Free Mr. Excel ebook

Posted by Xavier Hacking on Nov 3, 2010

Microsoft Excel is a major part of SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius) and to build advanced dashboard you need some proper Excel knowledge. Today I was browsing for some info on a few Excel formulas when I came up to this Mr. Excel site, offering a free 900+ pages best practices book on Excel called Learn Excel 97-2007 from Mr. Excel: 377 Excel Mysteries Solved!. The video below shows some of the tips & tricks that are covered in the book.

The ebook is in low resolution so it is good enough to use as a reference guide to take with you on your laptop or iPad. Download it here (no login/registration required!). You can get the printed version here.

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Posted in: Books, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, Xcelsius

SAP InsideTrack videos on Xcelsius (SCDD) and BO Explorer

Posted by Xavier Hacking on Oct 22, 2010

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.

Posted in: SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, Xcelsius

Which Xcelsius (SBOD) version do I have?

Posted by Xavier Hacking on Oct 16, 2010

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

Posted in: SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, Xcelsius

Xcelsius 2008 Fix Pack 3.3 (Windows 7 support) available

Posted by Xavier Hacking on Oct 11, 2010

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.

SAP BusinessObjects 4 teaser and sneak preview videos

Posted by Xavier Hacking on Oct 10, 2010

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.