Is it possible to leverage the portal drive capabilities when working with reports from my Business Information system? The answer is YES! As you know, the portal drive allows you to work with documents, including BI reports, the same way you would work on any Windows drive. The primary function of the portal drive is to allow you to map folders in the Portal as local drives. In addition, you have access to such great features as: working offline, working within the familiar Windows Explorer environment, sharing files and folders, and locking files and versioning! Just imagine the possibilities!! One of many possible scenarios to consider could be this…. You are the U.S. VP of Sales for a large toy manufacturer. As such, you are to be automatically informed when new data is loaded into the sales billing report. It is Sunday afternoon and you are leaving tonight to meet with a large customer. Before heading to the airport you log on to your company’s SAP NetWeaver Corporate Portal. You immediately see that you have received a notification via e-mail from knowledge management that the sales billing report has changed. The sales billing report has been placed in a KM folder via BI’s Information Broadcasting capabilities. Time is short so you leverage the portal drive and map the folder as a local drive. Now you will be able to work offline while flying to your customer’s location. This allows you to review the report to see that the billing quantities in the current quarter have decreased. Knowing you will be in meetings all day tomorrow with a customer you create an e-mail for your US Sales Manager instructing them to follow up on the billings and prepare to discuss after your customer meeting. The US Sales managers will also have access to the report via the SAP NetWeaver Portal.
