BO InfoView & Rich client Fast User Manual (Tutorial) (Part # 1 - Navigation)

 

Overview:

This is a fast walkthrough, User Manual and tutorial on BusinessObjects (BO) Web Inelegance (WEBI). This can be useful for InfoView And Rich client BOXI3 as well as BI Launch pad BO4. This user guide should help you to understand the basic functionality and features provided by BO web intelligence. Don’t hesitate to leave me a comment if you find anything useful to add.

 

Login:

Main screen please note that if you are using InfoView it will not ask you about system. As every system have his own URL while if you are using Rich Client, It will ask you to enter your system name. First I will explain how to access your system:

Info View: Link should be like this: https://<Server Name>:<Port Name>/InfoViewApp/logon.jsp Example: https://boProd:9009/InfoViewApp/logon.jsp

Rich Client: Go to the following Path: Start Menu --> All Programs --> BusinessObjects XI 3.1 --> BusinessObjects Enterprise Client Tools --> Web Intelligence Rich Client

 

The required login Information described below:

• System: this your system name. If you have multiple environment like Development, SIT, UAT and production then you may have a different system name for each. System name is identified by <BO instance name>: <Port number>. Example: [boProd1:6401] without brackets.
• User Name: your user name and it it will depend on your authentication method. So for example if you selected LDAP so you need to provide LDAP user and password. If you for example selected Enterprise, then you should provide a valid user name & password that defined on BO server by BO administrator.
• Password: your password.
• Authentication:
  • Enterprise: credential are kept on BO server and can be created, edited and removed from CMC screen by the BO administrator.
  • LDAP:
  • Windows AD
  • Windows NT
  • Stand alone
• Use offline mode

Please note that System & use offline mode are only displayed when you are trying to login from Rich Client only. As we mention before, System information are included in URL when we are trying to login into InfoView and there is no offline mod in InfoView.

 

Navigation:

After you login successfully to the system you will see the following screen. Let’s go through all available options:

· 

Main Tool Bar:

• Home: Will return you back to this page.
• Document List: Navigate through your reports. You can navigate them by category or by folder.
• Help: Display help menu.
• Preferences: Configure and personalize your settings.
• About: information about BO release and license.
• Logout

Navigate:

• Document List: Navigate through your reports. You can navigate them by category or by folder.
• My Favorites: This is your own area and you are the only one who can access this folder (beside BO administrator of course). You have a full privilege on that folder and you can build your own analysis here.
• My Inbox: All reports scheduled to be send to your Inbox folder.

Personalize:

• Preferences: Configure and personalize your settings.

As you can see you can access the same option from many places.

 

Report options

After you click on document list, the following screen will be displayed. You can navigate through your reports by folders or by categories

Toolbar menu:

• Folder: Navigate your reports by folders
• Category: Navigate your reports by category
• Refresh: Refresh report list

New:

• Hyperlink: You can use this option to create a hyperlink for any relative site.
• InfoView page layout: Portal Page
• Publication: We will have a detailed post on publications
• Web Intelligence document: This option used to create a new Webi Document.
• Analytic
• Category: create a new category
• Folder: Create a new folder

Add

• Crystal Report
• Local Documents: You can add local Microsoft [Word, Excel and PowerPoint] or PDF document to the current selected folder.

Organize

• Cut: Cut the selected object/ Document.
• Copy: Copy the selected object/ Document.
• Copy Shortcut: Copy the relative path for the current object or document.
• Past: works as Microsoft Windows.
• Delete: Remove the selected object / Document.

Actions:

It will display a customized menu based on the selected object from the navigation area.

If you right click on any report, the following popup menu will be displayed:

View: Open Webi report in view mode

Properties: Open properties window for the selected document.

Categories:

Modify: Open selected Webi report in edit mode

Schedule: Create a scheduler for that report. (We will have a separate post for this topic)

History: Display the history for all instances generated from report schedule.

New: As described before.

Add: As described before

Organize: As described before.

What is the difference between folder and category?

Folders: Folders are physical containers that used to store mutable related objects/ Documents.

Category: Virtual & logical grouping for reports or documents. The reports are physicaly stored in folders and can exists in only one folder while you can to refere to the same report from more that one category. Normally categories is better to represent business calsification while folder is better for data classification.

Example:

We have 2 data areas:

• Customer Information
  • Customer Search Report
  • Customer relatives
  • Customer Segmentation
• Current Account
  • Account Statement
  • Last 10 Transaction by Account
  • Top 10 transactions Today

We have 3 business groups:

• Tellers:
  • Customer Search Report
  • Account Statement
• Marketing:
  • Customer Search Report
  • Customer Relatives
  • Customer Segmentation
  • Account Statement
  • Last 10 Transaction by account
• Fraud, Compliance & Risk Department
  • Customer Search Report
  • Account Statement
  • Top 10 transaction Today.

As you can see from data point of view the report can created only once under it is corresponding data area. While the same report can serve many business departments. Let’s imagine that we don’t have category feature, in this case we should build our security model to allow every department to access their reports only. This will lead to duplicating same report in many folders just to fulfill this security constrain. But because we have categories feature we can create report once and map it to many categories. I will create a special post to cover this topic in details.