Part 1 Design Studio Class Notes (includes a Discount tip)

BOD310 today covered Design Studio 1.1; the instructor said it was the first time 1.1 had been taught in the U.S.  I did this as a virtual course.  This is good because I didn’t have to travel.  The downside is it hard to hear your fellow attendees over their speaker phones.

I used two machines – one to watch the Instructor on Adobe Connect, and the other to do the actual exercises. 

Right now it is a 2 day course and I can see Update BOD310 auf Design Studio 1.2! it will become a three day course.  This is a wise course of action as with all the features it can be tough to digest everything in just 2 days.

First, SAP provided a video of how to log on to the WTS – this is much needed, as you go through a couple of servers to finally get to the desired training system.  The instructor made it clear to write down all passwords (to the server, BW, BI Platform) up front. 

Some Highlights:

The instructor felt the farther you could go with Design Studio, the less you needed some of the other tools in the BI portfolio (his opinion).  He also said BEx Web is a subset of BEx Web Application Designer aka WAD (I hadn’t heard that discussed in a long time).  In comparison with the other tools, no design work is needed for SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP

He said the edit > Initial View feature is similar to the BEx query view feature.  The current feature missing, he said, is there is no drag and drop like BEx WAD.  The next version will have a navigation panel.

To fix the keyboard we went to Start Panel > Region and Settings – remove all except English – so you can do CTRL-Space to bring up the wizard.  I wonder if they could have used this at TechEd Amsterdam last week?  I saw complaints about the German keyboard.

All along the instructor said “Anyone who can do a pivot table can do this”.  The benefit of Design Studio over BEx WAD is the “what you see is what you get” at design time, said the instructor.

Design Studio does not have what-if analysis and Web Application Designer does not have this functionality.  Dashboards generates a web application has this.  If you need “what-if” analysis, use SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards

Otherwise, if BW is your data source, he suggested to start looking at Design Studio.  He said with Design Studio “it helps to know the BEx Query Designer”.

Some Terminology:

To BW person, a data source is source of data to load to BW.

Data source in Design Studio is asource of data and is usually a BEx query from BW to Design Studio, HANA view, soon Universe.  The instructor said to always use a BEx query as it gives you variables and other features.

It is called an Analysis Application, not a dashboard.  You create an Analysis Application in Design Studio.

Should you cange the data alias name to find out where data came from?  Why not change it?  The instructor suggested not changing the alias name in case you may have a button that says swap.  (not sure I totally followed).

Other features, which I will review later, include the align buttons and maximum space button for your panels/grids.

A panel is a “folder”, said the instructor.

“CTRL+SPACE is your friend with code”

Tab strip terminology:

I liked some of the analogies the instructor used.

• Children of tab strip are “tabs”
• Children of tabs (if you right click):
  • 

Discount for SAP Education

Source: our SAP Instructor:

“Save 10% on SAP Education HANA and Mobility courses when you use promo code 13HAMOB10-INST.

Save 5% on all other SAP Education courses when you use promo code INDIS52013 at registration.
To book, please call 1-888-777-1727, Option 2″

The instructor said we could share this.

Question & Answer

Q: Does Design Studio have a speedometer?

A: No

I will share more when I have more time to document.