tricks and tips.
He discussed the following topics:
- Why are dashboards used and what are the benefits?
- Dashboard Design and Best Practices
- Dashboard Connectivity – Enterprise and Non Enterprise
- Xcelsius best practices with the designer and internal spreadsheet
- Xcelsius Tips and Tricks
- Xcelsius resources
You can watch the replay of this presentation here (Adobe Connect required).
Two other interesting presentations covered the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and the SAP BusinessObjects Roadmap/overview.
Which Xcelsius (SBOD) version do I have?
SAP released the third fixpack for Xcelsius (SBOD) service pack (SP) 3 last week. This is the eighth update since the initial release of Xcelsius 2008. You might be wondering which version you are using right now.
To see which versions you have, go to the Help menu and choose About Xcelsius.... In the table below you can find an overview of all releases.
| Release | Version | Build |
| Xcelsius 2008 (RTM) | 5.0.0.99 | 12,1,0,121 |
| Xcelsius 2008 SP1 | 5.0.0.99 | 12,1,0,247 |
| Xcelsius 2008 FixPack 1.1 | 5.1.1.0 | 12,1,1,344 |
| Xcelsius 2008 SP2 | 5.2.0.0 | 12,2,0,608 |
| Xcelsius 2008 FixPack 2.1 | 5.2.1.0 | 12,2,1,66 |
| Xcelsius 2008 SP3 | 5.3.0.0 | 12,3,0,670 |
| Xcelsius 2008 FixPack 3.1 | 5.3.1.0 | 12,3,1,776 |
| Xcelsius 2008 FixPack 3.2 | 5.3.2.0 | 12,3,2,864 |
| Xcelsius 2008 FixPack 3.3 | 5.3.3.0 | 12,3,3,973 |
| Xcelsius 2008 FixPack 3.4 | 5.3.4.0 | 12,3,4,103 |
| Xcelsius 2008 FixPack 3.5 | 5.3.4.0 | 12,3,5,1128 |
| Xcelsius 2008 SP4 | 5.4.0.0 | 12,4,0,11,66 |
Xcelsius 2008 Fix Pack 3.3 (Windows 7 support) available
The SAP Xcelsius team (they still use the ‘old’ name themselves, lol) has release a new fix pack for Xcelsius 2008 SP3. It now fully supports Windows 7. You can get the download here and further information (release notes, fix-list) should be available in the next few days on this page.
To read the original announcement, go to the SDN-forum or just click the More-button below. It also includes some tips on installing and running this version of Xcelsius.
Posted in: SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, XcelsiusSAP BusinessObjects 4 teaser and sneak preview videos
SAP uploaded two new videos on the upcoming SAP BusinessObjects 4 release. First a smooth teaser and second a longer video showing some of the (new) features of this release. This second video shows us a new Query Browser for Xcelsius (SCDD), which seems to enable the creation of direct Universe queries from within Xcelsius. Also a Query Prompt Selector component is demonstrated.
Posted in: SAP, SAP BusinessObjects, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, Xcelsius
New GMaps Plugin v2 for Xcelsius try-out
This summer Centigon Solutions released the latest version of their Google Maps add-on for Xcelsius (uh, SAP Crystal Solutions Presentation Design…). Although I liked the first version of this add-on, I really missed an option for showing regional alerts. You still had to use the standard Xcelsius map-components which did support this feature.
In this post I will show the steps you have to take to create a dashboard showing a Google Map with regions that have alert colors and are clickable with some drill-down functionality like the example below.
Update: First check this post concerning changes on the Google Maps API.
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://hackingsap.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/NL_GMaps_demo.swf” height=”600″ width=”600″ /]
Posted in: Knowledge sharing, New technology, SAP, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, Xcelsius
