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Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas

Reviewing what is new in BusinessObjects Analysis Office 2.4

I do not see where the official SAP Help has been updated yet but I did notice the software was available for download this morning:
So I will only cover what I have observed so far.

Table Rule Design Editor

The table rule design editor now has a copy button (far left)

Link Dimensions

You can link dimensions across crosstabs, and this means when you filter on the main cross tab it will also filter and navigate across the linked cross tabs.  They should share common dimensions

You can see the above icon indicates they are “linked”

Group Dimensions

You can group dimensions to “dependent” cross tabs.  One cross tab becomes the “main”.

The common dimension appears only once after grouping

You can see crosstab 1 is main, crosstab 2 is dependent

You can ungroup in the dependent cross tab or from the ribbon:

You can only navigate in the “master” cross tab

No Display

You can define a dimension to be “no display” in the Properties panel

Workbook Protection

You can select operations allowed while protecting workbook

Exclude Copy & Paste from Clipboard or File
You can explicitly exclude members from a file or a range

Example clipboard:
!ZY0217A
ZY0217B
!ZY0236
ZY0393
ZY0580
!ZY0589
ZY0597
!ZY0611
ZY0633A
ZY0633B
ZY1287A
<ZY1287B

Filter based on copy clipboard:

Result:

More to come, especially after the official SAP Help is released.

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      30 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Aaron Benner
      Aaron Benner

      Tammy, as always great summary!
      Any update on new/changed EPM features in AO2.4?

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Aaron -
      Thank you for reading and commenting.
      I believe there is quite a lot planned for EPM but since I don't use it and I didn't try it out, I will defer to SAP documentation (which isn't updated yet for 2.4)
      Tammy

      Author's profile photo Cathy Moore
      Cathy Moore

       

      Is the documentation available now? I do not see much info on SAP help

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      Cathy - SAP changed URLs on their help - it should be at https://help.sap.com/viewer/product/SAP_BUSINESSOBJECTS_ANALYSIS_OFFICE/2.4.1.0/en-US

       

      Tammy

      Author's profile photo Cathy Moore
      Cathy Moore

       

      Thank you Tammy

      Author's profile photo Arun Kumar Kancha
      Arun Kumar Kancha

      Hello Tammy,

      Will there be any BOP ANALYSIS FOR OFFICE 2.4 training course coming up ?

       

       

      Thanks,

      AK

      Author's profile photo Avinash D M
      Avinash D M

      Thanks Tammy. It's a very good abstract view for AO 2.4 features.
      Waiting for the more updates on AO 2.4 🙂

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Tammy, thanks for the summary.
      The display option for a dimension with "no display" seems already available at 2.3 SP2 (which I'm using now). I didn't notice it before though 😉
      Philipp

      Author's profile photo Iver van de Zand
      Iver van de Zand

      Thanks Tammy, really great that you already did this reveiw. There is a What's New on Af0 2.4 going on as we speak. The recording will be availableshortly 

      Author's profile photo Stephen Hobbs
      Stephen Hobbs

      Any information on the Comments option? It's grayed out even when connected to the BIP...

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      Stephen - the documentation is not updated yet, but my guess would be that that feature is dependent on an upcoming BI4x support pack

      Author's profile photo Stephen Hobbs
      Stephen Hobbs

      A good blog as ever! I had a play with the customize user interface option which is also new in 2.4.

      We have an Excel Add-In that inserts product images into an Analysis workbook. Previously this was called from the standard Add-Ins tab so I wondered if this would be a good use case.

      The config screen is easy to use and allows you to create custom Analysis Ribbons by either removing options you don’t want or adding new (non-Analysis) ones.

      Once you have created and saved your new ribbon you need to make it your default. The original is not changed. The next time you start Analysis, your new custom ribbon will be active.

      In our case, once we have run our Analysis report we can add the product images by clicking the new ‘Product Images’ button within the ‘Insert’ group.

      The profiles you create are stored at the following location by default:
      C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\SAP \Cof\User Interface

      As an administrator, you can define a specific profile for your company and provide it to your end-users by copying the profile at the following location:
      C:\ProgramData\SAP\COF\User Interface

      There is a good ‘how-to’ video created by SAP which guides you step-by-step.

      Regards,

      Stephen

      Author's profile photo Torsten Wirth
      Torsten Wirth

      Hi Stephen,

      thank you for this Information.

      I don't think that this is a really good approach from SAP in case of planning button group. In 2.3 it was possible to show / hide planning buttons via a setting in AO without restart. That was possible per user because only some users need planning and most don't.

      Now we have to set profiles per user (which means deploying per user) depending on the tasks of the user. The alternative is that the user has to do this settings byself. Which is - in case of planning group -  much more complicated than before. Create a new name for a profile, make settings, save profile, make it to the default profile, restart AO.

      In case of excel macros this macros are connected to an excel file normally which means it makes more sense that one use buttons in excel files where the macros are stored per file. Maybe I miss the point of this new approach. It think it would make more sense to store this data in combination with the Excel file instead of a general profile if there is this highly customizable approach. Furthermore there should be general settings like planning group on or of which are more important than the settings in the file.

      Has anyone an idea what "Arbeitsstatus" "Work Status" in the planning group is for? I have not installed the BPC part. This look like the workflow feature of BPC. This should not be available, should it?

      Regards,

      Torsten

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

       

      Hi Stephen

      Thanks for sharing this cool feature you have enabled in AO to display product images. We too have a similar need and the way I was going about it was to store product images as documents on master data by enabling the document property flag on the Infoobject and then uploading the images.

      However I am not sure how your custom button is able to pull the images into your report and would appreciate if you could share some more insight into this.

      Thanks

      Shailendra

      Author's profile photo Bart Verweijen
      Bart Verweijen

      hi Tammy

      I'm not seeing the option to group crosstabs in my right click menu. I'm on AO 2.4. Are there any backend prerequisites for this?

      Thanks
      Bart

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      Bart - grouping requires BW 7.5 SP06
      I am surprised the Official SAP Help is not there yet...

      Author's profile photo Torsten Wirth
      Torsten Wirth

       

      Hello Tammy,

      you wrote (I miss the reply / quote button for your original post):

      “You can link dimensions across crosstabs, and this means when you filter on the main cross tab it will also filter and navigate the linked cross tabs.”

      What do you mean with navigate?

      I have tried the filter feature and it works. But if I move a linked dimension to rows / columns this has no effect to the linked crosstab.

      The Group table feature is very nice. This is a kind of a virtual MultiProvider / HCPR in AO based on choosen dimensions.

      I have not found the unlink option for the dimensions in two grouped tables up to now (this seems to be not possible up to now – maybe this is a bug). Separate does work if link is used without group feature but in combination I don’t find the separate button for a single dimension. If you ungroup and group again the links which are set before are kept.

      Regards,

      Torsten

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Torsten - I meant filter - and you are right, it works.  I am sorry for the delay in replying, as I was traveling last week

      Author's profile photo Torsten Wirth
      Torsten Wirth

      There are 4 new parameters in the config file where I have found no documentation up to now:

      • DefaultBWQueryDesigner
      • DoSelectorHierarchyExplicitSelection
      • AutoCompleteFetchMemberLimit
      • HanaHttpConnectionTimeout

      And there is another one which I have found in the notes (2.4 SP1):
      2398492 - AO 2.x: Enforcing Datepicker for calendar day variables

      Author's profile photo Michael Hamm
      Michael Hamm

      Does anybody know how to hide or deactivate the Customize User Interface button?

      I could not find any parameter related to this, so i would i assume this is not possible..

      Regards,
      Michael

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      I think we have to wait until the admin guides are published; the ones at help.sap.com point to the earlier 2.3 version

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Does anyone know how to set the Company Profile as Standard Profile for users? I tried to set the path in the C:\ProgramData\SAP\Cof\Cof_app.config file but it did not work.

      Thanks and best regards

      Astrid

       

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Astrid - would you please post this question at answers.sap.com so the community can reply/see it?  Thank you

      Author's profile photo Karan Sehjpal
      Karan Sehjpal

      Its really awsome Tammy

       

      Thanks for sharing. I was looking for such described information about the latest version as we are planning to upgrade to this.

       

      Thanks

      karan

      Author's profile photo Sanjay Sachithanandham
      Sanjay Sachithanandham

      what is the resolution for the below note ??????????????????????????????????

       

      Symptom

      Using a planning function of type upload leads to an error message like “File doesn’t exist”.

      You are unclear which tools currently support this type of planning function.

      Other Terms

      BW, File Upload, Planning Function, “File doesn’t exist”

      Reason and Prerequisites

      In general Analysis Office supports all types of planning functions provided by BPC Embedded or BW Integrated Planning. This covers the concept of variables and filters. The provisioning of an upload file is not available. As a consequence this planning function of type upload is not supported.

      Solution

      We are aiming at supporting this planning function type in the future. Please check the “What’s New” section of Analysis Office or similar sources for an update.

       

       

       

       

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Sanjay - I'm sorry to hear about the error you are experiencing.

      I don't work for SAP and I am not that familiar with planning since I do not use it

      If you have question about it please create a new discussion/question at answers.sap.com

      Tammy

      Author's profile photo Santhosh Kumar Alladi
      Santhosh Kumar Alladi

      Hi Tommy,

      Could you explain how Exclude member filter values works step by step? I am following below approach but it doesn't work for us and we are using AO 2.4

      1. Select the column data on which filter to be applied
      2. Right click  Filter By Member, pop up window comes up
      3. I select Range Selection ,Not Between , then Choose Paste from Clipboard
      4. Step 3 does select the options from Clip board but all of them got checked but Range selection is overriden with Individual selection and values pasted from Clipboard have been selected instead of UNSELECTED
      Author's profile photo Christoph Nicolai
      Christoph Nicolai

      Hi Tammy,

      i would like to exclude several members in the range selection over "not equal to".

      Do you know a way without having to put an exclamation mark in front of the number?

      If i paste it from the clipboard without an exclamation mark, it becomes too "equal to", although i

      chose "not equal to"

      Best regards

      Christoph

       

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Christoph - thank you for reading/replying

      Off the top of my head, I don't know; I recommend asking this question at answers.sap.com so others in the community might see...they may have a better answer.

      Tammy

      Author's profile photo Christoph Nicolai
      Christoph Nicolai

      Hi Tammy,

      thank you for your answer.

      Christoph