Search

Custom Search

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Dynamic refresh for Dashboard content using Live office Connection

 

Overview:

In this post we will find how to dynamically refresh SAP dashboard [formerly know xcelsuise ]content using live office connection. Simply we will do the following:

  • Create Webi (Web Intelligence) report with prompted parameter.
  • Link our excel file with Webi report data using live office.
  • Link (bind) report parameter to excel cell. When the value of this cell changed the new value will be passed as a parameter for that report.
  • Import this excel file to be our dashboard data source.
  • Open data manager and use live office connection stored in excel.
  • Export our dashboard and refresh it automatically from info view.

Step # 1: Create a report:

By the way you can use live office to retrieve data from SAP BO using one of the following:

  • Crystal Report.
  • Web intelligence report (Webi Report)
  • Universe.

In this post I will guide you through the second option which is using web intelligence report as a source for our data and information. You can build your report using InfoView or rich client. So lets start:

We want to create a simple report to display branch summary information. The report should prompt the end user to select a region and the report will display the number branches under this region. Find below the report specification and screen shot for the final output.

  • Report name: Branches by region
  • Report Information:Region – City - No of Branches
  • Report Prompt: Select Region code:

After we completed our report we will save it and export it to our repository.

Figure # 1

Branch Summary Report

Figure # 2

Edit Query

Dashboard Prompt

Step # 2: Create Excel file with live office connection:

  • Create a new excel file then navigate to Live Office tab [make sure that you already installed live office plug in].
  • Then insert data from web intelligence report that we already created.
  • Select Modify object from Live Office tab
  • Select Prompt setting
  • Select the 3rd choice:
    • Always ask for value.
    • Choose values list
    • Choose excel data range. [Select This one and select the cell that you want to bind your prompt with.]
  • Now we have successfully bind our report prompt with a specific excel cell. Whenever data changed in that cell it will be passed automatically to the report and it will retrieve the refreshed data.
  • Finally, Save your excel file to BO repository by selecting Save to BOE option from live office tab.

Figure # 3

Live Office

Figure # 4

10-10-2013 11-52-59 AM

Figure # 5

10-10-2013 11-53-20 AM

Figure # 6

10-10-2013 12-10-56 PM

Step # 3: Create Dashboard:

  • Open SAP dashboard designer
  • Import previously saved excel file from BOE to be our data source.
  • Build a pie chart on top of the summary table.
  • Create a drop down menu selector to display regions and set the insertion target to the blinded cell (gray one)
  • Open data connectivity manager and select live office.
  • Configure it to run after data been changed in the blinded cell.
  • Save dashboard to enterprise server.

Figure # 7

10-10-2013 2-35-15 PM

Figure # 8

10-10-2013 3-12-19 PM

Step # 4: Access Dashboard and refresh data from info view:

  • Access saved dashboard from info view.
  • Select another region from the drop down menu selector.
  • See the data been refreshed.
    10-10-2013 3-10-09 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment