Crowdsourcing Our 2013 ASUG Webinar Planning for SAP BOBJ
Greetings SAP Community,
We are in the process of working with Americas SAP User Group ( ASUG ) to plan our 2013 Webinars and would Love to get Community feedback on what you would like to see presented as part of this process from your SAP Support Teams. Whatever topics are generated we will ensure they are shared Globally so all may benefit.
– If you have a topic you feel would be of interest please add your comments below for consideration.
– Could be a common pain point or a part of the product area you don’t feel is documented well enough for you to be successful.
2012 Sessions:
Thank you all for the wonderful topics and ideas. Based on the feedback we will use this list below to keep track of the planned topics. We have had some excellent Community feedback to Co-Present on these so we thank you! Anything we can do together will be more impactful and provide a great Community feel.
| 2013 Planned Topic | Planned Presenters |
|---|---|
| BI4 Calculation Engine Strikes Back | Coy Yonce, EV Technologies – Carly Thomas, SAP |
| BI4 Backup & Recovery | Raphael Branger, IT-Logix – Shiva Vishnubatla, SAP |
| BI4 Dashboards Best Practices & Optimizations | Amit Mathur, SAP |
| BI4 Mobile Best Practices | Dave Mau, SAP |
| BI4 Maintenance Best Practices | Chris Vozella and Saroj Parmar ; SAP |
It would be great to see a presentation around the calculation engine changes in BI4 (current version and planned versions). I'm happy to contribute and co-present.
'BI4: When the Calculation Engine Fights Back!'
-Coy
How about BI4 Dashboards Best Practices & Optimizations? I can contribute and present this. 🙂
With the upcoming release of SP5, what about what you will need to do to get your dashboards on BI Mobile
Hmmm... Might be interesting or in addition too... Mr. Amit?
Good one for sure. I can include this. 🙂
Love it! WebI Calc Engine and Dashboards is a great place to start!
How about Backup & Recovery - I can present too if you want 😉 http://wp.me/p2nNXm-1H
It would be great if the webinars would be accessible from the beginning to everybody. Even though we were ready to pay the membership fee ASUG did not allow us to join them as we are Europe based...
Thanks Raphael! We will figure something out on the delivery as a couple options to ensure it is accessible to all Customers / Colleagues globally! Backup and Recovery is a good topic!
Here are my Topic ideas:
Splitting the BI4 APS and AJS. - Give some practical examples of that stellar white paper you put out in September. I see you're doing this in November, but I think it could be done a few times.
Managing Java - Would be good to talk about how best to manage Java/JRE versions that seem to constantly creep up on servers and desktops.
SAP Router - This needs some serious exposure. Show benefits to the customer that are greater than the Big Brother factor.
Although this has been done before, I think it could use some revisiting: Best practices around opening a support ticket with SAP.
What constitutes a "Very High" priority. How to select the right priority. How to fill in the support questionnaire so you get a prompt response.
How best to communicate with the support engineer on the other side. Etc.
Going beyond Backup & Recovery - In light of Hurricane Sandy about to blow us away, perhaps a webcast (or short series) on Disaster Recovery.
Thanks Greg!
- Raphael is going to help us on the Backup topics but agreed a good one.
- I will include our process topics in an updated ' Get the Most Out of Support Deck'
Maybe some SAP router or Java topics! Will think a bit but I like!
Excellent. Thanks Greg! We will chat with Tim Coffman next week on the remote support topics. A deep dive on use cases for router might be nice! Will look at that first and then evaluate the others but good topics! We have an upcoming BI4 APS ASUG Pres ( will also be released as SAP Meet The Expert )
Lots of great ideas listed so far. Here are some more:
The SAP BusinessObjects Roadmap and Microsoft Technologies
I don't think enterprises are keen on adopting Microsoft Windows 8, but several other interesting technology pieces have either been updated recently or soon will be. Will SAP customers need to wait for next year's BI 4.1? Or is support coming sooner for BI4.0? Which ones (if any) will be supported by the XI 3.1 platform? Help BI administrators answer the questions our Windows admin/DBA peers will soon be asking us.
Microsoft Windows 8
Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 (already on Windows 8 and coming in November to Windows 7)
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 (both as a BI platform as well as AD integration support)
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (both as system database and a data source)
Microsoft Office 2013
Microsoft Sharepoint 2013
Best Practices for Universe Design with the Information Design Tool 4.0
While most of our knowledge from the legacy Universe Design Tool still applies, what tips and tricks are unique to the IDT? What are some of the common support calls SAP is receiving, etc.? Also, what new features are coming in IDT 4.1?
Crystal Reports Business Views and Cascading LOV's
While still technically still supported in BI 4.0 and legacy Crystal Reports 2011, what should customers do with them? Which features of Crystal Reports for Enterprise help customers retire them?
Liking it Dallas - I am thinking a need area in the CR area per our offline chat with James. We haven't provided much focus to that segment in the ASUG / Meet The Expert arena. Will discuss with James but might be cool!
In addition to everything that Greg Myers and Dallas Marks stated, I would like
to see more information on the following:
How each service in the Platform works in a clustered
environment. The documentation is a little week on how some of the new Adaptive
Processing Services are clustered (Active / Active) vs (Active / Passive) vs
(Single Active Node Only).
Managing session timeouts for the Web Application Server
contexts other than the /BOE context. What about /dswsbobje and /explorer ?
How to prevent a patch from overriding web application changes
that are not in the BOE/WEB-INF/config/custom directory. There are other areas
that get updated but patches seam to replace them.
Best practices for configuring the –maxobjectsincache, -thread
and –receiverPool switches for a 64bit CMS service. Seems like we should be
able to really increase the cache now that we have more memory. I would also
like more explanation from development on the –thread and –reciverPool switches.
Excellent. Thanks Jonathan. Some good ones! Clustering / Separating the tiers might be good one to start but like them all..!
These are all GREAT comments! Please keep them coming. I would like to see updates on the changes coming to the new support portal.
I can see that we have many great suggestion here already which is fantastic. Another hot topic will be Integrating BOBJ tool with BW data. SAP has provided some high-level documentation, but they are too high-level and too simplified. Customers also feel that SAP keeps selling them more tools instead of fixing the problem with the existing tools.
For example, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 has many limitation when it comes to BW data. Now SAP is telling their BW customers they should be using Design Studio (a.k.a. ZEN). But SAP fails to clarify to their BW customers that Design Studio does not support map at this time. Also Design Studio requires some programming knowledge. It is for a different skill set as compared to the Dashboards.
It will be great if we can have some webinars on how to use the existing tools to report on BW data. And if there are better tools on the horizon, how can the customers prepare and transition to get there? "Getting to the moon" is nice, but before we can get there, what can we do right now? Does SAP has any detailed plan to help their customers besides just showing how great the "moon" is?
Another good topic is: how to use SAP sizing methodology (e.g. T-shirt sizes) on BOBJ environment, including Mobile BI.
Thanks Simon - some nice ideas!
- The Futures pieces I will feed back to the solutions team as our focus from a Support end will be on existing products and doing our best to collaborate and document best practices, troubleshooting, and common scenarios.
Some of the potentials might be the following:
- WebI & Dashboards Best Practices for reporting off of BW / BICS
As for the Sizing there is an updated BI4 Sizing Companion expected in Q4 so expect that may be a good starter from a sizing standpoint.
Thanks
C
I am trying to get started with some SDK work (.NET). I have not done SDK since my 6.5 days of VBA in Full Client Documents. I have downloaded all of the documentation I can find about the SDK but something that would be really helpful would be a general overview of how to get started.
I am on 3.1 SP4 right now. But will also need to know the same information for when I upgrade to 4.1 next year sometime!
Since you're on XI 3.1 currently, much of the SDK is included in the installation for the product.
There's a variety of SDKs provided - specialized for the many features available with BusinessObjects, so it may feel daunting at first.
Usually what I recommend is to first define what you'll like to accomplish with the SDK customization, and start from there. Once you outline that, the selection of what SDK you'd want would become clear.
A lot of help can be found asking on SCN BI Platform .NET SDK forums:
http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/microsoft-net-sdk
Sincerely,
Ted Ueda
Sincerely,
Ted Ueda
I attended a session at this years BOUC in Orlando (session 0716) titled "Making SAP Work for You - SAP BusinessObjects 4.x Development and Maintenance Model." The presenter was Terry Penner from SAP.
I thought this was a "GREAT" session. It helped understand how support tickets are ultimately evaluated. How product bugs or enhancements become integrated into the development process and described the release cycles. He also included important links on the support portal.
I think this would be a good topic for a webinar under the SSIG for Maintenance. It really helps to know how the tickets are handled once they are submitted to SAP and what information should be included to assure better results and influence on product fixes.