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Case Study: Advanced Techniques from Sonae Indstria for Creating Interactive, User-Friendly SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence Reports

Antonina Santos and Nelsa Santos Sonae Indstria

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In This Session

Learn how the company uses input controls to view the same report from multiple angles

and enable quick data filtering to analyze reports based on specified criteria

Find out about new SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1 Web Intelligence features that improve

user experience and reporting capabilities

Learn how to improve report formatting, data visualization, and user interaction

See how the company uses SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence BI web services to

accelerate dashboard design performance

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What Well Cover

Sonae Indstria: Overview

Report performance

End-user experience

Report formatting

Dashboard design performance web services

Wrap-up

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Sonae Indstria

Wood-based panels industry

Main indicators (2014)

Turnover: 1.015 Million Euros

EBIDTA: 96 Million Euros

Production: One of the worlds top producers

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Sonae Indstria: Our Operations

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Sonae Indstria: Our Products

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1998 ... 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

BOE XI 3.1

Portal InfoView

SAP BW + BEX

DW + BO 5

Portal Lotus Notes

DW + BO 6.5

Portal Lotus Notes

SAP BI + BOE 4.0 4.1 Portal BI Launch Pad

DW + BOE XIR2

Portal InfoView

SAPs BO acquisition

Investment & Acquisitions Restructure & Optimize

SAP Full Model

Rollout

SAP FI

Business focus

Sonae Indstria: Our BI System Landscape History

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Sonae Indstria: Our BI Landscape and Architecture

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Portugal

Germany

Spain

UK

France

South Africa

Canada

Netherlands

SAP ECC 6.0

SAP ERP

HCM 6.0

SAP BW 7.3

BID Development

BIDCLNT121

BIQ Quality

BIQCLNT121

BIP Production

BIPCLNT121

T12

T12CLNT121

T12CLNT322

TPO

TPOCLNT121

IND

INDCLNT121

Transport

Workbench (322)

Workbench/Config. (121) transport

DEV (SBD) PRD (SBP) Import wizard Product Lifecycle management

SAP BOE BI 4.1

HRD HRT HRP

BI Launch Pad

BI CMC BI Launch Pad

BI CMC

Our BI Landscape and Architecture

Transport

Transport

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SAP Systems Overview

Reporting: SAP BusinessObjects and SAP BW 7.3

More than 400 users

Receive data from source system more than two times per day

Different time zones

SAP ERP 6.0 single instance

More than 70 company codes and 21 plants in 7 countries

SAP modules: MM, SD, PP, QM, PM, APO, GL, AP, AR, AA, CO-PC, CCA, PCA, IOA

SAP ERP HCM 6.0 single instance

SAP Enterprise Portal

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What Well Cover

Sonae Indstria: Overview

Report performance

End-user experience

Report formatting

Dashboard design performance web services

Wrap-up

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Avoid Multi-Reports in a Document

Having one document with many reports is not legible and the

performance is bad. We opted to have separated documents.

For example:

Sales and marketing report is divided into two documents: one with Customer List and

another with Customer Key Account. Instead of having one document with 10 reports,

we have two documents with five reports.

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Avoid Multi-Reports in a Document (cont.)

Benefits of creating smaller documents:

Reduce the time it takes to load the document initially in the viewer/interface

Reduce the refresh time

Reduce the system resources needed

Improve the performance while modifying the document

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Query Stripping

Query Stripping feature optimizes the query to fetch only data which will be displayed to

the user

How to activate this option:

Edit Query Properties and select the option Enable query stripping

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Query Stripping (cont.)

How to activate this option: (cont.)

Edit Document Properties and select the option Enable query stripping

If the Query level property and the Document level property are both enabled, then the query will

be stripped. Otherwise, the query will not be stripped.

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Query Stripping (cont.)

For example: instead of creating a big document with a lot of information, we created a

document called Flat Query with only three columns. We made available a lot of objects in order to permit all users to build tables or graphs without editing the query. We made

available the principal objects in Available Objects list and users just have to choose and

drag and drop.

The objects not selected in the report appear in bold

Always refresh the report when a new object is added in the right panel

Available

objects to add

in the report

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Query Stripping (cont.)

Benefits of query stripping:

Decreases the response time

The display of the report for the user is faster

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#TOREFRESH

In a Web Intelligence document developed over a BICS

connection, a typical message that appears is

#TOREFRESH

To avoid manual refresh, activate the Automatic option

Go to CMC and activate option in Applications Web intelligence

In Web Intelligence tool, go to Properties Document and select the option Automatic refresh

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Publication and Schedule

Why we use the publication:

The publication permits us to have the information customized. The user or group of

users will only receive the data by email according to the profile defined in the role in

SAP BW.

For example:

Our sales assistants receive by email a sales report (in PDF format) only with their own

customer list. They dont have access to BI Launch Pad.

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Publication and Schedule (cont.)

We define the publication and schedule in Central Management Console:

We have a specific folder for publication

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Publication and Schedule (cont.)

We define the Enterprise Recipients

Select the Group List that

will receive the report. This

Group is defined in an SAP

BW role.

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Publication and Schedule (cont.)

We specify the document format and the destination

Select the document format to be sent

Define the details to be sent: all

reports or a specific report

Configure the destination (email, report

name). The email address is defined by

the user profile in SAP BW.

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Publication and Schedule (cont.)

We fill the prompts values and recurrence type

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Publication and Schedule (cont.)

Benefits of the publication:

Maximize the security

Minimize database traffic

Easy distribution

Users dont have to wait for the refresh of the report

Users dont need to have access to BI Launch Pad

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What Well Cover

Sonae Indstria: Overview

Report performance

End-user experience

Report formatting

Dashboard design performance web services

Wrap-up

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BI Launch Pad

Easy access organized by folders with restricted accesses. By simple clicks, the user has

access to the information.

Access to a workspace with user information according to the profile defined in SAP BW.

Each user sees their own information in a global view (dashboard) or selects the

document he wants to analyze.

Link to

documents Dashboard

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BI Launch Pad (cont.)

Benefits of the BI Launch Pad:

Gain a comprehensive view of all information in one place

Ability to mix different content types to create unified views

Simple and easy to use (users can modify and create their own documents)

Any level of user can create and modify workspaces using drag and drop features

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Input Controls

Use input controls to create a dynamic report depending on the users selection in order to enhance the report presentation and usability

We can select single or multiple values for filtering

Define input controls using standard windows controls such as text boxes and radio

buttons

When you select values in the input control, you filter the values in the associated

report elements by the values you selected

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Input Controls (cont.)

Input controls provide an interactive and easy way to filter the data

Users just have to select and unselect data. They can easily see what is filtering.

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Prompts Predefined

In all our reports, we defined prompts by default. When the user refreshes the document,

the Prompt screen appears with Prompts prefilled.

For example: the prompt Grid Domain (materials grouping) is filled with the value GRIDWW. This value is defin