Page 1 of 14
Search
BI hub
BI Financials HR SCM CRM Solution Manager GRC Project Management IT
Home > BI > Articles > Best Practices to Develop and Manage a Corporate Reporting Template
Share |
Share
Our Community
Development and management of corporate reporting initiatives can be burdensome and result in a muddled array of report styles and data. Clearly streamlining the process for corporate branding through a reporting template gives direction to all users and ensures consistent results, as well as focused management of the development process. While the drag and drop functionality of SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence (WebI) results in a powerful ad-hoc tool for corporate reporting, issues with formatting often cause end users to write off the tool as difficult to use, confusing, frustrating, or inaccurate. Correctly implementing a corporate standard and template mitigates these issues, resulting in greater user adoption and a cohesive corporate brand. I take you through four steps of how to create a corporate reporting template, and also share best practices to consider.
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 2 of 14
Figure 1
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 3 of 14
Figure 2
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 4 of 14
Figure 3
In the video demo below, I show you how to create the common elements of a corporate reporting template, using a Web Intelligence report as an example.
00:00
00:00
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 5 of 14
flexibility to meet a multitude of reporting needs. You can display elements such as document name, last refresh date, filters, and page numbers using built in functions. Using pre-defined cells either built-in Web Intelligence elements or self-defined elements using a blank cell allows the format of corporate reports to remain the same while also permitting a variety of customizations on individual reports. You can find these template cells in Web Intelligence by going to the Report Element tab and then navigating to the Cell sub-tab menu (Figure 4). The menu on the left side of Figure 4 corresponds to the output on the right. For this example, if you add Document Name to the report, you get Pre-Defined Examples; if you add Last Refresh Date to the report, you get 11/7/12; if you add Drill Filter, you get None, and so on down the list.
Figure 4
Free-standing cells
Common elements include the following: Company logo Report title and subtitle Dates for which the report is displaying data Date and time of report execution Page numbers Filters applied to the report Confidentiality statement and disclaimer
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 6 of 14
Margins
Will the template be portrait or landscape? Creating two templates using each approach provides the most options with the least modifications for end users. Save time by developing one of them, and then copying it and modifying the details, such as margins and final element placement. While these vary across organizations, margins of inch allow for the most content per page, while still falling within the printable area. While wider margins create unneeded white space on a report, you can use - or 1-inch margins if reports contain little data.
Relative Positioning
Positioning is critical in the successful development of a template, yet it is the most-often-missed aspect by end users because users assume that if the items appear to be aligned correctly with whatever data they are currently viewing, that it will always be aligned. Users dont necessarily think about the expanding and contracting of tables based on fluctuating datasets, which may result in the overlapping of elements and poor pagination. When report elements are not positioned relative to each other on the report, they begin to overlap each other as the data set grows, resulting in elements that appear to be missing or floating in the middle of other elements. Each template should include a table for data and a chart (if charting is part of your organizational needs). A chart can always be deleted by a user who copies the template, but a charts inclusion allows you to set the relative position of that chart to the table. This ensures that regardless of how many rows of data the table contains, it does not overrun the chart, causing one or the other not to be visible. Using relative positioning for elements such as titles, filter displays, and report dates in the headers ensures that all elements are evenly distributed and thereby more visually pleasing. Furthermore, setting the width of these elements ahead of time and disabling autofit options also safeguards data from being truncated and overrunning other elements. To disable autoformat options, in Web Intelligence, follow menu path Format Cell > General > Autofit width and Autofit height checkboxes, and remove the marks from the boxes.
Refresh Settings
While largely driven by security and distribution requirements, refresh settings should be determined based on whether most reports need to contain the most up-to-date data based on user access privileges. In most cases, the Refresh on open option (under the Document Properties menu) is checked to ensure that the user gets the most recent data. The exception to this is if the report is distributed via publication. Publications also send a refresh request to the server during execution. If the report is set to refresh on open as part of a publication, the system attempts a double refresh at the same time, causing the report to fail.
Prompt Settings
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 7 of 14
While not a part of the template itself, the corporate standard should note whether responses are modified by the following options: Prompt with list of values*. Uncheck this box to get a freeform text box for user defined values. Select only from list*. Uncheck this box to allow users to select from a list or enter a value in a free-form text box. Keep last values selected*. This option retains the last value entered. Uncheck this box for reports in which users have restricted data sets and only can select from a list of values to which they have access. Optional prompt. Uncheck this box to allow a report to run with no restriction from the user (i.e., a way to essentially select all). By default, the starred items above are checked when creating a prompted filter. That said, if prompts are part of reporting, include these prompt responses in the template to inform users that the report may contain filtered data. While this can be accomplished using the Prompt Summary pre-defined field, a more useful way is to include the UserResponse() function in a blank cell positioned within the header.
Other Considerations
Refer to the various element tabs in Web Intelligence 4.x. Define each property for a complete standard. Note Click here to download the above design items in a checklist format.
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 8 of 14
tables should also be ordered positive, negative, positive, negative, yet both the WTD and PTD positive tables are displayed first, with their corresponding negative data elements pushed to the bottom.
Figure 5
Conversely, Figure 6 shows how the elements appear in the correct order when added to the report in the proper sequence. Furthermore, you can also see that the title and date run for fields in Figure 6 have been shifted so that they are centrally aligned above other report elements. You can accomplish this by setting the textbox in which element is contained to a size much larger than the text itself and then centering the text in the textbox. Even after being aligned to the left in an email, the elements still appear centered.
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 9 of 14
Figure 6
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 10 of 14
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 11 of 14
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 12 of 14
<install drive>:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0 \images\WebIDefaultStyleSheet.css 1. Copy these files to create a backup and store it in a separate location 2. Open the defaultConfig.xml file 3. Modify the various report configuration elements listed within the file 4. Save and close. See Figures 7 and 8 for pointers about where the values to be changed are located in the code. Note Changes made in the style sheet do not automatically appear in your existing reports. However, changes appear when an existing report is opened in Modify mode and then refreshed and saved.
Figure 7
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 13 of 14
Figure 8
Jennifer McKune
Jennifer McKune is a senior BI consultant with full life cycle data warehouse and business process experience across many industry sectors. She speaks globally and mentors on data warehousing, ETL, and business process and reporting best practices. She has more than eight years of IT experience in the following areas: data warehouse design; ETL; architecture and development; business process re-engineering; universes dashboards, and report design and implementation; security and business analysis and administration; technical training and mentoring; and project management. To contact the author, click here: Jennifer McKune. If you have comments about this article or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the BI editor. See more by this author
Comments
No comments have been submitted on this article.
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013
Page 14 of 14
Submit a Comment
Please keep comments civil and pertinent to the article you are commenting upon. SAPexperts reserves the right to edit or remove your comment. Display Name Comment *
Contact Us
Partners
FAQ |
About Us
20 Carematrix Drive, Dedham, MA 02026 USA Sales and Customer Service: 1.781.751.8799 Email:licenses@wispubs.com
SAP and the SAP logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and several other countries.
http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/bi/articles/best-practices-to-develop-and-manage-a-corpor...
02/05/2013