Business Objects: 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

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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

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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