PLANO, Texas, Feb. 15, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Visual BI Solutions, an SAP Partner and a specialized player in Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics, today announced their participation in BI and Analytics Conference being held this year at Huntington Beach, CA between February 19-21. They will be exhibiting at Booth #3.
 

 
This year, Visual BI will be exhibiting their End-to-End BI capabilities ranging from Quick-Start Programs, Migration, Training, Consulting and SAP Certified Product Extensions. In addition, participants will also have a chance to explore their innovative Product offerings like Visual BI Extensions for SAP Lumira Designer (VBX 2.2), Value Driver Tree, VBI View and Document Management for SAP Lumira.

“BI and Analytics Conference is going to be a great platform for us to showcase our innovations, customer experiences & success stories in SAP’s BI portfolio covering SAP Business Warehouse, SAP BusinessObjects and SAP HANA,” said Gopal Krishnamurthy, Founder/CEO, Visual BI Solutions.

Click here for the link to our webpage: www.visualbi.com

About VISUAL BI

A leading SAP-certified BI Enablement firm, we provide strategic consulting, software and solutions that achieve agile, mobile, self-service and real-time BI. Some of the world’s largest firms look to us for strategies & solutions to drive BI adoption through actionable insights and advanced visualizations

About BI and Analytics Conference

Formerly SABOC, BI+A is a celebration of the people, technology, ideas, and innovations that are literally transforming the way we live and work. This conference gives you access to global thought leaders, local peers, and industry experts using BusinessObjects and the full range of SAP’s analytics and reporting tools. For more information on this conference please visit http://biaconference.com/

SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. See http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

Media Contact:
Varsha Manikandan
190426@email4pr.com
972-232-2233

The post Visual BI Solutions Announces Its Participation in BI and Analytics Conference to Showcase their End-to-End BI Capabilities and Product Offerings appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

Visual BI Solutions participating in the BI + Analytics Conference being held this year at Huntington Beach, CA between February 19-21.

We will be exhibiting at Booth #3.

This year, we will be exhibiting our End-to-End BI capabilities ranging from Quick-Start Programs, Migration, Training, Consulting and SAP Certified Product Extensions. In addition, participants will also have a chance to explore our innovative Product offerings like Visual BI Extensions for SAP Lumira Designer (VBX 2.2), Value Driver Tree, VBI View and Document Management for SAP Lumira.

The post Visual BI at BI + Analytics Conference appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

Visual BI is proud to announce that we will be exhibiting at SAPinsider’s BI & HANA 2018 being help this year between February 26 – March 1 at The Bellagio in Las Vegas.

BI & HANA 2018 is a collaboration of SAP and SAPinsider, and is the definitive conference for professionals who use and support SAP data technologies, SAP Cloud Platform, business apps, and analytics. This year’s must-attend event is packed with in-depth sessions, live product demos, and interactive forums showcasing the latest updates and best practices for SAP HANA and BI solutions.

If you’re able to attend the event, be sure to stop by Visual BI’s booth in the exhibit hall.

You can get full details on the agenda, as well as receive a special discount off the registration price by visiting www.HANA2018.com/VisualBI.

The post Visual BI will be exhibiting at BI & HANA 2018 appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

In the previous blog, we took a quick look at Value Driver Tree and explored its origins dating to the 1920s. While specific sectors such as mining have seen strong value driver tree adoption, it is only recently that enterprises have taken a renewed interest in the framework.

Let’s look at the top 4 reasons why Value Driver Trees are making a comeback:

(1) Advancements in computing: A Value Driver Tree can be highly resource-intensive in terms of computing for typical enterprise use cases. The reason is that it involves a chain of calculations, often supported by a series of resource-intensive read-write database actions. This has traditionally required a stronger server configuration to handle the load. When you look at trees with 1000+ nodes and multiple users, the complexity increases exponentially.

A Value Driver Tree

In the recent years, innovations such as in-memory computing have tremendously increased capabilities of applications and databases. Cloud computing has made infrastructure scalable on demand. Transactional and analytical applications too are riding the in-memory wave and increasingly providing live connectivity options to popular data stores.

Solutions such as Visual BI’s Value Driver Tree use high-performance embedded javascript engine that function exclusively on the browser – eliminating the need for backend processing – and still support 1000+ nodes with ease.

(2) Innovations in visualizations & UX: The appeal of a Value Driver Tree lies in the visual and intuitive arrangement of drivers that capture their relationship & interaction. However, it was not until a decade ago that dedicated visualization software started becoming common in enterprises. Even though computing power was still available, visualization best practices lagged behind thereby hindering user excitement and adoption.

Since then, trends such as design minimalism and touch-enabled interactions have brought humans and machines much closer.

The evolution of UX (2004 vs. today)

(3) Emergence of Self-Service culture: The increasing adoption of visualization and self-service BI tools such as Tableau and Power BI expanded the horizons of non-technical business users and executives over the last few years. Even decision-makers who preferred to receive their reports in a printed format on their desk every week (or every morning) started getting used to touch-click-drag-pinch gestures.

While this has not made them technological wizards, it has definitely made them receptive to try out newer solutions, as long as it helps them become self-reliant (but without having to go through a steep learning curve).

(4) The need for enterprise planning to be dynamic: While business modeling & planning have always been a priority for enterprises, their evolving needs require planning & simulation capabilities to be more dynamic than ever before. This implies that enterprises can take strategic actions and re-forecast quickly, rather than wait for the decision cycles to align with the annual budgeting & monthly forecasting processes. Value Driver Trees that are lightweight, agile & nimble serve this need very well.

There is a secondary benefit in leveraging dynamic value driver trees. They can not only support top-down planning needs requiring a quick turnaround, but also complement bottom-up enterprise planning that leverages platforms (such as SAP BPC/IP) for a more detailed analysis. The quick up-front time invested in building the first few iterations using Value Driver Trees can save a lot of subsequent time invested in bottom-up planning tools – thereby delivering a big value add for enterprises looking to shorten their overall planning & budgeting cycles.

All of the above reasons have made the situation ripe for value driver trees to make a comeback.

* * *

Value Driver Trees: How things will be different this time

Until the 1990s, the evaluation, implementation, data gathering, performance measurement and monitoring of popular value management techniques required a tremendous amount of time, effort and attention from enterprises. Logically, such initiatives had to be blessed by the C-Suite, and they often required the guidance of leading management & strategy consulting firms.

Contrast that with today, where the three reasons discussed above are making it possible for even line managers and mid-level executives to apply value management techniques to their departments and teams. This is expected to drive Value Driver Tree adoption at all levels – enterprise, departments and teams.

* * *

In the upcoming series of Value Driver Tree blogs, we’ll review more topics of interest such as tips on getting the most out of value driver trees, best practices, how-to recommendations, software evaluation considerations and more.

Note: The visual shown above has been generated using Visual BI’s Value Driver Tree software for SAP Lumira Designer. Reach out to us today to learn more.

Interested? Here’s a chance to download a 15-day trial of Value Driver Tree.

The post 4 Reasons Why Value Driver Trees Are Making A Comeback appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

SAP has made OData the de facto standard for all solutions developed using SAPUI5.

Application servers are a primary source of OData and when it comes to SAP, NetWeaver platform and SAP HANA have a great understanding and provision of data for SAP UI5 applications. So, learning OData is a must if you are on the ground of creating SAP UI5 Applications.

SAP UI5 Framework follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) Architecture. The data that is consumed in the Application can either be directly from JSON (external JSON File) or through OData.

This blog briefly explains how OData can be created through a couple of commonly used sources and ultimately be consumed on an SAPUI5 Application.

Depending on the nature of the Application and the type of data source, OData can be generated from:

• SAP ABAP
• SAP HANA

 
SAP FIORI categorizes its applications developed using the SAPUI5 framework into three. They are:

1. Transactional Applications
2. Analytical Applications
3. Factsheets

Transactional Applications:
 
If we’re creating an SAP Fiori Transactional Application, then essentially the data would be consumed from an ECC System. Transactional applications give a fresh look coupled with standard or custom functionality, having the ability to write back to the ECC system. Hence the OData that needs to be used up in the Application is created in NetWeaver with SAP ABAP as the primary programming language.

Similarly, there are ABAP CDS Views which can be directly exposed as OData and consumed in the Application.

Whichever the approach be, SAP Gateway of the NetWeaver platform plays an integral role in providing the necessary components for web interaction.
 
Analytical Applications
 
When we’re building an SAP Fiori Analytical Application, the data is available in the OLAP System. We can also expose BEx (Business Explorer) Queries which are held on top of NetWeaver System directly as OData.

We do have other options through which OData can be exposed by the SAP NetWeaver platform.
 
Factsheets:
 
Factsheets are pre-dominantly coupled with Enterprise Search and are read-only applications providing enhanced data view experience primarily around Master Data.

Now that we have looked at the three application categories and how we can consume OData through SAP ABAP, let’s jump into SAP HANA as a source.

When it comes to SAP HANA as a platform for application development, we look up to the server-side Java Scripting (XSJS) and ODATA. We can either directly expose the views from a HANA Model or by using SAP HANA as a database through XSJS or XSOData.

XSJS is primarily preferred when:

1. Any kind of data manipulation is required
2. Data needs to be represented in a specific format

XSOData is preferred mainly when an information view from SAP HANA needs to be directly consumed into the SAPUI5 Application.

Let’s discuss in detail about each source of OData in the upcoming series of blogs which explains about-

SAP ABAP as a source to OData through:

1. Gateway Projects
2. Business Explorer (Bex)
3. ABAP CDS Views

SAP HANA as a source to OData through:

1. XSJS
2. XSOData

Got questions? Click here to get in touch.

The post Playing Around With OData Using SAPUI5 Applications appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

On February 7th, 2018, SAP came out with a “Simplified Strategy”, bringing about a couple of changes aimed at their BI portfolio. Of the changes suggested, one of the major change is the decision to move forward with SAP Analytics Cloud as the primary tool for Data Discovery. Here you can see their simplified roadmap:
 

 
On the same roadmap, you should be able to observe SAP Lumira as the target tool for Dashboards & Applications. SAP Lumira Designer already stands strong in its ability to build simple or complex Analytic Applications and Executive Dashboards. What we haven’t really dived into is its ability to cater to the requirements to satisfy Self-Service BI needs. As part of this blog, let’s look at how best it serves the needs for Self-Service BI.

Self-Service BI

Whenever we talk about Self-Service BI, it’s always assumed it’s BI without the involvement of an IT team. But is it? Let’s assume that we’re using a tool such as SAP Lumira Discovery to create our own visualizations – is IT not involved here? Come to think about it, IT is actually responsible for providing us the end-user tool, setting up Data Sources and providing us with access. It is therefore essential to understand what constitutes Self-Service BI.

Gartner defines self-service as:

“Self-service business intelligence is defined here as end users designing and deploying their own reports and analyses within an approved and supported architecture and tools portfolio.”

As you can see, even with completely autonomous self-service scenarios, the IT team is involved in enablement at the least. It is thus, essential to change our connotations about the term “Self-Service BI” – in a real enterprise, Self-Service BI would mean different things to different groups of users. This is something we will look at a little later in this blog.

Types of Self-Service BI

When you take a very broad look at Self-Service BI, you will find that there are actually two types of self-service BI:
 

• Guided Analytics, usually constituting dashboards and analytic applications, is a form of Self-Service BI wherein users do not need to construct their own visualizations but can navigate through the dashboards to perform other analytic options such as filtering and drilling down. These typically present users with information in the form of Visualizations and are straight-forward and easy to use.
• Structured Self-Exploration, usually involving easy-to-use BI tools for storyboarding and ad-hoc visualization, is a form of Self-Service BI where users have more flexibility and can use any data source of their choosing to construct their own visualizations to arrive at answers they are looking for. In this type of a Self-Service scenario, users are not presented with information, and must work their way towards it.

Types of Users

Now that we understand the types of Self-Service BI more clearly, let’s look at how different types of users can perceive “Self-Service BI”. We are just using an example here, but the number of such groups could be more in bigger organizations:
 

 
When you have multiple groups of users such as Analysts, people from the Finance department, the Sales team and C-level executives, the requirements for each of these groups of people are likely to differ and hence, their expectations from and perception of “Self-Service BI”.
 

 
While business-oriented users may have fewer requirements from Self-Service, users such as Finance or BI Analysts may have more requirements usually leaning towards more “hands-on” with the data. But regardless of the requirements, we can clearly observe that these users fall into some category of Self-Service BI or the other.
 

 
It’s apparent that each user can be fit in either category of Self-Service BI. Just as easily, SAP Lumira Designer can be used as a tool to cater to the requirements of either type of Self-Service BI.
 

SAP Lumira Designer for Self-Service BI

Guided Analytic Applications

SAP Lumira Designer is first and foremost a dashboarding and an application building tool. The Analytic Capabilities in SAP Lumira Designer can help create robust applications with well established analytic threads. SAP Lumira Designer allows developers to use BIAL scripting to introduce a host of interactive options on applications which can further enhance this analytic capability of the application. Filtering and Drilldown capabilities can be implemented to allow users to start using Guided Analytical applications in a typical top down manner – from the highest level as an executive dashboard, drilling down into a more detailed report by linking it to another URL.
 

 
Furthermore, the introduction of collaborative capabilities such as Commenting and Scheduling bring more power to these applications.

Structured Self Exploration

What we tend not to realize very easily is that SAP Lumira Designer has in-built capabilities that will allow users to create applications that are even capable of meeting requirements for Self-Service. For instance, let’s consider some of the “Self-Service” requirements that we covered earlier – the requirements coming in from different user groups. This is how SAP Lumira Designer can address these requirements:

SAP Lumira Designer also makes it easier for developers to deploy solutions for Self-Exploration through the use of templates. A Generic Analysis template available out-of-the-box allows users to directly deploy and run applications capable of self-exploration with minimal hassle.
 

 
In fact, in previous versions of roadmaps from SAP, we will find that SAP Lumira Designer was toted to be a replacement for Analysis for OLAP as well. Many of the capabilities that the tool offers is already a part of SAP Lumira Designer, setting it up to be a very viable replacement as an on-premise solution.
 

 
There is no denying that structured self-exploration on this tool will still have gaps. For example, while users can still connect to live BW queries and HANA views on the fly, as you can see below, SAP Lumira Designer still lacks in the Data Preparation layer:
 

 
Fortunately, Interoperability between SAP Lumira Discovery and SAP Lumira Designer is available to bridge these gaps. SAP Lumira Discovery still stands strong as an option for customers looking to leverage their on-premise investments and fill the gaps in SAP Lumira Designer when it comes to Self-Service capabilities.

Future SAP Lumira Roadmap

As we said when we started this blog off, SAP’s recent blog on their Analytics Strategy has left a lot of customers in doubt about their own strategies for Self-Service BI. While SAP recommends SAP Cloud Analytics for Data Discovery going forward, they are still endorsing SAP Lumira Designer as their premier tool for applications and dashboarding. As we demonstrated through this blog, SAP Lumira Designer meets quite a few requirements for Self-Service BI from a varied user set. However, the gaps, now being covered through SAP Lumira Discovery will still need an alternative. This is something that SAP is already focusing on, as evident from their roadmap for SAP Lumira:
 

 
Some of the planned self-service-based innovations may include the addition of drag-and-drop capabilities for story composition (similar to what we saw in SAP Design Studio 1.6 and earlier with Online Composition).
 

 
With these planned innovations, SAP Lumira Designer is poised as a very strong alternative for Self-Service BI, whether it is Guided Analytics or Structured Self-Exploration. As such, the tool is filled with myriad possibilities thanks to extensive customizability through scripting, composites and a host of other features. It will be interesting to see how the tool grows out and how it can canvas ever-changing requirements.

Got questions? Click here to get in touch.

The post SAP Lumira Designer: A Self-Service BI Alternative appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

SAP has merged the EPM add-in with Analysis for office so that it is a single installation versus multiple installations. In this article, we will do a feature by feature comparison of both these tools to highlight the additional features that Analysis for office has to offer.

This article outlines the difference between the reporting Add-in tools in Analysis Office based on the BPC model created – Embedded model/IPAK as opposed to the classical model of BPC and explains how each of the functions in EPM add-in can be achieved in Analysis Add-in and the future road map of Analysis Add-in.

EPM Add-in and Analysis Add-in has been unified in Analysis for Office. Based on the model type the specific add-in is selected.
 

 
BPC embedded models are connected to Analysis Plug-in and BPC classic models are connected to EPM Plug-in by default.

Going forward with BPC 10.1 and BPC 11.0 aka BW/4 BPC, the direction from SAP is to emphasize to the embedded model for both planning and consolidation for future developments.

Note: This is just the recommendation / guidance from SAP , but the current standard model is supported in BPC 11 and tools to convert standard to embedded models are slowly taking shape.
 

 
Components available in Analysis Plug-in.
 

 
Components available in EPM add-in.
 

 

Future planned in Analysis Add-in includes Asymmetric reporting, embedded comments feature instead of having to work around.
 

Data Manger Add-in:

 
BPC Standard model user Data Manager Add-in to move data from a source to target and is achieved through Data manager packages.

In BPC embedded model, Data manager Add-in is not available and movement of data from source to target is through Process chains and Planning functions. We will visit these topics in detail in a subsequent blog to help differentiate how this can be achieved in an increasingly HANA world.

Got questions? Click here to get in touch.
 
References
 

1. AO Help on SAP Help Portal (AO Plugin Userguide / EPM Plugin Userguide)
2. https://blogs.sap.com/2016/12/07/bpc-10.1-office-client-strategy/
3. Offline Planning – https://www.sap.com/documents/2017/01/a651eedb-a27c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.html
4. Comments in AO – https://blogs.sap.com/2016/12/23/bpc-10.1-embedded-comments-with-a-minimum-of-modelling/

The post Analysis for Office Versus EPM Add-In Detailed Feature Comparison appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

In my earlier blog, we had discussed Integrating Big Data Workflow with SAP BODS. In this blog, we will explore how we can directly use Cloud Services on BODS Workflow.

Cloud Storages are Services provided by major cloud platforms that can store and handle large number of files of huge sizes. AWS S3, Azure and Google provide Cloud Storages that are used for storing ad-hoc files like log, flat files and data dumps. SAP BODS 4.2. SP7 introduced the support for the above-mentioned Cloud Storages.
 

 
In this blog, we will consume data from AWS S3. The Steps for the other Cloud Services are similar.
 

Configuring Cloud Storage Services

 
The Cloud Storage Services should be configured so that SAP BODS can connect to it. The configuration can be followed from the guide published by the Cloud vendor.

To Connect to AWS S3, we will need to enable IAM access to AWS. Once the IAM access is enabled, then access and secret key must be generated to the IAM user for the S3 which is used by BODS to consume the data from S3.

The access and secret key can be generated from the Users section in IAM. Copy the access and secret key after generation.
 

 
Place the required files in S3 bucket to consume it in SAP BODS.
 

 

Configuring BODS with the Cloud Services

 
We need to create a File Locations in SAP BODS that points to the AWS S3. Login to the Designer and navigate to Formats in the Local Object Library.
 

 
In the File Locations context menu, select New and create a new Flat File or Excel file depending on your source.
 

 
Create the File Location by selecting the protocol as Amazon S3 Cloud Storage. Fill in the Security details of Access and Secret key and select the region. Provide the details of bucket name from which the data has to be fetched and configure the other necessary parameters.
 

 
Different Configurations can be set for your Dev/Quality and Production. Azure and Google Cloud can be configured in similar manner.

Create a new Flat File or Excel file depending on the Data Source and Enter the format of the file.
 

 
Drag and drop the file in the Data Flow and you can use that Object to perform Transformation and other operations.

Azure and Google Cloud Services can be configured using the above mentioned method and BODS can be used to process files between each other or combine files from them together and process the same.

Got questions? Click here to get in touch.

The post Consuming Data From Cloud Storage in SAP BusinessObjects Data Services appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

Visual BI recently came out with the latest release of Visual BI Extensions for SAP Lumira Designer – VBX 2.2. Watch our webinar- Whats new in VBX 2.2 to know more. For those of you who missed the webinar here is a quick summary of the latest set of enhancements offered by VBX 2.2. We have covered some of the most sought after enhancements by customers.

1. New Charting Capabilities

– Pareto Chart

– Gantt Resource – Displaying multiple timeline for the same item

2. Dual Axis, Combo Axis and Multi Axis Enhancements

– Support for Trendline
– Ability to define the “order” of displaying different chart types.
– Ability to configure one stacked chart type per available axis.
– Scripting enhancements – ability to set the chart type and assigned axis using scripting

3. Custom Tooltip and Data Label for Maps

– Location Analyzer and Heat/bubble map

4. Period Selector Enhancements

– Ability to configure the Year-Quarter-Month layout from Top-bottom or Left -right
– Ability to define the Calendar Limits in a flexible way beyond a fixed set of 4 years.
– Ability to set dynamic Calendar Limits based on the Start Year and End year offset.
– Enhanced Scripting options – setting default values based on the current month, year, quarter, or day.

5. Advanced KPI Tile

– Support for multiple data sources – configure each tile container with its individual data source.
– Ability to show / hide specific elements of the Advanced KPI Tile based on specific profiles of the Responsive UI.
– Ability to configure additional properties like title, axis and data labels and several others for each of the Sparkline charts used as part of the Advanced KPI Tile
– Added Target Value and deviation indication for displaying KPI value
– ‘Selected’ mode – Ability to define the Background color, border color and shadow on KPI Tile select.
– Ability to configure the background color as part of the conditional formatting rules
– Support for Text Wrapping
– Layout flexibility – change container height and width by simply dragging it

6. Advanced Table

– Ability to define column width based on Technical ID or Column Index.
– ‘Auto’ resizing of table column width based on the overall table width
– Advance Context Menu option for Table

7. List Box/ Combo Box

– A new visual option – checkbox for a multi-select display.
– Ability to filter the list based on the conditional formatting rules
– Ability to sort the elements of the list box and combo box based on dimensions from the data source.
– Enhanced scripting options- APIs to clear selection, add a member list without a data source and retrieve single or multiple single selected value in form of an array

FAQs during the Webinar (subset)

Q. Can we reuse the data sources? Changing dimensions each time we use in other charts?
Ans. Yes, you can achieve this with the help of Data Utility property.

Q. Does the Tooltip and Data Label customization textbox allow most HTML tags, including tables, etc.?
Ans. Yes. For additional references please refer to blogs on Tooltip and Data Labels customization

Q. Do the map extensions allow me to create custom groupings? For example, can I create custom regions based on a set of states or a set of counties?
Ans. Yes, you could do so by using the Geojson property offered by VBX Map-Location Analyzer

Q. Does VBX Maps support conditional formatting?
Ans. The VBX Maps support robust Conditional formatting options for Maps. It supports conditional formatting based on static data, dynamic data, calculations and dimensions.

Q. On the self-service capabilities, if users have Country, State, City data can they create a geo-map themselves?
Ans. Yes, the VBX maps can read regional information up to county level.

Q. Can you please show us FLOW layer feature in Geo Map?
A. The flow layer is available as part of the Location Analyzer. For more details please refer to VBX user guide – Page 884

Q. Drilldown Charts: Is it possible to handle large data sources by selective data reading when changing the drilldown level?
Ans. Yes, the drilldown charts can handle large data sets and provide N level drilldown capabilities.

Q. Any future plans to create Forecast charts with Confidence intervals
Ans. You could achieve this using VBX Dual Axis/ Multi Axis or Combo charts

Q. What are the self-service capabilities offered by the VBX Advance Table? Can users change the order of metrics columns? e.g. Net Sales | Net Units instead of Net Units | Net Sales?
Ans. Yes, the order of the metrics can be changed in VBX Advanced Tables.

Q. Does drill down charts and Hierarchy filter works with SAP Universes?
Ans. SAP Lumira Designer doesn’t support hierarchies from SAP Universes, natively. However, hierarchies can still be used by creating a hierarchy structure within the chart itself by dragging the dimensions in the right drilldown order.

Q. What are the BOBJ and Design Studio version requirements for VBX 2.0?
A. Please refer – http://visualbi.com/wp-content/uploads/visualbi-extensions-for-sap-lumira-designer-vbx-supported-platforms.pdf

Q. Are these new features of VBX 2.X features only available with Lumira Designer 2, or do they also work with Design Studio 1.6?
Ans. VBX extensions work the exact same way on SAP Lumira Designer 2.X and Design Studio 1.6

Q. Does Lumira have access to Webi report data out of the box or do you need Visualbi Extensions
Ans. SAP Lumira doesn’t provide the option to read Webi report data. The only way possible is by using the VBX extensions – WSDL component

Click here to download a 15-day trial of Visual BI’s Extensions for SAP Lumira Designer(VBX)

The post Top 7 New Enhancements in VBX Extensions 2.2 for SAP Lumira Designer appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

Visual BI Solutions participating in the BI + Analytics Conference being held this year at Huntington Beach, CA between February 19-21.

We will be exhibiting at Booth #3.

This year, we will be exhibiting our End-to-End BI capabilities ranging from Quick-Start Programs, Migration, Training, Consulting and SAP Certified Product Extensions. In addition, participants will also have a chance to explore our innovative Product offerings like Visual BI Extensions for SAP Lumira Designer (VBX 2.2), Value Driver Tree, VBI View and Document Management for SAP Lumira.

The post Visual BI at BI + Analytics Conference appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

PLANO, Texas, Feb. 15, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Visual BI Solutions, an SAP Partner and a specialized player in Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics, today announced their participation in BI and Analytics Conference being held this year at Huntington Beach, CA between February 19-21. They will be exhibiting at Booth #3.
 

 
This year, Visual BI will be exhibiting their End-to-End BI capabilities ranging from Quick-Start Programs, Migration, Training, Consulting and SAP Certified Product Extensions. In addition, participants will also have a chance to explore their innovative Product offerings like Visual BI Extensions for SAP Lumira Designer (VBX 2.2), Value Driver Tree, VBI View and Document Management for SAP Lumira.

“BI and Analytics Conference is going to be a great platform for us to showcase our innovations, customer experiences & success stories in SAP’s BI portfolio covering SAP Business Warehouse, SAP BusinessObjects and SAP HANA,” said Gopal Krishnamurthy, Founder/CEO, Visual BI Solutions.

Click here for the link to our webpage: www.visualbi.com

About VISUAL BI

A leading SAP-certified BI Enablement firm, we provide strategic consulting, software and solutions that achieve agile, mobile, self-service and real-time BI. Some of the world’s largest firms look to us for strategies & solutions to drive BI adoption through actionable insights and advanced visualizations

About BI and Analytics Conference

Formerly SABOC, BI+A is a celebration of the people, technology, ideas, and innovations that are literally transforming the way we live and work. This conference gives you access to global thought leaders, local peers, and industry experts using BusinessObjects and the full range of SAP’s analytics and reporting tools. For more information on this conference please visit http://biaconference.com/

SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. See http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

Media Contact:
Varsha Manikandan
190426@email4pr.com
972-232-2233

The post Visual BI Solutions Announces Its Participation in BI and Analytics Conference to Showcase their End-to-End BI Capabilities and Product Offerings appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

Visual BI is proud to announce that we will be exhibiting at SAPinsider’s BI & HANA 2018 being help this year between February 26 – March 1 at The Bellagio in Las Vegas.

BI & HANA 2018 is a collaboration of SAP and SAPinsider, and is the definitive conference for professionals who use and support SAP data technologies, SAP Cloud Platform, business apps, and analytics. This year’s must-attend event is packed with in-depth sessions, live product demos, and interactive forums showcasing the latest updates and best practices for SAP HANA and BI solutions.

If you’re able to attend the event, be sure to stop by Visual BI’s booth in the exhibit hall.

You can get full details on the agenda, as well as receive a special discount off the registration price by visiting www.HANA2018.com/VisualBI.

The post Visual BI will be exhibiting at BI & HANA 2018 appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

In the previous blog, we took a quick look at Value Driver Tree and explored its origins dating to the 1920s. While specific sectors such as mining have seen strong value driver tree adoption, it is only recently that enterprises have taken a renewed interest in the framework.

Let’s look at the top 4 reasons why Value Driver Trees are making a comeback:

(1) Advancements in computing: A Value Driver Tree can be highly resource-intensive in terms of computing for typical enterprise use cases. The reason is that it involves a chain of calculations, often supported by a series of resource-intensive read-write database actions. This has traditionally required a stronger server configuration to handle the load. When you look at trees with 1000+ nodes and multiple users, the complexity increases exponentially.

A Value Driver Tree

In the recent years, innovations such as in-memory computing have tremendously increased capabilities of applications and databases. Cloud computing has made infrastructure scalable on demand. Transactional and analytical applications too are riding the in-memory wave and increasingly providing live connectivity options to popular data stores.

Solutions such as Visual BI’s Value Driver Tree use high-performance embedded javascript engine that function exclusively on the browser – eliminating the need for backend processing – and still support 1000+ nodes with ease.

(2) Innovations in visualizations & UX: The appeal of a Value Driver Tree lies in the visual and intuitive arrangement of drivers that capture their relationship & interaction. However, it was not until a decade ago that dedicated visualization software started becoming common in enterprises. Even though computing power was still available, visualization best practices lagged behind thereby hindering user excitement and adoption.

Since then, trends such as design minimalism and touch-enabled interactions have brought humans and machines much closer.

The evolution of UX (2004 vs. today)

(3) Emergence of Self-Service culture: The increasing adoption of visualization and self-service BI tools such as Tableau and Power BI expanded the horizons of non-technical business users and executives over the last few years. Even decision-makers who preferred to receive their reports in a printed format on their desk every week (or every morning) started getting used to touch-click-drag-pinch gestures.

While this has not made them technological wizards, it has definitely made them receptive to try out newer solutions, as long as it helps them become self-reliant (but without having to go through a steep learning curve).

(4) The need for enterprise planning to be dynamic: While business modeling & planning have always been a priority for enterprises, their evolving needs require planning & simulation capabilities to be more dynamic than ever before. This implies that enterprises can take strategic actions and re-forecast quickly, rather than wait for the decision cycles to align with the annual budgeting & monthly forecasting processes. Value Driver Trees that are lightweight, agile & nimble serve this need very well.

There is a secondary benefit in leveraging dynamic value driver trees. They can not only support top-down planning needs requiring a quick turnaround, but also complement bottom-up enterprise planning that leverages platforms (such as SAP BPC/IP) for a more detailed analysis. The quick up-front time invested in building the first few iterations using Value Driver Trees can save a lot of subsequent time invested in bottom-up planning tools – thereby delivering a big value add for enterprises looking to shorten their overall planning & budgeting cycles.

All of the above reasons have made the situation ripe for value driver trees to make a comeback.

* * *

Value Driver Trees: How things will be different this time

Until the 1990s, the evaluation, implementation, data gathering, performance measurement and monitoring of popular value management techniques required a tremendous amount of time, effort and attention from enterprises. Logically, such initiatives had to be blessed by the C-Suite, and they often required the guidance of leading management & strategy consulting firms.

Contrast that with today, where the three reasons discussed above are making it possible for even line managers and mid-level executives to apply value management techniques to their departments and teams. This is expected to drive Value Driver Tree adoption at all levels – enterprise, departments and teams.

* * *

In the upcoming series of Value Driver Tree blogs, we’ll review more topics of interest such as tips on getting the most out of value driver trees, best practices, how-to recommendations, software evaluation considerations and more.

Note: The visual shown above has been generated using Visual BI’s Value Driver Tree software for SAP Lumira Designer. Reach out to us today to learn more.

Interested? Here’s a chance to download a 15-day trial of Value Driver Tree.

The post 4 Reasons Why Value Driver Trees Are Making A Comeback appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

On February 7th, 2018, SAP came out with a “Simplified Strategy”, bringing about a couple of changes aimed at their BI portfolio. Of the changes suggested, one of the major change is the decision to move forward with SAP Analytics Cloud as the primary tool for Data Discovery. Here you can see their simplified roadmap:
 

 
On the same roadmap, you should be able to observe SAP Lumira as the target tool for Dashboards & Applications. SAP Lumira Designer already stands strong in its ability to build simple or complex Analytic Applications and Executive Dashboards. What we haven’t really dived into is its ability to cater to the requirements to satisfy Self-Service BI needs. As part of this blog, let’s look at how best it serves the needs for Self-Service BI.

Self-Service BI

Whenever we talk about Self-Service BI, it’s always assumed it’s BI without the involvement of an IT team. But is it? Let’s assume that we’re using a tool such as SAP Lumira Discovery to create our own visualizations – is IT not involved here? Come to think about it, IT is actually responsible for providing us the end-user tool, setting up Data Sources and providing us with access. It is therefore essential to understand what constitutes Self-Service BI.

Gartner defines self-service as:

“Self-service business intelligence is defined here as end users designing and deploying their own reports and analyses within an approved and supported architecture and tools portfolio.”

As you can see, even with completely autonomous self-service scenarios, the IT team is involved in enablement at the least. It is thus, essential to change our connotations about the term “Self-Service BI” – in a real enterprise, Self-Service BI would mean different things to different groups of users. This is something we will look at a little later in this blog.

Types of Self-Service BI

When you take a very broad look at Self-Service BI, you will find that there are actually two types of self-service BI:
 

• Guided Analytics, usually constituting dashboards and analytic applications, is a form of Self-Service BI wherein users do not need to construct their own visualizations but can navigate through the dashboards to perform other analytic options such as filtering and drilling down. These typically present users with information in the form of Visualizations and are straight-forward and easy to use.
• Structured Self-Exploration, usually involving easy-to-use BI tools for storyboarding and ad-hoc visualization, is a form of Self-Service BI where users have more flexibility and can use any data source of their choosing to construct their own visualizations to arrive at answers they are looking for. In this type of a Self-Service scenario, users are not presented with information, and must work their way towards it.

Types of Users

Now that we understand the types of Self-Service BI more clearly, let’s look at how different types of users can perceive “Self-Service BI”. We are just using an example here, but the number of such groups could be more in bigger organizations:
 

 
When you have multiple groups of users such as Analysts, people from the Finance department, the Sales team and C-level executives, the requirements for each of these groups of people are likely to differ and hence, their expectations from and perception of “Self-Service BI”.
 

 
While business-oriented users may have fewer requirements from Self-Service, users such as Finance or BI Analysts may have more requirements usually leaning towards more “hands-on” with the data. But regardless of the requirements, we can clearly observe that these users fall into some category of Self-Service BI or the other.
 

 
It’s apparent that each user can be fit in either category of Self-Service BI. Just as easily, SAP Lumira Designer can be used as a tool to cater to the requirements of either type of Self-Service BI.
 

SAP Lumira Designer for Self-Service BI

Guided Analytic Applications

SAP Lumira Designer is first and foremost a dashboarding and an application building tool. The Analytic Capabilities in SAP Lumira Designer can help create robust applications with well established analytic threads. SAP Lumira Designer allows developers to use BIAL scripting to introduce a host of interactive options on applications which can further enhance this analytic capability of the application. Filtering and Drilldown capabilities can be implemented to allow users to start using Guided Analytical applications in a typical top down manner – from the highest level as an executive dashboard, drilling down into a more detailed report by linking it to another URL.
 

 
Furthermore, the introduction of collaborative capabilities such as Commenting and Scheduling bring more power to these applications.

Structured Self Exploration

What we tend not to realize very easily is that SAP Lumira Designer has in-built capabilities that will allow users to create applications that are even capable of meeting requirements for Self-Service. For instance, let’s consider some of the “Self-Service” requirements that we covered earlier – the requirements coming in from different user groups. This is how SAP Lumira Designer can address these requirements:

SAP Lumira Designer also makes it easier for developers to deploy solutions for Self-Exploration through the use of templates. A Generic Analysis template available out-of-the-box allows users to directly deploy and run applications capable of self-exploration with minimal hassle.
 

 
In fact, in previous versions of roadmaps from SAP, we will find that SAP Lumira Designer was toted to be a replacement for Analysis for OLAP as well. Many of the capabilities that the tool offers is already a part of SAP Lumira Designer, setting it up to be a very viable replacement as an on-premise solution.
 

 
There is no denying that structured self-exploration on this tool will still have gaps. For example, while users can still connect to live BW queries and HANA views on the fly, as you can see below, SAP Lumira Designer still lacks in the Data Preparation layer:
 

 
Fortunately, Interoperability between SAP Lumira Discovery and SAP Lumira Designer is available to bridge these gaps. SAP Lumira Discovery still stands strong as an option for customers looking to leverage their on-premise investments and fill the gaps in SAP Lumira Designer when it comes to Self-Service capabilities.

Future SAP Lumira Roadmap

As we said when we started this blog off, SAP’s recent blog on their Analytics Strategy has left a lot of customers in doubt about their own strategies for Self-Service BI. While SAP recommends SAP Cloud Analytics for Data Discovery going forward, they are still endorsing SAP Lumira Designer as their premier tool for applications and dashboarding. As we demonstrated through this blog, SAP Lumira Designer meets quite a few requirements for Self-Service BI from a varied user set. However, the gaps, now being covered through SAP Lumira Discovery will still need an alternative. This is something that SAP is already focusing on, as evident from their roadmap for SAP Lumira:
 

 
Some of the planned self-service-based innovations may include the addition of drag-and-drop capabilities for story composition (similar to what we saw in SAP Design Studio 1.6 and earlier with Online Composition).
 

 
With these planned innovations, SAP Lumira Designer is poised as a very strong alternative for Self-Service BI, whether it is Guided Analytics or Structured Self-Exploration. As such, the tool is filled with myriad possibilities thanks to extensive customizability through scripting, composites and a host of other features. It will be interesting to see how the tool grows out and how it can canvas ever-changing requirements.

Got questions? Click here to get in touch.

The post SAP Lumira Designer: A Self-Service BI Alternative appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

SAP has merged the EPM add-in with Analysis for office so that it is a single installation versus multiple installations. In this article, we will do a feature by feature comparison of both these tools to highlight the additional features that Analysis for office has to offer.

This article outlines the difference between the reporting Add-in tools in Analysis Office based on the BPC model created – Embedded model/IPAK as opposed to the classical model of BPC and explains how each of the functions in EPM add-in can be achieved in Analysis Add-in and the future road map of Analysis Add-in.

EPM Add-in and Analysis Add-in has been unified in Analysis for Office. Based on the model type the specific add-in is selected.
 

 
BPC embedded models are connected to Analysis Plug-in and BPC classic models are connected to EPM Plug-in by default.

Going forward with BPC 10.1 and BPC 11.0 aka BW/4 BPC, the direction from SAP is to emphasize to the embedded model for both planning and consolidation for future developments.

Note: This is just the recommendation / guidance from SAP , but the current standard model is supported in BPC 11 and tools to convert standard to embedded models are slowly taking shape.
 

 
Components available in Analysis Plug-in.
 

 
Components available in EPM add-in.
 

 

Future planned in Analysis Add-in includes Asymmetric reporting, embedded comments feature instead of having to work around.
 

Data Manger Add-in:

 
BPC Standard model user Data Manager Add-in to move data from a source to target and is achieved through Data manager packages.

In BPC embedded model, Data manager Add-in is not available and movement of data from source to target is through Process chains and Planning functions. We will visit these topics in detail in a subsequent blog to help differentiate how this can be achieved in an increasingly HANA world.

Got questions? Click here to get in touch.
 
References
 

1. AO Help on SAP Help Portal (AO Plugin Userguide / EPM Plugin Userguide)
2. https://blogs.sap.com/2016/12/07/bpc-10.1-office-client-strategy/
3. Offline Planning – https://www.sap.com/documents/2017/01/a651eedb-a27c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.html
4. Comments in AO – https://blogs.sap.com/2016/12/23/bpc-10.1-embedded-comments-with-a-minimum-of-modelling/

The post Analysis for Office Versus EPM Add-In Detailed Feature Comparison appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

In my earlier blog, we had discussed Integrating Big Data Workflow with SAP BODS. In this blog, we will explore how we can directly use Cloud Services on BODS Workflow.

Cloud Storages are Services provided by major cloud platforms that can store and handle large number of files of huge sizes. AWS S3, Azure and Google provide Cloud Storages that are used for storing ad-hoc files like log, flat files and data dumps. SAP BODS 4.2. SP7 introduced the support for the above-mentioned Cloud Storages.
 

 
In this blog, we will consume data from AWS S3. The Steps for the other Cloud Services are similar.
 

Configuring Cloud Storage Services

 
The Cloud Storage Services should be configured so that SAP BODS can connect to it. The configuration can be followed from the guide published by the Cloud vendor.

To Connect to AWS S3, we will need to enable IAM access to AWS. Once the IAM access is enabled, then access and secret key must be generated to the IAM user for the S3 which is used by BODS to consume the data from S3.

The access and secret key can be generated from the Users section in IAM. Copy the access and secret key after generation.
 

 
Place the required files in S3 bucket to consume it in SAP BODS.
 

 

Configuring BODS with the Cloud Services

 
We need to create a File Locations in SAP BODS that points to the AWS S3. Login to the Designer and navigate to Formats in the Local Object Library.
 

 
In the File Locations context menu, select New and create a new Flat File or Excel file depending on your source.
 

 
Create the File Location by selecting the protocol as Amazon S3 Cloud Storage. Fill in the Security details of Access and Secret key and select the region. Provide the details of bucket name from which the data has to be fetched and configure the other necessary parameters.
 

 
Different Configurations can be set for your Dev/Quality and Production. Azure and Google Cloud can be configured in similar manner.

Create a new Flat File or Excel file depending on the Data Source and Enter the format of the file.
 

 
Drag and drop the file in the Data Flow and you can use that Object to perform Transformation and other operations.

Azure and Google Cloud Services can be configured using the above mentioned method and BODS can be used to process files between each other or combine files from them together and process the same.

Got questions? Click here to get in touch.

The post Consuming Data From Cloud Storage in SAP BusinessObjects Data Services appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

PLANO, Texas, Feb. 23, 2018 — Visual BI is proud to announce that they will be exhibiting at SAPinsider’s BI & HANA 2018 conference to offer proven advice to attendees. The event takes place February 26 – March 1 at The Bellagio in Las Vegas.
 

Visual BI @ BI&HANA Conference Booth #120

“BI & HANA is going to be a great platform for us to showcase our innovations, customer experiences & success stories in SAP’s BI portfolio covering SAP Business Warehouse, SAP BusinessObjects and SAP HANA,” said Gopal Krishnamurthy, Founder/CEO, Visual BI Solutions.

If you’re able to attend the event, be sure to stop by Visual BI’s booth #120 in the exhibit hall.

BI & HANA 2018 is a collaboration of SAP and SAPinsider and is the definitive conference for professionals who use and support SAP data technologies, SAP Cloud Platform, business apps, and analytics. This year’s must-attend event is packed with in-depth sessions, live product demos, and interactive forums showcasing the latest updates and best practices for SAP HANA and BI solutions.

You can get full details on the agenda, as well as receive a special discount off the registration price by visiting www.HANA2018.com/VisualBI.

About Visual BI

A leading SAP-certified BI Enablement firm, we provide strategic consulting, software and solutions that achieve agile, mobile, self-service and real-time BI. Some of the world’s largest firms look to us for strategies & solutions to drive BI adoption through actionable insights and advanced visualizations.

About SAPinsider

SAPinsider, published by Wellesley Information Services, is the premier source of information on products, services, and strategic initiatives coming from SAP and its partners. More than 250,000 customers in 70 countries rely annually on education and training materials from Wellesley Information Services to optimize their investments in SAP solutions. Wellesley Information Services is the publisher of SAPinsider, insiderPROFILES, SAP Experts, InsiderTRAINING, and insiderBOOKS, and is the producer of SAPinsider conferences and seminars. For more information, visit www.SAPinsiderOnline.com.

SAP is a registered trademark of SAP SE in Germany and several other countries. Wellesley Information Services is not affiliated with SAP SE or any of the SAP SE group of companies.

SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries.

All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

Contact:
Varsha Manikandan
190828@email4pr.com
972-232-2233

The post Visual BI to Exhibit at BI & HANA 2018 in Las Vegas appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

In the preceding blogs, we took a quick look at the origins of Value Driver Tree and a few reasons why they are making a comeback. Let’s now take a look at some of the key business use cases for Value Driver Tree.

Note that Value Driver Tree models facilitate not only the analysis but also stakeholder discussion & communication in all these use cases.

1) Business Modeling:  Simulate an executive’s view of the business through dynamic modeling; Understand how drivers impact outcomes; Evaluate business initiatives such as new product launch or new market entry; Identify opportunities for efficiency & improvement; and more.

2) Strategic Target Setting: Incorporate changes to external & internal drivers and simulate fully costed scenarios based on current forecast, budget or actuals. Share justified clear targets to businesses for bottom up planning process.

An example of a firm setting sales targets to all its divisions

3) Budgeting & Planning: Compare budget versions; Understand variations in budget drafts. Identify opportunities for cost savings by playing through unlimited scenarios rather than basic percentage cost savings.

4) Sensitivity Analysis: Understand the impact of changes to one or more value drivers to operational or financial outcomes.

Sensitivity Analysis generated by Visual BI’s Value Driver Tree

5) Periodic Reforecasting & Variance Reporting: Compare budget vs forecast. Identify root causes for variances. Play through scenarios for the rest of the year to identity remedial actions.

Periodic Reforecasting & Variance Reporting – An Illustrative Example. Note that forecasts are applied from June till December, with outcomes (Net Profit) reported for the full year.

6) Executive KPI Dashboards: Leverage the calculation engine to calculate KPI’s. Use value driver trees to visualize and analyze performance, and drill down to the details.

* * *

Visual BI’s Value Driver Tree for SAP Lumira Designer helps you address all the use cases listed above. Reach out to us if you are interested to learn more.

The post 6 Use Cases For Value Driver Tree appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

Visual BI recently came out with the latest release of Visual BI Extensions for SAP Lumira Designer – VBX 2.2. Watch our webinar- Whats new in VBX 2.2 to know more. For those of you who missed the webinar here is a quick summary of the latest set of enhancements offered by VBX 2.2. We have covered some of the most sought after enhancements by customers.

1. New Charting Capabilities

– Pareto Chart

– Gantt Resource – Displaying multiple timeline for the same item

2. Dual Axis, Combo Axis and Multi Axis Enhancements

– Support for Trendline
– Ability to define the “order” of displaying different chart types.
– Ability to configure one stacked chart type per available axis.
– Scripting enhancements – ability to set the chart type and assigned axis using scripting

3. Custom Tooltip and Data Label for Maps

– Location Analyzer and Heat/bubble map

4. Period Selector Enhancements

– Ability to configure the Year-Quarter-Month layout from Top-bottom or Left -right
– Ability to define the Calendar Limits in a flexible way beyond a fixed set of 4 years.
– Ability to set dynamic Calendar Limits based on the Start Year and End year offset.
– Enhanced Scripting options – setting default values based on the current month, year, quarter, or day.

5. Advanced KPI Tile

– Support for multiple data sources – configure each tile container with its individual data source.
– Ability to show / hide specific elements of the Advanced KPI Tile based on specific profiles of the Responsive UI.
– Ability to configure additional properties like title, axis and data labels and several others for each of the Sparkline charts used as part of the Advanced KPI Tile
– Added Target Value and deviation indication for displaying KPI value
– ‘Selected’ mode – Ability to define the Background color, border color and shadow on KPI Tile select.
– Ability to configure the background color as part of the conditional formatting rules
– Support for Text Wrapping
– Layout flexibility – change container height and width by simply dragging it

6. Advanced Table

– Ability to define column width based on Technical ID or Column Index.
– ‘Auto’ resizing of table column width based on the overall table width
– Advance Context Menu option for Table

7. List Box/ Combo Box

– A new visual option – checkbox for a multi-select display.
– Ability to filter the list based on the conditional formatting rules
– Ability to sort the elements of the list box and combo box based on dimensions from the data source.
– Enhanced scripting options- APIs to clear selection, add a member list without a data source and retrieve single or multiple single selected value in form of an array

FAQs during the Webinar (subset)

Q. Can we reuse the data sources? Changing dimensions each time we use in other charts?
Ans. Yes, you can achieve this with the help of Data Utility property.

Q. Does the Tooltip and Data Label customization textbox allow most HTML tags, including tables, etc.?
Ans. Yes. For additional references please refer to blogs on Tooltip and Data Labels customization

Q. Do the map extensions allow me to create custom groupings? For example, can I create custom regions based on a set of states or a set of counties?
Ans. Yes, you could do so by using the Geojson property offered by VBX Map-Location Analyzer

Q. Does VBX Maps support conditional formatting?
Ans. The VBX Maps support robust Conditional formatting options for Maps. It supports conditional formatting based on static data, dynamic data, calculations and dimensions.

Q. On the self-service capabilities, if users have Country, State, City data can they create a geo-map themselves?
Ans. Yes, the VBX maps can read regional information up to county level.

Q. Can you please show us FLOW layer feature in Geo Map?
A. The flow layer is available as part of the Location Analyzer. For more details please refer to VBX user guide – Page 884

Q. Drilldown Charts: Is it possible to handle large data sources by selective data reading when changing the drilldown level?
Ans. Yes, the drilldown charts can handle large data sets and provide N level drilldown capabilities.

Q. Any future plans to create Forecast charts with Confidence intervals
Ans. You could achieve this using VBX Dual Axis/ Multi Axis or Combo charts

Q. What are the self-service capabilities offered by the VBX Advance Table? Can users change the order of metrics columns? e.g. Net Sales | Net Units instead of Net Units | Net Sales?
Ans. Yes, the order of the metrics can be changed in VBX Advanced Tables.

Q. Does drill down charts and Hierarchy filter works with SAP Universes?
Ans. SAP Lumira Designer doesn’t support hierarchies from SAP Universes, natively. However, hierarchies can still be used by creating a hierarchy structure within the chart itself by dragging the dimensions in the right drilldown order.

Q. What are the BOBJ and Design Studio version requirements for VBX 2.0?
A. Please refer – http://visualbi.com/wp-content/uploads/visualbi-extensions-for-sap-lumira-designer-vbx-supported-platforms.pdf

Q. Are these new features of VBX 2.X features only available with Lumira Designer 2, or do they also work with Design Studio 1.6?
Ans. VBX extensions work the exact same way on SAP Lumira Designer 2.X and Design Studio 1.6

Q. Does Lumira have access to Webi report data out of the box or do you need Visualbi Extensions
Ans. SAP Lumira doesn’t provide the option to read Webi report data. The only way possible is by using the VBX extensions – WSDL component

Click here to download a 15-day trial of Visual BI’s Extensions for SAP Lumira Designer(VBX)

The post Top 7 New Enhancements in VBX Extensions 2.2 for SAP Lumira Designer appeared first on Visual BI Solutions.

TIBCO Spotfire offers us crisp and clean reporting across various business performance metrics (not to mention the fairly faster filtering powered by its in-memory capability, or on-demand for that matter). Yet, there are some unavoidable situations where the user must navigate across a long list of filters to make a selection to the report. Imagine a scenario where the user must scroll two or three pages all the way down to the bottom of the filter panel just to make one single selection in every filter component.

This is mainly because we do not have dropdown boxunder filtering options so that we have one thin slice of a component just at one click and move on to the other selections, saving a lot of dashboard real estate let alone the hassle of scrolling for the users.

What’s the alternative for this? Property control feature.

Why? It has the dropdown box component making it a better alternative to the regular filters for a handful of reasons.

• Let’s see how we can achieve cascading filters with property controls placed within a Text Area
• Say we have three columns (Continent, Country, State) and we need to build a set of hierarchical filters using native drop-down property control. This means we choose to see only those necessary items within the filter components instead of an entire list of dimension items (All countries, states etc.)
• We achieve this by creating new property controls and calculated columns by following the below steps.

Insert a TEXT AREA from Toolbar

 
Within the Text Area toolbar, select property control

 
In the property control window, create a new document property. Name: NewContinent
 

 
Select first column and click on OK and save the Text Area.
 

 
Press ESC key. Voila!
 

Sample dropdown box using property controls

We now have…
 

 
With the below formula for calculated column, replicate this for State level and you will now have Continent > Country > State hierarchical cascading property-control-based filter setup.
 

 
A comparison between regular filter setup and ours.
 

 
The Cascading filters using property controls is ideal for single selection scenarios like-

• Year > Quarter > Month > Date (or) Sales Executive > Product Group > Product etc.
• Comparison between two sales executives from two different sales regions etc.

Though we will not be able to do reverse cascading with this method, it is one of the most efficient and user-friendly methods to apply filters to your report.

Got questions? Click here to get in touch.

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