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 as some new powerful features that were not available before. We’ll also discuss some limitations and work arounds to prepare you for the road ahead.

For those who are attending, there will be a set of door prizes which include copies of my book SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook

For those who cannot physically attend, there will be a remote access link found in the wiki link below.

For more information on the event, please visit http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/events/SAP+Inside+Track+Vancouver+2011

Hope to see everyone there!

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

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 page.

The easiest way is to tweet by clicking on this link! or you can use the share buttons from the PacktPub SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards Cookbook page

Retweeting other tweets is also allowed and there are no limits to how many tweets you can tweet!

Good luck and happy tweeting!!

We cover the ins and outs of using the Dashboard Design components, connecting to different data sources, as well as providing examples on how to use many of the top Xcelsius Addons.  Each recipe contains easy to follow step by step instructions and screenshots on accomplishing each task.  In addition, XLF example source files are also included for every recipe to make sure users are following the recipes correctly.

The book is published in eBook (ePub and DRM-free PDF) and paperback format and is available from the Packt Publishing website

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook overview

Over 90 simple and incredibly effective recipes for transforming your business data into exciting dashboards with SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Xcelsius

Xcelsius 2008 was recently included in SAP’s BusinessObjects 4.0 family, rebranding “Xcelsius Enterprise” as “SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0”. With features like flexible design and what-if scenarios, the powerful dashboarding software allows enterprises to make business decisions at a glance, and this book allows you to go far beyond the basics of these techniques.

This cookbook full of practical and applicable recipes will enable you to use the full latest capabilities of Dashboard Design to visually transform your business data. A wide range of recipes will equip you with the knowledge and confidence to perform tasks like configuring charts, creating drill- downs, making component colors dynamic, using alerts in maps, building pop-up screens, setting up What-If scenarios, and many more.

The recipes begin by covering best practices for using the Dashboard Design spreadsheet, the data-model, and the connection with the components on the canvas, later moving on to some from-the-trenches tricks for using Excel within Dashboard Design. The book then guides you through the exploration of various data visualization components and dashboard interactivity, as well as offering recipes on using alerts, dashboard connectivity, and making the most of the aesthetics of the dashboard. Finally, the recipes conclude by considering the most important add-ons available for Dashboard Design and enabling you to perform relevant and useful tasks straight away.

What you will learn from this book :

• Become fully equipped with best practices for using the Dashboard Design spreadsheet
• Present data using the wide variety of data visualization components
• Learn how to make dashboard components interactive for an enhanced user experience
• Take advantage of Dynamic Visibility features on the dashboard
• Master manipulating the look and feel of your dashboards
• Gain confidence in using alerts on charts and other components
• Get to grips with advanced Dashboard Design components like the Trend Analyzer, Fisheye Picture Menu, History Component, and the Canvas Component
• Optimize the user experience of the dashboard
• Connect your dashboard to live data sources
• Export and publish the Dashboard Design model into several environments.
• Learn about the most applicable add-ons available for your dashboard requirements.
• Master setting up alerts on charts, gauges, maps and scorecards

Approach

This guide to SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 (formerly Xcelsius )is a cookbook packed full of practical recipes written in a clear, concise manner with annotated examples to empower readers to quickly accomplish specific dashboard tasks.

Who this book is written for

If you are a developer with a good command and knowledge of creating dashboards, but are not yet an advanced Dashboard Design user, then this is the perfect book for you. You should have a good working knowledge of Microsoft Excel as well as knowledge of basic dashboard practices, though experience of Dashboard Design as a specific dashboard tool is not essential.

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 deck below

Download powerpoint presentation here

So this weekend I decided to buy a Solid State Drive (Corsair F115) as I was interested in speeding up my system.

The only problem here was that Solid State Drives are much smaller than the traditional hard drive.  Thus the task was to migrate only the OS partition to the Solid State Drive.  My system consisted of a C: partition, which housed the Operating System and applications that I used often. It also consisted of a D: partition where all the data and applications that were executed not so often resided.

Although some people would tell you to do a fresh install with the new drive, a fresh install is not an option for me, as I have a ton of applications installed and a lot of tweaks and customization done on my system that I do not want to spend weeks doing again.

I did a lot of reading, and apparently it was not so straight forward to migrate just a single partition to the new drive and have the partitions aligned properly.

Then I came across Paragon Migrate OS to SSD 2.0 and read that it allows you to perform migrations very easily.  Since it was only $19.95 I agreed to give it a try.

So basically the whole process took less than 30 minutes!

All I had to do was the following

1. Execute the program
2. It automatically finds the C: which contains my OS partition
3. Select the Solid State Drive as the target (If it is smaller than your OS partition, it even lets you exclude any folders or files on the C: to make it smaller)
4. Run the migration and then reboot
5. On the BIOS change the boot order to have the Solid State Drive boot first
6. When Windows starts up again, the new C: will now be the Solid State Drive and the previous C: will automatically be bumped to E:

I’m extremely pleased that I was able to perform the migration in less than 30 minutes and every application running off the C: is blazing fast.  Xcelsius pretty much loads instantly and same goes with the other Business Objects client tools.

You can visit the Paragon website if you are interested at http://www.paragon-software.com/technologies/components/migrate-OS-to-SSD/

I’m very pleased to announce that the Xcelsius Cookbook, which Xavier Hacking and I have been working very hard on, is scheduled to be released in it’s final format on May 2011.

The book will be structured like a cookbook where we will go through step by step on accomplishing different tasks (recipes) in Xcelsius.

In addition we will be showcasing some of the more popular 3rd party addons, provide best practices for development, as well as provide some real life dashboard examples built using recipes learned from the cookbook.

The book is currently available as RAW (Read as we write) format since it is currently under development, so feel free to check it out at the Packt Publishing website for more information.  In addition, since SAP is re-branding Xcelsius yet again, the book name will most likely change to SAP Business Objects Dashboards Cookbook.  Stay Tuned for updates!

Thanks for all your support!

I look forward to seeing everyone at Vancouver’s very first local SAP Inside Track Wednesday Sept 15, 2010!

I’ve been given the great opportunity to represent Xcelsius Gurus Network and present on SAP Crystal Dashboard Design (Xcelsius).

I’ll be presenting the following topics and have a thorough Questions and Answer period.

• Why are dashboards used and what are the benefits?
• Dashboard Design and Best Practices
• Dashboard Connectivity – Enterprise and Non Enterprise
• Xcelsius best practices with the designer and internal spreadsheet
• Xcelsius Tips and Tricks
• Xcelsius resources

For more information on the event please visit the event WIKI at

http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/events/SAP+Inside+Track+Vancouver+2010

In this article I would like to talk about some important features that Inovista Microcharts has that Xcelsius cannot reproduce. A very important table component that Xcelsius lacks is the ability to expand and contract your rows like a tree. Inovista has a component called a “Microchart Tree Grid” that allows a user to expand and contract rows so that users can group their rows accordingly. This is extremely important if we don’t want to clutter a table view with too many rows.

Below is a sample that I have taken from the Inovista website that shows a Tree table in action.

Looking further into the example, there are 2 additional components inside the tree table that Xcelsius cannot reproduce. First of all, Xcelsius does not have the ability to create a bulletgraph, which is quite a popular item used in dashboards. In addition, the ability to create checkmarks and other shapes would be very hard to reproduce in Xcelsius; thus is another component lacking in Xcelsius since many dashboards contain checkmarks and stars for ratings. The option to put the x-axis scale on the header or y-axis scale on each graph is also a useful feature that Inovista provides for the Microcharts table and Microcharts treegrid. Finally the ability to move the columns around is also another useful feature that Xcelsius does not allow.

There are however, a few problems that remain with the treegrid which comes mainly from the column sorting ability. Please use the example below as a reference.

The first problem comes from the fact that sorting only occurs alphabetically and cannot be modified to be sorted numerically. For example if we have the following numbers 1, 2, 19; the sort order will be 1, 19, 2 which is incorrect. The next problem is that the Microcharts treegrid doesn’t sort by parent and then child. For example if you expand the parent nodes and try to sort the items, the result will be a messed up list where child nodes are all over the place.

Sorting is an important element but not a show stopper so hopefully the author fixes these problems for the next Inovista release.

The final important feature that Inovista provides that Xcelsius cannot reproduce is the IMT slider, which is similar to the slider that you find in the finance.google.com charts and biz.yahoo.com charts. This is extremely useful as it allows users to intuitively view a window of time that they are interested in.
]]> http://davidlai101.com/blog/2009/10/20/inovista-microcharts-part-2/feed/ 1 http://davidlai101.com/blog/2009/08/11/beware-of-frederick-carter-pathway-techn/ http://davidlai101.com/blog/2009/08/11/beware-of-frederick-carter-pathway-techn/#comments Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:30:18 +0000 David Lai This is a warning to all consultants and anyone who has professional contact with Frederick Carter.

I’ve worked with many clients in the BI and BOBJ industry and unfortunately this is the first customer that I have provided services for who ran away without paying. Apparently Frederick needed some work accomplished in a short period of time and I was generous enough to complete a week’s worth of Xcelsius work without even taking a deposit.

Luckily, towards the end of a week’s work, I accidentally heard one of his conversations with his accomplice “Dianne Sawyer” saying that he was going to stiff me and not pay. In addition, he said that “The client he was trying to score the contract with thinks that all the Xcelsius work was done by him, and that he could learn how to be an Xcelsius and Business Objects expert in 1 week”. I called him up on this and he kept making excuses that he was having cash flow problems. He said that he would promise to pay if I would do a few more hours of work for him so that he could score a contract with Fannie Mae. So, out of sympathy I completed a few hours of work for him and after the work was completed, he started ignoring my emails and phone calls regarding payment.

After he found out he got kicked out of the linked in group “Xcelsius Gurus” since he ripped off another Xcelsius Consultant “Kalyan Verma”, he started begging me to get him back into the group and offered to pay off his debt in payments. I was nice enough to agree and he paid an initial payment of $200. However a week later he purposely closed his account on paypal and the $200 payment got reversed.

After that he has ignored all calls and emails.

I hope this posting will expose and help prevent Frederick Carter from ripping off anymore consultants and businesses since we all work hard for our living. For those who are interested, I have all the chat logs and emails sent back and forth between us to prove everything that happened.

Here is a link to his linked-in profile

http://www.linkedin.com/in/frederickcarter

His Corporation is Pathway Technologies Inc.
His Accomplice is Dianne Sawyer