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Miscellaneous Tips and Tricks

What is a Business Objects PAR Document?

If you are a veteran of Business Objects then you probably have heard of a PAR document. If you are a stickler for details then you may know that PAR stands for “Product Availability Report”. But the rest of us are scratching our heads now, and maybe you guys are too, when we ask ask ourselves “What is a Business Objects PAR document exactly?”.

PAR = Supported Platforms ?

I really am not sure if PAR is the deprecated Business Objects term for the documents that SAP now wants to call “Supported Platforms”. If this is true, “Amen”, I love the name change, PAR never meant anything to me. It is a strange acronym representing three words that really don’t precisely mean anything as clear as “Supported Platforms”. The SAP Support Portal puts these two document names in the same heading and they call it “Supported Platforms/PARs”. Other than that I am not sure we have anything else backing up the claim that “PAR = Support Platforms”.

PAR != Supported Platforms ?

The most recent Supported Platforms document at the time this article was written was “Business Objects Enterprise XI 3.1 SP2 for ???? – Supported Platforms”. The Linux one says on page 8 “Unless otherwise specified in the PAR”, so if we are taking this literally we are to understand that there is some other document still called a PAR that is not the Supported Platforms document. Or perhaps this was a mistake; it would not be the first time.

Conclusions

I have read on the BOB forum in at least one posting (link) that some of their resident experts (a.k.a. Forum Fanatics) confirm that “PAR” and “Support Platforms” are synonymous. However, the documents themselves seem to confound this belief. I still ask myself, what exactly is a PAR document in 2010 and where can I get one?

Business Objects Tips and Tricks for Web Intelligence Reports – October 2009

Happy Halloween to all. I am going to try to start publishing short to medium length lists of my favorite tips. These have helped me a lot over the years and I think if I just try to jot them down as I use them I can end up with a fairly decent list of Business Objects tips and tricks that I can post with some kind of regularity.

  1. Use the “View my documents…” preferences setting of “fullscreen browser window”: There are actually two options and I believing that I am a power user, prefer to use the “in multiple fullscreen browser windows, one window for each document” option. If you don’t use one of these “fullscreen” options you are probably working less efficiently than you would otherwise. Do yourself a favor and try this tip out!
  2. Save New Versions Often: For many years, in full client (a.k.a. Desktop Intelligence) and in Web Intelligence Report creation and modification I have regularly used the “Save As” option every time I make a change that is just a bit more complex than a few formatting changes. I use the technique of starting with a base report name and then appending the date numerically to it. I don’t get down into a numerical representation of the time as it would be tedious I just use letters, starting with “a”. For example, the first version saved off today would be saved as the name “My Awesome Report 20091029a”. Doing the date and the letters in this format allows for simple alphabetical sorting within the InfoView or CMC object list. Later if the report becomes corrupt, or my great idea causes a huge mess I just start stepping back in version until I find the last known good one.
  3. Relative Positioning of Tables, Charts, and Cells: If you haven’t yet used this feature then your report design must be rather limited or just simple. I relatively position all of my tables, charts and cells. Always. Even if there is just one table on the report table I use relative positioning to get teh table exactly where I want it in relation to the page margins. Many times I am mixing tables, cells, and charts on the same report tab/page and I use relative positioning to make sure they never bleed together and that they are always spaced the same no matter how much data I pull in. My favorite trick is to create multiple tables and relatively position them to look like a single table. This is great when trying to make BO’s reports look and feel like the business user thinks they should.

    How do you do this Business Objects magic trick. Easy, just click on the table, chart, or cell until you see a border around the object with a very small checkered pattern (with tables you need to click the border, with the other just click the object anywhere). Then right-click (with table, right-click the border) and select “Position”. Then your choices are flexible: horizontal, right and left, and vertical, top and bottom. Each one allows the space to be defined in pixels (px). Experimentation will pay off in allowing to to create some very professional looking reports and possibly even satisfy some otherwise impossible business requirements!

  4. What you see is not always what you get: For 98% of the components of a report what you see in the Java Report Panel is what the users will see in the regular HTML viewer they will use to open, refresh, and view the report. But there is that 2% that is not really quite the same (I just picked a low number, don’t quote me on the number). Most notably the prompts; they do not work exactly the same. Date prompts have different controls and selected dates in the HTML viewer will append the time to the date.
  5. Where is my data cube? What exactly was returned by the query?: Open the WebI report in the HTML viewer and click on Document > Save to my computer as… > CSV. The output will include all of the data from each query. The first query’s data followed immediately by the second query’s data ans so on. This is a good way to check things out without any concern about whether a BO table with all of the query objects is actually aggregating the query’s data when you don’t want it to.
  6. Cross-tab tables with totals in the first column: OK, this is nitpicking, but I keep finding business requirements that specify the totals should be in the first column and then the cross-tabbed data. Try to do this and you will find yourself in cross-tab hell. That is unless you click on the last dimension on the left and then add a column after. You just added a column in the “dimension” zone and now you can throw a measure variable in it. However, be prepared to format the column quite a bit to get it to look like a measure column; by default it will inherit the formatting given to measures.
  7. Alerts don’t work on dimensions: Yeah, this one sucks. I try about once a year to get an alerter to allow me to manipulate a measure in the header, for example create borders around quarters. It won’t do anything. Alerters are intended to bring attention to or apply condition formatting to measures. The alternative is to come up with some compromise involving semi-complex variables using the dimension objects.

Business Objects Support Portal, What Happened!?!?

The SAP AG Acquisition of Business Objects

If you don’t know yet that SAP AG purchased Business Objects for a mere 4.8 billion Euro in a friendly takeover then you must have been too busy creating universes and reports; you really need to get out more often or at least surf the web a little during breaks. This all was announced in fall of 2007, I’m not sure when it became official. But I can tell you that in July 2008 BO’s support web portal got folded into SAP’s support web portal, the SAP Service Marketplace, and in the process a few things changed.

New Support Role Call

Firstly, some new roles, or names of roles, have emerged. Apparently each business customer should have a “primary contact” or “superadministrator” who retains the maximum level of authorizations in the SAP Service Marketplace. This person(s) determines which company employees will have access to BO-SAP Support and what their assigned authorizations are with regards to the support application in the SAP Support Portal. The “named contacts” will generally have access to some or all of the following:

  • Display customer messages
  • Create customer messages
  • Send customer messages to SAP
  • Confirm customer messages
  • Open service connection
  • Maintain system data

New BO-SAP Service Marketplace Terms

    There are a few new terms that you should understand and adopt in order to make your support experience as painless as possible.

  • Customer Message: Become familiar with this term, this is your new “case” or “customer case”. It seems SAP found a way to remove any negative tones from the name for cases and at the same time remove most of the logical meaning from the name. Good luck with using that term in your communications, it will confuse everyone including yourself until we fully accept and adopt it.
  • Notes Database: You could probably guess this on a multiple choice test, but I will give you a huge hint, KB… ok, to be fair, I tire of all the acronyms so let me stop being a hypocrit, this is your new Knowledge Base.
  • Super-Administrators: I gave this away above, generally this is the central point of contact and the person who contols the Regular Support User membership.
  • Regular Support Users: These are the grunts, they women and men suffering through support issues, opening “Customer Messages” with BO-SAP, and praying for a pormpt response and resolution.
  • Netviewer: the SAP standard desktop sharing tool, replacing everyone’s favorite WebEx. Hmmm… as of last week I have heard that many BO Support folks are still using WebEx, but expect this to phase out.

Links

Business Objects Support – Tips and Tricks

  • Keep in mind that this SAP Support Portal is new to BO Support as well. They are still adjusting to the new terminology and functionality of the SAP Service Marketplace.
  • In reported experiences Internet Explorer 6 seems to have trouble with some of the website, especially the creation of Customer Messages. I recommend using Mozilla FireFox, it seems to do well.
  • Tired of Entering Your User Name and Password on Each New Page?:For efficiency and Sanity’s sake while working within the SAP Service Marketplace I strongly recommend, no I insist, that you make use of the “Single Sign-On with SAP Passports”. The “Single Sign-On Certificate” can be requested, and installed directly from the home page of SAP Service Marketplace or from the ‘My Profile’ left-hand navigation bar.
  • Preferences: Mine were all set to default European ones. I recommend you update these under My Profile. This might save some confusion with date and decimal formats. It also might prevent Business Objects Support from calling your personal cell phone at 6:00 AM.
  • Search Before Creation: OK, this is a strong trend everywhere support can be requested and BO-SAP are trying to help you out here. Get used to it. You can quickly execute a search and click “Create Message” button (towards the bottom, a dark gray button for me) if you know you have to open a case no matter what.
  • It gets easier, it really does. The first time you have to search for your system you will feel disoriented, but your perseverance pays nicely the next time as this system will be available as a hyperlink to quick selection. You will need to select a “Component” each time, but this gets easier as you learn where the important ones are in the hierarchy.

Business Objects SAP Support Tips and Tricks Guides!

I have managed to get my hands on some documents being distributed by Business Objects Support personnel that provide some screenshots and tips on navigating and creating support cases, I mean customer messages on the new SAP Service MarketPlace. I don’t think BO would mind me distributing these, enjoy:
BO SAP Support – Tips and Tricks
BO SAP Support – Creating an SAP Customer Message

References