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

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

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 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

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.