#BI4 Feature Pack 3 Planned Features for the BI Platform

Greg Wcislo, SAP, provided an ASUG webcast last week on planned BI 4 Feature Pack 3 features for the BI Platform.  As usual, the usual disclaimer applies and things discussed below are subject to change at any time.

Source: SAP, Figure 1

Today in Figure 1 covers the current 4.0 release.  This webcast covered planned innovations which is in the BI 4.0 Feature Pack 3 release.

Insight to action is a new feature for navigating to the SAP system.  This will allow you to go from a report to an SAP ERP system and do things like approve an expense report.

Also included are improved HANA support and Kerberos single sign-on.

Figure 2, Source: SAP

Greg provided this link to describe the report to report interface (RRI).

This feature is limited to SAP systems.  It will be available for Crystal Reports and Dashboards.  It allows you to navigate from BI into ERP systems directly, going into a transaction, and then take action on it.  Greg expects in future releases this will expand to other clients.

Figure 3, Source: SAP

Figure 3 shows an example of how the RRI feature would work from a report you have a menu to take you to “an action”

Figure 4: Source SAP

BI Suite to work with HANA; it can use HANA database as a repository for auditing.

BI clients can use HANA SSO using Kerberos.

Greg said they are adding Kerberos support for Linux as well for HANA.

Figure 5, Source: SAP

Greg said they worked on making products more customizable.  An example is customized install packages that are lighter. 

Multi tenancy is for companies looking to offer SaaS –  provisioning tools and templates.

Custom user attributes allows you to pull down from active directory, LDAP, SAP systems.

Figure 6, Source: SAP

Figure 6 shows support of theming including changing icons and backgrounds

When applying patches you do not need to reapply  these.

Figure 7: Source: SAP

Figure 7 shows you can pull down attributes by user id

Greg said a lot of information in LDAP, such as country, region, code, and now these can be consumed in BI Platform and stored in repository – from external identity provider

You create attributes in user console or using scripts with an SDK and then use this to build queries on semantic layer level.

Figure 8: Source: SAP

SAP has been working on bringing StreamWork to BI as a self service feature.  You can send documents to StreamWork to collaborate, possibly cross companies, have discussions, ask questions regarding reports.

Figure 9, Source: SAP

Figure 9 shows an example.

On top screen you see a discussion on a report, follow certain discussions

You can also subscribe to events

Unlike Facebook, your feed will show what you are following.

Here is a link to a YouTube demo that Greg provided:

Figure 10, Source: SAP

Greg said the features in Figure 10 are intended to lower “TCO” or total cost of ownership.

Hot backup is when you back up system without taking it down. 

For monitoring they took feedback from 4.0 initial release to help get to root-cause.

Figure 11, Source: SAP

Figure 11 shows the future direction, subject to change.  Greg said they are working on deployment flexibility; really working on making it simpler to “reduce TCO” to automate repetitive tasks

Multi-tenancy is needed to share systems and the future direction is to make it easier to manage. 

Greg said they hope to be in ramp-up soon with customers on BI 4 Feature Pack 3.

Question & Answer (a subset):

Q: Is RRI available from Web Intelligence, can RRI be to SAP systems or can RRI be done to Non-SAP systems such as Peoplesoft or Oracle

 A:  RRI is not yet available from Web Intelligence, only Dashboards and CR, and at this time it is available to SAP systems only.

Q: Will you be able to create UNX directly against ECC, any point in the future ?

A:  None at this time, again Greg encourages posting this on idea place.

Q: What is the place and role of Advanced analysis in BO 4.0 FP3, are there any planned enhancements in Advanced Analysis

A:  Advanced Analysis is the old name.  New name is Analysis and features were covered in 12/7 webcast, a webcast summary is posted here.

Related to BI 4 Feature Pack 3:

At last week’s SAP Influencer Summit, SAP Mentor John Appleby talked with SAP’s Steve Lucas andAdam Binnie about BI in 2012 and BI 4 Feature Pack 3 on this JD-OD.com video:

My thanks to SAP for providing ASUG these webcasts.