We've refreshed the look of the newsletter and added two new features to help you get (and ask for) BI practical advice from experts in the field.
A New Look
To make the content more accessible, we've added a table of contents in the upper left side and shortened the text of each featured item, without cutting down on the content you've come to expect. You hopefully will also notice the updated banner graphic (the dashboards in the graphic were created my SAP Mentor Mico Yuk with SAP Dashboard Design (Xcelsius) 2008). And keeping with our social media activities, we've added links to the SAP Crystal Solutions Twiiter and FaceBook accounts so you can now stay current with all the latest developments.
Dear aBI
But for those looking for new advice, we've launched two new (regular) features that provide BI advice and lessons in different formats. First up is Dear aBI - an advice column written by SAP Mentors and other selected experts. Mico Yuk got us started with Dear aBI: Dashboarding Must-Haves, tackling questions such as licensing, connectivity to BusinessObjects Enterprise, and training.
SAP Mentor Ingo Hilgefort has written two blog columns addressing his domain of expertise, deploying BusinessObjects on SAP systems. In Dear aBI - SAP ERP with Crystal Reports and Xcelsius Ingo describes the option for how to use Crystal Reports and Xcelsius in combination with SAP ERP. In Dear aBI: SAP BusinessObjects and SAP NetWeaver BW InfoProvider, he answers the question around SAP BusinessObjects and SAP NetWeaver BW InfoProviders.
Do you have a question that you'd like addressed by a BI expert? To learn how to submit question(s) to one of our BI Experts, please visit the BI Advice Wiki.
Real World BI Stories
Sometimes, though, lessons are best told in story format, which is why we also launched Real World BI Stories. On the community we do a good job of telling the story about SAP BUsinessObjects solutions but in the field, the story gets much more complex and variable due to resource, political, technical, process, and/or time issues.
This is our effort at telling those stories with the goal of sharing the lessons learned by their respective authors, but also to spark further dialog about the particular story. Would you have done anything differently? Do you have a similar experience and if so, what are the details and what are the lessons you learned? Read Real World BI Stories: Upgrade or Else written by SAP Mentor Simon To. Find out what happened when he and his team had to upgrade from XI Release 2 to XI 3.1 in just 1.5 months, and the lessons they learned along the way.
Next Month
Next month, I'll be writing the Letter from the Editor from Nairobi, Kenya. This will be my third consecutive year working on the Social Entrepreneurship 101 program with the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. I look forward to telling you about the projects that I'm working on this year.
Until then, Kwaheri!
