Advice for Migrating from SAP Dashboards (Xcelsius) to SAP Design Studio Webcast Summary

[TammyPowlas]

This was a webcast last week from Gopal Krishnamurthy of Visual BI.  Below are my notes as I heard them

Figure 1: Source: Visual BI

Figure 1 shows the history of SAP Dashboards, formerly known as XCelsius

Figure 2: Source: Visual BI

Figure 2 shows the Flash issue and lack of browser support

Figure 3: Source: Visual BI

At this point of the session Gopal took some questions

Question & Answer

Q: How long support Dashboards?

A: no end of life from SAP, not getting investment

Q: licensing costs of converting from XCelsius to Design Studio?

A: caveat, check with SAP Account Exec – think none

If you own XCelsius you own Design Studio

Figure 4: Source: Visual BI

Design Studio offers hierarchy support, currency conversion, Integrated Planning – read and write to IP cubes

Today Design Studio has 3 different deployment options; new investment is in BI platform

Figure 5: Source: Visual BI

Design Studio offers background processing, parallel processing

Global scripting can be reused – useful in maintaining and supporting

Figure 6: Source: Visual BI

Design Studio has containers are somewhat responsive

If you need offline a dashboard, Design Studio has this in roadmap but Dashboard can do this today

Figure 7: Source: Visual BI

I don't have notes on Figure 7; it is self-explanatory

Figure 8: Source: Visual BI

You can do ad-hoc analysis on dashboard without going to IT

At runtime you can change query

Figure 9: Source: Visual BI

Connectivity to BW/HANA without universe

Figure 10: Source: Visual BI

Figure 10 shows component comparison

More Question & Answer

Q: How rate Design Studio vs non-SAP tools?

A: In terms of SAP connectivity it beats those tools

SAP is bringing in self-service features

Q: What about customers without HANA?

A: Works with BW and universe without HANA

Figure 11: Source: Visual BI

Figure 11 shows performance statistics between the two products

Figure 12: Source: Visual BI

Figure 12 shows some migration best practices; be sure to size your BI platform properly

Figure 13: Source: Visual BI

Make your application more business focused as shown in Figure 13

Figure 14: Source: Visual BI

Figure 14 gives some reasons to use extensions

Figure 15: Source: Visual BI

Figure 15 shows Visual BI recommendations; if you require offline capabilities and your go live is in 2016 continue to use Dashboards.  If you require complex local calculations in Excel then continue to use Dashboards

Figure 16: Source: Visual BI

Figure 16 shows a list of charts and each release.

Final Question & Answer

Q: Can you export to PowerPoint?

A: Visual BI can via SDK and other partners do as well

Upcoming ASUG Design Studio Webcasts

• March 1 Using SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio for Self Service BI
• March 8 Design Studio Ready-to-Run Application & Templates
• May 10 What's New with Design Studio 1.6 Feature Pack
• June 8 Are you ready to migrate from SBOP Dashboards to SBOP Design Studio?