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Customize Web-based BW reports and functionality with Business Server Pages (BSPs)

Customize Web-based BW reports and functionality with Business Server Pages (BSPs). Dr. Bjarne Berg & Deepu Sasidharan. What We’ll Cover …. Introduction Introduction to WAS and BSP Use of BSP applications in NetWeaver BI A look at some application issues and solutions BW Web Printing

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Customize Web-based BW reports and functionality with Business Server Pages (BSPs)

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  1. Customize Web-based BW reports and functionality with Business Server Pages (BSPs) Dr. Bjarne Berg & Deepu Sasidharan

  2. What We’ll Cover … • Introduction • Introduction to WAS and BSP • Use of BSP applications in NetWeaver BI • A look at some application issues and solutions • BW Web Printing • Wrap-up

  3. Introductory Slide • In this session we will be examining how you can use BSP and other SAP provided web tools to improve on the NetWeaver user experience. • While we will be showing some basic code examples on how thing are done, the session is intended for both programmers, managers and report developers. • We will also be demonstrating some of the features and give you a general idea on what features you can add using simple BSP enhancements provided by SAP.

  4. What We’ll Cover … • Introduction • Introduction to WAS and BSP • Use of BSP applications in NetWeaver BI with demos • A look at some application issues and solutions • BW Web Printing • Wrap-up

  5. Evolution of WAS

  6. WAS – What is included? SAP Web Application Server (WAS) provides the basis for BW 3.0B and higher. WAS integrates ABAP engine and a Java-2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) engine in one application server.

  7. Introduction to BSP Business Server Pages (BSP) is a page-based programming model with server side scripting for designing web applications. The BSP programming model is similar to the server page technology like ASP, JSP etc. BSP uses ABAP for implementing Business Logic and HTML/CSS for presentation logic. BSP server side scripting enables direct access to all elements on the application server such as ABAP Objects, Function Modules, Database elements etc.

  8. BSP Architecture

  9. BSP Architecture User requests URL BSP Engine creates related BSP object BSP Engine invokes a predefined sequence of events (Event handler code of BSP object is invoked.) HTML page is generated by execution of scripting code BSP Engine sends back HTML page to browser and browser displays HTML page

  10. Introduction to BSP and the Web Application Builder Web Application Builder (transaction code SE80 from SAP GUI) can be used for creating BSP Applications. Web Application builder functions: • Create BSP Applications and Pages • Editing BSP layouts using ABAP and HTML • Integration of Mime Repository for mime objects • Implementing BSP Event Handlers in ABAP • Activating and Executing BSP applications

  11. BSP – The web application Builder interface

  12. BSP - Basics Properties can be used for setting the general properties of the BSP web pages such as Compression, Stateful, Caching, HTTPS (secure HTTP). Layout settings can be used for determining the presentation logic for using server-side scripting in the layout. This means that the code is not executed on the client browser, but instead processed on the server, which has more “horse power”. Event handlers allow the separation of static and dynamic code in a page. The layout processing deals with the static data, while the event handlers deal with the dynamic data.

  13. BSP – Shared and unique page attributes Page attributes are parameters that are declared explicitly for a page. Page attributes can be accessed from the layout and by event handlers. If you mark any page attributes as ‘automatic’, the attributes automatically gets the formatting and values from another web page or navigation step. This simplifies shared formatting and reuses the code.

  14. Executing and activating services for BSP Use the Web Application Builder Toolbar to execute the BSP. The ICF service for BSP should be activated from transaction code SICF before executing the BSP application.

  15. What We’ll Cover … • Introduction • Introduction to WAS and BSP • Use of BSP applications in NetWeaver BI with demos • A look at some application issues and solutions • BW Web Printing • Wrap-up

  16. Practical uses of BSP applications in NetWeaver Web Reports BSP Applications along with SAP delivered function modules can be used for enhancing web reports. • Search Queries in role menu assigned reports and favorites • Centralized BW favorites and management • Emailing Bookmarks and comments • Metadata dictionary with on-line business definitions We will now look at a few practical examples on how BSP can be used to enhance the NetWeaver user experience

  17. Search Queries in role menu assigned reports and favorites Users often have access to hundreds of queries and favorites “buried” in a maze of folder structures. It is hard to find what you are looking for. You can use SAP delivered Function Modules along with BSP to provide a search interface for locating reports in user roles and favorites.

  18. How is it done? – Query searching in the role menu using BSP 1) Use a JavaScript function for calling the BSP application from the BW Web template. 2) Read the search term entered by the user in the BSP page.

  19. How is it done? – Query searching in the role menu using BSP 3) Use SAP delivered Function Module ‘BX_SEARCH_OBJECT’ to search the User role with the search term entered by the user. Make sure that the search text matches the attribute name (i.e. “searchstring”). Note: the attribute name is not case sensitive

  20. Using BSP to create centralized BW Favorites Standard web bookmarks are stored in the web browser and is therefore not available on all PCs. Also, the NetWeaver BI administrators does not know what views users are really accessing. Centralized favorites allow users to manage favorites in a central repository. These favorites are not browser specific and can be accessed through the BW role menu web item. • A ‘Save Bookmark’ icon can be made available from the BW Toolbar.

  21. Using BSP to create centralized BW Favorites We can add simple features, so that the users have the option to create sub folders inside favorites to manage bookmarks better. This allows users to save their versions of the BW query with the variables that they have selected.

  22. How is it done? - Centralized BW Favorites BW Web API and JavaScript function is used to create the bookmark on the BW server by passing the Bookmark Id to the BSP application to insert the Bookmark to User favorites. To save Bookmark with current data use the command 'BOOKMARK_DATA=X'.

  23. Centralized BW Favorites Users can access the Bookmarks from BW Role menu and does not need to use the favorites in their internet browser. Better Solution The favorites created in the current user session will be available only the next time the users logs into the system.

  24. Using BSP to create centralized BW Favorites ‘Manage Favorites’ Icon from the BW Toolbar allows the users to delete, rename, move and email favorites.

  25. How is it done? - Centralized BW Favorites BSP applications are used for the various functions like Delete, Rename and Move. Email bookmark function can also be designed to open up e-mail applications like Outlook Express. The delete Favorite function deletes the Bookmark from the user favorites and also deletes the physical bookmark from the BW server.

  26. Centralized BW Favorites

  27. Email Bookmark Sometimes we want to only send a quick link to a person or a mail group in a simple manner without having to use the steps Broadcaster wizard (available in BW 3.5 or higher). ‘Email Report’ Icon from the BW Toolbar and Manage Favorites allows the users to email favorites using standard SMTP.

  28. How is it done? - Email Bookmark ‘Email Report’ creates a Bookmark in the BW system and passes on the Bookmark ID to the Email application.

  29. How is it done? – Create an email bookmark application with BSP A custom BSP application is build for emailing Bookmarks based on the SAP delivered BSP (BSPTUTORIALMAIL).

  30. Email Bookmark You can also use MS Outlook for Emailing Bookmarks. JavaScript function is used for emailing the Bookmark. SAP/BW/BCT/JAVASCRIPT/BCTTASK.JS  SAPBCTSendPage

  31. Email Bookmark

  32. Definitions In a typical BW system 30-40% of all measures presented to the end users does not exist in the source system. These are calculated key figures (CKF), restrictive key figures (RKF) and virtual key figures (VKF). Users often have a mistrust of these numbers since they cannot see how they are calculated and what they mean. Also, a typical BW system may also have hundreds of characteristics and masterdata elements that users are unfamiliar with. Access to definitions and explanations are critical to successful adaptation of BW in an organization

  33. Definitions – What can be done? Build a simple application for BW definitions and provide access to business definitions for all the terms used in a report (including the report itself). Let users access the definitions directly from the standard context menu of any characteristic or key figure.

  34. How is it done? - Definitions The definitions are stored in a Z table in the BW System, the Z table has the following fields. OBJ_ID Unique Identifier OBJ_NAME BW Object Name OBJ_DESCRIPTION Definition

  35. How is it done? - Definitions This simple BSP Page is used for accessing the Definitions stored in the Z Table inside BW (no new servers needed). Since the match is on each infoObject, the definitions entered is available in all queries where the infoObject is used, and also in any new queries being created.

  36. What else can you use BSP for? - Some ideas BSP applications can be used to build: • Custom logon application • Custom Role menu • BW Report branding • BW Documentation apps • Admin interfaces • Reading Table data

  37. What We’ll Cover … • Introduction • Introduction to WAS and BSP • Use of BSP applications in NetWeaver BI with demos • A look at some application issues and solutions • BW Web Printing • Wrap-up

  38. BW Online Help and Training BW and OLAP can be quite confusing to a first-time user. Since there are many features and navigation options, users often gets lost in the terminology and ‘explanations’ from power users and other experts. An on-line help system for end users with training material and on-line demos is a great tool to make sure that the system is well received by the user community

  39. BW Online Help – What can you do? • Make sure that your on-line help application provides many ways to find the information. • Organize the content based on a folder structure as well as by an index. • Create many internal links inside the help text and use many images.

  40. How is it done? - BW Online Help People can relate to demos and ‘movies’, and there are many low-cost tools that can help you quickly create a set of BW help animations Tools like Camtasia Studio, SnagIt and Dreamweaver studio can be used to develop these help animations.

  41. How is it done? - BW Online Help BW Online Help files (HTML, Images, Video files etc.) can be stored in the WAS Mime Repository (SE80). Use the ‘Import Mime Objects’ function to add files to the Mime Repository.

  42. How is it done? - BW Online Help The files can be accessed directly via URL <Path to the Mime Object Repository>/BWHelp_files/home.html Maintaining different folder structure inside the Mime Repository makes maintenance easier.

  43. What We’ll Cover … • Introduction • Introduction to WAS and BSP • Use of BSP applications in NetWeaver BI with demos • A look at some application issues and solutions • BW Web Printing • Wrap-up

  44. Web Print formatting with Excel Formatting options for BW web reports have been very limited in the past unless you used Crystal reports. However, Excel has many good formatting features and in the past BW users often relied on the BEx Excel interface to format their reports and bypassed the whole web delivery. Many has asked why SAP did not provide better web formatting options for the queries that were published to the web. ? ? ?

  45. Web Printing with Excel We can now implement an Excel based interface for printing web reports. Depending on the size of the report users may have three different options available: • Portrait • Landscape • Landscape Legal Pre-requisite - Import ABAP Package and Classes provided as part of ‘How To…Web Printing with Microsoft Excel’.

  46. How is it done? - Web Print formatting with Excel The data will be exported to Excel and ‘Fit-to-page’ depending on the options selected by the user. Customization options include options for specifying a print specific template and stylesheet. Users can use rich Excel print settings for printing.

  47. Another option is a pure web solution with no Excel…. A JavaScript based solution can be used for providing the users options for printing reports in one page. Depending on the size of the report users have 3 different options available for ‘Fit-to-page’ : • Portrait • Landscape • Landscape Legal If user’s want a pure web solution, this is a better option

  48. How is it done? – pure web printing with no Excel Use BW Web API along with JavaScript for opening up the current report in a print template. JavaScript function and stylesheet can be used for dynamically changing the font size of the report. The JavaScript loops through the page with different font sizes to find a size that fits the size of paper selected (portrait, landscape or legal). Since the web browser may override the format suggested, users must also make sure that the paper format selected is consistent with the format selected in the browser

  49. What We’ll Cover … • Introduction • Introduction to WAS and BSP • Use of BSP applications in NetWeaver BI with demos • A look at some application issues and solutions • BW Web Printing • Wrap-up

  50. Resources • SDN: SDN BSP Forum • https://forums.sdn.sap.com/forum.jspa?forumID=49&start=0 • Web Log: BSP – a Developer Journal • https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/550 • SAP online help • http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/e9/bb153aab4a0c0ee10000000a114084/content.htm • SAP Press Books • Advanced BSP Programming • http://www.sap-press.com/product.cfm?account=&product=H1903 • SAP Web Application Server • http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592290132/ • BSP Extensions: How to Master Web Reporting • http://www.sap-hefte.de/katalog/hefte/titel/gp/titelID-952

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