David Lai's Business Intelligence Blog

SAP InsideTrack 2010 Vancouver Dashboard Essentials

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...

Error opening Excel files after installing Live Office

I’ve had this error pop up while trying to open Excel files (Excel 2007) after installing Live Office on several machines where it says “There was a problem sending the command to the program“. A couple other people ran into the same issue, so I’d like to post a quick solution. 1. Open the Excel program 2. Go to Excel Options 3. Go to Advanced 4. Go to General 5. Make sure...

Using Filtered Rows instead of VLOOKUP

This article talks about using the filtered rows technique instead of a VLOOKUP. Not until Xcelsius 2008 came out, were we able to filter on multiple rows of data that matched 1 entry. So in order to accomplish this we would either have to use VLOOKUP or INDEX MATCH. Using this technique was very cumbersome and although filtered rows has been available for a while, I have been on a couple engagements...

Xcelsius Push Button

The Push Button is a powerful new feature in Xcelsius SP3 that allows developers to transfer source data from an arbitrary sized cell block to a destination cell block of the same size. This gives us a triggering type mechanism where we needed to jump through hoops in order to accomplish before. I’ve attached a video and the example xlf source file which shows how to use the push button as a...

Xcelsius Dynamic Color Binding

Dynamic Color Binding is a great new feature in Xcelsius SP3 that allows developers to dynamically bind colors. This gives developers total flexibility on dynamically customizing their coloring schema during run time. I’ve attached a video which shows a couple examples on using dynamic color binding. If you have any additional examples that you would like to share, please post them on the comments...

Xcelsius Canvas Container

In this article I’ve attached a video that talks about the new Canvas Container feature in Xcelsius 2008 SP3. I found that the Canvas container is very easy to use and provides the same functionality as the group method but allows the flexibility of moving objects in and out of the canvas very easily. I totally recommend that Xcelsius developers use the Canvas container method to group objects...

Understanding Business Objects Inheritance

When setting up user and group rules, it is important to understand inheritance and how inheritance works.  Otherwise you may run into unexpected access rights for your groups and users. Global to object level hierarchy By default, groups and users will inherit rights from the highest level. The highest level starts at the Global Settings level.  The second level is the folder level; and finally...

Xcelsius 2008 advanced workshop

Join the Xcelsius gurus, Mike Alexander (Author, Crystal Xcelsius For Dummies/ Founder, Data Pig Technologies) and Mico Yuk (Founder, Everything Xcelsius / Xcelsius Gurus Network) for a 2-day Xcelsius 2008 advanced workshop this upcoming March 2010 in Dallas, TX! The workshop which contains a wide array of advanced Xcelsius tips and techniques sold out when it was first held in March of 2009 and...

Understanding Business Objects Access Levels

Understanding the Business Objects security model will enable you to map out a content management strategy for your organization.  Visit my previous post at http://davidlai101.com/blog/2008/11/06/content-management-planning-in-business/ after understanding user access levels and inheritance to setup your content. In this article we’ll go through the Business Objects Enterprise Access Levels. There...