Workbook Pre Calculation and Broadcasting

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. Start the analyzer, what will open your Excel

2. Select BEx-add-in >> Open query.

3. 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/

4. Select the query you would like to use for data source for your workbook. You can also create the workbook based on more queries.

5. You can enter values for variants; these will be used during the execution of the query when your workbook is pre-calculated.

6. 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.

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.

2. Open the workbook you created in the previous section.

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

4. 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 /.

5. 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 user's language and with the user's locale.

. 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.

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.

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

10. 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

11. Fill the Scheduling screen. In this article I selected weekly periods for the update and broadcast of the workbook.

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! /

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 e-mail notification when the file is updated.

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.