How to launch AfO report via URL

This is a continuation of my earlier blog post about launching AfO documents (reports) from SAP GUI. Analysis for Office (AfO) documents can be shared with users also by sending them just a simple URL that will open the document in either MS Excel or MS Powerpoint applications. The URL is basically an SICF (SAP Internet Connection Framework) service for Analysis documents. It has following syntax:

 

http(s)://<server>:<port>/sap/bw/analysis?application=<application>&object_type=<type>&object_id=<id>&var<VAR1_TECH_NAME>=<val_of_variable1>&var<VAR2_TECH_NAME>=<val_of_variable2>

 

A value of application parameter can be excel or powerpoint. The value of object_type parameter can be document (for workbooks and presentations), query, query_view or infoprovider. Finally, the value of object_id is the technical name of the object in the BW system, e.g. AfO report technical name. Parameters of the report’s selection screen can be supplied as well – see the URL’s parameter like var for passing variables values etc.

What happens when the URL is accessed is that a web browser gets a file with an extension sapaox (e.g. analysis.sapaox). Over that file depending on BW’s backend configuration either logon popup window is displayed and the user provides logon credentials there or via Single Sing On (SSO) target AfO application is opened (Excel/Powerpoint) and the AfO report is shown in there. The sapaox file is technically an XML file that contains ticket which allow the authenticated login to the backend server (BW servers BusinessObjects BI platform server).

However, in order to this function working there is a one prerequisite. The SICF service mentioned above needs to be activated via t-code SICF.

 

More information:

Online docu

Launch AfO from SAP GUI

2658872 - Analysis Office: How to ensure secure connections in Analysis Plugin

3105370 - Using and troubleshooting SAC Live Data Connections in Analysis Office

BPC clear cache in case BPC Web Client issues

BPC Web Client is a software module used by both BPC Standard and BPC Embedded. It may happen that after an upgrade of the BPC Web Client that was done standalone (not as part of BW/BPC component) the BPC client is not being displayed in web browser.

In this case a cache of the BPC application server needs to be reset. There are following two URLs that are supposed to be executed in a web browser:

 

http(s)://<server>:<port>/sap/epm/bpc/web/clearcache

http(s)://<server>:<port>/sap/epm/bpc/web/resetcachebuster

 

From BPC NW 10.0 a SICF service /default_host/sap/EPM_BPC/web is referring to link /sap/bpc/web. Thus, the URLs like below are supposed to be functioning:

http(s)://<hostname>:<port>/sap/EPM_BPC/web

http(s)://<hostname>:<port>/sap/bpc/web

 

From BPC NW 10.1 where the UI is moved to UI5 the sICF service was changed to /default_host/sap/bc/ui5_ui5/sap/bpcwebclient and is referring to link /sap/epm/bpc/web. Thus the two URLs look like:

http(s)://<server>:<port>/sap/bc/ui5_ui5/sap/bpc4webclient/resetcachebuster

ABAP web reporting URL parameters

Sometime back I wrote post about parameters of web reporting’s URL. That post was related to different parameters that we can employ into URL of web reporting based on JAVA or ABAP stack. In this post I want to list more parameter of ABAP based web reporting.

Recently I had to do stress tests of BW system. Most of my test cases involved web reporting. I need to quickly run multiple reports with deferent selection screen’s values. So I prepared simple HTML page where I put URL pointing to ABAP stack of the BW system. Each URL carried different parameter for BW report. Here are some of URL parameters I leveraged in my HTML page.

Parameters to address single value type of variable:

QUERY – mandatory parameter which tells the system which query to run

VAR_NAME_X – technical name of variable which is present on selection screen, where X is number to identity the variable

VAR_VALUE_EXT_X – value of variable on selection screen

Example of URL:

http://mybw.mydomain.com:8000/SAP/BW/BEX?&QUERY=Z_BW_QUERY&VAR_NAME_1=ZVAR1&VAR_VALUE_EXT_1=01.2014&VAR_NAME_2=ZVAR2&VAR_VALUE_EXT_2=01.2015

Parameters to address interval type of variable:

QUERY – see above

VAR_NAME_X - Technical name of the variable on report’s selection

VAR_VALUE_LOW_EXT_ X – "From" value for interval variable

VAR_VALUE_HIGH_EXT_X – "To" value for interval variable

Parameters to address select option type of variable:

QUERY – see above

VAR_NAME_X - see above

VAR_OPERATOR_X – Operator, following values are possible:

'EQ' = Individual value

'BT' = Interval

'LT' = Less than

'LE' = Less than or equal to

'GT' = Greater than

'GE' = Greater than or equal to

VAR_VALUE_LOW_EXT_ X - "From" value for select option variable

VAR_VALUE_HIGH_EXT_ X - "To" value for select option variable

VAR_SIGN_ X – in case it equals to 'I' values are included into the report’s output, in case 'E' found values are removed

Lastly I want to mention that as per my tests these parameters are valid for web reporting based on ABAP Stack of SAP BW.

More information:

Online docu: Transferring Variable Values

SAP BI web reporting URLs