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Author's profile photo Former Member

Customizing the Web Intelligence UI in BI 4.1

For a long while now, BusinessObjects Administrators have wanted the ability to customize the Web Intelligence (Webi) user interface. While Webi is an amazing tool for ad-hoc report development, not every organisation is going to use every feature of Webi. In the past, when I would train end-users or ad-hoc report developers, I would spend a lot of time explaining “Here are the icons for XXX, which we don’t actually use in this implementation”. And it takes more time to explain why we are not using the function then it does to just cover it (like with data tracking, for example)

With the release of the BusinessObjects BI 4.1 ramp-up, administrators can now rejoice! One of the major new features for Webi is the ability to customize the user interface based on a user group. To access this feature, login to the Central Management Console (CMC) of your BI 4.1 server and then navigate to the Users and Groups area.

Locate the group you would like to customize Webi for and on the right-click menu, select “Customization” from the right-click menu as shown below in Figure 1:

/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/customize_222824.png
Figure 1: Customization options in the CMC in the Users and Groups area

This will open the dialog shown below in Figure 2, which is broken down into User Interface Elements (which components/icons/menus will be available to users) and Features (which are Refresh/Drill/Reading/Design/Data modes)

/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/customize1_222825.png

Figure 2: Customization options for hiding UI features/functionality

On the User Interface Elements, you can navigate through the group tree or alternately search for a particular element by typing in the box. For example, if you wanted to disable the “Send To”  function for the Finance group you could filter by typing “Send To” in the box and then the tree will be filtered for the different areas where this function appears, as shown below:

/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/customize2_222827.png

If you tick the box, this feature will be hidden—with this customization feature, all of the Webi UI elements and features are enabled by default and you will need to hide the ones you don’t want.

Once you have finished selecting the features you want to hide/disable, click “Save” to save your selection.

To test this customization, we still have the best practice of setting up an Enterprise user account (in this case, “TestFinance”) and adding it to the group in question. This will allow you to login as the test user and see that the feature/function has been hidden.

So whether you want to hide one feature, or strip Webi right back to just the basics, you are going to love the new customization feature. And to the BI 4.1 product team, well done! (Now if we could only edit BEx queries in HTML mode… 😉

Figure 3: Filtering the feature list

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      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi David,

      Thanks for the post. But we another issue where we need to hide some of the WEBI features to the end user while viewing WEBI report from the Infoview in Portal.

      And it was suggested here to use WEBI UI elements as you suggested to restrict the functionality for end user.

      https://ideas.sap.com/ct/ct_a_view_idea.bix?c=1DA84A30-1E5A-43FA-95C5-857A8B99D197&idea_id=0E190527-0C78-40E2-8BD7-D246665EF44B

      But we have an issue, using this method. Lets say I have a user who is 2 different roles and in one role he can view the report with bare minimum design/edit ability, but same user in another role with Analysis/Design ability. When I customize the WEBI UI elements for 2 different roles /usergroups but have the same user in both of them, and open a report WEBI Rich client, it displays the UI elements with least access. For example in one role I have the ability to see only Format option in WEBI rich client and in another role I have set therole to display all the options, When I log into Rich client and open a report from the second role with full access, I only see the Format option, not the other options.

      Looks like this might be a bug, as a Same user can be in different roles and should be able to view/edit WEBI report as per the access he has.

      Can you please advise. Thank you.

      Suman

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      It is worth nothing that in BI4.1 SP2, the relationship of checked boxes versus "hide" has reversed. 

      Now "Uncheck" means "hide"......

      Thanks,

      Peter

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Peter,

      Thank you for pointing it, I am aware of that.

      But the issue I am running into is a bit different, Please review above and let me know if there is  solution for this issue 🙂

      Thank you

      Suman

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Suman,

      Did you get a resolution to your issue with single user in multiple roles? We are having similar requirements and unable to find solutions.

      Thanks

      Sunitha

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Sunitha,

      No we have not found any resolution. There is an idea that was raised and if moe people vite for it they may change the functionality to suit requirement like ours which I think is very basic.

      Here is the link to Idea and you can vote for it..

      https://ideas.sap.com/ct/ct_a_view_idea.bix?c=1DA84A30-1E5A-43FA-95C5-857A8B99D197&idea_id=0E190527-0C78-40E2-8BD7-D246665EF44B

      Thank you

      Suman

      Author's profile photo Sreenivasulu Dasari
      Sreenivasulu Dasari

      Hi David..Good info. Thanks for the post.

      Author's profile photo Ashley Maslamoney
      Ashley Maslamoney

      Hi David,

      Thank you for this post. Your solution worked like magic 🙂

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi David, what about a case of the entire 'Customization' menu is not there? Any clues?

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      HI David. Consummately written as usual.

      Author's profile photo Andrew Dale
      Andrew Dale

      does not work in BI4.1SP5 against a SQLSERVER2008R2 repository database

      http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/2124846

      fix will be available in SP6