Introduction
Hello, my name is Amit Nagar and I work as Product Manager on SAP Business Objects products integration with Microsoft SharePoint.
In my Introduction to Integration Option for Microsoft SharePoint softwares you are already Introduction to Integration Option for Microsoft SharePoint software to the SBOP XI3.1 versions of IOMS along with few Product Screen Shots : Integration Option for Microsoft SharePoint software 1.0. This article will brief you about the soon to be released (H1, 11) , newer version of IOMS.
Highlights of the release
First things first, since the previous release couple of years back, I have been bombarded with questions of when do we support the 64 bit versions of SharePoint, and lately due to successful launch of SharePoint 2010, the queries kept pouring which let me support both of these in the current release.
Yes, IOMS for BI4.0 supports both SharePoint 2007 x64 and SharePoint 2010.
The second feedback that was about improving the user experience. In XI3.1, the look and feel was primarily .NET Infoview completely. The end user experience saw that people found the application alien to SharePoint. This is changing completely in this release, right from Breadcrumbs, contextual Menus, Search Results, toolbars, ribbon menus and so on…
No pre-requisites before installation. If you remember, for IOMS XI3.1 to be installed, you needed a .NET SDK at a minimum as a pre-requisite. Of course you need a SharePoint installedJ. In this release the SDKs are bundled along with the IOMS package. All you need is SharePoint
A significant investment has been made by BusinessObjects XI4.0 to bring forward a vastly improved search engine and experience. This 4.0 search engine is used by IOMS when searching for content stored in the BusinessObjects repository.
Last but not the least, much improved out of the box Site template, which is deployed as a SharePoint Site template and provides instant access to content stored in SAP Business Objects from SharePoint
More …..
- From BI4.0 onwards, there would be no .NET Infoview anymore. IOMS replaces it
- Authorized user can manage their content directly from SharePoint. This includes the ability for users to set report schedules, edit report properties, set parameters, view report history, delete files, send files to inbox, email or FTP and more. In addition users can add or upload new content from Local machine to BusinessObjects without having to leave IOMS.
- Users can open, view and interact with the content directly from SharePoint. Depending on the type of file, the file may be opened directly in a web browser (such as in the case of a crystal report, WebI document or Xcelsius dashboard) or in the appropriate thick client application (such as in the case of opening a Word document, PDF file)
- If you are an XI3.1 customer, you need to migrate your CMS to BI4.0 and have a 64bit SharePoint 2007 before using IOMS for BI4.0
- The URE or content explorer webpart or Document explorer is flexible now to choose columns you would want to see, number of items you would want , choosing the start folder etc.
- Ofcourse the Associate a report with a viewer webpart in SharePoint feature introduced in XI3.1 support packs , continues to be available in this release as well
- IOMS provides flexible site searching options allowing users to search just the IOMS site or the IOMS site plus all other SharePoint sites. When all SharePoint sites are search the best match results appear on a single page. Users are now able to conduct free text search across all of this metadata at the same time. In addition, the search index has expanded to include other meta information about files as well as the actual content of the file. For example, the dimensions, measures and values inside a WebI report are now indexed and made searchable by users. This is very powerful as now users can get results when searching for customers or products, locations or people or anything else that may exist in the content of files.
- IOMS wizard driven installer and SharePoint site definition template allows it to be quickly deployed with minimal configuration as a dedicated SharePoint site. Once deployed SharePoint administrators can further tweak and enhance the IOMS site as required but the goal of IOMS is to take customers most if not all of the way there out of the box.
- Introduced helpful Units like “Recently viewed” and “Recent Searches” on the Out-of-box template Home Page to enable quick navigation
- Users can browse to access content stored in their BusinessObjects inbox, personal folders, public folders or categories. The users permissions and rights as set in BusinessObjects are still enforced by IOMS ensuring that users are only able to access stuff they are authorized to access.
- IOMS is built on the 4.0 Business Intelligence platform and leverages the new Platform features for Auditing, Search and other areas. Being built on the BI Platform means that IOMS can be remotely administered using the web based Central Management Console.
- From an Authentication and SSO standpoint, users can login directly to BOE from SharePoint using their Active Directory, LDAP or BusinessObjects Enterprise Credentials. In addition Single Sign-on workflows can be supported using Kerberos or CA SiteMinder.
- IOMS includes SharePoint webparts that allow administrators to enhance existing SharePoint sites with business objects content. Out of the box IOMS 4 ships with a number of SharePoint WebParts that allow you to enhance other SharePoint sites with BI reports, dashboards and content stored in BusinessObjects. For example, an Xcelsius dashboard containing sales metrics could be embedded into the landing page of a SharePoint sales site. When users open the sales site the dashboard is refreshed to show the latest information on sales for that region or team.
The purpose of each webpart varies, but they fall into the basic categories of being able to view or pen files, being able to explore or search the BusinessObjects repository for content and being able to perform management actions on files such as scheduling reports or viewing report properties.
As a teaser attaching a screen shot of content explorer webpart.
*This mockup only for the purposes of communicating the proposed future capabilities of IOMS 4.0. Final screens may vary.
Lastly,
IOMS is a FREE and available as an add-in downloadable from the SAP marketplace similar to the way it was done it for IOMS 3.1
Looking forward for your feedback and successful release of this product.
More Later...
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