SAP Inside Track Vancouver Sept 27, 2011-> Leveraging the power of BI Web Services to build better dashboards

I’ve been given the opportunity to share my experiences with BI Web Services and how to build more efficient dashboards using BI Web Services in the upcoming SAP Inside Track Vancouver 2011.  Please mark your calendars for September 27, 2011 2:30pm -> 3:20pm PST! In this presentation you’ll learn about BI Web Services and how it provides a hybrid of QaaWS and Live Office.  As well...

September 24th, 2011 by David Lai 

Bug in Xcelsius 2008 SP4 that does not allow dynamic color changing

I’ve had several comments on my “Xcelsius Dynamic Color Binding” post regarding issues where their dynamic colors were not changing. Well I did a quick test and yes there is a bug! So I wanted to warn everyone including SAP about this new bug. (more…)
August 12th, 2011 by David Lai 

Congratulations to our tweetaway contest winners!

I’d like to give a big thanks for everyone who participated in the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook Tweetaway contest! I was very impressed with the huge amount of tweets so Thanks everyone! I’d like to congratulate the 2 lucky tweeters who have won an eBook copy of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook They are …….. rodri_m_d montoyainigo We’ll be contacting...

July 26th, 2011 by David Lai 

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards Cookbook Giveaway Twitter Contest!

Hi everyone! Packt Publishing is having a promotion where we will be giving away 2 free eBook copies of our newly released SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards Cookbook. On Monday July 25, 2011 we will be randomly drawing 2 winners and grant them access to their free eBooks! All you need to do to join the Tweetaway twitter contest is to send out a tweet with a link to the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards Cookbook...

July 8th, 2011 by David Lai 

Xcelsius 2008 SP4 adds some very useful features!

I hope everyone has had the chance to experiment with the new features on Xcelsius 2008 SP4 as I am already using them for my current client projects. The following features were added Waterfall charts Combination charts can have alerts for multiple series Added alerts into the spreadsheet components The new waterfall chart component saves developers the hassle of emulating one using the stacked bar...

June 28th, 2011 by David Lai 

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards Cookbook now available!

I’m very proud to announce that SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards Cookbook is officially available.  For the past year, Xavier Hacking and I together with Packt Publishing have carefully compiled over 90 recipes on transforming your data into highly effective dashboards. We cover the ins and outs of using the Dashboard Design components, connecting to different data sources, as well as providing...

June 8th, 2011 by David Lai 

Thanks for attending the Toronto BusinessObjects Customer Exchange!

BOCX Speaker Deck I’d like to send out a special thank you to all of those who attended the Toronto BusinessObjects Customer Exchange yesterday.  The event wouldn’t have been a success without the support of all those who attended. I am hoping that everyone had a great learning experience! For those who attended my presentation on dashboard essentials, you can download a copy of the presentation...

April 14th, 2011 by David Lai 

Using Charles to help you debug!

In this article I would like to state the importance of how useful it is to use a traffic monitoring tool such as Charles or Fiddler when debugging connection type errors. In this example, we’ll go through a quick scenario on solving a crossdomain.xml related issue. You will need to Install Charles on your machine and install the Charles addon for Firefox. (more…)
March 18th, 2011 by David Lai 

Embedded Charts inside an Xcelsius Spreadsheet Table

One of the important features that Xcelsius lacks right now is to be able to embed charts in a table. This is a very powerful feature as we are able to present a lot of meaningful information with little real estate when embedding charts inside a table as shown. Embedded Bar Chart in Table (more…)
February 8th, 2011 by David Lai