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2005 Wellesley Information Services. All rights reserved.
Distributing Reports With SAPInformation Broadcaster: Dos,Donts, and Real-world Lessons
Dr. Bjarne BergComerit Inc.
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What Is BEx Information Broadcasting?
Its a standard part of SAP BW 3.5 and higher
It lets you send reports, i.e., Bex Queries
Workbooks
Web Applications
To...
Email addresses, BW users, BW roles
SAP Enterprise Portal Knowledge Management folders
SAP Enterprise Portal Collaboration Rooms
You can define and deploy iViews based on the resulting KM /
Collaboration documents, if you wish!Note
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Why Is Broadcasting So Valuable?
It...
Reduces the time users spend looking for information Improves the like likelihood that users will use your BI data
Expands the reach of BI data to non-BW users as well!
Particularly, non-BW users
Makes BW data available for users on the go
Lets you link your BW and Portal systems together!
Users can collaborate, integrate BW content with other
enterprise and Web content, etc.!
Casual users, non-BW users, travelling users,
and executives are all prime candidates for
broadcasted reports!Note
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Different Needs and Tools
Flat Reporting Formatted
Print
Form based
Static
Predictable access
OLAP ReportingDrill Down Slice and Dice
Analyse
Data Mining
Search and discover
KPI & ScorecardFormatted
Simple
Easy to view
Limited nav Aggregates
The information needs of the user communi ties are diff erent
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What Well Cover
Overview
The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
Wrap up
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The Broadcast Wizard - ad hoc scheduling
You can access the Broadcast Wizard from the context menu in a query
The Broadcast wizard is a
tool for end users to
distribute queries, andworkbooks to single
individuals or larger
audiences through email
or the enterprise portal
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Step 1 Choose an Output Format
Independent HTML file
We can use this option to send a single HTML file (standard static web page).This is an easy way to send webpages that can be used by handheld devices
(i.e. Blackberry or PocketPCs), and also by custom web applications.
The report is a snapshot vs. "live" data
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Step 1 Choose an Output Format (cont.)
HTML as Separate MIME Files
This option results in a set of individual files
for each web item in your report.
The benefit of this standard web format
option is that it optimizes reuse of objects,
as images are cached in the browser after
being accessed for the first time.
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Step 1 Choose an Output Format (cont.)
Online links back to current Data
The link back to the on-line source (requires recipients to log on with a username and
a password to see the content, but can see the latest data). This is the most securemethod for protecting the access to your date. However, the recipient must have on-
line access back to your system, have a username and password.
The recipient may not see the same as what you believe you sent him,
since the data may have been refreshed since you sent the broadcast.
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Step 1 Choose an Output Format (cont.)
Depending on how
your mail system is
setup, this is what
a recipient of an
on-line web linkmight see.
Text can also be
added by the
sender
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Step 2 Identify Recipients and Enter a Message
Enter one or more email
addresses, a subject, and
body.
The 'importance' level
will flag the email for
delivery to your recipient.
Click Cont inueto save
and schedule the
broadcast to execute
laterOR
Click Scheduleto executethe broadcast once only,
during the next available
processing window and
exit...Adding comments in the 'contents' area wil l make the
query much more understandable to your recipient
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Step 4 Tell the System When to Schedule the Broadcast
We can schedule the job
to run every time the
infocube is changed (the
process chain has run)
We can limit the users to
when they can schedule
jobs to avoid stress on the
system. We can providemultiple pre-defined times
when they can schedule the
reports.
We can also allow the
users to create their ownscheduling times (Only
authorized users see this)
Setting up pre-defined
'windows' of time is a
developer's job.
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Broadcast Wizard Demo
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What Well Cover
Overview
The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
Wrap up
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The BEx Broadcaster
BEx Broadcaster is another way you can access tools to broadcast queries,
workbooks and web apps. It is typically given to the powerusers or developers,
since it have more options and requires slightly more skills.
You can get to the BEx Broadcaster through:
The Query Designer
The Web Application Designer
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Regular Scheduling by PowerUsers using BEx Broadcaster
Through the regular BEx Broadcaster more advanced users or developers can
broadcast content to specific BW users, roles, email addresses or email groups andset language. You can also make the broadcast user specific.
Another feature is that you can authorize access through another user (if permitted).
The output formats are the same as in the broadcast wizard.
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BEx Broadcaster - Exception Reporting
First you have to definethe exceptions for the
query and make the
exception 'active'.
If a certain exception has
occurred, or if a certain level hasbeen reached, you can make the
broadcaster send you an
exception report.
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BEx Broadcaster - Exception Reporting
In BEx Broadcaster we can select the pre-calculation tab and ask to be alerted onlywhen we reach a certain minimum level of the exception.
Key concepts: Don' t spend time moni tor ing 'business as usual'
activi ties, only get alerted when exceptions occur And don' t
search for exceptions, send them automati call y to you.
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BEx Broadcaster - Filters
If you pre-calculate the queries, you can allow the recipient to navigate the reports by the
characteristics you select. When doing so, you have to include a navigation block in the
web template so that user can actually use the navigation features you have enabled
The more items you include, the larger the size of the broadcast
items. Thi s is not a 'big-deal' if you are mail ing to a few of users, but
for thousands of users dail y, you should select these items carefu lly.
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BEx Broadcaster - Filters
If you pre-calculating a web template, you have the ability to specify a control query to
be used in the pre-calculation of the navigation filters. This is a great feature, when
you have specific queries that contains the navigation filers that you want tobroadcast.
The benef i t of the Fi lter Navigation tab is that you can select which
items you want to enable, without having to create new quer ies.
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BEx Broadcaster - Web Application Designer and Portal
You can also use the web application designer to pick up queries and publish the
applications to the portal or the BEx Broadcaster
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What Well Cover
Overview
The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
Wrap up
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Why Broadcast to the Portal vs. Email?
More powerful
Users can comment, rate, and discuss the broadcasted assets You can place the assets in iViews on cockpits/dashboards
You can integrate the assets with other Portal content!
Portal users without a BW user id can now access BW content
Broadcasted assets are included in TREX searches More user friendly
Users can subscribe/unsubscribe themselves!
Easier, more flexible administration
You can leverage the Portals access control lists/capabilities
No email address lists to maintain - users sub/unsubscribe
Avoids the email glut, and the BW/network performance hit!
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Broadcasting to the Portal
The Broadcast options are similar to the email distribution. You have several choices:
1 - Deploy via KM Favorites 4 - Deploy via the BW Showcase role
2 - Deploy via a KM Folder 5 - Deploy via a custom iViews that you define
3 - Deploy Via Collaboration
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Using BEx Broadcaster to send items to the Portal
You can broadcast the content to the portal at fixed intervals and have the contentinstantly available through independent web pages. You can also broadcast to the
portal through links back to your system
There is a demo role available in SAP Enterprise Portal version 6.0. You can use
thi s role for your publi shing to the portal or enhance it anyway you like.
The role is avai lable undercom.sap.ip.bi.business_explorer_showcase
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Sending items to a KM folder, Content directory or iView in the Portal
KM Folders and Portal roles appears as
targets within the Broadcast Wizard and Bex
Broadcaster...
You broadcast the content to a personal
portfolio of a user, or a portfolio shared by a
set of users i.e. knowledge management
folders.
You can see all KM folders and broadcast
directly to any of them.
Users can subscribe to the broadcasts and be
notified when the content is updated:
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Deploy Via the BW Showcase Role
You dont have to go
through KM orCollaboration...
Use the special SAP BW
Showcase Role
com.sap.ip.bi.business
_explorer_showcase
You can use this role for
your publishing to theportal or enhance it
anyway you like.
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What Well Cover
Overview
The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
Wrap up
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Why is Broadcasting so all encompassing?
BW is an integrated
decision support
system with a high
degree of flexibility.
Therefore the
broadcaster has to
function for a varietyof purposes and for a
diverse audience.
Today, broadcaster
supports everythingfor portals, PDAs,
alerts and email to
caching and
Knowledge
Management.
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Bex Broadcaster
Bex Broadcast
Wizard
Broadcast Process Flow Three Key Avenues
Job added toSAP BW JobScheduling
Broadcastsent immediately
to the Portalor Email
Broadcastregistered
with BW Alerting
Portal
Collaboration RoomPortal KM Folder
Email
Recipients
Broadcasttools
Broadcastengine
Broadcasttargets
Event triggersfor broadcasts
One-time, immediatebroadcasts
ScheduledBroadcasts
1 2 3
S it d E ti
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Security and Encryption
Controlling who can schedule ad-hoc, or through the BEx Broadcaster is a
critical maintenance issue. You can control the user's ability to schedule the
reports, through the new authorization object S_RS_BCS (the administrator stilluses the standard S_RS_ADMWB object).
You also have new broadcast settings for the RSADMWBOBJ field. These
settings include: Maintain/Delete (23), Display (03) and Execute/Schedule (16).
Activate Secured Socket Layer (SSL) 2.0 or
higher in your browser and use HTTPS as a
protocol for you browsers to encrypt and secure
your web content. This is not an SAP function,
but standard M icrosoft browser web options.
P h i d Ti i t
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Process chains and Timepoints
You can also assign broadcast event to process chains. First you create a variantwith and assign it to the infocube. The event in the process chain will trigger the
broadcast event.
Creating timepointsBackground jobs can be created (transaction SM36) to schedule any jobs startingwith the text "TP_BROADCASTING_". This is to allow users to broadcast at certain
time points. Under SM36 start the condition,select the date and time when the job starts,select the periodic flag and defineit as hourly, daily, weekly, monthlyor other.
Timepoints contr ols when end users can
schedule broadcasts. This is used to avoid heavy
schedul ing dur ing data loads or times when
many users are accessing the systems.
C ti Ti i t
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Creating Timepoints
Creating timepointsBackground jobs can be created (transaction SM36) to schedule any jobs starting
with the text "TP_BROADCASTING_".
Creating Timepoints
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Creating Timepoints
Broadcasting using the Reporting Agent to external applications
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Broadcasting using the Reporting Agent to external applications
You can also use the traditional reporting agent to mail pre-calculated reports to avariety of targets including 3rd party portals such as Plumtree.
Workbook pre calculation what do you need?
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Workbook pre-calculation - what do you need?
Use transaction RSPRECADMIN in the BW administrator workbench to
get to the pre-calculation settings. You also need one server with:
1. MS-Office XP (or .net framework version 1.1 or higher)
2. MS-Excel-2000 (or higher)
3. SAP BW workbook pre-calculation services (on standard BW install
CDs). Note: servers with this installed will be visible under the transaction 'RSPRECADMIN' andyou can also perform server load balancing.
4. GUI v. 6.20 with BEx (or higher)
This is not needed for standard
broadcasting of web queries or web
appli cations, only for workbooks.
Cool programs for Managing Broadcaster
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Cool programs for Managing Broadcaster
There are some programs that can help you manage the SAP BEx
Broadcaster :
RSRD_BOOKMARK_REORGANISATION is a program which can be used
for reorganizing and deleting bookmark IDs and view IDs that werecreated for Information Broadcasting by the system and are no longer
needed.
RSBCSRE03 - Deleting email logs created by broadcaster.
I n large BW systems with many users and frequent
broadcasts, the logs can be really big and should be
deleted per iodical ly
Transaction codes for Managing Broadcaster
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Transaction codes for Managing Broadcaster
You also have transaction codes for helping you debug and monitor the
logs in SAP BEx Broadcaster:
Transaction Codes
RSRD_LOG - This displays all logs for BEx Broadcaster settings. Logs
are only written for scheduled settings and not for settings executed
directly.
RSRD_START - Using transaction RSRD_START, you can execute (and
therefore debug for test purposes) any settings. Make sure that the
indicator for executing settings online is activated.
P t l I t ti I
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Portal Integration - Issues
If you broadcast to your own web "report center" that users can acess form the portal, the
portal takes control of the pages hosted by BW. This prohibits interaction between
pages contained within the frameset by changing the document.domain property of thelaunched page
Understanding Try/Catch :
http://www.devguru.com/Technologies/ecmascript/quickref/try...catch.html
More on Cross Frame Scripting With IE :http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/om/xframe_scripting_security.asp
The SolutionMust be addressed on the
frameset page
Place this function in theframeset ONLOAD event
Soultion by David Cole
Wh t W ll C
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What Well Cover
Overview
The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
Wrap up
D idi Wh Sh ld B All d t D Wh t G i C il
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Deciding Who Should Be Allowed to Do What - Governing Council
Powerusers
Regularusers
Authors DevelopersBW
Admins
PortalEmail
Process Chains
Schedule usingpre-set timepoints
Free schedule
One-time
Bex BroadcasterBex Wizard
Scheduling
Tools
Target
- /
- /
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-
- - -
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There are many options and decisions to be made on who should be able to access
all the Broadcast features. A good approach to decide how gets access and also
when to create any timepoints is to create a Governing Council of a few managersand developers
Spam filters and server blockers
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Spam filters and server blockers
Users that create a high volume of emails may be automatically blocked by spam filters inthe browsers and mail servers. You will have to make sure that the internal email systemhave flagged you as a valid email broadcaster.
Review regularly that mai l systems such as Yahoo, Google, AOL,
M icrosoft and others have not f lagged al l your emails as spam.
Management of Timepoints
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Management of Timepoints
Be careful to not add all your broadcasts
to the end of process chains. Large
systems with hundreds of infocubes maybe 'bogged down' with lengthy process
chains that slows down the whole load
processing.
Good timepoints may be 6-8 am when
the load jobs are finished and before a
large numbers of users accesses the
system.
The key is to balance the times when jobs can be executed. If this is not carefully,
all users tends to schedule their broadcast between 7 and 9 am each morning.
Another good time may be at the end of weekly, or monthly loads on theweekend (i.e. Saturday or Sunday mornings).
Avoiding Volumes of Junk
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Avoiding Volumes of Junk
Users have a tendency to schedule queries for distribution and never disable the
schedule after it has started to run. This creates mountains of junk that few actually
use.
Users who don't want a broadcast tends to simply
delete it, or create a program/agent that automatically
removes the email.
So, how do you know if anyone reads the broadcasts?
A process to review and control internal "spam-kings'
have to be established. Hint: use the transaction codes
'SCOT' and 'SOST' to monitored SMTP mails.
A periodic review of scheduled broadcasts
should be performed by the developers to see
if there are any candidates for deletion.
Push Vs Pull - Change in Mentality
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Push Vs. Pull - Change in Mentality
Users have a to change their mentality to stop reviewing everything that is
'business as usual'. The Push mentality requires that users plan for what is
important to them and set up fixed sets of reports that are used to manage thebusiness.
In general the push approach reduces the time users spend looking for
information and provides them with more time to examine data that really
matter to them.
You should carefully consider using the BEx Broadcaster for the core reporting
that is done through any handheld computer devise. This will simplify the
security setup and also increase the speed of any report (will be viewed on thedevice instead of accessing back to the source system through limited
bandwidth).
Casual users and executives are prime
candidates for broadcasted reports
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Exception Reporting Demo
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Exception Reporting Demo
What Well Cover
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What We ll Cover
Overview
The Broadcast Wizard
Scheduling by PowerUsers via BEx Broadcaster
Broadcasting to the Portal
Broadcaster Advanced Options
How to make it work in practice
Wrap up
"Sneak peek" at Broadcaster in BI 7 0
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Sneak peek at Broadcaster in BI 7.0
New Object Types Query Views
Formatted Reports
New Distribution Types Master Data based broadcasting- Broadcast
to recipients derived from BW master data
and optionally adapt the output format foreach recipient
Exception broadcasting - Create Alertsettings based on defined exceptions
Integration into SAP Alert Framework & UWL
New Output Options Printers PDF Files Cache
Source: SAP AG
7 points to take home
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7 points to take home
1. Do not schedule all your broadcasts after a process chain has completed. Itis tempting but may slow down nightly data loads.
2. Control the times users can run reports to avoid too high stress on thesystem.
3. Segment the broadcast tools based on the user roles and level of training.
4. Monitor the logs carefully and make sure that "spam-kings" are controlled.
5. Do not give free scheduling to a high number of users.
6. Be aware that spam filters may catch many of your broadcasts.
7. Broadcasting to a portal simplifies the distribution, but be careful with linksto workbooks.
Resources
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Resources
SAP Developer Network
"New BI Capabilities in SAP NetWeaver" Version 2.0, June 30, 2005
Broadcasting with SAP NetWeaver '04, Eric Schemer, Glenn Leslie
and Oliver Mayer -- TechEd 2004.
Information Broadcaster with SAP BW, Katie Beavers,https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.km.cm.docs/library/events/asug-biti-
03/Information%20Broadcasting%20with%20SAP%20BW
BW Expert (bwexpertonline.com)BEx Information Broadcasting in SAP BW 3.5 Puts Users Front
and Center, Glenn Leslie, August 2005
Your Turn!
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Your Turn!
Dr. Bjarne [email protected]
Questions?