Migrating SAP Dashboards/Xcelsius Applications to SAP Lumira Designer Webcast Recap

This was a webcast last week given by Visual BI   I tried not repeating content from here.

“Why move away from Xcelsius/Dashboards?” and understand SAP’s direction with SAP Lumira

Figure 1: Source: Visual BI

Figure 1 shows what is happening with SAP Lumira 2.0.

Figure 2: Source: Visual BI

Why phased out SAP Dashboards?  Figure 2 covers it, mostly due to the Flash dependency

Figure 3: Source: Visual BI

Figure 3 shows the start of Xcelsius beginning with Infommersion, the decline of flash, the Design Studio release in 2012, through SAP Lumira 2.0

In 2012 SAP updates to Xcelsius to limited HTML5 components

Figure 4: Source: Visual BI

SAP Lumira 2.x is a “”tool for IT & business”

It is possible for business users to use templates for generic visualizations; a controlled environment

Lumira Designer doesn’t have Flash dependency

It has “Out of box for SAP data sources”

Figure 5: Source: Visual BI

GA is expected August 21 (always subject to change)

Figure 6: Source: Visual BI/SAP

Some key features for Lumira Designer include interoperability and componentization

Figure 7: Source: Visual BI/SAP

Figure 7 shows SAP Lumira Designer supports direct HANA connectivity, background processing, high volumes, scripting

Figure 8: Source: Visual BI/SAP

Pain point for Dashboards was mobile compatibility

Figure 9: Source: Visual BI/SAP

Can be consumed on Mobile BI app or on browser

Figure 10: Source: Visual BI/SAP

Bypass row limits using Lumira Discovery

Figure 11: Source: Visual BI/SAP

Lumira Designer is built for self service for users to compose their own dashboards based on visualizations they created

Figure 12: Source: Visual BI/SAP

Figure 13: Source: Visual BI/SAP

Range slider is missing from Designer; available in Xcelsius

Figure 14: Source: Visual BI/SAP

The VBX extensions include the following and what is shown in Figure 14.

• Range sliders
• Stacked area charts
• Regional heat maps
• Can use Excel as a datasource

Reduce need for scripting, CSS customization, improve performance

Figure 15: Source: Visual BI/SAP

Most popular with the customer is conditional formatting, maps

Figure 16: Source: Visual BI/SAP

Custom case study in Figure 16 included using range sliders and progress bars

Figure 17: Source: Visual BI/SAP

This customer used the extensions for gauges

Figure 18: Source: Visual BI/SAP

Explorer is used for controlled data discovery, based on corporate data

Information spaces set up by IT

Business users can use these spaces to explore

Figure 19: Source: Visual BI/SAP

This is the first time I’ve seen something like this compared; it is interesting.

Figure 20: Source: Visual BI/SAP

Visual BI has an extension with explorer functionality including prebuilt applications, ability to switch data sources and online composition

Question and Answer

Q: migration, complete lift and shift or redesign?

A: at the moment no lift and shift, it is manual

Q: when imported from discovery to Designer – could not refresh data

A: on roadmap from SAP; looking at ways to refresh

Best use case is Excel data source

Q: Best way to approach existing set of dashboards – start from scratch?

A: Start from scratch in Designer/Design Studio

Q: What is row limit for HANA data source?

A: Safety belt; no limitation; remember this is a dashboarding tool so summarized data should be used

Q: When date available

A: Aug 21

Q: Web services based on Web Intelligence

A: Today Lumira doesn’t have connectivity to web services; VBX will offer web services as a data source

Q: Data limit for acquisition – 20K row limit?  Any best practice for mobile use

A: If have license for Lumira Discovery you can circumvent data limitation

Best practices – number of different practices – how design dashboard or data source

Q: How connect to 2 BW instances?

A: Yes, will be able to connect to two from within same Dashboard – Lumira Designer ; create on BI platform admin sets up connections to systems

Other

Upcoming relates webcasts follows below: