In just six months’ time, the development team has progressed by leaps and bounds with SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio. As we announced last year at the introduction of the concept of SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, we’ve kept to our six-month release dates and you can continue to expect six-month release cycles. SAP Design Studio v1.1 has also gone directly to general availability, and you can download it from the SAP ServiceMarketplace. We expect the pace of new features to continue because the development team has been expanded and ramped up.
We’ve been listening to the feedback from those who adopted SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio v1.0 and working to incorporate that as quickly as possible. Already in v1.1 we have included custom style sheets, variable support, and enhanced charting. The version v1.0 was targeted as a premium alternative to SAP BusinessObjects BEx Web application designer, but now with v1.1, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio is set for a much wider adoption.
To get a customer point of view, watch this replay of British American Tobacco’s 2013 SAPPHIRE presentation and also catch a couple of interviews. You can also see a demo video by Ian Mayor, solution manager for SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio.
So What’s New in v1.1?
First, there are significant improvements in the designer. There are animated charts and new charts (Column Combination, Bar Combination and Waterfall). Plus with custom style sheets, you can do your own branding for the business intelligence (BI) applications. In moving closer to being able to do “what if” analysis like in SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, you have the API calculations. And now not only can you easily mobilize your applications on web or iPad, but in v1.1 there is iPhone support as well.
Other notable new features are the interoperability with SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, version for OLAP, which allows your business analysts to play around with the data and then (when it’s ready to be published) seamlessly transfer it to SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio with the filter member values to have a more formal application/dashboard built.
In addition, the partner and customer SDK beta should be opening in August 2013. Watch this first video done by partner graphomate who has been working closely with us on the development.
