SAP BO Business Intelligence Platform 4.0
Report Conversion Tool
Best Practices
Carmelo Riso
Confidential
Report Conversion Tool Best Practices
After completing this lesson, you are now able to:

©
Identify best practices.
2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
Confidential
2
Report Conversion Tool Best Practices
Brief Overview of Report Conversion Tool
The
RCT converts Desktop Intelligence reports to Web Intelligence reports and publishes
the converted reports to the CMS.
The
RCT does not convert all Desktop Intelligence features and reports.
The level of conversion depends on the features that are used in the original report.
Desktop Intelligence features that are not (yet) available in Web Intelligence are of course
not converted.
The
RCT can modify, re-implement, or remove Desktop Intelligence features that are not
supported in Web Intelligence.
The
©
RCT assigns a status to each report. Values are:

Fully Converted

Partially Converted

Not Converted
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Gathering Requirements
Do you have enough information about the possibilities of Web Intelligence?
How many people are impacted?
How are they informed? How can they get support?
Have you considered moving your Desktop Intelligence deployment to Web Intelligence?
If not, please explain.
If yes, please describe the level of involvement and role of the users involved in the project
to move from Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence
IT
/ Development
BI
Project owners
Report Authors
BI Analysts
Business
External
©
end-users
resources
2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
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Gathering Requirements
Do you have information about your current Desktop Intelligence deployment:
Can you categorize the existing documents into crucial, useful, redundant, …
Who is using the information?
Do you use the following features in your current Desktop Intelligence deployment:
Personal
data providers
VBA
Free
hand SQL
Do you have a global plan for sourcing the move to Web Intelligence (IT / Business users /
External resource)?
Do you have a training plan?
What is the status / timing for your move from Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence?
Select the option that best describes your situation and add some comment
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2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
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Gathering Requirements
1.
Have investigated but won’t move any content to Web Intelligence due to planning,
process or resource issues
2.
Have investigated but won’t move any content to Web Intelligence due to missing
features
3.
In the process of moving some projects to Web Intelligence, although many Desktop
Intelligence reports remain
4.
In the process of moving most projects to Web Intelligence, although some Desktop
Intelligence reports remain
5.
In the process of moving all projects to Web Intelligence, abandoning Desktop
Intelligence
6.
Completed the move to Web Intelligence, no Desktop Intelligence reports remain
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2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
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Planning a Typical Workflow
Step 1: get the lists of the documents from the various business departments
along with their priorities
Step 2: set full client documents as source, migrate these with the upgrade
management tool.
Step 3: run the conversion using the report conversion tool
Step 4: review conversion result
Review the logs
Estimate the level of rework for each document
Set categories: no rework / some rework / a lot of rework / needs to be recreated
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2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
Confidential
7
Planning a Typical Workflow
Step 5: handle the rework
3
versions: source, in progress, completed
Checking
the content and testing the refresh
Step 6: involve business owners for validation
The
conversion complete documents are migrated to a quality platform for user
acceptance testing
If
not validated, the documents are sent back to the conversion team
Step 7: finish document lists for each department and deliver packages to the Business
Objects migration team
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2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
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Conversion Issues and Workarounds
Type
Keyword
Workaround
Block format
Crosstab across edge display
options
Within Web Intelligence the option
to repeat the footer will apply on
both the horizontal and vertical
footer of an Crosstab. The settings
to repeat the ‘Across Edge’ footer
will not be required.
Chart
Legend
The option to assign a position for
the legend within a Chart is not
available within Web Intelligence.
You can freely move the legend
within the Chart area
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2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
Confidential
9
Conversion Issues and Workarounds
Type
Keyword
Workaround
Chart
Title
The option to assign a position for
the title within a Chart is not available
within Web Intelligence. You can
freely move the title within the Chart
area
Filter
Complex Block filters
Normally occurs due to the fact that
the formula used for the filter cannot
be converted to a Web Intelligence
Formula.. Redefine the filter within
the WebI report
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2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
Confidential
10
Conversion Issues and Workarounds
Type
Keyword
Workaround
Filter
Complex Global Filters
Normally occurs due to the fact that
the formula used for the filter cannot
be converted to a Web Intelligence
Formula.. Redefine the filter within
the WebI report
Page setup
Page setup options
Reformat the report to fit the required
page layout. (using smaller font size,
etc)
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2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
Confidential
11
Conversion Issues and Workarounds
Type
Keyword
Workaround
Query
Sort on Query
In case the sort on a query is used for
retrieving the top x of a set, the usage of the
build in ranking statement from the query
panel is recommended as a replacement for
the sort function. All other Sort functions do
not impact any result set within the Reporting
Solution and can be dropped
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2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
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12
Features Implemented in Latest Release
Every new release or service pack introduced a large set of new features and
support for additional features from Desktop Intelligence.
The table below illustrates a few of them.
Web Intelligence Release
©
Desktop Intelligence Feature
XIR2
XI 3.0
XI 3.1
XI 3.1 SP2
BI 4.0
Edit SQL
a
a
a
a
a
Offline Capability
a
a
a
a
Personal Data Providers
a
a
a
a
MultiCube (ForceMerge) Function
a
a
a
a
Document Autosave and Recovery
a
a
a
Support Large Datasets
a
a
a
Query on Query
a
a
Fold / Unfold
a
a
Input Controls
a
a
Fit to page
a
Show/Hide
a
2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
Confidential
13
Report Conversion Tool Best Practices: Lesson Summary
After completing this lesson, you are now able to:
©

Identify best practices to be implemented.

Plan Desktop Intelligence document conversion with minimum impact.
2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
Confidential
14
Thank You!