Webi 4.x tricks : summary
Hi everyone,
I am pleased to share with you some tips on the advanced use of Web Intelligence. These few tutorials allow you to give more value to your existing documents or to come or just to give you ideas for your future designs.
All my tricks are just a focus on some capabilities of the application, if you want more details about what you’re able to do with it, share your thought with me I’ll be happy to talk about it.
All entries are ranked by difficulty and by authors because I spend a lot (lot, lot, lot) of time searching on SCN great tips on Web Intelligence and some good entries are unfortunaltely hidden…so it’s time to raise your hands guys (and girls ).
New features in Web Intelligence 4.2
| Performance | Charts & other features |
|
New WebI feature in BI4.2 – Parallel Queries by Robert Twigg |
How to build a Custom Elements service for SAP Web Intelligence 4.2 by Pascal GAULIN |
New features in Web Intelligence 4.2 SP3
SAP BI 4.2 SP3: What’s New in Web Intelligence by Christian AH-SOON available here SAP BI 4.2 SP3: What’s New in Web Intelligence
Summary
| Tricks | Design | Performance | Sizing | Auditing | Following | Debugging |
Legend
Tricks
Designing
This section will help you designing the structure of your Web Intelligence document. You will be able to highlight your data into a Webi document well-designed with some best practices from experts.
| Author | Link to document |
|---|---|
| WILLIAM MARCY | Designing smart report with Web Intelligence |
| Merlijn Ekkel | Best Practices for Web Intelligence Report Design |
Performance
Challenge accepted ! Once your document is complete and functionnal, think about performance. A well designed document is nothing for user if it opens in 10 minutes. So performance is the key to help users to understand the power of Web Intelligence. Jonathan Brown made a full document containing all tips for Optimizing the Performance of Web Intelligence Documents.Others related documents can be added to this table to find easily how to optimize performance.
One of the big challenge with SAP BusinessObjects on SAP landscape is to get best performances with Web Intelligence based on SAP BW using BICS (Business Intelligence Consumer Service) connection. @kurt.holst gave us a complete overview of best practices using Webi against SAP BW.
Sizing
| Author | Link to document |
|---|---|
| Matthew Shaw | Performance Tips: Getting the most out of your Web Intelligence Processing Servers |
Auditing
| Author | Link to document |
|---|---|
| Matthew Shaw | WebiAdminTool – Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects) – SCN Wiki |
Following
The Web Intelligence Bulletin (this page) is a timely and regularly-updated information source providing links to hot issues, new documentation and upcoming events of interest to Web Intelligence Users and Administrators (extract from the Web Intelligence Bulletin – source : see below).
| Author | Link to document |
|---|---|
| Adam Stone & Ted Ueda & Jason Everly & Michael Neville | The WebI Bulletin |
Debugging
A structured introduction and collection of hints, basic product information, best practices and links in the area of Web Intelligence. The goal is to provide end users a basic knowledge package to avoid or solve issues during the day to day business.
Special ovation to Timo Seufert and ALL the BI TEAM HUNGARY for their work knowing that Webi incidents can make you crazy. Good job team !
Additional ressources
You can see more things about Web Intelligence on space dedicated :
SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
Creating Extensions to SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-54507
And more official documentation on Help Portal at :
SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence 4.1 – SAP Help Portal Page
One more thing, if you want to index your entry with a “Webi trick”, leave a comment and I’ll add your link ASAP. I’ll update this document frequently with new entries I’ll find out on SCN.
Have fun !




















Thanks William ! Keep Sharing
Thanks...Great stuff.
Great idea William and great presentation style .. You are a true blue blood blogger ...Even Sometimes it gets difficult for me to find my own blog
This will definitely increase the visibility of blogs ... However if the blog can be dynamic it would be awesome..
Thanks Durga ! Same for me, it's the jungle out there !
What do you mean by "dynamic" ? If you want, I can add you as an editor
That will be great.. I am planning for some more Webi trick blogs which I will put in yours as they are ready.. and also we can update it when other SCN members come up with a neat new trick..
Done. You can now edit the document.
Restless to read your next tricks !
Regards,
Thanks William.. have been thinking to write about couple of tricks but its little difficult to get the motivation write a blog.. Hope to write by next week
Hi,
maybe this blog can be helpful for someone
alternate row colors in a break
best regards,
andreas
Thanks for your entries Andreas !
You've been added to the summary with your Webi trick
Keep posting. Regards,
William
Thanks for sharing & summarizing all this tricks!
Great improvement for searching a single webi-trick!
Excellent presentation, like your communication style.
Hi William
Great stuff ,,thanks for sharing
really good ,,
Hello All
I encountered the below question in one interview. Can you please give me an idea on how to get it done.
Q: how would you accomplish to show total sales revenue at the end of bar chart which has monthly sales in X axis.
Can i get any help on this ??
Thanks
Dwaraka
Hi WILLIAM MARCY,
Really good collection & glimpse of important documents.
Thanks a lot for sharing...
Regards,
Mahesh.
Hi William...
Wonderful compilation of the tricks. Thanks for all the effort you are putting in.
After i looked at your list, i have also posted one of the trick : Custom message to replace 'No Data in the query'
Rgds
Nagavaibhav
Hi William,
Maybe the 3 below blog entries, from the former WebIntelligence Solution Manager, could be helpful to someone.
What is your opinion?
1/ http://scn.sap.com/people/michael.thompson/blog/2010/11/05/webi-tricks-butterfly-charts
2/ http://scn.sap.com/people/michael.thompson/blog/2009/08/31/using-web-intelligence-to-connect-your-data-silos
3/ http://scn.sap.com/people/michael.thompson/blog/2010/04/30/big-uses-from-a-small-feature
Morever, would you acept external content into this webi tricks listing ?
Regards, and thanks for the good job!
Gregory
Hi Gregory,
I'll look these entries later. I can also add you as a contributor if you want to collaborate on this document.
I'm busy now but I'll take time for that tonight.
Regards,
Hi William,
Thanks. If you add me as a contributor, I will do it.
Regards,
Are you just restricting to articles on SCN? There's quite a lot of good articles on other blogs on the web and it might be an idea to link to some of them
kind regards
Al
Yes ! Just articles from SCN
Hi William,
here one proposal for how to avoid #TOREFRESH:
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-51051
Best regards,
Victor
I'll add your entry soon
Great work
Good one.keep it up.
Thank you for sharing.
Hi William,
You have explained about the level and compared the level with the difficulty face. Its really different and nice blog. Keep it up.
Regards,
Hari Suseelan
Great idea William and great presentation style
Hello William,
Here is my blog for adding trend lines to webi charts: Linear & Polynomial Trend Lines in Webi
Thanks,
Huu Nguyen
Hello William,
Here is an Idea for Dense Ranking at Web Intelligence reports.
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-52445
Regards,
Selva.
Hi William,
great idea, as the list grows you may wish to categorize them, i.e. charts, calculations, formatting, etc.,
Thanks
Simone
Hi William,
Just came across a nice blog post by Harald Anton Mueller
Displaying WebI report parts via openDocument in BI 4.0
Could this be added to the list please.
Thanks,
Nagavaibhav
Great guys !
The blog is growing and growing 🙂
I'll add this day all your entries for sure. I'll set up categories for a next edit.
Keep sharing
Hi William,
Here is my next post for WebI Tricks: WebI Trick: Top N data for any integer N using Entry field Input controls
Thanks,
Huu Nguyen
Hi William,
Another post for Webi Tricks: WebI Trick: Line chart to show running average for each year
Thanks,
Huu Nguyen
Hi William,
Few tips helped me much, thanks alot!
Benpo.
Hi William,
Thanks for sharing..
Narayana
I've created a Blog that points to TD Doc & my WIKIs with more details on the new WebI Calc Rewrite Tool:
http://scn.sap.com/community/businessobjects-web-intelligence/blog/2014/04/23/bi-41-sp03-introduces-the-web-intelligence-formula-rewrite-tool
I'm not sure if it fits in here, but thought it might be useful if users are having difficulty with upgrades changing data returned by formulas due to intentional changes to the WebI calculation engine.
I love this document & promote it frequently!
Carly
thanks for sharing it with us
I have a new blog post about conditional formatting Conditional formatting based on User input
Hope it's worth sharing.
Thanks,
Huu
Hello All,
Can I increase the limit size of List of Values in WebI report ?? Its only upto 50K. I want to set it for 5L. Appreciate your help.
Regards,
Anila.
Respected All,
I want the result for every Request id separately: - Subtract dates under column (Ac Create Date from the below date) and get the difference between dates in the format of "No of days" in next column (Delay). Tried Days Between but it doesn't gives result. Please help...
For e.g.:- Request Id: - 547926 II Ac Create Date:-6/10/14 II Delay:-15 days (From the next below Ac Create Date)
Thanks...Great stuff.
Hi William, great compilation. Thank you very much.
Wanted to point out to you that your link to the blog: WebI trick: Create a SEARCH Input Control for your WebI report part! is actually bad. It has the http:// at the end instead of the start and is broken.
Thanks again.
Doug
Thanks Douglas,
I'm fixing the problem. Thank you for your feedback 🙂
Regards,
Thanks for sharing this compilation 🙂
Regards,
Christian
Nice Compilation
Excellent job William, many thanks for sharing!
Some good stuff are coming soon. Stay in touch.
Can't wait 🙂
Hi William,
Maybe great to add it to your WebI-Biblle, Open document lingo (hyperlink) through the whole BI platform. I'm trying to collect all opendocument links between webi's, design studio and webi, dashboard and webi, etc etc...
Your opinion counts, so do not hesitate to give me some feedback!
grtz
Koen
Hi Koen,
More we are, better is the knowledge ! I'll add your entry ASAP. I think OpenDocument and links between documents (and other apps) is somtehing very important for users to navigate in BI Platform. Thanks for your comment.
William
Hello William,
I had created a new blog on Webi Chart Trick. If you would like to add this to your list as well.
Merging Charts in WebI
Hi Wiilliam, I´ve added three blog posts that I thinl could indexed as Webi tricks.
How to set a page break in a Report
How to set alerts on a Column Chart and
Concatenating Values of a column
Cheers,
Rogerio
SOrry, there's another
http://scn.sap.com/community/businessobjects-web-intelligence/blog/2014/12/04/how-to-filter-a-table-by-it-s-linenumber
Thank you.
I'll have a look ASAP.
Stay tuned.
hi,
there goes anther one
http://scn.sap.com/community/businessobjects-web-intelligence/blog/2014/12/08/how-to-propagate-values-used-in-an-input-control-to-other-reports
Thanks. Whole compilation thing is great!
I really appreciate your time and effort!
Hi William,
Great idea,
Thanks for sharing this
Regards
Soumya
Good one.keep it up.
Nice one...
Very Helpful....
Thank you !
Great Work..
Thank you for sharing 🙂
Wow! Thanks so much for all the effort you put into this, William. Tracking down this kind of information is my biggest challenge!
Very helpful....thanks for sharing:)
This is a great knowledge booster 😎
Hello WILLIAM MARCY...Its really a nice work...lots of info in one go...Great work..keep it up...
THX !
Thank you William for putting all these great ideas or work around in one place. Appreciate your sharing!
Thanks for sharing WILLIAM MARCY, nice job.
One addition to the „ How to avoid/solve 20% of your Webi incidents ! „ series.
This series was a team effort of the BI Team Hungary. So the credit goes to the whole team.
Any feedback is very welcome (positive as well as improvements) to keep things as valuable as possible.
Thanks for your reply. I've fixed that point and congrats to all BI Team Hungary for this work.
Hi William,
How about adding Didier MAZOUE's following trick to the list?
Charts windowing
Thanks,
Mahboob Mohammed
Thanks for notify me. I'll add it soon !
William
Hi William,
Thank you.
Maybe you can also add these documents links in your list:
Thank you fior having a look on these posts.
Didier
Yep interesting ! 😉
@WILLIAM MARCY, how about adding the below document to this list?
Sum & Avg lines in Chart
Thanks,
Mahboob Mohammed
Yep interesting ! 😉 (also)