Dr. Bjarne Berg

In This Session …
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Best practices to design SAP BusinessObjects
Dashboards
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How to get the right requirements for your dashboards
How to conduct design for performance and size your system accordingly
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Take a look at common design challenges
See several sample designs and demos of good operational, management and formatted dashboards, as well as dashboards in BI Workspaces and the BI
Launchpad
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What We’ll Cover …
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Overview
Getting the right Requirements (ASAP, RAD and Agile)
Dashboard Design Considerations
Performance Testing and Performance Design
The BI 4.0 Environment and Dashboard Deployments
Wrap-up
2

The “Waterfall Methodologies” Are Not Good for Dashboards
The System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methodologies, such as
ASAP, are known collectively as “waterfall methodologies”
They give a false sense of clear-cut stages and do not address substantial functionality changes during development
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It is hard to fix missing functionality during integration testing
The waterfall
Examples for Accelerators:
• Project Plan, Estimating
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Design Strategies, Scope Definition
• Documentation, Issues Db
• Workshop Agenda
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Questionnaires
• End-User Procedures
• Test Plans
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Technical Procedures
• Made Easy guidebooks (printout, data transfer, system administration…)
Fill in the Blank
Versus
Start from Scratch
Source: SAP
The challenge with ASAP is that users don’t know what they want until they see it …
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The ASAP Methodology Approach
Integration
Testing
Create Functional specs
No
Complete?
Yes
Create Technical specs
No
Complete?
Yes
System Testing
Unit Testing
Peer Review
No
Yes
Approved?
Peer Review
Complete?
Yes
No
Structured walkthrough
No
Complete?
Yes
No
Configuration
Yes
Approved?
Structured walkthrough

Where Do You Start — First Alternative
Get a group of five-to-seven people for a brainstorming session
Draw the solution, knowing that it may look somewhat different once developed
Focus on the use of space, graphs, navigation, available data, and the purpose of the dashboards
Do not design fixed format “reports”

Building a Mockup in Excel
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If you can make a “mockup” in Excel, users can see what it may look like in Xcelsius
Users can now see what it may look like

Prototyping the Dashboard Requirements
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Once the brainstorming is completed, you can create data in Excel and prototype the solution in SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
It can be very time consuming to get the requirements right

A Dashboard Accelerator Approach – Agile, JAD and RAD
A Dashboard Accelerator is a group of bought, or pre-developed dashboards, to help companies develop their dashboards faster following a Rapid Application Development (RAD), JAD or Agile methodology
Orientation meeting
- high-level scope agreement
Interactive development
Show dashboard in weekly UAT sessions
Demo accelerator dashboards in scope
Request enhancements and new features
Make enhancements
Performance enhancements backend & front/end
Unit test
No functional specs are written and the development time for a subject area can be as little as 4-10 weeks depending on back-end enhancements required and scope.
System test
Integration test Go-Live

What We’ll Cover …
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•
•
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Overview
Getting the right Requirements (ASAP, RAD and Agile)
Dashboard Design Considerations
Performance Testing and Performance Design
The BI 4.0 Environment and Dashboard Deployments
Wrap-up
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Creating a Dashboard Standards
A Dashboard template should be developed that standardize the font, colors, button locations, navigations and tabs. Spend serious time on this, it should become the global standard for all your dashboards.

Divide and Get Performance
Drill-down options
Link to Details
WebI reports
Split your dashboards into logical units and get new data when drilldowns are executed. This keeps the result set for each query small and also decreases the load time for each dashboard
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Build Several Dashboards for each Functional Area
• Avoid trying to create a single dashboard for each functional area.
• You will normally need 3-5 dashboards for areas such as accounts receivables, accounts payables, purchasing, sales orders, invoices, shipping etc…
• Build 2 to 5 WebI reports for more details and link them to the dashboards so that navigation is easy for end users

Formatted Number Based Dashboards
Some dashboards may have little navigation and be number or key performance indicator (KPI) based similar to Crystal Reports
Static information
Basic graphing of key numbers
KPIs

Senior Management – Graphical Dashboards
• Dashboards for the senior management should be very graphically oriented.
• Consider using logos, and images instead of text for this purpose.
• Navigation should be very simple
• For senior managers, the ability to interact with the data
(what-if), see performance numbers relative to plan, budgets and prior years are critical functionalities

A Real-World Example
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This project is for travel expense analysis
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The color codes communicate changes, yearover-year
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Graphs can be displayed many ways
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Navigation can be done and can get new query result sets
This dashboard is based only on BW query and BICS connector; the cube is in SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator and the dashboard therefore loads in less than 12 seconds
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A Real-World Example (cont.)
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Dashboards are most useful when compared to something
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This dashboard is relative to a budget
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Notice that all graphs can be displayed in many ways and that color coding is consistent across the dashboards
Make sure layout, buttons, and colors are consistently used
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A Real-World Example (cont.)
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This dashboard groups six different categories and over 30 lines into an easily readable table using a few lines and mostly colors
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Too many lines and incorrect use of
“bold” makes dashboards very hard to read
Don’t cram too much into a single dashboard. Plan on multiple dashboards for each business area.
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A Real-World Example (cont.)
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Changes over time are typically tracked in the dashboards
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Don’t just present numbers, plan on only showing changes
I.e., in amounts and percentages
In this dashboard, the graphs are sometimes hard to read, so we added filter selections. Use these carefully, since they are slow and make Flash files large.
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Dynamic Dashboard Option for Power Users
Step 2 - Self Service to select any characteristic to filter on. Can select multiple characteristics to filter on also IE: Month, Plant, Material Group, etc.
Step 1 – Provide a self service option to select a group of any of the many key figures available from a SAP BEx Query
Step 3 - Self service option to select any range of dates or selections. The dashboard is design to limit 13 characteristic key figures though.
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The Measures can now be selected to be displayed
Step 4 –
Select available key figures to display on chart.
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The Next Step is just to refresh the display
Step 6 – Update the Key Figures to add more key figures.
Step 5 –Select available key figures to display on chart.
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Adding more measures to the display and rearranging them
Step 7 –
Add Revenue to selected Key Figures
Step 8 -
Move SNP
Forecast
(MT) to the top of the list for a higher priority.
Then click update
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The Output
Step 9 – Notice SNP Forecast (MT) moved to the top and now has numbers on the chart.
Step 10 – Revenue is now a selectable option.
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Controlling Characteristics
Step 11 – Select Xref, a custom characteristic to describe a material hierarchy.
Step 12 – Select Mesh and CLICK ‘apply’
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Saving a Personalized View
Step 13 – Save this view as ‘Mesh and Mas Dashboard’
Step 14 –
Enter name and save, and this become your personal selfservice dashboard view!
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Online Help System for Your Dashboards
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Online help is available for each dashboard
The online help system explain
How numbers are calculated
How to read graphs
What functionality is embedded
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Mobile
Dashboards are web based and may be rendered on a mobile device.
Devices that do not support Flash, can use HTML-5 based dashboards in the future, or you can download software tools such as Xwis to assist with the rendering on tools such as Apple’s iPad.
With Flash version 11 installed, all dashboards may be rendered on a mobile device using the
Microsoft or Android based operating systems
Further optimization is also possible for older devices with low memory or low network capacity

The Strategic Dashboard Release Plan
Area
The strategic dashboard plan should clearly map out the vision for the next 24-36 months
2012 2013 2014
Dashboard
COPA
Billing
Order
AR
AP
Freight costs dashboard
Cost analysis dashboard
Profitability dashboard
Product profitability dashboard
Phase -2 enhancements
Billing overview dashboard
Billing analysis dashboard
Billing errors dashboard
Phase -2 enhancements
Order dashboard
Order trend dashboard
Phase -2 enhancements
AR overview dashboard
Past due dashboard
Aging dashboard
Phase -2 enhancements
AP aging dashboard
Discounts taken dashboard
Travel expense dashboard
Phase -2 enhancements
...
!
!
!
!
!
Make sure you add the “phase-2” timeline for all areas, plan for enhancements, and communicate this early to all users
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The Dashboard Deployment Diagram
The dashboard deployment diagram provides an overview of who has access to each dashboard
You should also provide a similar diagram that shows who can grant access to the dashboards. These are called “dashboard owners.”

The Business Readiness Dashboard Checklist
The purpose of the business readiness dashboard checklist is to make sure that a project is not merely an afterthought with little visibility, zero real sponsorship, and has a lack of communication, support, training, and organizational commitment
There are reasons why many dashboard projects fail
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What We’ll Cover …
•
•
•
•
•
•
Overview
Getting the right Requirements (ASAP, RAD and Agile)
Dashboard Design Considerations
Performance Testing and Performance Design
The BI 4.0 Environment and Dashboard Deployments
Wrap-up
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Dashboard Objects That Can Cause Slow Performance
These are dashboard objects that you need to carefully consider before employing
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Excel Performance Considerations — What to Avoid
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The logic you build into your Excel spreadsheet is also compiled into the Flash file when you export it
Since some “daisy-chain” functions are very time consuming, you should be careful not to add too many conditions in the data
Lookup functions and conditioning that should be avoided include:
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Lookups
Mid strings (MID)
Right and left strings (RIGHT/LEFT)
Horizontal Lookups (HLOOKUP)
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Vertical Lookups (VLOOKUP)
Condition
General conditioning (IF)
Count if a condition is true (COUNTIF)
Sum if a condition is true (SUMIF)
Complex logic and nested logic create large SWF files and take a long time to open. Try to keep as much of the calculations and logic in the query instead of the spreadsheet.
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The BO Sizing for Performance Dashboards
SAP has provided a sizing tool for the BI environments. It is based on
Flash and is actually a dashboard itself.
Download it: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/ index?rid=/library/uuid/1055c55
0-ce45-2f10-22ad-a6050fff97f1
Output Area
(Sizing Results)
Input Areas
(items and users)
This tool can help you size your BI 4.0 environments with a few key assumptions and inputs.
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The Sizing Tool – Entering Users
First, you have to enter the estimated active concurrent users (ACU) for the following user types:
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Information
Consumers
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Business Users
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Expert Users
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Dashboard User Classification
The tool provides on-line definitions of the user types and guidelines on how to determine Active Concurrent
Users (ACU). This is defined as approximate 10% of the active users.
Many dashboard users is large organizations may be classified as Information Consumers .
They may not wait 5 minutes between clicks, but typically do little drill-down and filtering.
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Dashboard Size Impacts
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The next step is to make an assumption on the size of dashboards.
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The sizing tool classifies small dashboards as having 25 rows in the result set, medium having 250, and large dashboards having 2,500 rows.
Assumptions: the tool was based on supporting two queries per dashboards, and benchmarked was for accessing two relational data sources. One with 6 dimensions with 77,000 entries and 400,000 line items, and one with 6 dimensions with 7,000 rows and 40,000 line items.
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Dashboard Environment Sizing Output
The output of the tool is measured in SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS).
100 SAPS is defined as 2,000 fully business processed order line items per hour.
It is a measure that hardware vendors can use to decide which of their configurations can meet your performance requirements. All hardware vendors are familiar with this measure and this is what you will provide them when requesting a hardware quote.
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Memory Requirements for Dashboards and BI 4.x
The sizing tool also provide a sizing estimate for the hardware memory required for each of the tiers.
This is measured in Gigabytes
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Saving Your Assumptions and Results
Your BI and dashboard sizing effort can be saved or printed from the tool and you can have many scenarios
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Example of Dashboard Performance Foundation
Modularize the data and create sub-sets of data for really fast dashboarding
Generic “metrics” data tables can be created for summarized KPI and scorecard dashboards
The summary, or snapshot data can be accessed much faster than underlying data tables with millions of records
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Dashboard Performance Architecture – another example
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In this example, the company uses snapshots for performance reasons
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Dashboards for executive users
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Pre-delivered SAP
BusinessObjects
Web Intelligence reports for casual users
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Ad hoc SAP BusinessObjects Web
Intelligence reports for power users
The dashboards are only built on the low-volume daily snapshot cube (this is also placed in SAP
NetWeaver BW Accelerator for very high performance)
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The Dashboard Performance Checklist
8.
9.
3.
4.
1.
2.
5.
6.
7.
The hardware servers — Check sizing
The server locations and networks — Check loads
Query review — Look at database & calculation time, & design
Interface review — Make sure you are using the best for the data source
Dashboard review — Look at Excel logic, container usage, number of Flash objects, sorts, size of result set, and simplification opportunities
In-memory review — Look at cache usage, hit rations, and SAP NetWeaver BW
Accelerator usage
Review data sources — Examine if snapshots can be leveraged and look for possibilities to create aggregates
Examine compatibilities between browsers, Flash, and Microsoft office versions
Review PC performance issues — Memory, disk, and processors
Performance is complex, look at more than one area
(e.g., Web portal bottlenecks and LDAP servers)
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What We’ll Cover …
•
•
•
•
•
•
Overview
Getting the right Requirements (ASAP, RAD and Agile)
Dashboard Design Considerations
Performance Testing and Performance Design
The BI 4.0 Environment and Dashboard Deployments
Wrap-up
45

BI 4.0 and Deployment Demo
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What We’ll Cover …
•
•
•
•
•
•
Overview
Getting the right Requirements (ASAP, RAD and Agile)
Dashboard Design Considerations
Performance Testing and Performance Design
The BI 4.0 Environment and Dashboard Deployments
Wrap-up
47

Additional Resources
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
Creating Dashboards with SAP BusinessObjects (2nd Edition)
Ray Li and Evan Delodder, 650 pages, ISBN-10: 1592294103 , SAP Press
(April 6, 2012)

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook
David Lai and Xavier Hacking, 354 pages, ISBN: 1849681783, Packt Publishing
(May 23, 2011)

SDN Community for Dashboard design http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-dashboards
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SAP User Interface Guidelines for Crystal Dashboard Design https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/docs/DOC-142813
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SAP Crystal Dashboard Design & Presentation Design 2011 Samples http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/40245c5e-767d-2e10-e4b2c779cf05d753
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7 Key Points to Take Home
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Getting the right requirements require prototyping and interactive sessions with end users
Plan on many dashboards and don’t force too much information into a single design
Build different layouts for casual, executives and power users
Link WebI reports to the dashboards and keep the detailed information in those
The SAP BI 4.0x platform should be the preferred choice to deploy your dashboards
Avoid certain components of the tool and stay with ‘default’ templates for simplified design (i.e. NOVA)
Plan your dashboard deployment as a larger initiative of BI selfservice for your organization.
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