Input Controls in Business Objects

Topic: Input Controls intro in Web Intelligence reports of Business Objects XIR 3.1 and how you can create Xcelsius like Dashboards with Input Controls!

Video walkthrough: Traditionally until 3.1, we had to ability to add Query Filters and in report Report Filters to see partial or granular data. For example, if users asked for the ability to pick and choose States, individual or multiple, you'd build a state Prompt for them and they would have to Refresh the (WebI) report EVERY TIME to pick new states of their choice and hit RUN. This was very ad-hoc like interactive approach because they wouldn't have to ask for a developer's assistance to dissect the report and see granular information. But, every refresh takes some toll on your DB server. Not all reports run in seconds, many takes minutes; multiply that by hundreds or thousands of users, they waste countless hours, DAILY!

Creating Xcelsius like Dashboards with Input Controls!
That's when Input Controls come in. You no longer need to add a prompt. Simply get rid of the prompt (assuming this is a report with reasonable data; not thousands of pages) and add input control for that prompt dimension. You refresh the report once, and once all the data is available, simply use the input controls to dynamically pick and choose and select as many or few states, years, products, or any other dimensions you'd like to view your data based off of. Let's look at it in action with our video below.

MicroStrategy offering Free Classes around the Globe

is a well known BI platform. They are offering few introductory classes from January 31st, 2012 to March 30th, 2012 in many places throughout the USA and across many other countries including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States. Try one out!

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Introductory Workshops for Business and IT in a Location Near You

"Extraordinary businesses are built from extraordinary decisions. These decisions depend on the data driving them. MicroStrategy software transforms your data and empowers your business to make informed, insightful and profitable decisions. MicroStrategy's new Business Intelligence Workshop Series comprises three free, one-day hands-on workshops introducing BI from the perspective of a business user, IT developer, and mobile user."

Introduction to Enterprise BI

Introduction to Mobile BI

Introduction to Developing BI Apps

Tableau 7 World Tour sign up

Tableau is a very smart Business Intelligence Dashboard and Analytics application that connects to all your data sources and displays the data in a very visually appealing fashion; much like Xcelsius. Tableau allows users to publish and collaborate content with others including dashboards, interactive reports, charts, what if analysis and more on your intranet or on the web, securely.

They are having a tour across the USA and several international locations next month, January 2012. If you are near any of these locations, you may want to attend to explore Tableau hands on.

Also: http://www.tableausoftware.com/tour

Globally change user preferences in BO 3.1

Topic: How to globally change users' preferences in Business Objects 3.1

When we log into Business Objects 3.1 Infoview, by default we are brought to the Navigate/Personalize window. Then from here we need to click on Document List, My Favorites and so on, to go where we need to go. So, if a user belongs to Accounting department for example and only has access to Accounting folder, he/she needs to click on Document List and then Accounting folder, every time he logs into Infoview. Now, if all 50 Accounting employees need to do this several times a day, every day, it becomes cumbersome and valuable time is lost.

This video will walk you through on how to globally set preferences for individual groups and redirect to unique locations; e.g. Accounting group to Accounting folder, Marketing group to their inboxes and so on.

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SQL Basics in 30 Minutes - Part 3

Topic: SQL Basics in 30 Minutes - Part 3: Views and Stored Procedures. 




Views, just like the word word itself, is a part of a whole. Look at the image on the left. You can see a partial 'view' of the earth. You don't see the rest of the earth, though it exists. Just like that, a View can have columns that are not seen, i.e. hidden from users. For example, you may have a table called "Credit_Card" and that table may contain the following columns: First_Name, Last_Name, Credit_Card_Number, Last_4_Digit, Address and so on. For security purposes, you (or your company) may only allow developers to create a View called "Credit_Card_Public" that may only have the following columns: Last_Name, Address and Last_4_Digit (of the card). 

Stored Procedures, again, just like the name suggests, are procedures or SQL commands that are stored in a single object. Look at the rabbit pic at the left. Think of the rabbit as a Stored Proc. As soon as you signal the rabbit, it snaps the twig and boom; all those bundles of cash start a domino effect leading up to the last bundle. Similarly, when a Stored Procedure is executed, series of SQL commands get run, leading up to the the 'end' of the stored proc. 

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