What is New in BusinessObjects Analysis Office 1.4

Alexander Peter, Product Owner for Analysis Office, provided this webcast to ASUG yesterday.

Since the discussion covers future versions, this is subject to change.

Figure 1: Source: SAP

Figure 1 shows that BEx tools are in maintenance mode.  There is not an immediate need to go off BEx clients but no new innovation.

Innovation comes with the Analysis clients.

Content with BEx Analyzer – conversion support exists today in Analysis Office.

Figure 2: Source: SAP

Analysis 1.4 release is smaller than 1.3 as SAP focused on improving performance.  SAP launched a performance project to review performance challenges from end to end. 

Alex said there are two collective notes to help you identify things on backend to streamline communication between server and client.

Main feature was broadcasting on BI Platform, another gap for BEx Analyzer– for legal reasons can’t release GA .  SAP chose the BI platform to use the scheduling features.  Broadcasting is planned for Q3.

GA for 1.4 is planned for May.

SAP has enchanced interoperability with Design Studio – in 1.3 you could copy a data source and insert it in Design Studio.  Now it is extended to be an automatic transformation to Design Studio – crosstab, chart, and components into an iPad application.  The scenario is to have a prototyping tool in Analysis Office and can use it to prototype a dashboard.

Strengthen BI platform support – if you store it in Launchpad ad start it from the Launchpad – before only Excel opens.  It didn’t know about Analysis Office workbook.  SSO wasn’t honored.  Now solved in with Analysis Office 1.4 and BI4.1 platform

Waterfall charts not available in native Excel so they have added them to the toolbar in Analysis Office 1.4.

With the ASUG Influence Council, SAP prioritized features.  After broadcasting query designer was a the top. 

You can open the Query Designer from Analysis Office 1.4 .  You can reset data source to query designer

With the read mode feature you can change from reading from the cube or the master data.

Time-dependent hierarchy at the given key date is now available in 1.4.

Data refresh – before 1.4, when press refresh, render cross tabs but not show the latest data – re-rendered data – had to leave Excel and open it again.  With 1.4 have a real data refresh.

They have added a member selector for mass data

Figure 3: Source: SAP

Figure 3 was not covered during the webcast, but it gives you an overall direction.  Today is version 1.3, planned innovation is Analysis Office 1.4.

Subset of Q&A:

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Q: Will AA 1.4 allow us to create or design Queries in BW?

A: The Query Designer remains the tool to create queries in BW.‑

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Q: Will AA 1.4 finally have LogOn / LogOff button?

A: No plan for a logoff button… but I am aware that AA can hold onto connections for an extended period so this issue is being investigated.‑

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Q: is it possible to connect to Essbase cubes directly?

A: Not from Analysis Office‑

A: … but Yes with Analysis OLAP‑

Q: is AA 1.4 compatible with BOBJ 4 SP5?

A: It is platform independent‑

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Q: What is the comparability of AA 1.4? We are on BI 7.0 and BOBJ XI3.1 sp 3.

A: It is platform independent – there are some features dependent on BW version but overall it is platform independent.‑

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ASUG Annual Conference

Alex is presenting at ASUG Annual Conference regarding the ASUG Influence Council.  Below is a list of other ASUG Analysis-related sessions for the conference: