David Lai's Business Intelligence Blog

In SAP Business Objects 4.0+, a properly distributed environment will have the Web application server and the Server Intelligence Agent (SIA) sitting in separate servers.  By default, when you install the web application portion of SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise, it will set the default CMS machine with the same hostname that the web application has been installed.

Unfortunately when a user opens up the login page it will look like the following

If I’m not a technical user, I won’t know that the CMS name is incorrect and my login will keep failing leaving me frustrated and confused.

Fortunately SAP BusinessObjects 4.0+ makes it very easy for administrators to make configuration changes

Please follow the instructions below on how to properly change the configuration so that users see the correct CMS name when they open up the BI Launchpad or CMS login page.

Step 1:

Go to the directory <BusinessObjects Installation>\tomcat\webapps\BOE\WEB-INF\config\default

Step 2:

Copy the 2 files
BIlaunchpad.properties
CmcApp.properties

to <BusinessObjects Installation>\tomcat\webapps\BOE\WEB-INF\config\custom

Step 3:

On BIlaunchpad.properties

edit the following line

# You can specify the default CMS machine name here

cms.default=<set to your appropriate CMS server and port>

Note: by default the CMS port is 6400 unless you specified something else

On CmcApp.properties

edit the following line

# You can specify the default CMS machine name here
cms.default=<set to your appropriate CMS server and port>

Step 4:

Restart the tomcat server from the Central Configuration Manager (CCM)

Step 5:

Clear your internet browser cache and you will see the proper CMS hostname and port.

If we look at the BIlaunchpad.properties a bit more closely, you’ll notice that there is a setting

# Choose whether to let the user change the CMS name. If it isn’t shown the default System from above will be used
cms.visible=true

I usually set the cms.visible property to false

That way users won’t accidentally enter something incorrect in the CMS field and complain that they cannot log in.