David Lai's Business Intelligence Blog

Step by Step guide on bursting reports in Business Objects

The ability to publish and schedule reports according to one’s profile is an important feature that we have in Business Objects.  For example, if I am a plant manager for a the West Region and want to receive a daily report on work quality, it would be very beneficial if I can receive a report in my inbox daily that only contains results for the West Region.  This would save me the hassle...

BI Web Services presentation from SAP Inside Track 2011 now available for download!

Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation on BI Web Services at SAP Inside Track Vancouver 2011! A replay of the presentation can be found at the following link => http://bit.ly/rkBU1p I’ve also attached the powerpoint presentation that you can download here  

All you need to know about Open Document (opendoc) Part 2

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...

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...

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…)

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...

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...

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...

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...