Advice for Migrating from SAP Dashboards (Xcelsius) to SAP Design Studio Webcast Summary
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
Excellent Document. Well explained.