Insights

SAP BusinessObjects iPad app & SAP BusinessObjects On-Demand

22 Jun 2010 Mobile, Business Intelligence (BI), Business Objects, Consumer Business

Having taken delivery of a shiny new iPad it's now time to put it to good use and demonstrate it's potential as a business tool. SAP released the SAP BusinessObjects app for the iPhone quite sometime ago and this app has now been updated for the iPad. Rather than simply download the app and play with the sample data, this blog post will demonstrate how you can upload some sample data onto Business Objects On-Demand, create a sample dataset, apply some sample filters, and subsequently view these master and filtered datasets on the iPad.

Pre-Requisites

1. Create an account at SAP Business Objects on Demand
2. Download the app for the iPad
3. Download the demo source files

 Step 1) Load Source Files into SAP BusinessObjects On-Demand

Log into your account at SAP BusinessObjects On-Demand (https://bi.ondemand.com/session/new )

 

After logging you will be presented with the Reports and Data page. Initially this will be empty and it is here that we will upload our sample file that you will have downloaded from the Pre-Requisites.

Click on the 'Add New' green button and select 'Add Dataset' from the drop-down menu.

Browse for the file that you downloaded from the pre-requisites and click the 'Add Dataset' button. You will then be presented with the dataset as follows. Click on the 'Explore'.

After clicking on the 'Explore' tab, click on the the 'Configure' button on the top right hand side of the group box.

After clicking on the Configure button, scroll to the right until you see the Units and Costs columns. Click on the Units header, and select 'Sum' from the drop-down list. Likewise, click on the Cost header and again select 'Sum' from the drop down list.

After clicking OK, you will now see that both Units and Price are included as Measures in our dataset. Our next step is to create visualisations.

Step 2) Create Filtered DataSets

For this demo, we will create three filters to our DataSet; Units by Country, Price by Age, Units and Price by Region. Let's first begin with Units by Country. Still in the current screen, click on Units in the Measures column. Then click on the drop-down button above the graph which will have the best guess assigned and click on Country. We will stick with a bar graph for this Visualisation. Now click on the 'Create Visualization' button on the top left hand corner of the group box.

You will see the following screen:

Now click on 'Edit' next to the visualization title "NEW VISUALIZATION" and rename this to Units by Country.

If you scroll down on the page, you will see detailed information about this visualization. This visualization will not be viewed in the SAP BusinessObjects iPad app, but rather the Filtered DataSet that the visualization is based on, in this case 'Bo Demo - Filtered View for Export.

To make it easier to select the correct filtered dataset in the iPad app, we will now rename this dataset to something more meaningful. Click on the Hyperlink for Bo Demo ' Filtered View for Export'. You will be presented with the following screen.

Now click on the 'Edit' hyperlink next to 'Bo Demo - Filtered View for Export' and rename to 'Units by Country' as press the Save Changes button.

We can now continue onto our next Filtered DataSet. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select the Bo Demo hyperlink located next to "Master DataSet?" Then click on the Explore tab. Select "Price" from the measures column, and then click on the drop-down list located next to price (above the graph) and select "Age".

Now click on the "Create Visualization" button and then click on the "Edit" hyperlink to rename the visualization to "Price by Age".

Again, we need to rename the Filtered DataSet to a more meaningful name. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select the hyperlink for the dataset titled "Bo Demo - Filtered View for Export". Then click the "Edit" hyperlink to rename the DataSet to "Price by Age".

 

We can now continue to our final filtered dataset, which will be Units and Price by Region. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select the Master DataSet hyperlink titled "Bo Demo". Then click on the Explore tab. The Units measure will most likely be already selected, if it isn't then select Units. Now, click on the drop-down button for "Units" (above the graph) and select the checkbox for "Price". This will give us both Units and Price as our measures. Click on the Drop down list to the right and select "Store".

You will notice that that the units measure is too small in comparison to the price measure and does not show on the graph. Select the Comparison button to the left of the graph and select the comparison type illustrated as follows:

You will now see that the right axis of the graph contains the Unit's measure and now we can see Unit's in our graph.

Click on the "Create Visualization" button at the top of the page and then edit the name to be Units and Price by Region.

Let's rename the Filtered DataSet by scrolling down the page and clicking on the hyperlink for "Bo Demo - Filtered View for Export". Click on the Edit hyperlink to rename the Filtered DataSet and call it "Units and Price by Region".

We have now completed all of our filtered datasets and can now go to the iPad to look at the results.

Step 3) Configure the iPad to see our SAP BusinessObjects On-Demand data

Whilst on the iPad, go into the app titled "SBO Explorer" and accept the licence terms. You will notice that the app is first setup to for sample data provided with the app. We want to link our app to the data we have just created in SAP BusinessObjects On-Demand. Press the "Settings" button just above the home button to the right.

Now enter your SAP BusinessObjects On-Demand username and password screen in the section on the bottom half of the screen.

Click on the Sign In button and the app will log you into your account and take you to you "My Stuff" section which will contain a link to your master dataset as well as each of the filtered datasets that we have created in the previous steps.

You can now explore your sample SAP BusinessObjects On-Demand data on your iPad.