Tài liệu SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook ppt

SAP BusinessObjects

Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook

Over 90 simple and incredibly effective recipes

for transforming your business data into exciting

dashboards with SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0

Xcelsius

Xavier Hacking

David Lai

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0

Cookbook

Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing

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However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: May 2011

Production Reference: 1180511

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

32 Lincoln Road

Olton

Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.

ISBN 978-1-849681-78-0

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by David Guettirrez ([email protected])

Credits

Authors

Xavier Hacking

David Lai

Reviewers

Charles Davies

Joshua Fletcher

Nargisse Skalante

Acquisition Editor

Stephanie Moss

Development Editor

Kartikey Pandey

Technical Editor

Pooja Pande Malik

Project Coordinator

Leena Purkait

Proofreader

Aaron Nash

Indexer

Rekha Nair

Production Coordinator

Shantanu Zagade

Cover Work

Shantanu Zagade

Foreword

The original (and key) innovation of Dashboard Design was to bring together the flexibility,

power and ubiquity of Excel with the visualization of Flash. This meant that a whole

new group of people (basically anyone who understood Excel formulas) could produce

sophisticated Flash animations. Over the years, this has led to an incredible array of

Dashboard Design models being produced, many of which, I suspect, go well beyond

what the creators of Dashboard Design intended (or even dreamed of). Indeed there

is one model (you can find it at http://www.antivia.com/confoundingmodel/)

which has been doing the rounds for a number of years that, so rumor has it, left even

the original Dashboard Design development team scratching their heads as to how it

was constructed.

As with any tool that has the flexibility and power to be stretched in this way, it is hard for

the core product documentation to comprehensively cover everything users need to know

to be successful, and it is books such as this one that fill the gap and allow knowledge

that has been distilled through the hands of many individuals to be passed on to the

community in general.

I am a particular fan of the recipe format; it allows you to dip in and out of the material

for learning in short bursts and also allows you to quickly and easily answer specific

questions. In addition, the overall structure provides a smooth flow through all the areas

of the product providing a comprehensive review of its capabilities.

In this book, Xavier and David have found something for everyone. For those who are just

starting out with Dashboard Design, there are recipes that give advice and guidance to

help you start on a solid foundation. For those who are more experienced with Dashboard

Design, there are advanced recipes covering inter-dashboard communication and

connectivity to external systems. For everyone, there will be something in these pages

which is new and will help you take your Dashboard Design knowledge to the next level.

My favorite recipes are in the third-party chapter, not just because I work for one of

the vendors featured, but because they advertise the possibilities opened up by the

Dashboard Design SDK. Although the initial innovation of Dashboard Design was bringing

together the Excel and Flash visualizations, the introduction of the SDK paved the way

for a second wave of innovations from third parties, which further widened the bounds of

what was possible with this amazing product.

Whatever plans you have for Dashboard Design, I wish you luck; keep pushing the

boundaries and share your experiences with the rest of us in the community.

Donald MacCormick

April, 2011

Chief Product and Marketing Officer

Antivia

Web: www.antivia.com

Twitter: @antivia

London.

About the Authors

Xavier Hacking is a SAP BI consultant from Eindhoven, The Netherlands. He has a

Masters' degree in Industrial Engineering and Management Science from the Eindhoven

University of Technology. He has worked with a range of products from the SAP Business

Intelligence portfolio, including SAP BW and SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius). His

goal is to deliver business intelligence solutions that enable people to do their work in a

better and more productive way.

In 2009, he started his blog HackingSAP.com (http://www.hackingsap.com/), which

covers news, tips, guides, and other resources on SAP Crystal Dashboard Design and

other SAP and non-SAP Business Intelligence tools. You can also follow Xavier on Twitter

(http://www.twitter.com/xjhacking).

Acknowledgement

Firstly, I want to thank the people of the Dashboard Design community on Twitter,

SDN, the LinkedIn groups, and the blogs for the interesting discussions on creating

dashboards with Dashboard Design and sharing their views and knowledge. I love to see

this community growing every day and I encourage everybody who works with Dashboard

Design to join us.

Next, I want to thank co-author David Lai for the fine teamwork during this project and the

nice discussions we had on the contents of the book.

A big thanks goes out to the entire PacktPub team that supported and guided us through

the writing process.

Finally, I'd like to acknowledge Norbert Maijoor for inspiring me to start writing/blogging

on business intelligence.

David Lai is an SAP BusinessObjects consultant and specializes in data visualization

and data warehousing. He graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering from the

University of Toronto. He has a passion for providing organizations with smart Business

Intelligence solutions that encompass Best Practices and Techniques. In addition, he is

an active contributor to the community by providing his knowledge in best practices

and solutions.

He started David Lai's Business Intelligence blog (http://www.davidlai101.com/

blog) in 2008 where he provides tips, tricks, and the best practices for Dashboard

Design and BusinessObjects-related material. He is a Bronze level contributor on the SAP

community network, has presented at SAP InsideTrack, and provides Business Objects

training to students.

Aside from work, David enjoys physical activities such as weight training, basketball,

volleyball, and skiing. He also has a strong passion for Latin dance.

David Lai is the owner of Xinfinity Solutions where he provides consulting services as an

SAP Business Objects consultant. He has done work for a long list of satisfied clients in

various industries.

Acknowledgement

Writing this book has been a long journey and would not have been possible without the

guidance, inspiration, and mentorship provided by many others along the way. From here,

I'd like to show appreciation to all those who have assisted me along the path.

First, of all I would like to thank the Dashboard Design developers for their efforts in

bringing us new features and fixes with every new version of Dashboard Design.

I would like to thank everyone in the Dashboard Design community for their contributions

in SDN, LinkedIn, and blogs. Without the community, we wouldn't have anywhere to l

ook for help when coming across a problem. In addition, thoughts and ideas are taken

into account by the development team to create a better product in the long run. A

big thanks goes to Kalyan Verma for giving me the opportunity to contribute on his

blog http://myxcelsius.com and really getting me kick started with community

participation (Excellent Job on getting myxcelsius.com to where it is today!). Another

big thanks to Mico Yuk of Everything Xcelsius for her past advice and really getting the

community involved with Xcelsius.

I'd like to thank Xavier Hacking for co-authoring the book. Without Xavier's teamwork,

knowledge, and expertise, this book would not have been a success. I would also like to

commend his great work on his blog @ http://www.hackingsap.com.

A big thanks to the Packt Publishing team (Stephanie Moss, Leena Purkait, Reshma

Sundaresan) for providing all the necessary guidance in our writing process. Without

the Packt Publishing team, this book would not have been possible.

Finally, I'd like to acknowledge Ryan Goodman for inspiring me to participate in blogging

and assisting the community on Business Intelligence best practices and solutions.

About the Reviewers

Charles Davies started his career in accountancy gaining qualifications as a Chartered

Management Accountant, but always sat between the Accountancy and IT departments

when building systems and reports.

From programming old SuperCalc spreadsheets for product costing purposes, to building

statistical packages in MS Excel, to designing, building, and programming SAP Business

Objects solutions to meet various reporting needs, Charles has always been challenging

the reporting needs of businesses to ensure the reporting and dashboarding solutions

meet those needs.

Charles has worked for large corporations in various industry sectors and is currently

Director and Consultant of his own company Reportex Ltd., which provides SAP

BusinessObjects and Dashboard Design solutions to clients in the United Kingdom

and Europe.

Joshua Fletcher has worked with Business Intelligence applications for over 10 years,

focusing primarily on the SAP BusinessObjects toolset. He started with Crystal Reports

v8 at the beginning of his career, and is now fully certified in SAP BusinessObjects, as

a Certified Professional in Enterprise XI 3.x, Data Integrator XI 3.x, Web Intelligence

XI 3.x and Crystal Reports 2008, as well as working with the entire suite of SAP

BusinessObjects, including many Xcelsius projects. He also has extensive experience in

business analysis, dashboard design, data governance, business intelligence strategy

and solution architecture, as well as a passion for data warehouse and ETL design and

development. Joshua is currently employed as the SAP BusinessObjects Team Lead for

CSG, a leading Australian SAP BusinessObjects Solutions Provider. When not working,

he loves spending as much time as possible with his wife and son, keeping active at the

gym, and playing squash.

Nargisse Skalante is a SAP BusinessObjects consultant in a multi-business group

in Dubai, UAE. She combines a Masters' Degree in Information Technology and more

than nine years of IT experience, including business intelligence. Throughout her career,

Nargisse has had exposure to various business and functional domains namely finance,

retail, and real estate. Nargisse has an extensive practice in producing innovative Xcelsius

dashboards with WebIntelligence drill down reports. She also has a wide experience in

integrating BusinessObjects with SAP.

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Table of Contents

Preface 1

Chapter 1: Staying in Control 7

Introduction 7

Making the spreadsheet more readable with colors 8

Making the spreadsheet more readable with comments 9

Making the spreadsheet more readable using borders 11

Using named ranges 13

Selecting all worksheet cells with one click 15

Copying the formatting of one cell to another cell or range 16

Debugging your spreadsheets 18

Navigation between worksheets 20

Grouping the canvas components 21

Chapter 2: Data Visualization 25

Introduction 26

Adding a line chart to your dashboard 26

Using the bullet chart 32

Using sparklines 37

Using the combination chart 40

Using the pie chart 42

Using the XY chart 44

Using the bubble chart 45

Using the radar chart 47

Using the OHLC chart and candlestick chart 48

Sorting series 52

Zooming in on charts 53

Scaling the y-axis 55

Using the tree map 57

Showing a trend without a chart 59

ii

Table of Contents

Displaying raw data 60

Illustrating single values 62

Chapter 3: From a Static to an Interactive Dashboard 65

Introduction 66

Drilling down from a chart 66

Selecting your data from a list 68

Using the Filter Selector component for hierarchies 71

Alternative hierarchy selection method 73

Using Filtered Rows 76

Using maps to select data of an area or country 78

Adding a MacOSX loading dock to your dashboard 82

Resetting your data (reset button) 86

Making selections from a custom image (push button and

image component) 87

Inputting data values 90

Using Play Selector/Play Control 94

Opening up a Web Intelligence report using dashboard parameters 97

Selecting calendar dates 101

Using sliders to create a what-if scenario 105

Chapter 4: Dynamic Visibility 109

Introduction 109

Switching between different charts 109

Building a pop-up screen 113

Creating a mouse-over help text pop-up 116

Password protecting your dashboard 121

Chapter 5: Using Alerts 125

Introduction 125

Adding alerts to a column chart 125

Using alerts in a gauge 128

Making alert ranges dynamic 131

Displaying alerts on a map 136

Displaying alerts of different thresholds on a map 139

Using bindable colors to control alert coloring from a central location 141

Using alerts in a scorecard 144

Chapter 6: Advanced Components 151

Introduction 151

Printing your dashboard 152

Grouping and organizing components with the canvas container 153

Using dashboard scenarios 155

Using the grid component 157