BusinessObjects Enterprise XI

InfoView
Customizing InfoView without Coding

Overview
Business Objects provides numerous ways to customize a Business
Intelligence solution. Many of these customization solutions do not
require any programming knowledge. The solutions discussed in this
guide are with regards to InfoView.

If deeper integration is required for the Business Intelligence (BI) portal

or to integrate BI into the business workflow, please consult the
developer library, as these solutions require coding:

http://devlibrary.businessobjects.com/

Contents
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 2
CUSTOMIZING INSIDE INFOVIEW USING PERSONAL PREFERENCES ................. 2
General preferences ......................................................................................2
Web Intelligence Document preferences ......................................................3
Default fonts for Web Intelligence Reports ................................................. 6
Crystal Reports Preferences.........................................................................7
MY INFOVIEW OPTION.................................................................................. 8
Customizing My InfoView ..........................................................................8
CENTRAL MANAGEMENT CONSOLE – INFOVIEW SETTINGS ............................ 8
InfoView Properties .....................................................................................8
Header and style ............................................................................................. 8
Display ........................................................................................................... 10
Object Listing................................................................................................. 11
Viewers........................................................................................................... 12
InfoView Rights.........................................................................................12
FINDING MORE INFORMATION ..................................................................... 13

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BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 Customizing InfoView Without Coding

Introduction
There are many reasons why users would like to change the interface or
behavior of a product: corporate colors, the logo, or formatting. For
many this means getting a consultant or developer to develop something
new to fit their needs even for small changes.

This document lists many settings to make these changes and achieve
desired goals quickly.

Customizing inside InfoView using Personal Preferences

Personal preferences are by default enabled for every user. The
Preferences icon is in the upper right corner of the InfoView home page.
Personal settings are a quick and easy way to personalize InfoView.
Changes occur only to the user’s specific account. Some important
settings include the Locale settings for Web Intelligence documents,
setting the password and logging off automatically when the browser is
closed.

Only General, Web Intelligence, and Crystal Reports preferences will be

described.

General preferences
Settings in this category modify the presentation and functionality of
InfoView.

• When I close my browser window… -- This setting can cause

licensing issues. If it is set to never log off InfoView in a concurrent
users licensing model, it will use one license as long as the web
application server session is alive. If that occurs, some users will be
denied access to InfoView because no licenses are available, even if
only a few users are viewing reports. Additionally, regardless of the
licensing model, setting this option to always ask before logging me
off InfoView or always log me off InfoView releases resources
when the user logs off.
• My interface locale is equally important for multi-language
environments. For example, if offices are located all over Europe,
users in each country would expect to see InfoView presented in
their own language. By default, InfoView is installed in 12
languages. By using the default setting User Browser locale it will
automatically change the logon screen and InfoView to the language
defined in the browser settings. In case a single language needs to be
used company wide, this setting can be changed on an individual
basis.
• When scheduling reports to run at a specific time, the setting My
current time-zone is … is crucial because the default setting is Local
to webserver. This means if the local client location has a two-hour
time difference from the web server location, the report schedule will

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BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 Customizing InfoView Without Coding

also run with a two-hour difference -- not at the expected time

reflected on the local computer.
• For each document show me … -- This setting allows selection of the
information required of each document when viewing a folder
listing. The Type column is a global setting and can not be removed
or added by individual users (Please see InfoView Application
Settings). In case no actions are selected, click the grey arrow left of
the title, and the actions will appear.

Figure 1 – General Preferences

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BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 Customizing InfoView Without Coding

Web Intelligence Document preferences

The settings in this section will apply to Web Intelligence documents
only.

• The Select a Format locale and When viewing a document settings

work together to allow the ability for overriding the locale used for
the document and to format numbers and dates in the way required.
• Select Default Universe can save time when choosing the same
universe every time a new report is created. When creating a new
Web Intelligence document, the user is taken immediately to Web
Intelligence.
• The Prioritize easy data processing in the Excel document setting in
the Select MS Excel format section allows the user to further
manipulate data in Excel by keeping only the essential data in the
report and removing the formatting.

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BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 Customizing InfoView Without Coding

Figure 2 – Web Intelligence Preferences

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Default fonts for Web Intelligence Reports

As in previous versions it is still possible to modify the fonts and some
other settings of the Web Intelligence Java Report Panel. The default font
is Arial. It is specified in the defaultConfig.xml file (for the Java Report
Panel) and the config.js (for the HTML Report Panel). Languages and
fonts must be supported on the client computer in order to be displayed
correctly. In addition, all fonts must be defined in the fontalias.xml file.

The location of defaultConfig.xml for JSP is:

<installation_directory>\Business
Objects\Tomcat\webapps\businessobjects\enterprise115\desktoplaunc
h\webiApplet\AppletConfig.

The location of defaultConfig.xml in .NET is:

<installation_directory>\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise

11.5\Web Content\Enterprise115\webiApplet\AppletConfig.

An example of defaultConfig.xml is as follows:

Before modifying the file, create a backup. Also, by opening the XML file
in Internet Explorer after it is modified will parse the document and
check for errors in the markup (for example, a tag that was not closed
properly).

Different <KEY> groups are used for different parts of the report.

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BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 Customizing InfoView Without Coding

Crystal Reports Preferences

Using the Advanced DHTML Viewer will require the Report Application
Server to be started and enabled. The other viewers will use the Crystal
Reports Page/Cache Server.

Printing from the DHMTL viewer can be done by clicking Print in

Internet Explorer. However, that produces only a single page of the
report. To have a professional printout as well as access to all pages, the
user has the option to print using the ActiveX Printing Control or
Acrobat Reader. Clicking the ActiveX Printing Control option
immediately prints the report. Using the Acrobat Reader printing
control option requires the additional step of first viewing the report in
PDF format. Also, using the ActiveX Printing Control will retain the
original Crystal Reports format and not the “exported” DHTML or PDF
view.

The Rendering resolution (DHTML viewers) increases the DPI

resolution to 120 DPI for reports with images, keeping a higher
resolution of the picture. This improves the quality when using DHTML
Viewers.

Figure 3 – Crystal Reports Preferences

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BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 Customizing InfoView Without Coding

My InfoView option
The My InfoView editor allows the user to create a simple dashboard
which can contain several portlets pointing to any document viewable in
InfoView or an external web address (for example,
http://www.businessobjects.com).

My InfoView is particularly useful for users who only need to analyze a

few crucial documents on a daily basis. This saves time to navigate to the
folder and open the individual documents.

Customizing My InfoView
To split the view into more than one portlet using the editor, choose a
template, and then use the 2 split-buttons in the portlet itself to split it
further.

Figure 4 – My InfoView

When selecting a Crystal Reports document to be displayed, there will be

additional options available, such as viewer, zoom level, and showing
the latest instance or on-demand data.

To have more space available, the navigation panel can be hidden.

Central Management Console – InfoView settings

Clicking the icon that looks like a window in the toolbar activates the My
InfoView editor. The editor allows users to create a simple dashboard
which can contain several portlets pointing to any document available in
InfoView or in an external web address, for example:
http://www.businessobjects.com

InfoView Properties

Header and style

To display a custom logo, select the option Display custom logo at this
URL. Place the file (for example, logo.gif) in the same location where the
style sheet can be found.

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BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 Customizing InfoView Without Coding

The style sheet can be found in <installation_directory>:\Program

Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise 11.5\Web
Content\Enterprise115\InfoView for .NET environments.

In JPS environments, the style sheet can be found in

<installation_directory>:\Program Files\Business
Objects\Tomcat\webapps\businessobjects\enterprise115\desktoplaunc
h\InfoView\res\schema.blue.

The default style sheet can be modified to choose colors, fonts, and many
other design settings. With around 700 lines of settings, the appearance
of InfoView can be greatly modified.

NOTE Discussions, Viewers, and Dashboards use different style sheets in other directories.

To edit Use custom header colors, choose an option other than Display
Business Objects logo. Click the Use custom header colors option.
Color-coding values are the standard HTML hexadecimal values
(RGB=256,256,256)

Figure 5 – Central Management Console settings

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BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 Customizing InfoView Without Coding

Display
The settings in this section will not affect the Administrators account, as
the Administrator by definition is able to see everything.

If it is necessary for all users to have the same personal settings, deny the
settings to them by disabling the Show Preferences button.

Disabling Type simply drops the Type column from the InfoView listing.

The Show ‘Filters’ tab on the Schedule page option keeps the data
limited to the report specifications since users are able to change the
record selection (filter) and view data to which they are not allowed.
Also, administrators may not want users to see the record selection
formula, as it will reveal in which database fields certain data is stored.
By disabling this option, users will not see the filters tab.

Category View was the only type of view for BusinessObjects version 6.x
and earlier. Beginning with BusinessObjects Enterprise XI, both Folder
and Category views are now possible.

The maximum Number of pages of objects to show at a time affects the

amount of direct links to pages viewed in the InfoView listing. For
example, if there are 50 objects in a folder and each page has a limit of 10
objects, then five page links will appear at the bottom.

Users can modify the number of objects per page in the General Settings
of his personal preferences.

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BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 Customizing InfoView Without Coding

Figure 6 – InfoView Properties

Object Listing
This option can dramatically improve the performance of the system. If
the default View the Object setting is kept, it will retrieve the current
data from the datasource and then view it using the viewer specified in
the personal settings. Once the data-cache has expired, it would need to
retrieve the data again.

But in many customer environments we look at historical data. Take the

example of “Yesterdays sales”. If a recurring schedule is created to run
the report overnight, when the database and the network are free, the
report will retrieve all the data and save it. When selecting the other
option View the latest successful instance of the object, the user will

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BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 Customizing InfoView Without Coding

not need to wait to until the data is retrieved, it will just render it and
show it.

Viewers
These options are specific to Crystal Reports. The first option is simply
verifying Crystal Reports users will use the DHTML viewer instead of
the Advanced DHTML Viewer.

Using the second dropdown, users can choose their default viewer for
users.

InfoView Rights
Clicking the Rights tab will present the users and groups who have
access to InfoView. Clicking the Advanced link under the Net Access
column presents additional rights to define for the user or group. This
can be considered customization to some extent and needs to be
mentioned since there can be different ways to achieve the same effect.

Figure 7 – InfoView Rights

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BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2 Customizing InfoView Without Coding

NOTE For more information on rights, please check the Administrators guide chapter:
“Controlling user access overview” page 286
Selecting “Explicitly Denied” will deny logging onto InfoView completely and display the
following error: “Sorry, you do not have the right to use InfoView. If you require this right,
please see your system administrator.”

Finding more information

For more information and resources, refer to the product documentation
and visit the support area of the web site at:
http://www.businessobjects.com/

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