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Author's profile photo William MARCY

Webi 4.x tricks : summary

Webi_tricks.png

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

openSrc_sdk.png

New WebI feature in BI4.2 – Parallel Queries by Robert Twigg

openSrc_viz.png

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

Picture Level Description
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend2_340541.png Level 1 Difficulty is very low. Easy to set up and you can turn easily your existing document into value-added report effortless
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend3_340542.png Level 2 Difficulty is low. Use analysis tools to interact with your report and give extra value to your operational reporting.
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Level 3 Difficulty is medium. Some of features used are advanced features and you’ve to be familiar with Web Intelligence.
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Level 4 Difficulty is high. Damn, your Webi document is so interactive and so cool. Restless to show and share it with others !
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend_340545.png Level 5 Difficulty is extreme. How did he do that ? I’ve read 8 times the document and I still understand nothing.

Tricks

Difficulty Author Link to document
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend2_340541.png

Abhijit Ingale

WEBI 4.0 Trick – Creating Progress Bar
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend3_340542.png

Rakesh Pattani

BOBJ Trick To Display Table Data In Hierarchy Format
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend3_340542.png Durgamadhab Mishra Webi tricks : Selecting Top N customers by Sales Percentage using a Slider
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend3_340542.png WILLIAM MARCY

Webi tricks : Interactive selecting and viewing TOPn data

/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Abhijit Ingale WEBI – Dynamic Line Chart driven by Input Control
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend2_340541.png Harsha Ganapathy Creating a Sparkline chart for IPad
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend2_340541.png Neha Kumari How to use formulae to change date and time formats in WebIntelligence
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend3_340542.png Andreas Kaufmann alternate row colors in a break
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend2_340541.png Tauseef Ali Mir Dynamic Variables using Input Control
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Nagavaibhav Elluru Custom message to replace ‘No Data in the query’
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Victor Gabriel Saiz Castillo All you need to know about #TOREFRESH
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend3_340542.png Michael Thompson Webi tricks: How to build a butterfly chart
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Huu Nguyen Linear & Polynomial Trend Lines in Webi
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend3_340542.png Michael Thompson Webi tricks: Bars embedded into rows
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend3_340542.png Huu Nguyen WebI Trick: Line chart to show running average for each year
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Harshil Joshi Date Variables in Web Intelligence
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Huu Nguyen WebI Trick: Top N data for any integer N using Entry field Input controls
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Tanav Gupta How to Add Document links (Interlink WEBI reports) in SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence 4.0
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Sateesh Kumar Show Trend Icon/Arrows in webi as per conditions

/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend2_340541.png

Huu Nguyen Conditional formatting based on User input
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Koen Hesters Dynamic Visibility within a Webi Report
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png David G WebI trick: Create a SEARCH Input Control for your WebI report part!
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Sateesh Kumar Dynamic Ageing Buckets in Webi
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Sujitha Grandhi Dynamic Visibility – Input Controls with Ranking
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Jonathan Brown Creating a Webi doc off of an unmanaged Excel data source on a network share
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Rakesh Pattani Merging Charts in WebI
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Rogerio Plank How to insert a Gauge chart inside a WEBI Document
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Selvarasan Subramanian Dense Ranking in SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Jordan Bishop How to create a Speedometer inside of a Web Intelligence document
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend2_340541.png Mahboob Mohammed Secret Custom Format (for Date) in Webi
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png swapnil bhootwala String aggregation on WEBI report level.
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Rogerio Plank How to set a WEBI document to autorefresh each n seconds
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Kwaja Noorullah Khateef How to grant filtering functionality for viewers/end-users on ‘Input Control’ enabled report blocks(Chart & Table) in web Intelligence reports without enabling the design mode’
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png SANDEEP SINHA Dimensions as Input Control- Dynamic Control | SCN
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Rogerio Plank Merging 3 Data Providers compatible 2 by 2
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Rogerio Plank Implementing a calendar like filter in the body of a report
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Didier MAZOUE Usage of mini charts in tables
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Didier MAZOUE Sort columns using input controls in read-only access
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Didier MAZOUE Top-Bottom ranking using input controls in read-only access
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend5_340544.png Didier MAZOUE Display vertical labels in tables
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Mahboob Mohammed Sum & Avg lines in Chart
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend_340545.png Mahboob Mohammed Accurately positioned Custom Comments in Column Charts
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Didier MAZOUE Display numbers in English words
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend2_340541.png Niraj Parihar Dealing with Null Values in a Chart
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend4_340543.png Didier MAZOUE Charts windowing
/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/legend_340545.png Mahboob Mohammed Relative positioning of a block w.r.t 2 (or more) blocks OR Container in Webi

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.

Author Link to document
Jonathan Brown Tips for Optimizing the Performance of Web Intelligence Documents
Kurt Holst How to Performance Optimize SAP BusinessObjects Reports Based Upon SAP BW using BICS Connectivity

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 StoneTed Ueda & Jason Everly & Michael Neville The WebI Bulletin

Debugging

Webi.png

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 !

Assigned Tags

      106 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks William ! Keep Sharing

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks...Great stuff.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      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..

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      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

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      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.. 

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      Done. You can now edit the document.

       

      Restless to read your next tricks !

       

      Regards,

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      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

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi,

       

      maybe this blog can be helpful for someone

      alternate row colors in a break

       

      best regards,

      andreas

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks for your entries Andreas !

       

      You've been added to the summary with your Webi trick

       

      Keep posting. Regards,

       

      William

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks for sharing & summarizing all this tricks!

      Great improvement for searching a single webi-trick!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Excellent presentation, like your communication style.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi William Great stuff ,,thanks for sharing really good ,,

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      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

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi WILLIAM MARCY,

       

      Really good collection & glimpse of important documents.

       

      Thanks a lot for sharing...

       

       

      Regards,

      Mahesh.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      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

      Author's profile photo Gregory BOTTICCHIO
      Gregory BOTTICCHIO

      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

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      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,

      Author's profile photo Gregory BOTTICCHIO
      Gregory BOTTICCHIO

      Hi William,

      Thanks. If you add me as a contributor, I will do it.

      Regards,

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      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

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      Yes ! Just articles from SCN

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi William,

      here one proposal for how to avoid #TOREFRESH:

      http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-51051

      Best regards,

      Victor

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      I'll add your entry soon

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Great work

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Good one.keep it up.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thank you for sharing.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      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

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Great idea William and great presentation style

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hello William,

      Here is my blog for adding trend lines to webi charts: Linear & Polynomial Trend Lines in Webi

      Thanks,

      Huu Nguyen

      Author's profile photo Selvarasan Subramanian
      Selvarasan Subramanian

      Hello William,

      Here is an Idea for Dense Ranking at Web Intelligence reports.

      http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-52445

      Regards,

      Selva.

      Author's profile photo Simone Caneparo
      Simone Caneparo

      Hi William,

      great idea,  as the list grows you may wish to categorize them, i.e. charts, calculations, formatting, etc.,

      Thanks

      Simone

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      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

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      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

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      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

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi William,

      Another post for Webi Tricks: WebI Trick: Line chart to show running average for each year

      Thanks,

      Huu Nguyen

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi William,

      Few tips helped me much, thanks alot!

      Benpo.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi William,

      Thanks for sharing..

      Narayana

      Author's profile photo Carly Thomas
      Carly Thomas

      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

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      thanks for sharing it with us

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      I have a new blog post about conditional formatting Conditional formatting based on User input

      Hope it's worth sharing.

      Thanks,

      Huu

      Author's profile photo Anila Dhharisi
      Anila Dhharisi

      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.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      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)

      Help.jpg

      Author's profile photo AMIT KUMAR
      AMIT KUMAR

      Thanks...Great stuff.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      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

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Douglas,

      I'm fixing the problem. Thank you for your feedback 🙂

      Regards,

      Author's profile photo Christian Schäfer
      Christian Schäfer

      Thanks for sharing this compilation 🙂

      Regards,

      Christian

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Nice Compilation

      Author's profile photo Carlos Pinto
      Carlos Pinto

      Excellent job William, many thanks for sharing!

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      Some good stuff are coming soon. Stay in touch.

      Author's profile photo Koen Hesters
      Koen Hesters

      Can't wait 🙂

      Author's profile photo Koen Hesters
      Koen Hesters

      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

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      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

      Author's profile photo Rakesh Pattani
      Rakesh Pattani

      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

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      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

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member
      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      Thank you.

      I'll have a look ASAP.

      Stay tuned.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member
      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks. Whole compilation thing is great!

      I really appreciate your time and effort!

      Author's profile photo Soumya .R
      Soumya .R

      Hi William,

      Great idea,

      Thanks for sharing this

      Regards

      Soumya

      Author's profile photo AMIT KUMAR
      AMIT KUMAR

      Good one.keep it up.

      Author's profile photo Soumya .R
      Soumya .R

      Nice one...

      Very Helpful....

      Thank you !

      Author's profile photo Vijay Bheemanathini
      Vijay Bheemanathini

      Great Work..

      Thank you for sharing 🙂

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Wow! Thanks so much for all the effort you put into this, William. Tracking down this kind of information is my biggest challenge!

      Author's profile photo Faiz Ahmed
      Faiz Ahmed

      Very helpful....thanks for sharing:)

      Author's profile photo Moumita Maity
      Moumita Maity

      This is a great knowledge booster 😎

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hello WILLIAM MARCY...Its really a nice work...lots of info in one go...Great work..keep it up...

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      THX !

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thank you William for putting all these great ideas or work around in one place. Appreciate your sharing!

      Author's profile photo Timo Seufert
      Timo Seufert

      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.

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks for your reply. I've fixed that point and congrats to all BI Team Hungary for this work.

      Author's profile photo M Mohammed
      M Mohammed

      Hi William,

      How about adding Didier MAZOUE's following trick to the list?

      Charts windowing

      Thanks,
      Mahboob Mohammed

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks for notify me. I'll add it soon !

      William

      Author's profile photo Didier MAZOUE
      Didier MAZOUE

      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

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      Yep interesting ! 😉

      Author's profile photo M Mohammed
      M Mohammed

      @WILLIAM MARCY, how about adding the below document to this list?

      Sum & Avg lines in Chart

      Thanks,
      Mahboob Mohammed

      Author's profile photo William MARCY
      William MARCY
      Blog Post Author

      Yep interesting ! 😉 (also)