Use Case: Workbook Pre calculation and Broadcasting

Applies to:
SAP Business Intelligence, SAP Enterprise Portal, Broadcasting, Pre calculation Server. For more information, visit the Business Intelligence homepage.

Summary
This use case provides you a step by step sample how to insert a workbook into your portal, which contains BI data. With the help of the Precalculation Server and Broadcasting this workbook will be automatically refreshed every Monday. Author: Dezso Pap

Company: SAP AG Created on: 30 September 2009

Author Bio
Dezso Pap works as Senior Support Consultant at SAP for over 5 years. He has experience in various NetWeaver topics and BI precalculation.

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Use Case: Workbook Pre calculation and Broadcasting

Table of Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 3 Prerequisites ................................................................................................................................................... 3 Create your workbook......................................................................................................................................... 3 Create a broadcasting setting for the workbook ................................................................................................. 4 Results ................................................................................................................................................................ 8 Related Content .................................................................................................................................................. 9 Disclaimer and Liability Notice .......................................................................................................................... 10

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Use Case: Workbook Pre calculation and Broadcasting

Introduction
In this article you will see how to create a document for your colleagues / managers in your portal, which will contain actual data whenever they open it. The data will come from your BI system and will be stored in Excel format in your portal. In this scenario we will use Enterprise Portal 7 and SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 Prerequisites To follow this guide you will need to have some components configured in your system. These are: Precalculation Server has to be installed and running You can find installation guide in SDN. Please check the Related Content section of this document. It is easy to verify whether you have a running Precalculation Server via transaction RSPRECADMIN. On the initial list there should be at least one server with green status. BI Query that supplies data for your workbook. You can create a query using the Query Designer provided in your SAP Business Explorer tools. Designing a query is not scope of this article. There are numerous documents in SDN in this regard. Your portal needs to be configured for receiving broadcasted documents. It has to have KM and Collaboration installed and configured. Please check Related Content section for more documents about this topic. SAP Business Explorer tools and SAP GUI installed on your computer. The users who will access the document, will be able to open the workbook without SAP BI Frontend installation, but for navigation in the workbook they will need this too.

Create your workbook

To create a workbook we will use the BEx Analyzer what is part of the SAP Business Explorer tool. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Start the analyzer, what will open your Excel Select BEx-add-in >> Open query. The analyzer will ask for you login details to your BI System. / You can select the BI System from your SAP logon system list using the systems button/ Select the query you would like to use for data source for your workbook. You can also create the workbook based on more queries. You can enter values for variants; these will be used during the execution of the query when your workbook is pre-calculated. Save it as workbook using the BEx Analyzer menu.

Now the workbook is stored in your SAP System, and it is ready for usage in a broadcasting scenario.

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Use Case: Workbook Pre calculation and Broadcasting

Create a broadcasting setting for the workbook

Login to your portal with a user that has role: Business Explorer /
pcd:portal_content/com.sap.pct/platform_add_ons/com.sap.ip.bi/Roles/com.sap.ip.bi.business_explorer_showcase /.

1.

Start the broadcaster. /Business Explorer > BEx Broadcaster / If you have single-sign-on configured between your portal and BI Server you will be logged on to your BI system, if not you have to enter the user and password for the BI backend. Open the workbook you created in the previous section.

2.

Figure 1: Open the workbook

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Use Case: Workbook Pre calculation and Broadcasting

3.

Create a new setting for your broadcasting. In this article we do not use the wizard as we would like to select dedicated Precalculation Server for the setting. After pressing Create new Setting, select Broadcast to the Portal as distribution type and enter a name for the file. /This will be the technical name of the document! / Enter a user for Authorization user. This will be the user used to execute the Job on the backend. This user should be able to publish the document to KM as well. This users settings in the BI System will affect the locals /e.g Date or Number format /. Select language. This language setting will be used during the background processing of the document. It does not influence the online execution of the setting. Select: Export Document to Other Folder. As we want the document to be published in the collaboration room. For Information: If you select here My Portfolio you can enter the names of the users separated by semicolons. These users will then have the document in their personal portfolio. / You also can use BI Roles, than all users having the role will receive the document. / When the flag User-Specific is selected, the system generates a document for each user on the users language and with the users locale.

4.

5. 6.

Figure 2: Export Document to other folder

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Use Case: Workbook Pre calculation and Broadcasting

7.

With the help of the F4 help select a folder where your colleagues will be able to acess the document. In this article we will place the document into the collaboration rooms Room >> Docuements folder.

Figure 3: Select the portal folder for the document 8. Select Texts tab. Here you can enter information, which will be used as the attributes of the document in the portal. a. Title and description: you can use F4 help to get these attributes from variables, otherwise enter the texts you would like the document to have. b. You can also select the Importance of the document.

Figure 4: Enter portal document text information

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Use Case: Workbook Pre calculation and Broadcasting

9.

On the workbook precalculation tab you can select a specific precalculation server.

Figure 5: Select Precalculation Server 10. 11. Select button schedule. - The system will ask you to save the setting. Select OK, and fill the technical name and the description fields. >> Select Transfer Fill the Scheduling screen. In this article I selected weekly periods for the update and broadcast of the workbook.

Figure 6: Create scheduling 12. Save the Setting, and Execute it to store the file right now in the portal Collaboration room. When you execute the setting, the current logged on users data will be used for the generation and execution. / E.g. the current logon language will be the language of the document! /

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Use Case: Workbook Pre calculation and Broadcasting

Results
If you check now in your BI system in Tr. SM37 you will see the Job scheduled under the name of the Authorization user. And you will find the workbook in the Collaboration room you selected. /If you executed the Broadcasting in step 9. / Users can also subscribe to these documents, so they get an email notification when the file is updated.

Figure 7: Workbook in collaboration Room End users having BI front end installation can navigate in the document after logon to the BI system. If there was an error during the precalculation, you can check the log file in Tr. RSPRECADMIN. The log is located under the Precalculation Server you selected in Point: 9.

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Use Case: Workbook Pre calculation and Broadcasting

Related Content
Installation of Precalculation Server Configuration for Information Broadcasting Setting Up Broadcasting to the Portal For more information, visit the Business Intelligence homepage.

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Use Case: Workbook Pre calculation and Broadcasting

Disclaimer and Liability Notice

This document may discuss sample coding or other information that does not include SAP official interfaces and therefore is not supported by SAP. Changes made based on this information are not supported and can be overwritten during an upgrade. SAP will not be held liable for any damages caused by using or misusing the information, code or methods suggested in this document, and anyone using these methods does so at his/her own risk. SAP offers no guarantees and assumes no responsibility or liability of any type with respect to the content of this technical article or code sample, including any liability resulting from incompatibility between the content within this document and the materials and services offered by SAP. You agree that you will not hold, or seek to hold, SAP responsible or liable with respect to the content of this document.

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