Classic FTW!
De Nederlandse BI Podcast – Episode 11: BO Simplification
We recorded a very current edition of De Nederlandse BI Podcast, discussing the latest SAP blog by Jayne Landry on the future simplification of the SAP BusinessObjects BI product portfolio. Check the blog here.
You can find the show in iTunes, on our website or just use the Podcast player below to listen instantly.
Design Studio 1.3 Q&A Chat Replay
We did our SAP Design Studio 1.3 Q&A chat for SAPinsider last night, which was a lot of fun. If you weren’t able to join us, you can check the ‘replay’ here. Later this week also an edited transcript of the chat will be posted.
Update: The transcript is available!
What Is New in Design Studio 1.3 Q&A chat
Jeroen van der A and I are hosting a Q&A chat session on SAP Design Studio 1.3 for SAPinsider on Tuesday 17 June 2014 at 12:30pm-1:30pm EDT (18:30pm-19:30pm CET). If you want to join the live discussion you can register here. That’s also the place where you can already add some questions or topics you want to discuss.
What Is New in Design Studio 1.3? Q&A with the Authors of Getting Started with SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio
How does SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio compare to SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius), Analysis for Office, and BEx WAD? What are the features you should look for from the new Design Studio 1.3 release?
Register now for our June 17 online Q&A with Xavier Hacking and Jeroen van der A, authors of Getting Started with SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio.
Ask your questions in this online author chat at 12:30pm-1:30pm EDT on the 17th, and post your technical questions on building dashboards using Design Studio, new features in 1.3, and how Design Studio compares to other BusinessObjects tools, including:
- What can we handle planning models in BW via Design Studio?
- How does Design Studio compare to Lumira, Analysis for Office, and Dashboards?
- How do I work with variable scripting and background processing?
- How does Design Studio handle responsive design and other mobility requirements?
- What is new with our scripting options in 1.3?
We’re looking forward to a great discussion on evaluating and using Design Studio 1.3. Register here.
QlikView Next front-end vs SAP BusinessObjects Mobile
I just took the time to watch this video previewing QlikView Next. In the video a good preview is giving of what this new QlikView tool looks like and works, and it seems pretty cool. It also worries me when I look at the mobile BI solutions SAP is currently providing in the SAP BusinessObjects Mobile app.
If I understand it correctly Next is some kind of BI vision for the future, where they want users to move from passively receiving reports to more actively participating in analysis. They made a beautiful website for this, but I can’t really find out what the really big deal is here. Things like the Discover, Decide, Do cycle are not really groundbreaking or unique.
But, I can see from the video demo that the tool itself is purely developed from a user experience perspective and fully compatible for mobile usage. It runs in Safari on an iPad without having to install something. You can easily select data and use ‘natural’ gestures as pinching to zoom in on charts. I really like the way you can circle around a group of data points to select them.
The user can create new analyses himself by drag-and-dropping components (charts, filter boxes etc.). From these analyses a story can be composed, including written text. This storyboard can be distributed to others and from a datapoint in this storyboard a user can go back to the original (more detailed) analysis.
So let’s compare this to what SAP is offering in their SAP BusinessObjects Mobile app. The Mobile app can show predefined Webi, Crystal, Dashboards and Design Studio application. Except from some basic annotations and mailing screenshots there are no options to add information or adjust what you are seeing. The interactivity/usability options within the reports (making selections for example) are miles behind what QlikView Next is showing in the video demo.
I also tried SAP Lumira Cloud on the Mobile app. It let’s you create a single chart, add and move some dimensions and measures. You can even click one or more datapoints on the chart to filter, but this doesn’t work really smooth. Also pinching and swiping seems to have no effect. And I just can’t figure out how to add more charts and/or a storyboard. Frustrating.
Conclusion is that the SAP BusinessObjects Mobile app still sucks and there is a lot of work to do to close this gap. The problem is that the approach for the Mobile app always has been to make (existing) BI4 reports available on mobile devices, which led to crappy solutions. It is just like publishers trying to port their newspapers and magazines to the iPad, in the exact same format as the printed paper (see my Blendle post).
Instead, SAP should start all over again and recreate their Mobile app from a pure mobile usage perspective (and not just continue to port Lumira to the iPad!). Also for Design Studio we need upgraded components that include these cool mobile gesture features like smart data selections.
By the way thanks to @pieter_hendrikx for the tip on this QlikView Next video.
New SAPexperts article: How to Use CSS in Design Studio
I wrote another article for the SAPexperts online knowledge base. In line with some of my recent posts here on my blog this one is all about CSS, but now more from a basic, 101 course standpoint.
In this article I give a basic introduction to the language of CSS and explain how it can be used in combination with Design Studio, either on a local installation or with a connection to an SAP BusinessObjects BI4 platform or an SAP NetWeaver BW environment. I also discuss how you can change the default CSS styles of the standard Design Studio components.
If you have an subscription to the SAPexperts BI hub you can check the article here.
