Skip to Content
Author's profile photo Muralikrishnan Ethiraj

SAP BI 4.2 – BI Platform New Features

Hello Everyone,

Here I would like to highlight some of the new features available with BI 4.2 from the Platform perspective. Some of you would have already aware of these features, but here I want to list it for the newbies.

1. User Notifications:

This is the feature which helps administrator to broadcast information to users. Consider the case where the administrator of BO system wants to send a message to all/any particular users. This can be achieved through User Notifications from CMC. The administrator can specify the timeline for the notification to be visible. The notification can also be sent as an Email which is mapped to the user.

How to create Notifications:

Go to BO CMC->Events->User Notifications

Capture_1.JPG

Specify the timeline for the notification to be visible and enter the Title and Description:

Capture_2.JPG

Manage Subscribers:

Here the subscribers can be users or groups

Capture_3.JPG


How to view the Notifications:

Once the user log into BI Launchpad, the notification would be highlighted and also available under My Alerts section. By clicking “See More” the details can be seen

Capture_4.JPG


2. Commentary:

This service is provided by platform for all BI Clients. The comments are stored in Audit DB by default but it’s customizable


Where to Customize:

Go to BO CMC->Applications->BI Commentary Application->Properties

Capture_5.JPG

Capture_6.JPG

The comments are managed by rights, and the authorizations on commenting to be defined on individual folder or object level

Eg: If I want to enable rights for the documents under folder say “Murali_Folder”, go to its User Security and select the user, assign the rights

Capture_7.JPG

Capture_8.JPG


Adding/Managing comments are already discussed in http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-67437 which you can refer.


3. Recycle Bin:

This feature enables the user to restore accidentally deleted content. It supports only Public Folders and Content.


Where to Enable:

Go to BO CMC->Applications->Recycle Bin Application

Capture_9.JPG

The threshold (No of days) can be set and once the threshold reaches the files will be removed from Recycle Bin

Capture_10.JPG

Some of the deletes files available in Recycle Bin

Capture_11.JPG


4. Administrator Cockpit:

If the administrator want to get a fast insight about the BO systems, he can access this feature, which gives, simplified drillable visual page with key information like list of Servers/status, Jobs, etc and specific actions are possible

Capture_12.JPG


5. Promotion Manager:

With BI 4.2, the administrator can do a selective retrieval of objects from LCMBIAR file. New job will be initiated based on the selection made. This would be helpful when the LCMBIAR file contains more no. of objects and the administrator want to promote only lesser objects.

Capture_13.JPG


Also the admin can utilize connection overrides while promoting content


6. Rest API:

These APIs would help

  • For User Management (Add/Create/Modify)
  • Uploading/Downloading documents to/from Platform


7. Upgrade Manager:

During the upgrade,

  • the administrator can specify the Log Level
  • also he can control the content(Objects) while upgrading

Capture_14.JPG


8. Audit:

In BI 4.2, the scalability of Auditing has been improved, which means when more events logged, the repository can be accessed by more users. There will not be any performance bottlenecks w.r.t Auditing.


Please note that this is in the Beta release and it may change in the GA release without prior notice.


Thanks for reading and hope this helps you.


Regards,

Murali

Assigned Tags

      24 Comments
      You must be Logged on to comment or reply to a post.
      Author's profile photo Ajay Gupta
      Ajay Gupta

      The NDA you signed with SAP, I don't think it allows you to publish this type content without prior approval from SAP Rampup team.

      Author's profile photo Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Ajay,

      This content is similar to the one posted already w.r.t BI 4.2 Beta features on WebI and Semantic layer. Here it summarizes platform related features.

      Rgds,

      Murali

      Author's profile photo Ajay Gupta
      Ajay Gupta

      That content is published by an SAP employee &/or member of the BI 4.2 Beta / Ramp-up team.  I don't think you an SAP employee?  Did you ask for permissions from SAP before publishing this NON released product to the general public.

      Author's profile photo Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Ajay,

      I am an SAP Employee and the content is approved by Moderators.

      Rgds,

      Murali

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks for the valuable information ....and for shutting down the worthless heckling as well.  😆

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi There,

      Do you know when the BI 4.2 will be available for downloading?

      Thanks

      Ercole

      Author's profile photo Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Blog Post Author

      Hi,

      Currently it's in ramp up and planned GA would be in end of Q1 or early Q2 this year.

      Please note that it may also change without prior notice. Keep following SAP Service Market Place.

      Rgds,

      Murali

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Murali,

      Thanks for your answer. We are working at the moment on an upgrade from 3.1 to version 4.1

      The project has just started and we are aiming for end of June to go live

      Do you think we should wait a bit and implement 4.2 or implement 4.1 and next year upgrade to 4.2?

      Any suggestions will be usuful

      Thanks in advance

      Ercole

      Author's profile photo Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Ercole,

      BI 4.1 has lot of new features compare to 3.1 release
      and 4.2 is in ramp up phase only at the moment. From the upgrade stand point, the upgrade from 3.1 to 4.1 is well documented and you can search for the contents in SCN and even if you face any issues during the upgrade you can search of various SAP notes to fix. As far as I know upgrading from 3.1 to 4.2, there are not much documents out there.

      Hence I would say it is safe to move to 4.1(latest SP and Patch) at this moment and upgrade to 4.2 later.

      Please do check with your SAP Contact before taking any decisions on this.

      Rgds,

      Murali

      Author's profile photo Chandra Janardhansudhir Kunar
      Chandra Janardhansudhir Kunar

      Hi Murali,

      Thanks for the updates .Kindly clarify on the below

      1. We are on SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 SP 31 . can we implement BI 4.2 over it.

      2. Any Impact to BI 4.2 on upgrading from BI 7.0 to BW 7.3  ?

      Thanks & regards,

      Chanda

      Author's profile photo Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Chandra,

      Please note that BI 4.2 is not yet in GA. So you can implement it, once available.

      And its always recommended to keep the up-to-date release level even for BW.

      Hence I don't think there would be any issues to move to SAP BW 7.3 and implementing BI 4.2.

      Rgds,

      Murali

      Author's profile photo Henry Banks
      Henry Banks

      FYI only - i answered the same question (same poster) over here: Re: BI 4.2 implementation

      Author's profile photo Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Henry.

      Author's profile photo Chandra Janardhansudhir Kunar
      Chandra Janardhansudhir Kunar

      Thank You Murali and Henry

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Murali,

      Thanks very much for your answer. I had an idea already, just nice to get another view on this

      For the moment we are going for 4.1 sp07 upgrade as it's well documented

      Thanks

      Ercole

      Author's profile photo Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Muralikrishnan Ethiraj
      Blog Post Author

      Hi All,

      BI 4.2 is GA as of March 8th, 2016.

      Link to what’s new document : Take a deep dive into What’s New in BI 4.2


      Rgds,

      Murali

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hello! I am wondering how to provide access to the BI Administrator's Cockpit. Is this something that can only be accessed if you are in the Administrator's group?  I know this is the case with other tabs, such as Authentication, Monitoring, etc.

      I see rights in access levels for the BI Administrator's Cockpit, but I do not see any way to manage user security for the application.

      Thank you!

      Cindy

      Author's profile photo Jawahar Konduru
      Jawahar Konduru

      Click on the group, you want to grant access to 'Cockpit' and select 'CMC tab configuration' and select Cockpit option and Grant the access.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks for your reply! I've already provided access through the CMC tab access, and I've provided the access rights as well. I just don't have any way to add user groups and the access levels to the application (i.e., there is no "right click", "User Security" option).

      Author's profile photo Lokesh Borse
      Lokesh Borse

      Hi Murali,

      We have recently installed BI 4.2 in our Test environment and I was trying to navigate through above mentioned new features. I found two issues.

      1. User Notifications: I followed up steps and set the notification, added myself as Subscriber. I logged into BI launchpad in that time window however can not find any alert. I did try restarting event server but did not help

      2. Administrator's Cockpit: Getting error "Enter a valid input (RWS 000079)" after clicking on it.

      Regards,

      Lokesh

      Author's profile photo Henry Banks
      Henry Banks

      Hi

      please contact Product Support via incident message for these issues

      regards,

      H

      Author's profile photo Lokesh Borse
      Lokesh Borse

      1. Issue resolved after creating new event server and restart

      2. Only Enterprise administrator can access this. Though I am a member of Administrator's group, I can not access and get the error. There is no setting in CMC>Applications to grant rights to Cokcpit. It should be there.

      Author's profile photo Henry Banks
      Henry Banks

      probably one to check again with SP03 when it comes out in Q3 .. lots of enhancements for cockpit

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi guys,

      I have the same issue and I am in SP03.

      I create a new message into the community : https://answers.sap.com/questions/106985/bo-42-sp3-bi-administrators-cockpit-security.html

       

      But no answer, have you advance about this ?

       

      Thank

      Gouwen