We learned at Mastering SAP BI in Australia this week that the Zen (also known as BusinessObjects Design Studio) registration for Beta program has been extended to September 14th.  If you are interested please see this link.

Additionally, beta participants can also download a new version of Zen/BusinessObjects Design Studio.  Below are some of the new things I noticed.

Figure 1

Figure 1 shows a new welcome screen with this beta version.  Included are tutorials, recently used applications, links back to SCN and create a new application.

Figure 2

After adding a data source to the application you can edit the initial view (this was not available before) as shown in Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 3 shows a preview of how the application will look, either as a crosstab or a chart.  This is after clicking the Edit Initial View. 

Notice in the upper right hand corner the “Pause Refresh”.  If you click this, you can make several navigation steps, unclick it, and then have only one trip made back to the server.  You can filter on an item that is not in the result set by adding it to the Background Filter.  This is similar to the other Analysis applications.

Figure 4

Figure 4 shows the preview of the chart.

If you click OK+Create Crosstab the application will create a cross tab and same for OK+Create Chart

I will write more once I start getting more experience with it.  These are new and welcomed features.