A common request that I have seen with my clients, is the ability to enter comments into a dashboard and then view those comments when they re-open the dashboard in the future.

Unfortunately Xcelsius does not have a native mechanism to send data back to the database, as a dashboard’s main purpose to read data and not write back to the database.  However, I do see the value in being able to persist comments so that we can go back later and be able to look at documentation on why certain things happened, etc.

In this article I will give step by step instructions on how to use web services and Xcelsius to accomplish the task of inserting comments.  However you will have to write your own web service code

I’ve been getting a lot of emails lately on how to setup opendocument (opendoc), so I’d like to post this tutorial on how to do so which works for Business Objects XI 3.1.

Unfortunately my previous tutorial at http://davidlai101.com/blog/2008/11/04/all-you-need-to-know-about-opendoc/ only works with Business Objects XI R2

Please note that the tutorial was taken from SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook so if you are interested in more useful Xcelsius recipes, be sure to purchase a copy

If you only need the Excel Template for setting up OpenDocument calls, you can download it here

If you are interested in getting detailed information on OpenDocument Parameters please download the official SAP OpenDocument documentation here

Otherwise continue reading for the Tutorial

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.

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

I hope that everyone has had a great start to 2011!
2010 was a huge year but 2011 looks to be even bigger!

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!