BI 2014 Design Studio and Dashboards – Looking to the Future
SAP’s Global Center of Excellence provided this presentation today, discussing both Dashboards and Design Studio.
SAP said Xcelsius has drawbacks. It started as an end user tool, click, drag and drop – easy to use; users wanted more. As user needs to change, tool became sophisticated. Sophistication = complexity. Tool has a good user experience but not enough for IT – design becomes more complex.
Moving to a different user experience in terms of design and consumption
With “Agile visualization” users are empowered to tell their own story. With self service they can consume data that they need “on the fly”
Figure 1: Source: SAP
As Figure 1 shows you move from static view on left to applications on the right.
With Design Studio there is “Less limitation on pulling back an entire dataset, custom branding and styles”
The application side is for customization
The upper right of Figure 1 shows three areas in portfolio
SAP said today that “Design Studio is the future of dashboarding for SAP”
They also said “this is not end of life for Xcelsius”
Why so many tools? Through acquisition
Figure 2: Source: SAP
Xcelsius creates instantly compelling visualizations; biggest drawback was amount of speed it brings back data.
It is difficult to get a lot of data in Xcelsius and have it have acceptable performance
SAP BEx Web Application Designer is tied to BW; it could handle massive amounts of data. It does not have ability to create compelling visualizations
It needed more interactivity, mobilization
SAP needed the technology to mobilize Flash, and performance with BEx WAD
How to move forward and tool that worked with both sides required a “complete re-architecture” to provide good design experience
Figure 3: Source: SAP
With Dashboards SAP began by mobilizing components with new HTML5 rendering engine, starting with BI4 SP5
SAP then introduced Design Studio for BW and HANA.
The first release of Design Studio was entirely HTML5, with every component is mobilized in Design Studio
Not every component is mobilized in XCelsius
Today we are In the Visualize stage, of Figure 3.
The future is one tool for building a dashboard but it is not Lumira, not self-service
There are “No plans to end of life Xcelsius but it will be put into maintenance mode at some point”. Updates to BI4.1 will protect it
SAP “does not want anyone to abandon investment made”
“New functionality and features will only happen in Design Studio” said SAP
Now focused on tablets and phones because you don’t interact with phone like tablet. Phone is small and form factor and interactivity
Design Studio uses HTML5 exclusively – desktop and mobile
Figure 4: Source: SAP
Design Studio includes universe support; it is a different approach than XCelsius
SAP said to “think about long-term ramifications of this; XCelsius relies on Excel – do not want to bring in a lot of data and calculations due to speed”
Figure 5: Source: SAP
If you don’t want to create SDK, talk to partners
If you have a need for visualization/widget you can do this with the SDK
Another partner is doing geomapping
Another partner adds commentary
Another partner allows you do use Xcelsius in Design Studio (only works with HTML5 content) – next release they plan to use SWF files
Figure 6: Source: SAP
Figure 6 shows where at with the Roadmap (subject to change) and where planning to be in few months
Middle column is what is planned for 1.3
Third column is for inclusion in later release
Note that this is the current state of planning
With 1.3 it includes planning for BW and write back
SAP is considering a HANA native deployment option – deploy to HANA
Release 1.3 includes charting – 120 chart types available from CVOM –
SAP has added conditional formatting in charts
Support is planned for Lumira visualizations
Version 1.3 will have application bookmarking and visualizations – work with data, analyze it – “come back to where you were” – capture as a URL to send to your team
Design Studio 1.3 has a Fiori-style dashboard
The Future
Future is 1.4 and beyond.
For the BW side includes RRI support, with interactivity features from BEx WAD – closing the gap
SAP plans to offer offline views, migration tools, improve interoperability with Lumira. This includes building apps from Lumira Data Sets, building a Design Studio app from a Lumira Storyboard. This does start to blur the line for self-service & dashboarding & apps
Resources provided by SAP:
Dashboarding Strategy and Statement of Direction
• http://blogs.sap.com/analytics/2012/04/17/the-future-of-dashboards-strategy-and-direction/
Executing on the Statement of Direction
http://blogs.sap.com/analytics/2012/04/17/the-future-of-dashboards-strategy-and-direction/
SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio Tutorials
Official Product Tutorials – SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.x
SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio Community
SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio
Figure 7: Source: SAP
Towards the we ran out of time to cover this but it is an important slide.
Design Studio is covered at ASUG Annual Conference – it s also part of the ASUG hands-on pre-conference session:
Hi Tammy,
This is a very timely post and certainly provides more clarity around the points raised in the recent What is the future for Dashboards discussion. Thanks for the detailed write-up.
I do have one question, more out of curiosity. You mention that "Design Studio 1.3 has a Fiori-style dashboard". Can you shed some more light on what we can expect? Does it mean that the standard Design Studio components will all be styled according to the Fiori look and feel, or is there going to be an entirely new dashboard component with the Fiori look?
Regards,
Mustafa.
Mustafa - great question, but unfortunately the session didn't get into those details. To me it looked like the Fiori look and feel
Hopefully we'll get more details soon.
Hi Tammy,
Thanks for the info!
did they mention how the consolidation of the Dashboard tools is supposed to take place? I only read it will be" one tool for building a dashboard but it is not Lumira, not self-service". Did they shed more light into what that they actually plan?
Thanks
Emanuel
Unfortunately the session ran out of time and there was no time to get into those details. Later in the week at BI2014 they said we would hear / learn more later in the year (likely after Design Studio 1.3 release - my guess only)
I hope to learn more at ASUG Annual Conference in early June as well.
Hi Tammy,
thanks for all that information.
For me it's not clear enough, on how to bring the BI data (design studio) to the enduser.
Is there a way, to integrate it as a Fiori Tile?
We have rolled out Fiori and now the users ask how they can access all their BI-reports.
thanks
marius
Hi Marius - I am not a Fiori expert but you can experience Fiori with BI by trying it out in the SAP CAL Library free trials like I did here ERP on HANA Trial Experiences - includes BI, Fiori, Lumira Server and More
I know Lumira integrates with Fiori
See Trial and Developer Offerings with SAP Cloud Appliance Library
thanks, will try that out...
do I understand it correct, that design studio creates an iview?
do I have any other options? like plain HTML5?
I haven't used BW with the portal in years but Design Studio can deploy to BW and I understand that there is a Design Studio iview
Great info as always, Tammy!
The future is definitely unification and I agree with SAP to simplify the tools.
BTW Is there any info how to migrate from WAD to Design Studio?
Is a mass conversion of WAD templates possible?
Regards,
Jürgen
Hello Jürgen Noe
Thank you for reading and commenting.
Please see SAP Roadmap (SMP logon required) at https://websmp102.sap-ag.de/~sapidb/011000358700000390622012D.pdf - migration is a "future direction" meaning planned some time after next release, with no definite time given.
Hi Tammy,
Thanks for the great post.
We are planning to migrate SAP WAD templates to design studio. Is the feature of conversion available from 1.5 version onwards? Can you please let us know?
Regards,
Laxmi
Laxmi - please see the latest roadmap at service.sap.com/roadmap - conversion is not planned