Saving Scenarios in Xcelsius

In most instances, Xcelsius is used to display data, and considered a ‘read only’ tool. But for those occasions where there's a requirement to have data be user-editable and persistent, I hope that the steps outlined below are helpful.

The most common scenarios that I've seen for this are:

• I want to be able to update my KPI variables occasionally, but don't have them stored in a data-source.
  


• I want to be able to have a comment shown on the dashboard that I can update occasionally.
  


• I want to perform what-if analysis, and save the scenarios for later analysis.
  


• I want to perform what-if analysis, and share this with other users.

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Moving Average in Webi

A moving average is a nice way of smoothing out noisy data, giving a clearer indication of how something’s trending over time. I’ve seen the requirement a few times so here we go…
=(RunningSum([Revenue]) - RunningSum(Previous([Revenue]; 5))) / 5 

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BI4.0 Information Design Tool

In SAP BusinessObjects 4.0, one of the major changes is the new "Information Design Tool". A replacement for the old Universe Design tool (which is still installed with the client tools).

When I first sat down to get acquainted, it felt like the process had become overly complex, to the point that I considered just sticking with the old tool. But I'm glad I didn't.

So what follows is the creation of a universe in the least number of steps possible. I suggest going through all of the steps without worrying too much about the various options. You will then have something up and running with which to explore all the new features.

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Live Office vs. QaaWS vs. BI Services

If you’re building an Xcelsius dashboard, and connecting it to a database, you have three (main) options. Picking between the three is often a source of confusion. Hopefully this post will help explain some of the differences, and help you decide which is best for your scenario.
First up, an overview of each:

• Live Office. Live Office is a Business Objects tool that is installed as an add-on to Microsoft Office Excel. This allows you to connect the Excel spreadsheet within your dashboard to a Webi or Crystal report, which in turn connects to your data source.
  
• Query as a Web Service. QaaWS is a Business Objects client tool that creates a web service, based on a query, that connects directly to a universe.
  
• BI Services. BI Services is the (relatively) new kid on the block. It creates a web service from a report block in a Webi report, which in turn connects to your data source.

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Webi as a Dashboard

Let's start at the end…
This is a dashboard. In Webi.

I can hover over a chart to see more details:



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Xcelsius Interactivity: Chart Drill-Down

In this post, I’ll create a simple dashboard that will allow users to interact with the components to change what data is displayed on the screen.

I will have one chart showing revenue by country, and another showing revenue by sales category; clicking one chart will apply a filter to the other, and vice versa.

You can download the finished dashboard here, and get the xlf file here.


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