Integration of BOBJ with SAP Portal

[S0019300750]

What are the benefits of Portal Integration?

We can integrate Business Intelligence (BI) content from Business Objects into the SAP NetWeaver Portal. With this integration, customers are able to mix BI content and other applications easily.

They can also personalize delivery of content based on SAP user roles and groups.
Having enterprise-wide access to relevant business information from a standard enterprise portal allows customers to make better-informed decisions. Consolidating the infrastructure for application and BI content delivery leads to reduced cost and time savings.

In our assignment, we integrated Portal 7.3 SP 7 with BOBJ Version: 4.0 SP 4 Patch 3 using below steps. The steps are more or less similar for other portal versions. Use references section for other versions of portal & BOBJ.

Steps:

  1. Get the com.sap.businessobjects.iviews.par and com.sap.businessobjects.iviews.templates.epa files from below BOBJ BI server location:

       [BI4_INSTALL_PATH]/SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0/warfiles/portlet/iviews

  2. Import EPA file to Portal as shown below. Wait till import gets completed successfully (avg. 1 minute) and then restart portal.

  3. Prepare EAR file from EPA file.

  Follow instructions in SAP Note “1672422 - It's not possible to create an iView using the Business Objects Document List Template iview and the    Enterprise Portal 7.3” to correct com.sap.businessobjects.iviews.par file and then migrate to EAR file.

4.    Deploy the EAR file to portal using NWDS.

5. Create System Object using new system template: SAP BusinessObjects System Template

Update properties as mentioned below:

System Name:                          SAP_BOBJ

System Alias:                            SAP_BOBJ

Property Category: SAP Business Objects

Web Application Server URL:     http://hostname:port/BOE

Property Category: User Management

Authentication Ticket Type:        SAP Logon Ticket

Logon Method:                         SAPLOGONTICKET

Property Category: Connector

Maintain the properties – Group, Logical System name, Message Server, SAP Client, SAP System ID, Server Port, and System Type

Connector system is nothing but SAP system (most cases BW) used for SAP authentication of BOBJ. Contact your basis team for these details.

6. Make sure SSO is configured between Portal and SAP System mentioned in connector properties of System Object in last step.

Connection test shall work fine for SAP_BOBJ system which we created in earlier step.

7. Create iView using SAP_BusinessObjects_Document_List template for BI launch pad.

Update the Business Objects properties of iView as below-

Preview iView and you will directly get logged into BI launch pad. We are done!

Issues?

By default, you won't see Locale and Timezone settings under Preferences in launchpad if launched from portal. The issue and solution is described in

SAP Note 1885357 - Locales and Timezone settings are not present in Bilaunchpad preferences from SAP Portal

References:

1. SAP Note 1687295 - How to configure Single Sign On (SSO) on the SAP Netweaver 7.x portal to BI4

2. SAP Note 1531960 - Missing iView Template from SAP EP

3. http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/Appendix+of+the+BOEXI3.1+Integration+into+the+SAP+EP

4. http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/BI4+-+How+to+create+SAP+BusinessObjects+Document+List+temp...