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Building cockpits and dashboards: Shortcuts, design best practices, and guidelines to ensure you pick the right SAP NetW

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Building cockpits and dashboards: Shortcuts, design best practices, and guidelines to ensure you pick the right SAP NetW

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    1. Building cockpits and dashboards: Shortcuts, design best practices, and guidelines to ensure you pick the right SAP NetWeaver BI tool for the job Dr. Bjarne Berg

    2. 1 What We’ll Cover … Background, terminology, and examples Tool options What makes a good cockpit? Which tool is right for me? Wrap-up

    3. 2 Background and Terminology Many companies and people confuse the concepts of dashboards, scorecards, and cockpits. They vary in terms of purpose, usage, source, data, etc. Most BI systems fall in to the cockpits category

    4. 3 Typical Components of a Cockpit: SEM Example Higher-level navigation between views External data Graphical displays

    5. 4

    6. 5 Navigations Linked to Multiple Views

    7. 6 What We’ll Cover … Background, terminology, and examples Tool options What makes a good cockpit? Which tool is right for me? Wrap-up

    8. Tool Options SEM CPM Web Application Designer (Web AD) SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer Publishing to the portal Custom cockpits (BI Java SDK) Third-party cockpits 7

    9. 8 Strategy Management and Performance Measurement – CPM The presentation layer in SAP Management cockpits has four layers: Cockpit High-level overview (consists of walls) Wall A logical grouping of measures Logical view The display level of the cockpit; consists of frames Frame Lowest level of individual measure display

    10. 9 What is SEM – CPM? The Corporate Performance Monitor (SEM-CPM) is part of the Strategic Enterprise Management BI tool suite. It consists of the Performance Measurement (PM) area and the Strategy management area (SM). The Performance Management area consists of four distinct areas: Management Cockpit Measure Builder Benchmarking Delivery of business content The Strategy Management consists also of four areas Balanced Scorecard Strategy modeling Value Driver Tree Risk Management

    11. 10 SEM – CPM Walls Walls are the highest level of the SEM-CPM Cockpit. Research has shown that more than 7 walls are hard to read and comprehend. Ideal numbers are 3, 5 or 7.

    12. Try to avoid empty spaces, but don’t force unrelated measures into the cockpit — it confuses users Don’t use as many types of graphs as possible, and never mix more than 3 types of graphs. If you use more, users have to interpret the pictures as well as the data. Missing data points add irritation 11 Rules for Graphs and Real Estate

    13. 12 SEM-CPM Rules for Graphs and Real Estate (cont.) There is nothing wrong with using the same type of graphs on a cockpit (e.g., tachometers or line charts). Users adapt quickly and can absorb the information faster.

    14. Tool Options SEM CPM Web Application Designer (Web AD) SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer Publishing to the portal Custom cockpits (BI Java SDK) Third-party cockpits 13

    15. 14 Cockpits with Web AD 3.x and SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Web Application Designer can create Web-based cockpits using BW query data

    16. 15 Cockpits with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Web AD New items include improved tab strip container in SAP NetWeaver 7.0 for designing BI Web applications

    17. SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Web AD New Features Web Items: Tab Pages, Button, Script Item (SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Support Package Stack 7) Drag and drop using Analysis item New chart types (heat map, Gantt, milestone trend analysis) Export BI Web applications in PDF format Command Wizard for generating Web API commands Integration with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 BEx Report Designer for formatted reports 16

    18. BI Web API Commands You can use BI Web API commands for carrying out certain actions in BI Web Applications Export to Excel, PDF, etc. OLAP functions: Apply Filter values, remove drill downs Command Wizards guide you through the steps for creating a BI Web API command Commands appear together for easy access Data Provider Web Items Web Templates 17

    19. 18 Command Wizard and JavaScript Use Command Wizard for generating JavaScript code for the Script Item to use in custom cockpit applications

    20. 19 More New Cockpit Options Personalize BI query variables Bookmark the navigational state of the BI Web application Perform multidimensional analysis of BI query data Allow users to create exceptions and conditions for BI query data

    21. 20 Web AD Cockpits in SAP Enterprise Portal Directly publish BI Web cockpits to Portal Content Catalog using the Publish option from Web AD

    22. 21 Broadcast Cockpit Views Using Web AD In SAP NetWeaver 7.0, use Information Broadcaster to broadcast BI Web applications (e.g., cockpit views) to Enterprise Portal KM folders and via email in various formats (PDF, MHTML, HTML) Information Broadcaster/Reporting Agent (SAP BW 3.x) can precalculate BI Web applications to enhance performance

    23. Tool Options SEM CPM Web Application Designer (Web AD) SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer Publishing to the portal Custom cockpits (BI Java SDK) Third-party cockpits 22

    24. 23 Visual Composer

    25. 24 Visual Composer is Easy for Power Users to Learn Visual Composer is a power user tool that is simple to learn for someone with a little bit of technical background (i.e. controllers, report writers, analysts).

    26. 25 Visual Composer for Complex cockpits

    27. 26 SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer DataProviders You can use BI queries and views as DataProviders for SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer models You also can use BI query functionalities for exceptions and variables along with SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer models

    28. 27 Visual Composer Data Methods Can integrate data from multiple data sources, including SAP and non-SAP systems, into one model Different options available for data access include: BI Extension Kit Remote Function Call (RFC) Web services BI Extension Kit allows access to the following DataSources SAP NetWeaver 2004 BI (BW 3.5 Support Package 14) SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 JDBC XMLA

    29. 28 Details about Visual Composer Cockpits Delivered as part of Enterprise Portal in SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 Usage Type (SPS8 and higher) Different options available for rendering Visual Composer output Flash Web Dynpro (HTML) Flash provides high-end visualization of Visual Composer models

    30. 29 The future of Visual Composer SAP July, 2008: Composition Environment including Visual Composer continues to be the go-to product for creating composite applications.

    31. Tool Options SEM CPM Web Application Designer (Web AD) SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer Publishing to the portal Custom cockpits (BI Java SDK) Third-party cockpits 30

    32. 31 Web Cockpit in the Portal Integrate queries and Web applications into the portal through publishing, broadcasting, or Web calls The portal can either receive designed pages passively or actively create communities, Web pages, collaboration rooms, or cockpits

    33. 32 Web Cockpit in the Portal (cont.) The SEM-CPM cockpits are already part of the portal, so you can access them there iViews can build custom portal cockpits with iViews from many data sources (Web AD, BW, SEM, SAP R/3, Web) and in many formats (graphs, pictures, figures, tables) iViews can also be interactive

    34. 33 SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Visual Composer Portal Publishing SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer Design time deploys Visual Composer models directly as iViews to Portal Content Catalog You can then use Visual Composer iViews in portal pages, roles, etc.

    35. 34 Building a Web Cockpit in the Portal

    36. Tool Options SEM CPM Web Application Designer (Web AD) SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer Publishing to the portal Custom cockpits (BI Java SDK) Third-party cockpits 35

    37. 36 BI Java SDK-Based Cockpits BI Java SDK can be used for custom applications based on SAP BI and non-SAP data. BI Java SDK provides access to relational and OLAP data sources using JDBC, XMLA, ODBO etc. Access to 200+ data sources using the JDBC drivers.

    38. 37 BI Java SDK-Based Cockpits (cont.) SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio can develop BI Java SDK-based applications Can use along with SAP Java Web Dynpro

    39. Tool Options SEM CPM Web Application Designer (Web AD) SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer Publishing to the portal Custom cockpits (BI Java SDK) Third-party cockpits 38

    40. 39 Third-Party Cockpits Some best-of-breed cockpit tools incorporate SAP BI as part of a Web item provider, or more commonly through BW queries fed by BAPIs or OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO) in BW Some even provide separate Multidimensional Online Analytical Processing (MOLAP) solutions tightly connected to SAP BW Hint: reading RS_ tables inside BW

    41. 40 Third-Party Cockpits (cont.) Other BI and cockpit companies, such as Corda, are actively working on creating cockpit tools for SAP NetWeaver BI

    42. 41 What We’ll Cover … Background, terminology, and examples Tool options What makes a good cockpit? Which tool is right for me? Wrap-up

    43. 42 War Rooms and External Access

    44. 43

    45. The Need for Speed When cockpits bring together data from many sources during runtime, it can be slow and cumbersome This is because when your system accesses the portal cockpit, it may have to execute supporting cockpit queries Solution: You can present static images (i.e., static HTML from BEx Broadcaster into a portal iView) or you can cache queries results by using BEx Broadcaster in SAP NetWeaver 7.0 44

    46. 45 The Need for Speed (cont.) SAP NetWeaver 7.0 allows you to fill the resident memory of your server with pre-run results (cache). This provides faster response to the users, since the query result sets are accessed from memory instead of re-executed on the database side.

    47. 46 The Need for Speed - BI Accelerator The SAP BI Accelerator makes query response time 50-10,000 faster. You use process chains to maintain the HPA engine after each data load

    48. 47 What We’ll Cover … Background, terminology, and examples Tool options What makes a good cockpit? Which tool is right for me? Wrap-up

    49. 48 What SAP Tool Should I Use?

    50. 49 New Tools Roadmap

    51. 50 BOBJ capabilities – Dashboards and Reports

    52. 51 What We’ll Cover … Background, terminology, and examples Tool options What makes a good cockpit? Which tool is right for me? Wrap-up

    53. 52 Resources COMERIT (Presentations, Articles and Accellerators) http://csc-studentWeb.lrc.edu/swp/Berg/BB_index_main.htm SAP Online Help BW and EP Integration http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/a3/7b583c2439e66fe10000000a114084/content.htm SDN BW How to Guides - How to integrate Visual Composer Applications and BEx Web Templates https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/ad182ac7-0a01-0010-4fb8-8a4d217b19c1 BW Expert (www.BWExpertOnline.com)* “Create Unparalleled Analytical Applications with SAP NetWeaver BI, Visual Composer, and Macromedia Flex” by Moya Watson and Judy Kestecher, SAP Labs, January 2006 issue * Requires access to credentials to view full article text

    54. 7 Key Points to Take Home There are many ways to build Web cockpits and SAP has tools for them all Look at in-house Web skills before you decide on the tool SAP Performance Management is a great tool for those with limited Web skills, but requires consistency in performance measures (roll-ups) and structured navigation SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer is great for complex graphing Web AD is the tool of choice by experienced Web programmers who want total design freedom 53

    55. 7 Key Points to Take Home Third-party tools for Web cockpits are emerging and some are quite advanced (Cognos, e.g.) While all these tools gives you a great deal of flexibility, it is the use of the real estate, colors, graphs, and consistency that is going to determine if your cockpit is successful: Spend serious time designing instead of coding! 54

    56. Your Turn!

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