WebI hints

Today just very briefly about few things in WebI I recently observed:

1. Re-ordering sequence of several tabs within Webi: Sometimes it may happen that you create several tabs in your WebI. Afterwards you realize that sequence of them is not correct according your user requirements. You can reorder your tabs anytime in Page setup menu -> Move report:

2. Changing your WebI page orientation: similarly to point no 1 sometimes you need to change page orientation. Functionality is available within same menu:  Page setup menu -> Page-> Landscape/Portrait:

3. Landing tab of webi: In case you have several tabs in your WebI. You may want to set one of them to be opened as “default” once user is accessing it. So far I;m not aware that there is possibility ot set so called ”landing tab”. However what is working (at least in my case) is following: Stay in design mode of your WebI on the tab that you want to set as landing one. Then save your WebI. Once you access itthe webi the tab which you stayed in for last time before the saving will be the opening one. This will also apply when you transport the WebI into another system.

Zero suppression in BO WebI

Here another story on topic of pursuing initiatives of moving away from BEx and trying to replace it by another reporting tool from BusinessObjects portfolio. 

Zero suppression is already known to BW developers from BEx Query Designer. Here you can set up this feature for particular key figure. However in WebI this feature is working differently. In BEx it is defined in the axis but in Webi it can be set for rows. Therefore it could let to collision. This is resolved in SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform 4.0 as of Feature Pack 3 where it can be set up similarly to the BEx. Notice that these settings are available in menu of Format Table or Format Chart pop-ups.

For further details see following SAP Notes:

1751883 - Zero suppression explained (filter out 0 values)

1611185 - Usage of BEx Queries via BICS in Web Intelligence 4.x

Other stories topic of leveraging BEx queries in the BusinessObjects tools:

Scaling factor in BO Webi

WebI’s query stripping

Creating reports based on SAP BW InfoProviders in BO Crystal Reports

Scaling factor in BO Webi

As BEx tools are slowly being faded out exploring new reporting tools from e.g. BusinessObjects portfolio becomes important. It is clear that BEx won’t go away within big bang approach. Organizations are moving towards other reporting tools slowly. One of approaches is to leverage existing BEx portfolio that was developed within companies for years. One of leveraging techniques is to base BusinessObjects reports on top of existing BEx queries. If you do so you may face difficulties using BEx features within particular BusinessObjects tools. 

One of examples is how to tackle with scaling factor set in BEx in WebI. The scaling factor is popular feature via witch you can influence of how numbers in reports are displayed. You can reuse such a queries having the scaling factor set in WebI as well. Till WebI version contained in SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform 4.0 you can simply display such a KPIs set in BEq in Webi. As of Feature Pack 3 for same platform version there are more possibilities available to work with scaled measures. In fact you can use the scaling factor attribute to determine the scaling value, to calculate unscaled value and so on.

On SCN there is a tutorial available which explains how to create the BEx query using a scaled measure and how to use the same to get the unscaled value.

WebI’s query stripping

Query stripping is feature in WebI that is available on XI 3.1 SP3 and BI 4.0. Basically it does optimize a set of data fetch from underlying WebI’s document source. If this feature is on; only data (in WebI terminology: measures and dimensions) that is used in WebI document output is fetched. This reduces traffic between presentation level (WebI) and source of your data.

How to switch it on: it is possible to be enables in two levels: 1. Query level – under Query Properties there is flag enable query stripping 2. Document level – flag query stripping on Document Properties tab. You need to enable both levels otherwise query won’t be stripped.

Notice that query stripping feature is only available for OLAP sources (e.g. BEx queries, Universes). 

However there are few constrains while using stripping: It may happed that you will get a tag #Refresh displayed instead of data. This bug is supposed to be solved in BOW Fix Pack 4.2 see note 1585615. If you running into this problem even you have patched your system you need to switch off this feature. Also it may happen that your WebI variables won’t work and the tag #Refresh will be displayed instead. In that case also switch it off.

Few SAP notes on this topic:

1544129 - Query Stripping is disabled in Web Intelligence Report

1585615 - Getting #Refresh output in Web Intelligence documents when 'Query Stripping' is enabled

1724499 - Query Stripping show more than one results set in WebI report in BI 4.0.

1733949 - Activating query stripping in a Web Intelligence report without refreshing the report itself corrupts it

SDN wiki - Optimize query with Query Stripping in Web Intelligence

How to create cell definitions in BEx report?

Cell definition is functionality available in BEx Query Designer tool which allows you to address every cell of your Bex report in particular. By this you can uniquely define content of each cell. 

You may face a situation when you want to create cell definition in your BEx report but icon of cell definition is not appearing. First of all there is a prerequisite for cell definitions. It is that you must have a two structure in your report. One structure would be in row and other in columns. By intersection of those two structures you address every each cell.

While you have two structures ready in your report then icon of cell definitions on BE’x toolbar is available:

If you click on that icon you get into new tab strip in BEx Query Designer where you can design your cells:

 

Useful links:

Step by Step Guide on How to Use Cell Definition in BEx Query

Online docu

PS: I recently had to use query with cell definition as a source of data for BusinessObjects WebI report. I was curious either this feature is even supported by WebI. My version of WebI was based in BOE 4.0 edition. According WebI user guide there are a lot of limitation on BEx queries while being used in WebI. E.g. Number of objects allowed in a query = Do not use more than 50 objects in a BEx query, otherwise an error occurs. Anyway my quite huge and heavy query with approximately 250 defined cells worked in WebI.