Teaching SAP Business Objects Business Intelligence

Many universities are thinking about incorporating BI into their curriculum.  This blog is designed to provide an insight into some of the resources available.  Firstly you will need access to the BI solutions.  There are basically two options.  Firstly you can use one of the University Competency Centres.  There is standardise curriculum and support which can make your life relatively easy.  An alternative is to use some of the free SAP Business Objects BI trial systems.  These are a good starting point while you are deciding which tools are best for your curriculum.  Tammy Powlas’s recent blog can assist you in understanding the different alternatives.  /people/tammy.powlas3/blog/2011/04/10/sap-businessobjects-analysis-suite-student-bi-club-notes–no-need-to-be-saved-by-the-bell

 Trial BI tools available include:

• Crystal Reports
• Dashboard Design (formerly Xcelsius)
• Interactive Analysis (Web Intelligence)

 These tools can be downloaded at http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/sme/freetrials/index.epx

•  Business Object Explorer

https://goexplore.ondemand.com/

• BI On Demand (Business Objects Explorer, Xcelsius, Web Intelligence)

http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/ondemand/try/index.epx

All these tools enable you to load your own data set.  Some tools have limits in terms of the number of rows.  I have created a data set based on GBI 2.0 which can be accessed here. 

http://www.business.vu.edu.au/sap/xcelsius/gbi%202%20GBI%20Dashboard%20final.xls 

Many of the tools have supporting online tutorials which are available through SDN

• Crystal Reports 

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/crystal-reports-elearning?refer=marketing

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/crystal-reports-enterprise-elearning?refer=main

• Dashboard Design (formerly Xcelsius)

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/dashboards-elearning?refer=main

• Interactive Analysis (Web Intelligence)

Official Product Tutorials – SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.x

• Business Object Explorer

Official Product Tutorials – SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 4.x

• Analysis

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/analysis-office-elearning?refer=main

Another very good source of workshop material is from previous TechEd conferences. TechEd 2010 had the following workshops:

• Two Hour, Hands On Tour Of The SAP Business Objects BI Client Products
• Best Practices For Integrating SAP Crystal Reports With SAP ERP And SAP NetWeaver BW
• SAP Business Objects Explorer Using Explorer As A Staring Point For AnalysisSAP Business Objects (Advanced) Analysis Edition For Microsoft Office
• Building A Multisource Universe With SAP Business Objects 4.0
• Building Dashboards That Rock With SAP Business Objects Dashboards 4.0 (Xcelsius)
• Best Practices For Using SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence With SAP Netweaver BW Today And Tomorrow
• Technical Deep Dive Into SAP Business Objects Analysis Edition For Microsoft Office.

Although you would be working with different systems and data sets these workshops allow you to understand the capabilities which can be adapted for your workshops.

 I hope this has been of assistance.